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The Blood Feud | Escape Part 2 | Nightshade glided through the sky above Ponyville, his large wings spread out fully as he descended towards the large building at the other edge of town. Behind him, the rest of his team followed close behind him. But as they came closer and closer to the compound, Nightshade noticed something odd that made him stop suddenly and hover in the air. He raised his hoof to the others behind him.
"Stop, something's going on." Nightshade said as he looked down at the brightly lit compound below. Aside from how bright it was down there, the sounds of shouting and screaming could also be heard. "Stratus, what's going on down there?" Nightshade asked. Stratus quickly took a pair of binoculars out of his bag and looked at the compound yard through them.
"Uh...." Stratus opened his mouth to respond to Nightshade, but quickly stopped in confusion. Starry hovered up beside him.
"What is it Strat? Ya catching a glance at some Wonderbolts making Hanky Panky?" Starry asked suggestively. Stratus simply looked up with a confused expression on his face.
"The Compound is already on fire." Stratus said. Starry's smug smile dropped to a confused frown while Nightshade and Charger both rose an eyebrow. Nightshade quickly grabbed the binoculars and looked through them himself. Sure enough, the yard was engulfed in flames, with a few Wonderbolts moving around the yard trying to combat the fire, and a few other unfortunate enough to catch fire themselves.
"What the hell?!" Nightshade said in confusion.
"Maybe they're trying to kill themselves so we don't have to." Starry said with a laugh. Charger scoffed.
"If they are, then let's hurry up. I want to get at least one crushed skull tonight." Charger said as he cracked his neck and forehooves. Nightshade nodded in agreement and gave the binoculars back to Stratus.
"It doesn't matter what's happening now, in fact this might help us. Now let's just get down there and start the fun." Nightshade said with a grin before continuing his glide down to the compound with the others following close behind.
Shortly after the chaos began on the ground, Soarin, Fluttershy and Scootaloo all quickly made their way up to the Compound's roof, where they began looking for a way in. Eventually, Fluttershy found a window big enough for them all to get through, and they were in.
After shutting the window and taking a look at where they were, they found themselves in a hallway on the top floor of the compound. There were only a few doors on that floor, one was labeled stairs, and another was labeled with a large Wonderbolt logo with Solar Storm's name beneath it. The walls were also aligned with several display cases of medals, trophies, uniforms, and photographs of former teams as well as commemorations for Wonderbolts that had passed.
"Okay, where's Dash's room Fluttershy?" Soarin asked. Fluttershy glanced over to the door labeled stairs and pointed.
"We have to go down, her room is on the second floor of the east wing, that's where the female dormitories are." Fluttershy explained. Soarin nodded and followed Fluttershy and Scootaloo to the stairs and made their way down a few flights to the second floor.
While inside, the alarm was continuing to be rung due to the distraction outside, but Soarin knew they probably didn't have long before things dies down and the Wonderbolts came back inside.
The trio finally reached the second floor stairwell door and opened it a crack, Soarin's stomach nearly dropped when he saw a Wonderbolt turn the corner at the end of the hall and began moving to where they were. Soarin was about to leap out and attack him when he was stopped by another Wonderbolt.
"Dude, we need everyone outside, we've got injured!" the further Wonderbolt shouted. The Wonderbolt that was moving towards the stairs stopped and turned around.
"Why? What the hell's happening?!" he shouted.
"Some crazy bitch just burned herself along with a few of us in the yard. We need to get them to the med bay!" the further one shouted. The closer one shrugged and went to follow, disappearing around the corner.
The whole exchanged that the three witnessed left them shocked. "Crazy Bitch" and "Burned Herself". It didn't take long before Fluttershy looked at Soarin with fright.
"Were they....r-referring to B-blossom?" Fluttershy stuttered out. Soarin tried to wrap his head around what he heard, but pushed it from his mind. If that's what happened, then Soarin DID feel bad, but now wasn't the time. They had some ponies to save.
"We'll deal with that later, but now, we have to find Dash and Blaze, c'mon." Soarin said as he pushed open the door and continued to move down the second floor corridors, still wary of other Wonderbolts.
Blaze and Dash quickly moved to the end of another east wing hallway. As they reached the end, they stopped and Blaze peeked around the corner, eyeing where the stairs were, just one hallway left before they could reach the ground floor and find a door to get out. With the security system now fully activated, all the windows had been locked, with exterior doors now being the only way out. Blaze turned back to Dash and nodded.
"Coast is clear, let's go." Blaze whispered. Dash nodded and the two began to make their way down the hallway. They were about halfway to the stairs when somepony leapt from a nearby doorway and grabbed Dash around the neck. Dash immediately started to struggle in the assailants grasp until another hoof wrapped around her. Blaze turned when she heard Dash's struggle and narrowed her gaze into an angry glare.
"Just where do you think you gals are off to?" Fire Streak said as he tightened his grip on Rainbow Dash. She continued to struggle, eventually she tried to bite his hoof, but could look down far enough.
"Just let us go Fire Streak. We don't want anything more to do with this you bastard!" Blaze shouted angrily as she took a few steps forward. Fire Streak stepped back with Dash and drew his switchblade, holding it to Dash's throat.
"Oh no, you aren't getting away this easily. Not after what you two did to my brother, what you did to me, what you did to the Wonderbolts. You're both better off dead for what you've done!" Fire Streak shouted. Blaze became angrier.
"What we've done? You and your brother did nothing but harass us, and look what Lightning did to me!" Blaze shouted, pointing to her blackened eye. Fire scoffed.
"Maybe he wouldn't have done that if you just gave him a chance." Fire Streak said, almost too matter-of-factly. Dash tried to struggle some more, but Fire held the switchblade even closer to her throat. "Maybe you can give me a chance now Dash?" Fire said quieter, leaning into Dash's ear as he held her against him. Dash shivered as he spoke to her. She always hated Fire Streak, but now he was crossing every boundary that had ever existed.
"Get off me." Dash said sternly, loud enough for Fire and Blaze to hear.
"I might, if you give me what I want. What I've wanted since I first saw you." Fire whispered to her. Dash felt like she was caving in. She looked at Blaze with desperation, but refused to fully cave in. Blaze's expression changed from anger to fear. Terrified of what Fire was going to do if she couldn't stop him.
Fire suddenly leaned into Dash further and stuck his snout into her mane. Dash shivered as she felt him inhale. Fire let out a pleasured exhale before leaning back to her ear.
"So, what'll it be Dashie?" Fire asked. Dash was about to tell him off, when something she never expected happened.
Somepony emerged from another one of the hallways that was connected to the hallway they were in, flying so fast that Dash couldn't make out who. She closed her eyes and hear a loud and rough impact on Fire's face. He lost his grip on Dash and was thrown back from her. She felt herself begin to fall, only to be caught by somepony else.
"GET AWAY FROM HER YOU ASSHOLE!" The voice above her shouted.
A very familiar voice. She opened her eyes and looked up. Soarin was there, holding her in his arms, glaring harshly at Fire Streak, who was now lying in a heap on the other side of the hallway. Soarin looked back down at Dash with concern.
"Are you okay?" Soarin asked. Dash didn't even respond before grabbing his face and bringing their lips together in a mental explosion of passion and relief. He was there, and he saved her. After sharing a kiss, they separated, and Soarin helped Dash back to her hooves. She stared into his eyes, beyond overjoyed that he had come to save her.
"I am now." Dash said. Soarin smiled and hugged her tightly.
"I'm so glad you're okay." Soarin whispered. As he hugged her, she saw Fluttershy and Scootaloo rush in next to Blaze, both looking relieved. After Soarin finished embracing her, she ran and hugged Fluttershy and Scootaloo as well.
"You guys.....came for us?" Blaze asked. Fluttershy smiled at her.
"Of course, though, we probably wouldn't have gotten this far without Rumble and Blossomforth." Fluttershy explained. Soarin suddenly cleared his throat.
"Look, we can talk and be happy later, but first, we need to escape, come on." Soarin said, pointing to the stairs.
"NOOO!" a loud voiced boomed from behind them. They all turned to see Fire Streak, who was now standing, his cheek was already starting to swell from the punch that Soarin gave him. His gaze burned like a bonfire and he clutched his switchblade shakily. He growled and started to step forward. As the group was distracted by Fire Streak's sudden outburst, suddenly another pony burst from the stairway and immediately stopped upon seeing the situation in the hallway. The pony, who everyone recognized as Altitude stood confused before finally speaking up.
"What in Grogar's beard is going on!?" he shouted. Fire Streak grinned towards Altitude and waved his switchblade.
"You're just in time Al, now we can take care of these degenerates together." Fire Streak said with a wicked grin. Altitude was taken aback slightly, reaching back for his own switchblade just in case. He looked over at the others and noticed Blaze and Rainbow Dash along with their friends and a very familiar stallion. Blaze suddenly spoke.
"Al, you don't have to get involved, just let us go." Blaze said as she started slowly walking towards him. Altitude stepped away, still unsure what to do.
"Come on Al! They're traitors, and they're going to kill us all!" Fire Streak shouted. Altitude looked back and forth between Fire Streak, Blaze, Rainbow Dash, and the stallion that he finally remembered was Soarin.
But before Altitude could mutter another word, another pony was suddenly towering behind Altitude. Blaze looked up and saw the pony first, but before she could warn Altitude, the pony grabbed Altitude around the neck, lifted him off the ground, took out their own blade, and slowly dragged the blade across Altitude's neck, slitting his throat.
Everypony gasped in horror, Fluttershy let out a small scream and shielded Scootaloo's eyes. Soarin's eyes widened in horror upon recognizing the pony. It was Starry Skies.
"Huh, it's not as fun if they don't fight back, eh, oh well." Starry said before dropping Altitude's body to the floor. She looked back at the group in front of her as Blaze moved away in shock. Starry's eyes landed on Soarin.
"Well, what do we have here guys?" Starry asked as she stepped towards them.
"Looks like somepony's got some explaining to do." another voice came from behind Fire Streak. He quickly turned and found Charger looming over him. He growled at him, but Charger didn't even flinch. From somewhere behind Starry stepped Stratus, glaring at the group. Finally, from one of the perpendicular hallways, Nightshade emerged, carrying the bodies of two dead Wonderbolts. He dropped both to the ground as he stared at Soarin in a mix of confusion and anger.
As the four approached, Fire Streak suddenly launched himself at Charger with a frenzied look in his eyes and his switchblade ready. Charger quickly dodged Fire's initial attack, grabbed Fire Streak's arm holding the blade and swung his arm elbow first into Fire Streak's.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Fire Streak wailed out in pain as Charger took his blade and kicked him to the floor. Charger placed a hoof on Fire Streak's chest to keep him from getting up.
"Wonderbolt Scum." Charger said before raising the blade and plunging it into Fire Streak's neck. He let out a sputter as blood began to pour from his neck. He squirmed and sputtered up blood for a moment before finally ceasing his movement and becoming silent.
Soarin hooked his hoof with Rainbow Dash's as he watched Fire die before them. Dash looked back at him with a face of fear, Soarin gave her a calmer face, but one that still showed some unease, like he was telling her to be strong despite the circumstances. Blaze was growling and glaring daggers at the Shadowbolts. Fluttershy was still shielding Scootaloo from everything as she shed her own fear tears.
Charger stepped off of Fire Streak and went to Nightshade's side. Nightshade nodded in satisfaction at Charger's actions before turning back to Soarin and the others.
"Well, now that it's nice and quiet. Soarin, what are you doing here?" Nightshade asked menacingly. Soarin gave Dash's hoof another firm squeeze before stepping forward.
"I'm here to......get some friends out." Soarin admitted, seeing no other way out of this. Nightshade looked even more confused, Charger frowned even heavier, Stratus scowled, and Starry started chuckling.
"You...came....to get FRIENDS?!" Starry asked while chuckling. "Your telling me your actually friends with these lowlife Wonderbums? Your fruitier than I thought!" Starry said between chuckles. Nightshade ignored Starry's laughing and continued.
"Friends? What do you mean?" He asked. Soarin looked back at them briefly before looking back at Nightshade.
"Nightshade, just let us go. We don't want anything to do with this stupid feud anymore." Soarin explained. Nightshade shook his head.
"What do you mean Friends! Have you really betrayed us! My brother raised you, fed you! You were Thunderlane's best friend, and now, your off gallivanting with his killers? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Nightshade shouted. Soarin quickly pointed to Rainbow Dash. Nightshade looked between her and Soarin, trying to piece it together.
"Her." Soarin said simply before walking back over to Dash. "I love her. She's shown me more appreciation, more care, and has helped me feel the best I've ever felt since my mom died, but now, thanks to this feud, everypony wants to keep us apart." Soarin said as he held Dash's hoof. Dash smiled and blushed at Soarin's words as he flashed her a smile. "But now, no more!" He shouted as he turned back to Nightshade. "I'm done with this feud, I'm done with the Shadowbolts, the Wonderbolts, and everything with this feud! I'm taking her and my friends and we're leaving!" Soarin shouted at Nightshade. Soarin stepped back over to the others after his outburst. He turned to Fluttershy, who was still shielding Scootaloo.
"Futtershy, do you know a different way out besides down the stairs there?" Soarin whispered. Fluttershy nodded and motioned over to one of the other perpendicular hallways. Soarin nodded. "I need you to take the others and get out of here, I'll take care of these guys." Soarin explained. He suddenly felt a hoof on his shoulder.
"No, I'm not leaving you." Dash said as she hugged him. As she did, Blaze came into Soarin's view.
"I'll stay with you to." Blaze said before turning to Fluttershy. "But you two need to get out of here." Blaze whispered. Fluttershy nodded. Dash pulled back from Soarin and he looked back at Nightshade, who looked furious.
"Well then, if you are no longer a Shadowbolt, and wish to work with these Wonderbolts, then you are now our enemy." Nightshade said before taking out his own blade.
"Kill them." Nightshade said to the other Shadowbolts, who quickly moved to attack. |
The Blood Feud | Escape Part 3 | Soarin barely had enough time to react as Charger lunged forward at him and his friends. Luckily he had the reaction time to keep everyone alive.
"GO!" Soarin shouted, quickly diving to the side, somehow grabbing both Fluttershy and Scootaloo and landing further down the hall from Nightshade and Charger. He saw Dash and Blaze had jumped the other way, and were now in a standoff with Stratus and Starry Skies. Soarin let Fluttershy and Scootaloo down.
"Get out of here, and don't look back. I promise we'll see you at the farm." Soarin said sternly before turning back to Charger. Scootaloo opened her mouth to protest, but was quickly pulled away by Fluttershy and the two ran back down the hallway to find another way out. Soarin turned back to face Charger, who was recovering from his missed attack. Nightshade was standing idly off to the side as he observed Charger for a second before looking at Stratus and Starry Skies as they stood ready to fight Blaze and Dash.
"What's wrong Nightshade? Gonna sit it out while making your crew fight us?" Soarin snarkily asked. Nightshade simply chuckled.
"I just don't want to end this fight too fast. I want to watch you all die slowly. It's more satisfying that way." Nightshade said as he shivered pleasurably. Soarin growled before turning his attention back to Charger, who was baring his teeth and growling back at Soarin.
"Well, let's get this over with then." Soarin said confidently. Charger then let out a battle cry and pumped his wings, shooting towards Soarin very fast. Soarin managed to side step his attack and delivered a swift kick to the side of Charger's gut.
"Ah, erk." Charger grunted as he got back to his hooves and began to frantically attack Soarin, who managed to dodge each punch and kick. Charger may have been mostly muscle, but he was unrefined, and attacked with too much rage. Soarin didn't like to fight, but using the skills that he learned, he was able to maneuver around Charger, waiting for another opening for an attack.
As Soarin avoided Charger, Blaze and Dash stood facing Stratus and Starry Skies. Starry flipped back open her razor blade and waved it around while Stratus took out a cigarette and lit it.
"Uh, really? At a time like this?" Starry asked. Stratus scoffed.
"I only do it when I'm enjoying myself, and I plan to enjoy this." Stratus said as he took out a switchblade with a longer blade than the usual ones. Dash felt intimidated by the two, but refused to show weakness. Blaze gritted her teeth and glared at the two harshly, ready to do her worst.
"Who do you want Starry?" Stratus asked. Starry eyed the two pegasi up, giving each a teasing gaze that they both responded to with a growl.
"Oh, you gals don't swing this way do ya? Oh well, time to die. I'll take the one that leads to the gold." Starry said as she pointed her blade at Dash. Stratus nodded and looked at Blaze.
"I guess it's you and me flame." Stratus said as he rolled his switchblade over his hoof and charged.
Stratus began to rapidly swipe his switchblade around Blaze, who managed to quickly dodged each attempted strike, waiting for an opening to make a move of her own against him. As Blaze dodged around Stratus, Dash and Starry began to skirmish as well. Dash was a little smaller than an average pegasus, and used this to avoid Starry who was swinging her blade around wildly while giggling to herself.
"You're a slippery one ain't ya?" Starry taunted as she tried to strike Dash again, only for her blade to be wedged in the floor, giving Dash a chance to kick her directly in the snout and away from her weapon. Dash quickly tried to pull the blade from the floor as Starry stood back up.
"You've got a lotta spunk colors..." Starry began as she walked back over to Dash, who was struggling to pull the blade free. "But it can only carry you so far." Starry finished before she grabbed Dash by the back of the neck and forced her to the ground next to the blade.
"AH!" Dash grunted in pain as she was forced down. Blaze looked over at Dash from her fight with Stratus and attempted to fly to her aid, only to be intercepted by Stratus who grabbed her and flung her against the wall.
"Sorry, only two per tango." Stratus sneered.
Soarin noticed the others struggling to fight, but was too busy holding his own against Charger to help them. No matter how many times Soarin punched him, Charger never seemed to budge. Soarin quickly glanced over at Nightshade, who looked like he was inching away towards the stairwell.
"Alright, it looks like you guys can take it from here, but if you'll excuse me, I've gotta fly!" Nightshade taunted before darting into the stairwell and disappearing. Soarin tried to follow after him, but was stopped by Charger. Soarin tried to force his way past, but ended up butting heads and hooves with Charger. The two pressed against eachother with all their might, waiting to see who broke first. Soarin also glanced at the others. Blaze was getting up after being flung at the wall, and Starry was on top of Dash's back, pressing a hoof sharply into her wing joints.
"AHHHHH! EERRG!" Dash cried out in pain as the muscles in her wings started to pop and strain. Starry was laughing even harder.
"NO! GET AWAY FROM HER!" Soarin shouted as he struggled against Charger, who was beginning to push Soarin back inch by inch. Starry chuckled at Soarin's reaction.
"Oh? The fruitcake really is protective of you. I want to hear more." Starry said as she pressed harder. Dash gritted her teeth and tried to hold in all the pain she felt, but let by many grunts and cries.
"Stop! Please!" Blaze shouted in anger. Starry laughed even harder as she kept hurting Dash.
"GO ON! SCREAM! SCREAM FOR ME BITCH!" Starry shouted before cackling madly, the sounds of anger and pain like music to her ears. She was about to finish the job, when something hit her incredibly hard in the jaw and she was flung back away from Dash and crashed into Stratus, knocking them both to the ground.
Blaze gasped as she saw who had just rushed in and saved Dash. "S-Spitfire?" Blaze stammered out as she rushed to Dash's side and helped her up.
"So, you're the sorry excuses for ponies that Nightstalker sent? I'm gonna kill you." Spitfire said with intimidation and anger in her voice.
Spitfire's sudden appearance was also enough to distract Charger, enough for Soarin to kick Charger's knees out and headbutt him back away from him. Charger turned and growled at Spitfire before turning to the rest of his team. Stratus and Starry both stood back up and scowled at Spitfire.
"Oh, Another One? This is our lucky day!" Starry said sarcastically. Stratus shrugged.
"If that means one more Wonderbolt to kill, then I'm fine with it." Stratus said before taking his switchblade again and launching at Spitfire. As they came to blows, Blaze helped Dash back to her hooves.
"Are you okay? Are your wings hurt?" Blaze asked. Dash stretched out her wings and flapped them a few times, showing that they weren't broken.
"Fine, but they'll be sore in the morning." Dash said, relieving both Blaze and Soarin, who was still in a standoff with Charger, waiting for the beast to make a move. Starry let out a sinister laugh as she approached Blaze and Dash.
"Oh, but you won't live to see the morning, so technically, they won't be sore!" Starry said with fake cheeriness before attacking again.
Blaze and Dash began to move around Starry as she fought them, both tried several times to land hits on her, only to either miss or do little to nothing against her. Blaze was struck in the snout at one point, making her right nostril bleed, but she didn't slow down one bit.
Stratus and Spitfire moved around eachother, with the two also exchanging blows, though Stratus only managed to give Spitfire a small nick on the arm with his blade. Stratus groaned as Spitfire expertly avoided his attacks.
"STAY STILL!" Stratus shouted in anger. Spitfire blew a raspberry in response to his rage boiling over. "What is it about the Wonderbolts that just love to breed ponies that look like candles?!" Stratus taunted, trying to make Spitfire loose her temper as well. Spitfire remained calm and swiftly punched Stratus across the muzzle, making him stumble back and drop the switchblade.
"At least I can land a punch Shittybolt." Spitfire taunted. Stratus narrowed his eyes into a piercing gaze of anger and howled in rage before lunging at Spitfire and tackling her to the ground. He tried to bite and punch her as they rolled around on the ground. Spitfire tried to gain any kind of upper hoof, but eventually ended up on her back, with Stratus over her, his hooves closing around her throat. Spitfire sputtered and wheezed as Stratus began to laugh.
"DIE! DIE! DIE!" Stratus yelled as he squeezed his hooves tighter around Spitfire's neck.
"You go Stratus!" Starry shouted from over where she was fighting Dash and Blaze. Blaze tried to help Spitfire, but was grabbed by Starry and dragged back to the fight. Soarin was also preoccupied with fighting Charger again.
Spitfire glanced around her her breathing became difficult and her vision began to go fuzzy, but she spotted Stratus's switchblade just an inch from her left hoof. She strained and used the last bit of strength she had and wrapped her hoof around the blade and plunged it into the side of Stratus' neck.
Stratus let out a choked grunt and spit a few drops of blood out of his mouth. His eyes widened and darted around, registering the pain he was now feeling. Spitfire quickly kicked Stratus off of her and stood up, looking over her enemy, now choking and writhing in the middle of the hallway. Stratus let out several more grunts and sputters before his movements ceased and his eyes glazed over.
Starry had stopped fighting Blaze as she witnessed Stratus die, same with Charger. Charger was the first to react with rage. He turned back to Soarin and slammed him into one of the walls, picking up their fight.
"I'm Gonna KILL. YOU. ALL!!" Charger shouted as he continued to grapple with Soarin, who was absorbing as many hits as he could, but didn't know how much longer he'd last.
After Stratus stopped moving, Spitfire rushed over to Blaze's side and checked if her cousin was okay. Blaze nodded and turned to Dash, who was looking worryingly at Soarin's fight. Blaze placed a hoof on Dash's shoulder.
"Go help him, me and Spitfire got her." Blaze said, pointing to Starry, who was glaring back at Spitfire, her eye twitching. Dash nodded and flew over to assist Soarin. Starry didn't even notice Dash fly by as she kept her eyes locked on Spitfire, her inner rage building.
"That wasn't funny.....That wasn't funny at all you bitch!" Starry shouted as she picked up her blade and readied herself to charge. Blaze moved up next to Spitfire.
"You ready cuz?" Blaze asked. Spitfire smirked and nodded.
"Let's wreck her shit." Spitfire said a second before Starry charged straight at them.
Soarin was punched in the gut again by Charger, Soarin retaliated with a headbutt and a swift kick to one of his legs. Charger barely flinched though, and grabbed Soarin around the neck.
"You.....you've got some fight in ya colt." Charger said as Soarin struggled in his grip. "But every fight ends, so might as well end it here." Charger said as he moved his hooves to Soarin's neck. Soarin began to desperately struggled against Charger, fearful that it was about to all end, when he heard the sound of a hoof connecting to Charger's face and he was pulled from his grip. He landed on the floor with a grunt and looked at the pony now standing between him and Charger.
"Don't you dare lay a HOOF on him!" Rainbow Dash shouted in anger at Charger, who was still standing, far from being beaten. Dash looked back at Soarin and gave him a confident smile, something that gave him more confidence as well. He stood up and moved next to Dash.
"Dash, you should get out of here. I can handle him, you should get out before you get hu-" Soarin started before Dash pushed a hoof over his mouth. She shook her head.
"I'm not leaving you alone to fight Soarin. I'll stick by your side through thick and thin, even if it's dangerous. I love you." Dash said while looking directly into his eyes. She lowered her hoof and gave him a quick kiss. Soarin smiled back at her.
"I love you too." Soarin said before turning back to Charger. "Are we gonna end this Charger? Or what?" Soarin taunted. Charger chuckled.
"Heh, now I get to kill two of you, just what I wanted." Charger said menacingly before launching forward to attack. Soarin and Dash quickly split apart to avoid Charger and began to attack him from two directions. Soarin continued to attack from the ground, going for Charger's legs in attempts to knock him off balance while Dash attacked from the air, punching him in the head several more times. Charger kept absorbing hits, but began to show a bit of exhaustion and from the constant beating.
Eventually, Soarin managed to get a well placed kick in on Charger's foreleg knee. Charger grunted in pain and fell to the ground for just enough time for Dash to try another aerial attack. But as she moved in for the attack, Charger thrust out his wings and hooves, knocking Soarin away from him and hitting Dash in the face, making her crash in front of him. Charger placed a hoof over the back of Dash's neck and held her while raising his other hoof to fatally strike her.
Soarin looked over and saw Charger raising his hoof to hit Dash's neck. His eyes widened and he felt a quick burst of adrenaline course through his veins. He got back to his hooves and launched himself towards Charger.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Soarin let out a battle cry as he rushed towards Charger. His hoof connected with Charger's snout and the force knocked Charger back first towards the wall, where one of the hallway's many light fixtures were. Charger's body impacted against the wall with a loud crash. However, after the impact, Charger stayed in the spot where he hit the wall, with his back hooves dangling a few inches from the ground.
Soarin helped Dash back to her hooves and the two looked towards Charger and both let out a surprised gasp. Charger was still hanging there. Blood was dripping from his mouth and down his body, turning his green coat and Shadowbolt jacket red. A piece of the light fixture was jutting from Charger's neck and broken glass was littered at his hooves. It was a gruesome sight.
"Are you alright?" Soarin asked as he looked over Dash, who had some bruises and scrapes all over. Dash nodded.
"Yeah, I'm good." Dash said before turning and seeing Spitfire and Blaze trying to fight Starry. Dash gasped and pulled Soarin's arm. "Quick, they need help!" Dash said. They both wasted no time flying over to help them.
Blaze landed another punch to Starry's back, who quickly tried to hit back with a swipe of her blade. Starry growled as the two mares flew around her, disorienting her and making her angry. Spitfire moved in for a kick, but Starry managed to block the attack and tried to cut her with the blade, but Spitfire made a quick retreat.
"Okay you two, you're starting to really PISS ME OFF!" Starry shouted in anger. Blaze snickered as she made another passing punch.
"What? Is the big bad Shadowbolt worried she might actually lose?" Blaze taunted. Starry growled and tried to attack them again, only to hit neither again. The game of exchanging blows continued for another moment before a loud crash sounded throughout the hallway. Starry looked over towards the source of the sound and gasped.
She saw the body of Charger, now hanging on the wall with Dash and Soarin getting up. Starry's brain nearly broke at the sight. Now both Charger ad Stratus were dead, two of the strongest Shadowbolts, defeated by these lowlife wretches. Starry knew that she was most likely not going to get out of this alive, but she knew she couldn't go down alone. As she continued being attacked by Blaze and Spitfire, she moved from trying and failing to attack, to dodging and waiting for a perfect moment to strike.
Blaze leaped forward for a quick strike on Starry, but she managed to dodge, but before Blaze could back out of the attack, she was distracted by Dash and Soarin rushing to to help them. Starry noticed Blaze's distraction and quickly wrapped her arm around Blaze's neck and held her blade to it.
"NO!" Dash and Spitfire cried out almost simultaneously. Blaze struggled in Starry's grip as she began to press the blade against her neck ever so slightly.
"Ope, no no no, stop moving or I'll turn your throat into a waterfall!" Starry growled at Blaze before glaring at the rest. "That goes for you too, one step and she's slit open!" Starry threatened. They all froze. Dash and Spitfire both glared daggers at Starry, though in their heads they were terrified, unable to figure out how to get her out of this situation. Soarin was the first to speak after a moment of silence.
"Just....put her down Starry. There's been enough bloodshed. We can all just walk away with no more deaths." Soarin said calmly. Starry scoffed.
"Pff, that's a pretty sermon coming from the traitor! As long as the Wonderbolts breath, there will NEVER be enough bloodshed. Only one group can come out on top, and it's whoever is the strongest." Starry shouted, rustling around Blaze in her arms as she spoke.
"Please! Let her go! She didn't want any of this, neither of us do! We just want to get far away from this conflict!" Dash pleaded, looking at one of her best friends with fearful look.
"Really? You didn't want this? You signed up for this when you joined the Wonderbolts, and these two agreed to it the moment they were born." Starry motioned to Blaze and Spitfire. Starry then noticed that Soarin had taken a few subtle steps forward.
"Starry......if you want to go on and continue fighting in this war, then we won't stop you. Just......let her go, let us go. We're leaving, and getting away from this town." Soarin said with a sense of calm confidence. Soarin gave Starry a pleading gaze and hoped that she would listen to reason. Starry's eyes darted around and she almost looked to be considering his words before stepping away from him with Blaze.
"No Soarin. I'm a Shadowbolt, loyal through and through. No matter where you run, you will never escape this conflict. It will hang over your heads like a ghost, and eat through your souls like rats until the day you die. We are bound to these groups, we took oaths, and now, we shall carry out what we promised." Starry explained in a voice that was much more softer and calm sounding than Starry's usual crazy tone. Soarin tried to understand what she meant, but none of them had any time to comprehend what she had said before Starry pressed the blade hard against Blaze's neck and slid it across her throat.
"NOOOO!" Spitfire cried out. Blood began to creep out of Blaze's neck wound and Starry tossed her to the floor, where she began to squirm. A smirk appeared on Starry's face, and Spitfire lost it.
She fired at Starry and the two clashed in another close quarters fight. Soarin and Dash were both caught heavily off guard by Spitfire's sudden attack, but quickly rushed to assist Blaze. She was clutching her neck and letting out choking and gagging noises as her eyes darted around in terror. Dash was the first to reach Blaze, and she immediately placed her hooves on Blaze's neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Soarin looked down at the two, wanting to try to help, but deep down, knowing that unless they could get her to intensive care in a very short time, Blaze wasn't going to make it. Soarin watched as Dash desperately tried to help, but to no avail.
"Blaze, Blaze, just look at me, you'll be fine, just stay with me, please." Dash stammered out as she tried to stop the bleeding, but Blaze was actually shaking her head, denying what Dash was saying. Dash stopped and looked into Blaze's eyes, who were actually....calm, and Blaze had a slight smile. Dash saw that Blaze was looking past her. Dash turned and saw Soarin behind her, with a hoof placed on her shoulder. She looked back at Blaze as she opened her mouth. Using that last of her life, Blaze managed to choke out her last words to her friend.
"G--get.....O-out." Blaze managed to say with a strangled choke. Tears began to fall from Dash's eyes as Blaze reached her hoof up and brushed some of her mane out of her eyes. Dash managed to smile back. Blaze's hoof then slide across Dash's cheek as it fell back to her side limply, and Blaze's smile faded, and her eyes glazed over. Her her chest stopped moving up and down and the last of her breath left. Blaze was dead.
The world around Dash felt like it had froze. She looked back at Soarin, who had a sorrowful look on his face as he kept his hoof on her shoulder. She looked over at Spitfire and Starry Skies who were still brawling in the middle of the hallway. Dash felt the tears fall from her eyes and land on Blaze's blank face, and the anger began to quickly build.
A growl escaped Dash's throat as she turned back to the fight between Starry and Spitfire. Starry landed a strong punch against Spitfire's gut and propelled her into the wall, leaving quite a mark in it. Starry then raised her blade to attempt to finish her off, and Dash acted.
She flew and slammed her front hooves directly into Starry's head and sent her to the ground. Starry barely had enough time to react before Dash continued to attack her viciously. She growled and snarled as she attacked with both her hooves and even tried biting her.
Dash's sudden attack made Starry drop her blade, which Spitfire quickly noticed and grabbed. Dash and Starry were now locked into a similar fight that Spitfire was just in. Soarin moved up beside Spitfire.
"I'll knock her into a good position. When she's vulnerable.....go for it." Soarin explained. Spitfire nodded and Soarin lunged forward into the fray. He wrapped his hooves around Starry's neck in an attempt to wrestle her away from Dash.
"Oh CAN YOU JUST PISS OFF FRUITY!?" Starry shouted in frustration. Starry stumbled away from Dash and was left in a vulnerable position in the middle of the hallway. Spitfire noticed the opening and thrust forward. Soarin quickly unlatched his grip from Starry and moved out of the way. Before Starry could move, Spitfire drove the blade into Starry's gut and it emerged out her back and blood poured from the wounds.
"Ack!" Starry grunted and staggered back. She gripped the blade as she looked at the situation she was in. She looked up at the others surrounding her and chuckled.
"Well, I hope Nightshade does better." Starry managed to say, followed by a few coughs before she fully collapsed to the floor. Spitfire and Dash both walked up to her crumpled for and glared down at her.
"That's for Blaze." Spitfire said quietly. Dash spat directly into Starry's face, but she barely flinched. Instead Starry started to chuckle again.
"What the fuck is so funny?" Spitfire asked angrily. Starry simply looked up at Spitfire and grinned.
"You can't win. None of you. The Shadowbolts will crush you, and burn you with all the fires of Tartarus." Starry choked out. Before any of the others could retort, a loud bang was heard throughout the building and a tremor shook the hallway. Dash, Spitfire, and Soarin all looked at eachother worryingly. Starry then began to laugh even harder despite the pain.
"He got it! Yes! Haahahahahahahah!" Starry began laughing maniacally. Spitfire reached down and pulled up Starry's head, making her wince in pain, but kept laughing.
"What do you Mean!" Spitfire angrily asked. Starry kept laughing.
"You'll all burn, and the Shadowbolts will stomp on your ashes." Starry simply said before breaking down into a fit of insane laughter. Spitfire turned back to the other two with a terrified look on her face.
"We need to get out of here, now!" Spitfire said frantically. Soarin and Dash nodded in agreement.
"Lead the way." Soarin insisted. They took off quickly, entering the stairwell and going down, leaving Starry, bleeding out and laughing in the hallway beside her dead comrades.
The trio emerged from the stairwell and quickly flew through the first floor, passing by several bodies as they made a break for the main entrance. As they made their way though, they began to feel a heat, and eventually noticed the flames beginning to spread throughout the mansion.
Flames began to engulf the walls around them, and smoke began to fill the air, making it hard to breath and see. But they continued to press on. They eventually reached the main entrance area, which was still free of fire, but not for long. They quickly made for the front door, but were stopped in their tracks by Nightshade.
"Well, if it isn't the Pathetic Posse. Where's my crew?" He asked. The just glared at him, giving him the answer.
"Oh? I see. Looks like I underestimated you. But no matter. I won't allow you to leave alive." Nightshade said as he blocked the door. Dash and Soarin exchanged frightful glances. Suddenly, the flames began to engulf the area around the ceiling above them, and a large piece of burning supports broke away and fell. Dash noticed it just in time to get out of the way. She moved even closer to Soarin, who placed a wing around her to calm her. Flames erupted all over from behind them, forcing them closer to Nightshade.
"That's it, make your choice. Die to the flames or to me." Nightshade said menacingly.
Spitfire glared at him before looking back at Dash and Soarin. The two looked terrified, they were holding onto eachother, trying to defend the other from the danger around them. Spitfire knew what she had to do now. Her home was destroyed, her cousin was dead, and she was about to die, but she had to give them a chance, a chance that this feud was about to take from them....unless she did something. Spitfire stepped toward Nightshade, glaring at him.
"Do we have a volunteer?" Nightshade asked as he reached for his blade. Spitfire didn't let him get any further before she launched from her spot and began to fly quickly around Nightshade. He was left disoriented as he tried to figure where Spitfire was going to go, when she suddenly attacked him from the side, latching onto his neck and knocking him to the side of the entrance. She lifted her head up and opened her jaws wide....
She bit down on Nightshade's ear.....HARD!
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Nightshade howled out in pain. Dash and Soarin went to assist her, but she quickly put up a hoof to stop them and looked at them with pleading eyes. Shaking her head as she held Nightshade's ear in her mouth. Soarin and Dash still hesitated though and Spitfire let go of Nightshade's ear.
"GET OUT OF HERE! GO!" Spitfire shouted as Nightshade began to flail around. Spitfire retaliated by biting into the ear again, this time, deep enough to severe it, making Nightshade howl in pain again.
Soarin and Dahs glanced at eachother before listening to Spitfire and quickly moving out the front door. They burst through it into the yard and turned back just in time to see Spitfire close and bolt the door behind them.
"NO!" Dash shouted as she flew back to the door. Dash looked through the door's window at Spitfire, pleading for her to come with them. Spitfire calmly shook her head as the flames grew behind her.
"Go Dash, with him. NOW!" Spitfire said sternly. Dash felt more tears squeak out of her eyes and she nodded.
"Thank you.....Spitty." Dash said before turning and flying away from the compound with Soarin. Spitfire watched them fly away before turning back to Nightshade who had recovered from his ear bite.
"Suicide Huh? You are a coward." Nightshade said. Spitfire growled back at him.
"My family's legacy is ending tonight, if I die along with it, then I'm taking you with me, and we're going down all the way to Tartarus!" Spitfire said as the flames grew in intensity around them. Nightshade cleared his throat and cracked his neck.
"Well then, let's finish it then." Nightshade said before lunging at Spitfire. She lunged back at him, as the flames grew around them, engulfing the mansion..... |
The Blood Feud | What Now? | Soarin and Rainbow Dash flew high over Ponyville, making haste for the small apple farm on the edge of town. Dash flew close to Soarin, never wanting to even let him out of her sight. She made quick glances back behind them, thinking about all that had happened.
Dash eventually found herself tearing up, with everything that had occurred that night striking her all at once, like being struck in the heart with a dagger. She could remember the look on Blaze's face before she died, Spitfire's insistence that they leave, and of course, the compound going up in flames. Her home for the past year had just been destroyed.
"Ah.....ah..." Dash muttered out as tears began to stream down her face, getting Soarin's attention. He reached a hoof over and placed it on her shoulder, giving her a sympathetic look.
"We'll be safe soon, just a bit further." Soarin reassured her. She nodded slightly and continued to fly beside Soarin until they finally reached the farm. The many storm clouds had rolled in and the rumble of thunder could be heard above them.
As they flew over the farm, Soarin pointed to the barn, where lights could be seen inside. They two hovered down as raindrops began to fall from the clouds. The two quickly entered the barn as the downpour began.
The second after Dash and Soarin closed the door to the barn, Dash fired herself at Soarin and squeezed him in a tight embrace that made Soarin feel like he was about to burst. Dash buried her face into his neck and let out all of the emotions she had been forced to hold in that night. Soarin quickly wrapped his arms back around Dash as he felt her tears begin to dampen his fur, but he didn't care, she needed his calming embrace.
As Soarin stayed still and held Dash for as long as she needed he looked over and noticed that the barn was indeed not vacant. Fluttershy and Scootaloo were standing a few feet away, but weren't moving as they saw Dash break down in Soarin's arms. Behind them, Rumble sat on a hay bale, looking on with a sorrowful expression. The last occupant was one of the ponies who ran the farm, Applejack. She gave Soarin a faint smile and nodded to him, as if telling him that the barn was theirs for the night. Soarin nodded back at her before she turned and left the barn.
After a good few minutes of an embrace, Dash stepped away from Soarin, her eyes now red and still a little wet from the tears. She turned to look at Fluttershy and Scootaloo, who looked extremely concerned. Fluttershy took a step forward.
"Dashie? Where's Blaze?" Fluttershy asked. Dash simply shut her eyes and threw herself at Fluttershy. The two hugged tightly, with Dash also signaling for Scootaloo to join. She did and the three shared a moment of shared sadness over their fallen friend. As they did, Soarin trotted over to Rumble.
"Rumble, where's Blossom? Wasn't she supposed to come back here with you?" Soarin asked. Rumble blew air out of his nose before looking back up at Soarin.
"She.....didn't make it." Rumble said quietly. Soarin let out a silent gasp and his eyes widened.
"Wh.....what happened?" Soarin asked with hesitation, unsure if Rumble would be able to recount what happened. But surprisingly, Rumble quickly answered.
"She burned to death on the lawn. Took out a few Wonderbolts with her. She.....she did it to herself......entirely on purpose." Rumble explained. Soarin's eyes became even wider. She self-immolated?
"Any idea why?" Soarin asked. Rumble shrugged.
"No.....but I guess she's back with my brother now." Rumble said as he looked up through one of the barns windows into the stormy sky. Soarin and Rumble then turned their attention back to the others as they finally broke off their hug. Dash quickly wiped her eyes and gave Fluttershy and Scootaloo reassuring looks before returning to Soarin's side.
"So, what's gonna happen now?" Scootaloo asked. Soarin and Dash exchanged worried glances before Dash spoke.
"The Compound....it....it burned to the ground." Dash said, making Fluttershy and Scootaloo both gasp. Soarin growled.
"It was the Shadowbolts, Nightstalker sent in his brother Nightshade and his team. We took out 3 of them, and when we made a break for the exit, Nightshade blocked us." Soarin recounted. Rumble walked up beside Soarin.
"Uncle Nightshade? Dad was serious about this." Rumble said in disbelief.
"Spitfire was the only reason we managed to escape before the place burned down. She.....stayed and fought him." Dash said shakily. Scootaloo quickly went and gave Dash another hug to calm her down as she looked ready to break again. "I...I don't know what's going to happen now, or where we'll go." Dash said. Soarin rested a hoof on her shoulder and looked at everyone else.
"For now, let's just get some rest, and we'll figure out everything tomorrow, Ok?" Soarin suggested. The others nodded and dispersed to get ready to hit the hay. But before Soarin could start turning off the lanterns in the barn, a loud knock was heard at the barn door. Everyone froze, Soarin looked towards the barn door and walked over to it.
"Who is it?" Soarin asked.
"It's Applejack Sugarcube, somepony's here, says she needs to speak with you." Applejack's voice could be heard beyond the door. Soarin exchanged glances with the others, and Dash joined him at his side. Soarin and Dash both nodded to the other before looking back at the door.
"Come in." Soarin said. The barn door opened, and in stepped Applejack, she turned around and motioned to someone just outside the doorway. Then, in stepped Fleetfoot, her usual shadowbolt jacket she wore was not on her, and she had several injuries, including a bleeding cut on her back and a limp in her right hind leg. Soarin and Rumble's eyes widened when they saw her, while Dash failed to hold in a slight growl.
"What are you doing here?" Dash said with a hint of menace, unsure if she was there to take Soarin. Soarin tapped Dash on the shoulder and stepped towards Fleetfoot. Rumble did the same, stepping up next to Soarin.
"Fleet? What are you doing here?" Soarin asked. Rumble went up to her and began to inspect her wounds, Fleetfoot mostly ignored Rumble and looked at Soarin.
"That god I found you. I didn't know where to look, but I needed to warn you." Fleetfoot said as she winced due to her injuries.
"Warn us about what?" Soarin asked. Fleetfoot took a deep breath.
"The mansion, it's been......destroyed. The Wonderbolts managed to take many of us down, so many that the Shadowbolts began to retreat. In the fighting I saw Nightstalker and Solar Storm clashing, but I didn't see the outcome before the mansion became overrun with Wonderbolts. I barely managed to get out unscathed before the mansion caught fire." Fleetfoot explained. Soarin gave her a confused look.
"The Wonderbolts burnt down the mansion too?" Soarin asked. Fleetfoot nodded before also giving a confused look.
"Wait, too? Did....did Nightshade burn down the compound?" Fleetfoot asked. Soarin nodded and Fleet smirked. "Huh, great minds think alike I guess. But that isn't really why I came here, it's Anarchy right now in town, Shadowbolts and Wonderbolts alike are clashing and pretty soon every chapter of the Wonderbolts and Shadowbolts will be fighting." Fleetfoot explained. Dash covered her mouth, realizing that this could mean a kind of war between the two groups, and others might get caught in the crossfire.
"What do we do then?" Soarin asked. Fleetfoot looked down before looking at Soarin, then at Dash.
"I want you to do what I did. If you have anything that gives away your allegiance to either the Shadowbolts or Wonderbolts, get rid of it, and get out of Ponyville. Go into hiding if you have to." Fleetfoot looked back over at Dash. "I don't know what you're doing with her, but I frankly don't want to know, just get out of Ponyville and don't look back." Fleetfoot explained. Soarin was unsure what to think of this, but he saw the panic and fear in Fleetfoot's eyes, something she only ever shown in very rare circumstances. Soarin nodded and stepped over to Dash.
"Thanks Fleet." Soarin said. Fleetfoot smiled.
"Don't mention it. If you two make it out of this alive, come find me in Fillydelphia, I'll buy you guys a drink." Fleetfoot said before quickly turning and heading back into the storm. After she left, Soarin turned back to the others in the room. Rumble was looking after where Fleetfoot had gone, Scootaloo looked extremely worried for Dash, and Fluttershy was staring wide-eyed and looked like she had just realized something horrifying.
"I....I...I need to get home." Fluttershy suddenly said and made a move for the door. Soarin quickly moved in front of her.
"Woah, hey, you heard what Fleet just said, it's a warzone out there. It's best to wait till morning before planning our next move." Soarin said. Fluttershy shook her head.
"Exactly, I have animals there, and if they get caught up in this fighting then they could get hurt or worse. I NEED to make sure they get out okay!" Fluttershy argued. Soarin was ready to argue back when Dash tapped on his shoulder. He looked over and Dash gave him a pleading look.
"Soarin, don't. If her animals are in danger, then nothing is going to stop her." Dash said. Soarin frowned but sighed in defeat and nodded. Dash turned back to Fluttershy and gave her a hug.
"Please be careful Flutters. I Promise you will see me again. Just....don't do anything too risky, okay?" Dash said. Fluttershy nodded. Before she could move for the door, Rumble spoke up.
"I can come with you. Protect you if you need to." Rumble offered. Fluttershy was caught off guard by the offer, but grinned at him.
"That's...very kind of you Rumble." Fluttershy said. Rumble nodded.
"Besides, I have to see if anyone survived at the mansion......see if my dad is OK." Rumble said quietly. Soarin glared at Rumble and walked over to him.
"Rumble?! Are you serious? Did you heard any of what Fleetfoot said?" Soarin shouted angrily. Rumble glared back over at Soarin.
"Yeah, and that's exactly why I need to go back. My family is in danger, and I'm NOT going to run away!" Rumble shouted back, louder than he ever had before and Soarin was taken aback by it. Rumble took a deep breath and walked up to Soarin. He placed of hoof on his shoulder.
"I can't go Soarin. I'm not gonna lie and say that I am 'proud' of my family's history or the conflict with the Wonderbolts, but it's still. my. family. I HAVE to go back." Rumble said sternly. "To give you some hope, if my father.....really.....is......dead.....and if uncle Nightshade is too, then I'm the leader then. And if I can, I will try to the best of my ability to run the Shadowbolts better, and if possible, end this stupid feud." Rumble explained before drawing Soarin into a hug. "I'm gonna miss you bro, but I need to stay. Have a goo life, and keep her safe." Rumble said, motioning to Dash. Soarin gave him a nod before Rumble walked over to Fluttershy.
"Let us be off then." Rumble said. Fluttershy nodded and the two flew off into the storm, leaving Soarin, Dash, and Scootaloo alone in the barn. Soarin turned back to the other two and sighed.
"Alright, I guess now we can hit the hay." Soarin said. Scootaloo had look of hesitation. Dash walked over to her.
"What's wrong squirt?" Dash asked.
"It's just.....so much has happened, and I don't know what I'm gonna do. I can't go back to the orphanage, can I?" Scootaloo asked. Dash gave her a reassuring hug.
"No, you shouldn't, none of us should stay in Ponyville." Dash said.
"But where can we go?" Scootaloo asked. Soarin walked up to the two of them.
"We'll figure that out tomorrow, but for now, we should just get some sleep." Soarin suggested. Dash and Scootaloo nodded. The three then chose their sleeping spots. Applejack had placed sleeping mats and blankets in the corner and in the loft. Scootaloo chose the loft while Dash and Soarin laid in the corner.
Dash snuggled up to Soarin and the two laid in silence in the now dark barn, with nothing but the patter of the rain and the occasional sound of thunder being heard. Soarin felt Dash stir as she snuggled as close as she could to him. He smiled at her through the darkness.
He was beyond happy that they managed to get out alive, but now they had to deal with more trouble on the way it seemed. But Soarin knew that as long as he and Dash were together, nothing would stop them.
"I'm so glad you're okay." Dash suddenly whispered. Soarin smiled.
"I'm glad you're safe too Dash." Soarin whispered back, tightening his grip around her.
"I....I'm kinda scared Soarin. I don't know what's gonna happen, and I'm worried that something worse WILL happen." Dash whispered with a shaky tone. Soarin leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips, Dash was immediately drawn into the kiss and all her worries seemed to melt away as she felt the comforting and warm feeling of his lips against hers. After holding it for a few minutes in blissful darkness, the two pulled away.
"I love you Rainbow Dash. I have fears too, but I am certain that as long as we stick together, watch each other's backs, then we can overcome any hardship. I promise you, I will stick by you and we will pull through." Soarin whispered before planting another kiss on her cheek. Dash smiled wide through the darkness and kissed his lips again.
"I love you too Soarin. I promise that I will always be with you." Dash said before snuggling back into the crook of his neck. Soarin smiled as he felt himself gently drift into sleep.
They were going to make it.....together. |
The Blood Feud | Leaving | Rainbow Dash's eyes slowly opened as the morning light flooded into the barn. She let out a long squeak as she stretched out as much as she could, but she couldn't really move around that much. She smiled as she felt the arms still holding her tight.
Her eyes opened again and she could clearly see Soarin's face directly in front of her's. He was still sound asleep, but with a small smile still on his face. His arms continued to shift, seemingly pulling Dash as tightly to him as he could even in his sleep. Dash felt her heart swell as she remained still, savoring this little precious moment with the stallion she had fallen in love with.
Of course, her thoughts soon drifted to what would happen next. Where could they go? Pretty much every major city in Equestria had at least one Wonderbolt and one Shadowbolt chapter in it. No matter where they went, they would probably still be stuck in the feud, whether they wanted to or not.
But almost as quickly as the thoughts entered her head, as soon as she focused back on Soarin, all of it vanished. She knew it was tough, but she was tough, and Soarin was tough. As long as they were together, Dash didn't care about the danger they may soon be in. As long as she was with him, she knew she'd be safe.
After another few minutes of silence, Soarin began to stir and he released a long groan and a yawn before his eyes opened. He looked over and saw Dash's smiling face in front of his and he smiled back, happy that they were still together, happy that they managed to get away the night before.
"Morning." Dash whispered, leaning in to peck Soarin on the cheek. Soarin felt his smile get wider before he stopped her from leaning back and placed a kiss on Dash's mouth, keeping her drawn in.
Dash let herself melt into the kiss, it felt like forever since the two had gotten a real chance to be together, with all of the conflicts having gone down, but now they could just be together, for these special moments, no matter how short they were.
Soarin and Dash finally pulled away from one another and stared into eachothers eyes. Both not saying or really doing much, just taking in the sight of the one they loved more than anything.
"Did you sleep well?" Soarin whispered, still looking longingly into her uniquely colored irises. Dash let out a yawn and shuffled to get in a more comfortable position.
"I'm not used to sleeping in the hay, but it wasn't so bad. Good thing you're so comfortable." Dash whispered back with a wink. Soarin chuckled.
"Oh am I? I didn't realize." Soarin joked. The two began to slowly lean in again, almost in an automatic way, like they didn't realize it. They were still enraptured in eachothers eyes, until a voice spoke...
"So, are you guys gonna kiss again? Or should I just leave to let you...you know..."
Soarin and Dash quickly pushed away and looked over at the other side of the barn. Scootaloo was awake and up from where she was sleeping. She had her head resting in her hooves with a smug grinning look on her face.
"Uh, how long have you been watching us Scoots?" Dash asked with a nervous chuckle and a blush emerging onto her cheeks as she and Soarin got up from their laying positions.
"Oh, about an hour. I even saw you wake up Dash." Scootaloo said with a snicker. Dash frowned, her blush growing.
"How did neither of us notice her?" She asked Soarin. He simply shrugged and held in a laugh at Dash's state of how embarrassed she was.
"I've mastered the art of invisibility." Scootaloo said in a fake dramatic tone. Dash scoffed and walked over to her. She wrapped her hoof around her and gave her a noogie.
"Little eavesdropper." Dash said as Scootaloo struggled and laughed. Soarin started laughing as well. Eventually, Dash let Scootaloo go and the three looked at eachother.
"So, what now?" Scootaloo asked. Dash and Soarin looked at eachother. They hadn't really gotten a good chance to discuss what the plan was next. Dash didn't really have any ideas about where they could go. They'd need bits, and to get bits, they'd need a job somewhere. Before Dash was a Wonderbolt, she worked a minimum wage job with the weather patrol in Ponyville, but now that was out of the question, so they needed something else.
"You got any idea Soarin? Cause I've got nothing." Dash said with a defeated look. Soarin stood up and began to fold up the makeshift bedding that Applejack had given them the night before. Dash and Scootaloo joined to help.
"I think, the best course of action right now, is to drift. Go from place to place until we can find somewhere to be free, free from the Wonderbolts and Shadowbolts. I don't care if we have to travel the far reaches of Equestria to get away, but we WILL be free from them, I promise you two." Soarin explained as they finished folding up the blankets. Scootaloo and Dash gave eachother glances, looking for either to be skeptical or unsure of the plan, but only saw nods.
"It's better than no plan at all, so let's do it." Dash said confidently as she hugged Soarin. The two looked over at Scootaloo, inviting her to join.
"Aw, if she's in, then so am I." Scootaloo said as she embraced the two older ponies. Dash felt a realization hit her as she hugged the two back. Part of her life had just ended, her time in the Wonderbolts was over, but now, she had a new chapter in her life to look forward to, one she could hopefully spend the rest of it, with her little sister, and the love of her life.
The three slowly moved apart and gave eachother looks of confidence and assurance. Soarin smiled at the two of them.
"Well, let's go."
After giving the makeshift bedding supplies that they had been lent the night before, Applejack was nice enough to give them a few spare backpacks with some extra supplies so they could make it to wherever they decided to head to first. They said their farewells to the farmer and proceeded back to the town. Of course, they made sure not to go directly into town, but they were lucky, since all they needed to do was get to the train station, which was on the edge of town, far from the remains of the Wonderbolt and Shadowbolt mansions.
As they approached the station, they noticed a few townsponies around, and luckily, none of them recognized them. That is, until Dash noticed the yellow one waiting by the ramp leading up to the platform.
When Fluttershy noticed Dash and the others approaching she smiled wider than Dash had ever seen her smile and she flew up to Dash and hugged her tight. Dash was slightly surprised by the sudden embrace, but quickly moved to return the gesture and embraced her oldest friend. She suddenly heard a sniffle and something drip onto her neck as Fluttershy held her. She was crying. Dash slowly pulled away after a few minutes of hugging and Fluttershy wiped her eyes with a hoof.
"I had a feeling you'd be leaving." Fluttershy said with s sniffle. "Just....be careful, OK." Fluttershy managed to sputter out before hugging Dash again.
"I promise I will Flutters. And don't worry, I will see you again. I promise." Dash said as she embraced her best friend. She eventually found herself starting to shed a few tears. She let go of Fluttershy to wipe her eyes. "Darnit, now you've got me all sappy." Dash said through her sadness. Fluttershy giggled and reached into her saddlebag. She pulled out three paper bags, each with the threes initials on them.
"I made you lunches for the train ride. Where are you going?" Fluttershy asked as she gave them each their bag.
"We haven't decided yet, probably wherever's cheapest." Soarin said as he jiggled the coin bag on his back, showing how little bits were in it.
"Thanks for the lunches Flutters, I promise that wherever we end up, i'll write you a letter as soon as we get there. In fact, I'll write frequently." Dash said, giving Fluttershy one last hug. Fluttershy smiled as they separated one last time. She then turned to Scootaloo and gave her a hug.
"Stay safe Scoots, and good luck out there." Fluttershy said as she hugged the smaller Pegasus. Scootaloo nodded and Fluttershy finally turned to Soarin. She then, unexpectedly, pressed her hoof firmly to Soarin's chest and gave him a glare that Soarin didn't expect.
"Take care of them." Fluttershy said in a much harsher tone than Soarin had heard from her thus far, but it quickly faded and her usual soft tone returned. "Please." she said softly. Soarin smiled and nodded.
"I promise. I'll protect them no matter what." Soarin said. Fluttershy hugged him quickly.
"Thank you." She said one last time before grabbing her stuff and walking back towards the town from the station, waving back at them as she went. The three waved her off before turning back and climbing up the ramp to the platform.
"You two go take a seat, I'll go get the tickets." Soarin said, pointing to a bench. Dash and Scootaloo went and sat down while Soarin walked over to the teller.
"Good morning." The teller said happily to Soarin.
"Morning." Soarin simply responded.
"What'll it be?" The teller asked. Soarin glanced at the train arrival times and saw that the next train arriving was for Fillydelphia. While not the best place to end up, it was at least a starting point. If they were lucky, they could find a place similar to Ponyville, a small town that hopefully didn't have a Wonderbolt or Shadowbolt chapter in it yet. Soarin knew Fillyfelphia was a mostly Shadowbolt city, but hopefully that wouldn't be there for long.
"Three tickets to Fillydelphia please." Soarin said. The teller nodded and pulled out three tickets.
"That'll be 15 bits please." The teller said. Soarin took the coin sack from his backpack and opened it, counting out 15 bits, leaving only about a dozen remaining. The teller took the bits and slid the tickets over.
"Thanks." Soarin said as he picked them up with his wing. The teller nodded.
"Have a nice day now." He said with a wave. Soarin waved back. He remembered how nice most people in Ponyville were. If it weren't for the Wonderbolts and Shadowbolts in the town, the place would be perfect. Hell, after last night, things may get better for the town.
As Soarin walked back over to where Dash and Scootaloo were, he saw the two locked in a very interesting conversation, one that Soarin couldn't hear, but could see Scootaloo going on and on about something to Dash, involving many hoof motions and fluttering of wings. Dash was also laughing quite a bit at whatever Scoots was going on about. Soarin found himself smiling as the two interacted.
Most of his life, he didn't really have much of a family. Since his mother died, he was left in the care of Nightstalker. He was a rotten bastard, and the only reason Soarin stuck around was his sons. Thunderlane was the closest Soarin had to a brother, but now he was gone. But as Soarin looked at Dash and Scootaloo, he realized that he now had a new family, in a more of an abstract sense. He wasn't related to them, but they were two ponies he had to protect from the world that didn't like them. He loved Dash more than anything, and Scootaloo was an unfortunate kid who got dragged into all this. But he was going to make sure that they all got through, together.
Soarin walked over to the bench and sat down next to Dash. He gave them each their tickets. "So, what are you silly fillies talking about over here?" he asked. Scootaloo was quick to answer.
"I was telling Rainbow Dash about this time I did a pressure drop during one of my practice sessions a few days ago. It was awesome!" Scootaloo said enthusiastically. Soarin chuckled.
"I don't doubt it." Soarin said as he looked around the platform. There were a few other ponies their, but most of them were just normal townsfolk going about their daily business. That is, until Soarin saw a familiar face land by the ramp. He looked over and saw Rumble walking onto the platform holding something. Soarin stood up and waved Rumble over.
"Rumble, what is Celestia's name are you doing here?" Soarin asked. Rumble walked up with a tired look on his face.
"I....I wanted to give you something before you guys left.....and....." Rumble hesitated. He stopped talking.
"And?" Soarin asked. Rumble exhaled and looked over at Scootaloo.
"I wanted to say bye to Scootaloo." Rumble said. Soarin's eyes widened and he looked at Dash, both of the remembering their short talk the night before. Soarin looked back at what Rumble was carrying.
"What is that you've got for us?" Soarin asked. Rumble took it off his back and held it.
"Last night....the mansion caught fire during the fight. Most of the upper floors were charred.....and the basement was burned up pretty badly, save for this." Rumble said, taking the cloth covering it off. Soarin and Dash both gasped at what Rumble managed to drag out of Soarin's room.
It was Soarin's painting of Dash. It was still completely together, with no evidence of any damage to it. Soarin took it from Rumble and he and Dash looked at it in disbelief. Every brushstroke, line, bit of color, all of it was still intact, and still beautifully done.
"Rumble....I.....how did you find this?" Soarin asked. Rumble shrugged.
"I was combing the smoldering ruins for anything that may have survived the inferno, and I managed to pull that out of the basement. It was in your closet, and strangely enough it was the only thing in your room that wasn't destroyed. I can't say the same for the rest of your art stuff, sorry." Rumble explained. Soarin simply chuckled and looked back at the teenage colt. He quickly embraced him.
"Thanks Rumble, thank you so much." Soarin said before pulling away. Rumble looked back at Soarin with a faint grin.
"No problem Soarin." Rumble said. He then turned to Scootaloo.
"You...you can come with us Rumble, you can get out of this with us, we can get out of this together." Scootaloo tried to get Rumble to come with, but Rumble shook his head and took Scootaloo's hoof.
"I wish I could, but I need to keep watching my father. He survived the burning, and I hope and pray that I can get him to possibly change his ways. Maybe soon I can join you, but not now. With Thunderlane still recently dead, I need to be there for him. I'm sorry." Rumble explained. Scootaloo quickly leaned in and hugged Rumble.
"Just, be safe okay. I hope I'll see you again soon." Scootaloo said before pulling away. Rumble smiled and nodded.
"I hope so too, Scootaloo." Rumble said. He then turned to Soarin and Dash. "You guys stay safe, and I hope to see you all again soon." Rumble said as he spread his wings and turned toward the ramp.
"You stay safe too Rumble." Soarin said back to him. Dash waved as well, and Rumble took off back to town.
The three went and sat back down on the bench. Soarin and Dash both kept looking at the painting. It was still on the thick piece of canvas. Dash and Soarin both exchanged smiles as they admired the painting again. Hopefully, it would be around to symbolize their love forever, as the two ponies who took on a blood feud to find love in eachother.
Soarin eventually took the cloth and covered it again. Dash nudged him in the side.
"Maybe you can get a job doing art commissions somewhere." Dash said. Soarin shrugged.
"I'd need new supplies, since the rest of my stuff is now gone in the fire." Soarin lamented. Dash simply rested against his side, hoping to give him comfort that everything will work out.
After another ten minutes or so of waiting, a train pulled into the station and screeched on its brakes. The doors opened and out stepped several ponies. Once all the ponies arriving got off, the conductor stepped onto the platform with a whistle and a pocket watch. He blew the whistle and shouted.
"ALL Aboard the 10:30 train to Fillydelphia!" He shouted for the rest of the platform to hear. The trio quickly gathered their stuff and entered one of the cars. The took a seat near the rear of the car and all sat down. Soarin and Dash next to eachother, with Scootaloo across from them. The conductor went through the car, taking the tickets from them, before the train finally started moving.
Soarin looked out the window as the train moved along the landscape. He looked back and saw Ponyville disappearing in the distance. He finally left that place behind, that place that brought him so much loss and pain, but also the greatest thing he could have ever received. He looked over at Dash, who was resting her head on his shoulder, her eyes were closed, trying to get to sleep. He looked across at Scootaloo, she was lying completely down in the train seat, asleep. Soarin smiled.
He was heading towards the next part of his life, one that would hopefully end much more happily than what he had just escaped. He had a good feeling. He looked back over at Dash and started to softly stroke her mane. As long as she was by his side, he felt like he could take on the whole world, and nothing would stop him.
They may have been heading into the unknown, but he was ready. Dash was also ready, confident that she, Soarin, and Scoots could find someplace where they could all be happy. But only time could tell.
Dash opened her eyes again and saw Scoots already dozing off on her seat. She looked up at Soarin who was staring out the window. She reached a hoof up and stroked his cheek. Soarin looked over and smiled at her.
"Hey Soarin?" Dash whispered.
"Yeah Dashie?" Soarin whispered back.
"We'll get through this, juts like we did before. You, me, and her." Dash said, motioning to Scoots. Soarin nodded.
"I'm more than certain. As long as you're by my side." Soarin said, reaching over and pulling her closer to him. Dash smiled.
"I love you Soarin." Dash said.
"I love you too Rainbow Dash." Soarin said, and they leaned in and kissed, shivering with the great feeling they felt every time their lips connected.
The train continued to clatter and clink along the train tracks, heading towards Fillydelphia. The future uncertain for the two of them, but they were certain in their hearts that as long as they were together, they would pull through, no matter what blood feud got in their way. FIN |
So yea... I'm a pony | pre | "Yea, how the heck did you open the door?" He asks while taking a seat on the black sofa in your living room.
"My 'magical hooves'" You say while waving your foreleg around in the air.
"I'm not even gonna question it anymore..." He says while staring at you with one eyebrow raised.
"Alright, tell me, what happened at your place?" You ask while taking a seat adjacent to him.
"You want the long or the short version." He asks with a small chuckle.
"We got plenty of time, so just give me the extended version." You respond
"Well, after that cop chased you for a couple of houses, he came back and asked me what that was. I kept trying to say that it was just a critter but then he asked about the fence and I had to just shrug it off. After he left, I went and talked to my sister. The second I got in her view, she started demanding answers to you got into the house."
"Did you tell her about me?" You ask while praying that he didn't.
"Nah, just said I left the back door open. I can't believe she bought that." He says while shaking his head.
"Oh and dude, what the heck! I thought you said you had the place to yourself?" You say with your voice raised.
"I forgot this was the weekend she was coming back from college. Of course, this is the weekend she comes back." He says while mumbling the last part.
"Well we got out of that mess, so, I'll ask again, what the heck do we do now?"
"I honestly have no idea, but I'm tired, so can we talk about it in the morning?" He says while suppressing a yawn.
"Fine, but what time is it? I just woke up and feel fine." You say while looking for a clock.
"It's 3:13 in the morning." He says while getting up off the couch. "Where can I crash for the night." He asks while looking back towards you.
"You get the couch tonight. I'll get you a blanket and a pillow." You say while getting up yourself and walking over to the closet in the corner of the room.
"Eer aah yoo" You say with the blanked on you back and the pillow in your mouth.
"Umm, thanks." He says while grabbing the pillow and blanket and looking at the spit stain on the pillow.
"Alright, I'll just be in my room." You say while walking down the hall back towards your room.
'Time to have a mental breakdown.' You think as you close the door to your bedroom.
"O-Ok, I'm better n-now." You say while wiping a tear away with your foreleg.
After calming yourself down following an embarrassingly long break-down, you start to recollect your thoughts and think about that dream you had before you woke up.
'What the heck happened? It was like I was watching a play, and I was in it! But I couldn't do anything? I've never heard of that happening in a dream before.' You think while walking over to your computer and turning it on.
After logging into your computer, which takes forever when your password is 50 characters and you have to type with a pencil, you look up the news and see that your picture is still on the front page.
"Well great, they think I'm legit... well, I am real." You say while scrolling through various articles.
After looking for around 30 minutes, you found nothing particularly interesting.
"Well, I guess I can try to go to bed again." You say to yourself while suppressing a yawn. "My not so little breakdown wore me out." You mumble right before you hop back onto your bed.
Opening your eyes, you are greeted by an endless black void. Looking around you in all directions yields no better results.
'Umm, hello?' You try to ask but your body doesn't want to cooperate.
"Hello?" You hear yourself say without trying to.
'Great, I'm in another dream.' You think after quickly connecting the dots.
"Oh, why hello there little pony." You hear another masculine voice say from all around you.
"Wha- who's there?!" You shout into the void only to get an answer from everywhere.
"Why it's me! The spirit of chaos itself!" You hear him say with a chuckle.
"D-Discord?!" You quickly say with a very frightened tone.
"My my, don't worry, I'm not here to hurt you. Just looking for a little chaos." You hear him say with a very noticeable amount of malice in his voice.
'Who the heck is this guy?' You think but almost immediately get your answer as if he heard your thoughts as a creature that looks like it came from Sid's room in Toy Story materializes in front of you.
"W-What are you doing here?" You hear yourself say as you take a step back.
"Why I am here to offer you a deal!" He exclaims with a grin on his face so massive he had to hold it up with his hands.
"W-What ever i-it is, I don't want it!" You shout while stomping a hoof.
"Really, not even a second chance at life?"
"W-What..." You are completely taken by surprise by his statement and are left speechless. Even dreaming you is somewhat surprised.
"Why, didn't you know? You died! I stopped you on your way to the great beyond to offer you a second chance! You should be thanking me." He says while giving you a fake pouting face and a few sniffles.
"I... I don't... what happened to me?" You hear yourself ask with a few tears rolling down your cheeks.
"You were struck by lightning!" He says before getting blasted by lightning and reforming right next to you in a hospital bed. "Then you were put in a coma on life support. You didn't make in the night." He says with a hint of sadness which seems to surprise your host.
"S-So what can you do about it?" You ask still shedding tears.
"Well, I can't send you directly back to Equestria, but I can send you to a universe that is linked to Equestria." He says while snapping his fingers and a globe of a planet forms floating above his talons. "This is called Earth, and should you choose to accept, this is where you will be sent, although... with a few minor changes."
"Why are you doing this for me?" You ask now realizing how absurd this is.
"Why it will benefit you and me alike! You get to live again while I get to have a little extra chaos!"
"But why do you need me? Why not just go there without me?"
"Well you see, I cannot just go there. I am bound to our dimension, but, that can be bypassed by simply having a pony in the dimension as well!" He says while squishing the globe between his hand and starts swimming through the air around you. "So, what do you say?"
"I... I-I'll do it." You say just wanting to be alive again.
"Alright then, just please sign on the dotted line." He says while a scroll with writing that gets progressively smaller to the point where it cannot be seen.
"But I can't even read it!" You say wondering if this is really the right decision. Your thoughts are cut short, however.
"Oh, it's just the usual mumbo jumbo." He says while waving his paw.
"But I don't have a quill?"
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don-" You stop after seeing the quill floating right next to you. "Fine fine, I'll sign the contract."
"Thank you, now we may begin." He says after you sign the line and the paper disappears right in front of you.
'This guy is nuts!' You think to yourself.
"Alright, let's begin. FOR FIVE SCORE-" He begins but cuts himself off. "Wrong story."
Hearing him say this just adds to the pile of confusion already crushing your brain.
"Ah whatever, I'll just do it the easy way." He says before touching your forehead with a glowing talon.
"What's supp- ARGH!" You scream in surprise at the amount of pain that suddenly took hold of your entire body. You are also surprised that you can feel every bit of pain as well considering that this is just a dream. You can't think properly as you convulse on the ground while the landscape around you fades to a perfect white. The pony in the dream is able to form one last partial thought before passing out from the pain.
"Wait, he can only go where ponies are so-"
"AHH!" You scream as you shoot up in your bed.
"Bro, you alright?" You hear Brock shout from the living room.
"Y-Yea, just a dream." You say while shakily getting out of your bed. You had never felt that much pain in your entire life. You thought it wasn't possible to feel pain in a dream, but that was just proven otherwise. Considering the recent event, you are basically on the borderline of throwing everything you ever knew about... well everything out the window.
Taking a look behind you, you see that your bed is soaked in sweat and your fur is also thoroughly soaked in sweat.
"Hey, you good?" You hear Brock ask from the doorway to your room with a worried look on his face.
"Yea, although I think I know why I am here now." You say taking a few breaths, still trying to slow your heartbeat.
"Really, that's great-" He starts saying but you quickly cut him off.
"Stop, just, wait. I wanna take a shower first and then we can talk. Also, what time is it?" You ask while taking a look around your room for a clock.
"It's 8:25 in the morning." He says while putting his phone back into his pocket.
"Alright, just let me shower first." You say while quickly striding past him and heading towards the bathroom.
After figuring out how to use a shower as a pony, which was considerably more difficult than you had thought even though your parents have a massive shower, you finally settle down on the couch, though still a little damp, on the opposite side of Brock.
"Alright, so there-" You start but are cut short by an all to familiar sound
*Grumble*
"Heh, could we talk about this over breakfast?" You trying to hide your embarrassment.
"Sure, I already ate so I'll get you something. What do you want?" He asks while getting up and heading towards the kitchen.
"Just some apple juice and haycakes." You say seemingly out of instinct.
He stops and then gives you a questioning look. "What are haycakes?"
"I-I don't know, that just felt natural. Plus, I hate apple." You respond while trying to think of why this would happen.
"Well, how about something I know of, like cereal with milk?" He asks while resuming his walk to the kitchen.
"Sure, that's fine." You say while hopping onto the only chair at the dining room table that was still pulled out.
"Alright, here you go." He says a few moments later while sliding a bowl of Captain Crunch and a glass of water in front of you.
"Thanks." You say as you pick the spoon up with your hooves and start shoveling the food into your muzzle.
"Ok, not that you got your food, why is this happening to you?" He asks while he takes the seat opposite.
Swallowing, you start your explanation. "Well, first..."
Canterlot Royal Palace
Princess Luna, princess of the night, was performing her nightly routine of protecting all her little ponies from their nightmares.
"No more nightmare in sight." She says while looking around the dreamscape. "We think that concludes our-" She cuts herself short as she feels another pony having a nightmare, although, this one feels so faint compared to the normal tugging sensation she got when a pony was having a nightmare. She looked in the direction she felt the nightmare coming from and was greeted by the smallest of white dots in the distance showing a pony's dream.
"Why is thy dream so distant?" She asks herself quietly as she starts flying towards the dream bubble.
After what felt like several hours of flying, galloping, and panting, Luna finally collapses on the ground having given up.
"AAAH!" Luna screamed out in frustration as she leaves the dream realm after not being able to get into a dream for the first time since she arrived back from her banishment.
*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
"Princess! Are you alright in there?" A lunar guard shouts from just outside the door.
"We are fine." Luna says as she falls back onto her big princess sized bed, staring at the stars through the window in her room.
"We must tell Tia about this..." Luna says with worry filling her mind. This was not normal she thought to herself. |
So yea... I'm a pony | Chapter-5 Umm... hello? | "Wait wait wait," Brock says while holding his hands up. "You're telling me, whoever you are now made a deal with... whatever it is you just tried to describe to me?"
"Yep." You say deciding to just give the short answer.
"Ok, that's great. We know who did this to you. Now, what the heck do we do?" He asks while holding his head and letting out a frustrated sigh.
"Well, I seem to be dreaming a lot. I used to never dream, so maybe it will tell me. These aren't normal dreams either." You say as you finish the last of your food.
Trying to explain something like that to someone who has no idea in the slightest what you are talking about is hard. Very hard. At first, he thought you were just joking, but you quickly reminded him that you are currently a talking miniature horse with wings. That sure seemed to shut him up for a while.
"Well, I would normally say alright, but, it's currently Saturday and we have school on Monday. Plus, your parents are going to come home eventually." He says while shaking his head.
"Well, that gives us the rest of today and tomorrow to try to figure this out." You say while getting off your chair and heading towards your bedroom. "Be a dear and clean my plate pretty please." You finish just as you shut the door to your room. You are still able to hear him sigh from the kitchen.
You walk over to your computer and decide to check your email. You haven't really done anything you normally do in the past day. Well, you're not really you anymore so...
After the tedious task of turning your computer back on, you open your email, which thank goodness is already logged in, and wait for it to load. "Hmm, I could go for some music right now." You say as you open Spotify while still waiting for your email to open.
After shoving an ear-bud into your new equine ears, which is actually strangely comfortable, you look back over to your email and see that it is now open.
"Hmm, let's see here..." You say to yourself as you look over the emails while attempting to scroll down. "Spam...spam...news...parents...sp- WHAT!?" You shout while instantly making sure that you read that correctly. Well, it turns out you sure did. "Oh no... it was sent last night..." You say to yourself while you move the cursor over the email.
"Bro, chill, what happened?" You hear Brock say from behind you.
"My parents sent me an email..." You say while just staring and praying that it doesn't say what you think it's going to say.
"Well, open it already." You hear Brock say once again from behind you, although now much closer.
"Here we go..." You say while clicking on the email. *
Subject: Hello?
Preston, why are you not answering your phone? We really need to talk. Something happened and we are coming home right away. We will be back around noon tomorrow.
Mom. *
"Umm, Brock, what time is it?" You slowly ask.
"Well... it's-" He is cut off by the last thing you want to hear.
"Preston! We're home!" You hear your mother shout from the front door.
You and Brock just stare at each other having no idea what to do. The both of you look like a dear caught in the headlights. You should probably hide or something to maybe soften the blow, but nooooo, let's just stare at each other and wait for it to happen.
"Preston!" You hear her shout from just outside your door. "Preston! Where the he-" She immediately stops what she is about to say and just stares at you. She casts Brock a question glance, but her attention is almost solely on you.
You decide to break the ice, but she beats you to it.
"Umm, hello Brock. First, where is Preston, second, why is there a pastel horse in the house?" She asks with her eyes still glued to the sight of you.
"Well, Preston is in here and to answer the second question, he lives here." Brock says deciding to not directly say it.
"What do you mean? I don't see him. And wh-" It was at this moment that realization dawned on her. "T-that..." She shakily says while pointing a finger at me.
"Yep, it's me, Preston." You say with a smile on your face.
"W-wha..." She isn't able to finish her thought as she promptly faints right then and there.
"Honey, where *cough* *cough* where are you?" You hear your father say from the entrance to the house.
'Oh yea, I got to tell dad also... hopefully he doesn't rea-'
"What happened!?" Your thoughts are cut short as you hear your father at the door to your room.
"Well," You begin. "she fainted when I sta-"
*Crash*
"Well so much for a different reaction." You say to yourself as you walk over to their limp forms on the ground. "Hey, help me get them on the sofa and make sure they didn't hurt themselves." You say to Brock which snaps him out of his gaze.
"S-Sure." He responds after you break his staring contest with the wall.
After moving both your parents to the sofa in the living room and putting ice on their visible bruises, you and Brock sit down on the chairs on the other side of the sofa.
"Well, that could have gone better..." You say while letting out a sigh.
"Yea, maybe just a little." He responds.
"Oh shut up. Well, we don't want them to do something irrational, so what should we tell them when they wake up?" You ask while staring back over at their resting forms.
"Well, we tell them the truth and get their support. They should be able to help us especially since they would find out that you were missing pretty quickly." He says with a shrug.
"Yea, I guess so." You say, dreading the moment one of them wakes up.
Oh, how the universe loves you.
"W-What happened?" You hear your father say while rubbing his bruised arm and looking around.
"W-Who's there?" You hear your mother say while she starts looking around as well.
It only takes a moment for both of their gazes to meet you sitting on the chair opposite of them.
"Umm, hi?" You say having no idea what to do to keep them from passing out again.
They do nothing but stare at you. If stares could kill, you'd be a stain on the ground right now.
"Did it just talk..." You mother shakily says.
"Yes, and I'm not an it, I'm your son, Preston." You respond deciding to be blunt.
"Wha... ok, Brock, what's going on here?" Your father asks, turning the attention onto Brock.
"Well, what he, er she, just said is true. That is Preston. Although, now you have a daughter! Yay." He says while giving a little clap.
This does nothing but causes your parent's jaws to hit the floor. You were really hoping he would leave out the fact that your now a girl... well they would find out eventually. 'Wait! Do horses have periods!? Fuuuuuuuu-' You think to yourself as your parents are still busying picking their jaws back up off the floor.
"I-Is it true? Is that really y-you Preston?" Your mother asks while looking like she is on the brink of tears.
"Yea, it's me." You say after a moment's hesitation.
"N-Not y-you too..." After saying this, your mother starts sobbing into her hands while your father gets up and starts comforting her.
Her words register in your mind after a few moments. "Wait, me too?" You ask.
"Your... sister called us. That is why we came back." Your father starts. "She said that she woke up in the morning and was a horse like you." He pauses and just stares at the floor. "We didn't believe her until she video called us. I don't know how but she managed to call us. She is still inside her dorm room at college."
"Oh my..." Is all you can say to this. First you, now your sister? She has been gone since the start of the school year. It is her senior year of college at USF. 'How could this happen to her too? Is she getting dreams as well? Is she alright?' All these thoughts ran through your head until Brock spoke up.
"Uh, I don't mean to interrupt anything, but, if the same thing happened to her, where is she?" He asks, still sitting and taking in the scene unfolding before him.
"We wanted to come to check on you because you weren't answering your phone. Well, one of us will get her now." Your father says as your mother finally starts to calm down.
"H-How... w-why..." She says to herself, still crying into your father's shoulder.
"Shh, it's alright, everything is going to be alright. Let's get you into bed and you can rest." He says to her as he helps her to her feet. They start walking towards their bedroom. After a few minutes, your father reemerges and walks over to the couch, and sits back down with an obviously worried look on his face.
"When did this happen to you?" He asks.
"During school on Friday." You respond while rubbing your hoof over the armrest.
"Alright, why didn't you call us?"
"Well, all the stuff I had on me just kind of disappeared when I woke up in the school bathroom, including my phone."
"I see." Is all he says.
"Plus, I'm on the news." You say which seems to catch his attention. "When I woke up and came out of the bathroom, the bell rang when I was walking down the hallway. And as you can guess, lots of people recorded it." You say while letting out a sigh.
After you finish, your father got his phone out and one could pretty easily guess what he was up to.
"Wow, they really like you." He says with a small chuckle that quickly fades.
"Well, are you going to go get Elizabeth?" You ask starting to feel worried after remembering your sister is going through the same thing. She, however, is stuck in the middle of a college campus.
"I guess I'll leave now, we should be back in a few hours. Help your mother out alright? She was freaked out even more than she is now when she learned what happened to your sister." He says while rubbing his forehead.
"Alright, bye dad."
He gives you a little wave as he walks over to the front door before slipping his shoes on and exiting the house.
Letting out a sigh, you remember that Brock has been sitting next to you silently almost the entire time.
"Hey, you there Brock?" You ask while waving a hoof in front of his face which seems to do the trick.
"Hmm, oh yeah. Dang bro, your family is going through some weird stuff right now."
"No kidding, I'm still a little surprised how little my parents said. Well, my mom is basically speechless right now but my dad didn't say much."
"They seem to be taking this pretty well considering the circumstances." He says with a shrug.
"Well, considering my parents are back and they know, you don't have to stay here, you can go home if you want." You say while looking up to see him giving you a reassuring smile.
"I wouldn't leave you in a time like this. I'll help you fix whatever the heck is happening to you. I will have to go back to school though, but I can come after school and I have all of tomorrow." He says with a smile.
"Thanks, although, unless you want the couch, there is nowhere else to sleep." You say feeling a little disappointed he can't stay the night... wait what the heck are you thinking?
You very quickly bleach your mind of that thought.
"It's fine, I can just go back to my place, it's pretty close."
"Alright, well I'm gonna be on my computer." You say as you hop off the chair and start heading towards your room.
"I guess I'll see what you're up to." He says as he follows you.
After sitting down in front of your computer, you decide to search the internet to see if anyone else is experiencing similar effects.
Well, after a few hours of searching and finding absolutely nothing, you give up as you hear the front door open.
"We're back!" Your father exclaims but the noticeable clip-clop of hooves is what captures your attention.
You quickly get out of your seat and head to your door which leads to the hallway connecting to the front door.
As you enter the hallway, you notice the small pony, which you learned you're called, walking next to your father. As you look at her, she looks up and stares directly back at you.
"Elizabeth?" You say deciding to speak first.
"Preston?" She responds, she also seems pretty surprised by something else.
'Oh yea, girl voice now.' You think to yourself.
After that, both of you immediately rush over to each other and give each other a big hug. Well, try, hugging as a pony is very difficult especially when you try to do it standing on both legs. That resulted in both of you on your back before getting helped up by Brock and your father.
After exchanging a hug and a small chuckle, you decide that now is a good time to eat.
"Hey dad, could you make us something to eat?" You ask while looking up at him. Jeez, you really never took in how short you are now. You're no more than three and a half feet tall at most.
"Sure." He says before walking off towards the kitchen.
After a few minutes, your father sets down, whaddya guess, a salad in front of two seats, the other you are assuming is for your sister which turns out to be correct after she sits down in front of one of the plates.
After taking your seat, you notice that aside from a small chuckle and your name, which she basically whispered, you haven't heard her talk.
"So... how was the ride." You ask her.
After letting out a sigh and looking up at you, she says, "It was good."
"That's gre-" You stop yourself not believing what you heard. "Umm, could you say that again please?" You say with uncertainty.
"Good." Responds the very masculine voice. |
The Mysterious Island | pre | "Ouch! That had to hurt."
Before long, the group had stopped running to catch their breaths.
"Everyone okay?" Shine Boy asked.
Twilight looked around to notice something's missing. "I don't see Spike anywhere. Anyone see him?"
"I thought he was behind us." Gamer stated.
"We better go find him." Fluttershy worried.
"Twilight! Over here!"
Everyone looked to see Chet carrying Spike as he showed them the dog's condition.
"Oh Spike!" Gasped Twilight as she felt his forehead. "You're burning up!"
"I don't look too bad" panted Spike.
"Fluttershy, Can you help him?"
"Not without the right medication, Twilight."
"But we need to help Spikey Wikey!" Rarity begged.
Gamer double checked the map. "Guys! I think I found something! According to the map, there's a place on a beach nearby said to have healing magic."
"It's our only hope! It's Spike's only hope." Sunset stated.
Wearily, Spike begged. "Guys, I'm fine. We need to find the guardian!"
Twilight answered by taking Spike in her arms. "No Spike. Before I met any of our friends, you were all I had. I'm not loosing you."
Shine Boy placed his hand on Twilight. "We're not loosing him. Gamer, which way?"
"This way. Shouldn't be too far."
"Then let's go." Chet lead the way as the others followed him.
"And now they're heading to the north of the island." Rutter reported to Mortar through a crystal.
"Continue to follow them." Mortar ordered as he shut off his crystal.
"The time to strike is now." grinned Reva.
To be continued |
The Mysterious Island | Cross The Bridge | The Rainbooms, Team Shine, Starlight, and Chet double timed it to make it to the beach to find the magic place to heal Spike with Twilight leading the way while carrying the dog. Twilight has showed no signs of stopping for she was worried about her dog the most. Shine Boy, Chet, and Sunset were right behind her trying to help comfort her while worried about Spike as well.
"Gamer, how much farther do we have?" Shine Boy asked.
Gamer, panting, caught up to the front and pulled out the map. "It shouldn't be too far. We should be nearing Force Bridge and then straight to the water's edge."
"Is that it?" Starlight pointed.
It was a long bridge connected to two very deep cliffs with nothing but water at the bottom.
"Yeah. that be it." Gamer stated.
"Oh! It doesn't look safe." feared Fluttershy.
"For Spike, I'm willing to take that risk!" Twilight demanded.
"We ain't backing down on him either, sugarcube." Appleback assured.
"N-no.... Not gonna put.... you all....in..danger." Spike mumbled
"But Spike-" Twilight worried.
"I-I'm okaaaaaaaaay." Spike fainted in Twilight's arms.
"SPIKE!" Twilight gasped.
"We're running out of time!" Sunset declared.
"Come on!" Chet called and they pressed on.
Soon, they were right at the start of the bridge. Chet and Gamer examined it.
"Looks sturty enough." Chet figured.
"I calculate we have a 75% chance we'll make it across" Gamer calculated.
"Forget about me..... find...guardian" Spike moaned
"No, Spike. We're not abandoning you. We're going end of discussion!" Twilight stated.
Suddenly, before anyone could cross, Who should appear but Reva, Mortar, and Lance.
"Don't tell me you kids were going to cross without super vision!" mocked Reva.
"Anywhere to get away from you!" snapped Rarity.
"And it looks like we got a rodent problem." Applejack added as she caught Rutter and Gutter poking their heads from behind a rock.
Gamer stepped up. "Everybody get across! I'll hold them off!"
"I'll help!" Pinkie declared.
"Chet! You help Twilight get Spike across! Everyone else go! I'll take the rear!" Shine Boy ordered.
Everybody began to cross the bridge trying to hurry but also being careful too. Rainbow stepped on a board only for it to break on her. Luckily, Love Shine grabbed her before she fell and helped her up. Suddenly, one of the bridge's ends snapped, causing the bridge to tilt. Everyone struggled to hang on. Twilight struggled the hardest because one hand was holding on to the rope and the other one was holding Spike. Luckily, Chet used his tail to help her across. Fluttershy was stuck in fear.
Shine Girl noticed this and extended her hand. "Fluttershy! give me your hand!"
Fluttershy tried to reach, but before she could grab it, the wood she held broke causing her to fall and scream.
"FLUTTERSHY!" Everyone cried.
Quickly, Shine Girl grabbed a cable from her belt and threw it at Fluttershy, tying around her waist catching her. When Applejack made her way across, she used her super strength to pull up the fallen end of the bridge, evening it out for the others to get across while Sunset and Shine Boy hurried and helped Shine Girl pull Fluttershy back up.
Meanwhile, Gamer and Pinkie stood there as the villains got closer.
"Get them!" Reva demanded.
But before they could seize the two, Gamer and Pinkie pulled out cameras and started to flash the villains, blinding them.
"Look at the birdie!" Gamer grinned.
"I'm lovin it! lovin it!" Pinkie cried as she posed while flashing.
Rutter and Gutter posed for the pictures.
"Make sure you get my good side!" Gutter added.
Back on the bridge, Shine Girl and Sunset joined the others across the bridge, helping and comforting Fluttershy across with Shine Boy not far behind. Seeing that everyone made it as he came across, Shine Boy called out to Gamer and Pinkie on the other side.
"Gamer! Pinkie! We all made it! Hurry!"
Gamer and Pinkie stopped and hurried onto the bridge. Gamer looked back at the villains.
"FYI There's no film in the camera!"
As Gamer went across behind Pinkie, Reva growled as she went on the bridge, but not before stopping Rutter from going before her.
"Back off, Plague head! I'm gonna cross first!"
"Okay! I just remembered. I hate heights."
"Then stay here!" Mortar ordered as he followed Reva on the bridge.
Pinkie was able to get across okay, but Gamer got his foot stuck on a step and was struggling to get free as Reva and Mortar were coming closer.
"Gamer!" Shine Boy cried.
"We got him now, Mortar!" Reva laughed.
"He won't get far." Mortar chuckled.
But before they could grab him, Shine Boy and Pinkie called out to them.
"Back away from my brother!" Shine Boy demanded.
"And just what are you gonna do about it?" Reva smirked
"I'll blow up the bridge!" Pinkie shouted, holding up her sprinkles.
"You're bluffing! You'll blow up your friend!" Mortar laughed.
Shine Boy nodded to Gamer, signaling him, and he nodded.
"Do it, Pinkie! I'm not worth it!" he called.
"What"? Reva and Mortar gasped.
"You have the count of three to get off the bridge! One!"
As Pinkie began to count, Shine Boy shot a cable to Gamer, pulling him to the other side, freeing his leg.
"Two!"
"Oh she's serious! I'm getting outta here!" Reva cried as she and Mortar ran back to the other side.
"Two and a half! Three! Sprinkles Ahoy!"
Reva and Mortar made it back just as Pinkie threw her sprinkles blowing up the bridge.
"You alright, Bro?" Shine Boy asked.
"Yeah Thanks" smiled Gamer.
"Okay, Let's get to that spot to help-" Twilight stopped as Spike slid down shutting his eyes slowly. "Spike? Spike!"
Meanwhile, Reva wasn't happy with her defeat.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU DO SOMETHING?" she bellowed.
"Hey we were following orders." Rutter stated
"Yeah you told us to stay put." Gutter agreed.
"SILENCE! You buck toothed, manicure needing pests!" Suddenly, Reva thought of something. "Buck tooth...... Nails. Lance, go fetch that rope. I think we'll get across after all." she chuckled.
Meanwhile, The team made a strecher for Spike out of Shine Boy's cape, Gamer's sheathed sword, and Shine Girl's baton.
"There. That outta do it." Shine Boy said as he and Chet carefully set Spike on the stretcher.
"Careful." Twilight pleaded.
"We will" Chet assured her. Then both lifted the stretcher and carried him while the others followed
Back with the villains, Reva had Mortar tie the rope around Rutter and Gutter's waists. Then Lance pointed to the other side.
"They're getting away!"
"Alright. I'll fling you both over on the count of three." Mortar instructed the rats.
"Okay"
"Ready."
Mortar grabbed the other end of the rope and started to swing them around.
"One!"
"I forgot my fear of heights!"
"Two!"
"Hey Rutter! I can see the base from here!"
"Three!"
Mortar then threw the rats to the other side where they grab the ledge with their teethes having a firm grip.
"AW amoard tht gooing athore" Rutter called with his mouth full.
To be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | Spike's Gone | The Rainbooms, Starlight, Team Shine, and Chet hurried to the water's edge while Shine Boy and Chet carried Spike on their makeshift stretcher. They soon arrived a part of the waterfront that had pillar like structures.
"This looks like the place." Gamer said.
"Let's set Spike down." Sunset said.
Shine Boy and Chet carefully set Spike down as Twilight leaned to the dog's ear.
"Spike? Can you hear me?" She grew sadder when the dog didn't answer. "He's not answering. He's not even moving."
Fluttershy held up her hand full of sand near Spike's mouth. "He's not breathing, Twilight."
"I'm not getting a pulse." Gamer said, checking Spike for a pulse.
Everyone grew sadder when they heard that.
Meanwhile, Back at the bridge, Reva, Mortar, and Lance were climbing the rope while Rutter and Gutter were holding on to the ledge with their teeth.
Mortar was in deep wonder. "What bother's me is wondering how those girls learned of Equestria."
"What bothers me is how tiring this is!" panted Reva. "But it'll be worth it once we have that necklace and return to Equestria."
"Well at the rate we're going, they'll be gone!" Lance snapped.
"Uh could you guysh hurray ut?" Rutter called.
"Yeah. we cun't holt you gosh all duh" Gutter mentioned.
But The villains didn't seem to listen as they bicker amongst themselves.
"I told you never to talk back to me in that tone, young man!" Reva snapped back.
"Can't we have this talk when we get across?" Mortar asked.
"You stay out of this!"
As the villains argued, the rope kept being tugged and began to tightened Rutter around the waist.
"Thut smertz!" he cried.
"What you fray, Rutter?" Gutter asked.
"I said That smarts." Rutter answered, unaware he pulled out his teeth losing his grip from the ledge. Gutter soon lost his grip as well and all the villains fell into the water below.
"Hey Rutter. I don't think we're getting paid anytime soon." Rutter sighed.
"Yeah Well while we're here, could you pass my rubber duckie?" Gutter asked.
Meanwhile, Back with the group, The others didn't know what to do to help Spike.
"Maybe it takes a while?" Gamer asked, trying to be positive.
"I'm unsure." Sunset worried.
It wasn't enough to relieve anyone. Rarity cried as both she and Rainbow Dash embraced Love Shine. Fluttershy was in tears as Shine Girl could only put her hand on her shoulder. Pinkie held Gamer bawling while her hair deflated while Gamer tried to hide his face of remorse.Even Starlight couldn't hide her tears. Twilight walked and sat on the sand and cried. Shine Boy, Sunset, and Chet followed her and Sunset and Shine Boy sat by her while Chet took off his hat.
"Twilight. I'm sorry." Sunset said.
"He was there from the very beginning. Even when Cadence couldn't be there, Spike always cheered me up." Twilight reminced before falling in tears. "Why didn't I help him earlier? He would still be alive!"
"Twilight." Shine Boy said, putting his hand on Twilight's shoulder. "I understand your pain. You wish you could've prevented this. But this is something we can't avoid forever. No matter how hard it gets."
"Does the pain ever go away?"
"I wish I could say yes." Chet said. "It's one of the burdens I live with every day from loosing my parents."
Twilight looked at the ocean as the others gathered around. "Spike was the most loving, cheerful, sweet dog I ever loved. It'll never be the same."
Shine Boy sighed. "No. It won't."
Unknown to them, Spike was glowing. After the glowing stopped, Spike got up and feeling much better. Seeing the group, he walked over to them.
"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked Shine Boy.
"Oh hey Spike. We're just sorry what happened to-" Shine Boy soon realized who he was talking to while everyone perked up as well.
"Spike!" everyone cheered as they gathered around him.
Twilight embraced him the most. "Oh Spike! I thought I-"
"Told ya I'll be okay" Spike smiled.
"Oh! Spikey Wikey!" Rarity kissed him like crazy.
"Welcome back, sugarcube." Applejack said.
"It worked! He's ALIVE!" Pinkie cheered as her hair puffed back up and tightly squeezed Gamer.
"Pinkie! You're hugging..... too hard!" Gamer struggled.
"Heh. No I'm not!"
Thankfully, Pinkie let Gamer go as Sunset patted his shoulder.
"Good work, Gamer." She said.
Gamer smiled. "Well to be honest, I gambled. Seeing what we've been through, I was hoping for the magic to help Spike."
"Well, The important thing is that Spike's okay!" Starlight smiled.
"Spike's okay!" Twilight gleefully hugged Spike.
"Yeah I'm Okay!" Spike pronounced.
"Now we can find the guardian and go home together!" Rainbow declared.
"Sounds good!" Chet smiled as the group continued on.
To be continued |
The Mysterious Island | Unlikely Ally | Lance was in the forest by the beach checking his sword. After falling from the bridge, The villains swam to the nearest shore. While Lance got out first, Reva and Mortar worked on getting dried off while having a grown up talk. Reva was still steamed at Lance for snapping at her earlier. Lance stormed off to be alone. Reva needed to be away from him as well.
The Rainbooms, Team Shine, Starlight, and Chet were in the area when they spotted Lance.
"It's that boy from the villains." Gamer whispered.
"If we get the jump on him, we can get some answers." Sunset suggested.
"I'll go." Chet volunteered as he drew his sword.
Chet snuck around and neared Lance. Before he could strike however, Lance pointed his sword at the Gecko.
"You're quick. I'll give you that." Lance commented.
"So are you. But I'm resourceful!" Chet quickly used his tail to disarm Lance. As the group gathered, Lance held his hands up, showing he surrendered.
"You got me. What do you want from me?"
"We want answers. Why are you people after us?" Rainbow demanded.
"Other than after my necklace!" Rarity added.
"Um Does anyone realize we never asked his name?" Fluttershy pointed out.
"My name is Lance. I will answer your question if you spare me."
Chet looked to Shine Boy who nodded to put his sword away while giving Lance his blade back.
"Thank you." Lance sheathed his sword to show he'll cooperate. "The reason my aunt and uncle is after your necklace is because with it we can use it to go home. You are familiar with Equestria?"
Everyone gasped. "You're from Equestria?" Sunset asked.
"My Aunt Reva told me she and Uncle Mortar were betrayed by someone who had plans to conquer the land."
"Who?" Starlight asked.
"She refuses to say who. All I know is that because of them, Princess Celestia, along with this Guardian, used the Elements of Harmony to banish us all from Equestria. I was only a filly when we were banished. While we don't know the whereabouts of the traitor, we were banished on this island where we learned about the guardian and been looking for the necklace since."
"That's terrible." Fluttershy said.
"Take me with you."
"What?" everyone was shocked.
"I want to find the guardian with you and help you get home. I personally want to go home, but my aunt and uncle are bent on revenge."
"How do we know this isn't a trick?" Gamer glared.
"I'm telling the truth!"
"I know how to find out." Sunset said as she grabbed Lance's hand, reading his mind with her geode powers. It was just as Lance explained it how they were banished from Equestria and everything.
"Well?" Shine Boy asked as Sunset regained conscious.
"It's true." She gasped. "He really is telling the truth."
They soon heard Reva screaming after tripping from Rutter.
"Please! my aunt and uncle will be coming any moment!"
"I believe him." Shine Boy stated.
"So do I" Chet agreed.
"Then we're all agreed?" Sunset asked and everyone agrees. "Then let's go!" And they all hurried, Lance included.
Meanwhile, Reva walks up, still wet.
"That's the last time I let Rutter and Gutter hang ten" she snorted. "Lance! Lance?"
Reva looked around realizing Lance's footprints and a few more prints. Mortar showed up with Rutter and Gutter.
"What happened?" Mortar asked.
"Lance is gone! And I think I know what happened." Reva gritted as she turned to Rutter and Gutter. "Find them! Find Lance!"
"Yes Boss!"
"Leaving!"
Reva's angered face turned to sorrow. "We have to find him, Mortar. He's the only family we have!"
"We will, my love. we will" Mortar glared at the sight.
To be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | Moving Forward | After Lance offered his services to them, The heroes continued their journey. Rarity was complaining about hurting her feet so she insisted Love Shine would carry her, much to the annoyance of Rainbow Dash. Soon, the heroes came to a dried up river.
"So you three are from Equestria too?" Lance asked Sunset, Starlight, and Chet.
"Yeah. I left because I wanted power until I was shown the errors of my ways" Sunset sighed.
"While Chet and I were visiting." Starlight added.
"What is Equestria like these days?"
"While there are those who still do harm, Twilight has been helping unite other creatures by making a school of friendship." Chet explained
"It..... must be nice to have friends." Lance muttered.
Shine Boy noticed the depressed look on the boy's face. "Not many friends, huh?"
"I've around my aunt and Uncle my whole life. And my aunt says friends will betray you." Lance sighed.
"That's not true!" Twilight denied. "True friends will never betray you!"
"You know we can be your friends for helping us." Sunset offered.
"I..... don't know" Lance sighed.
Gamer smiled. "At least think about it."
"Um.... Look what I found." Fluttershy said.
Everyone looked to see her holding what appeared to be a scepter with a blue orb on it.
"Whoa!" Rainbow awed.
"What is that thing?" Applejack asked.
"Duh! It's a scepter!" Pinkie grinned.
"It's beautiful!" Rarity admired.
Gamer used his goggles to analyze it. "It seems harmless enough."
"You feel any different?" Shine Girl asked.
"Oh no. In fact, I kinda feel more happy with it." Fluttershy said.
"You think it belongs to the guardian?" Sunset thought out loud.
"If not, we could give it to him as an offering to get you home." Lance suggested.
"That's a good idea" Chet complemented.
"I like the way you think, Lance." Shine Boy agreed. Lance smiled a little at the compliment.
Back at the Rubble base, Mortar was trying to get his crystal to work.
"C,mon! Don't fail me now!" he growled.
Suddenly, his crystal flickered, showing the heroes looking at the scepter.
"Well, what do we have here?" He wondered.
Reva frowned. "It those meddlesome brats with that stupid gecko!"
"I wonder what they're up to" Mortar pondered when he noticed another face. "Looks like they added a new face to their party."
Reva looked then gasped. "I don't believe it! It's our nephew Lance! They must've taken him prisoner! We have to save him!"
Mortar glared. "They will pay for whatever torture they put him through!"
Back at the heroes, Pinkie was entertaining everyone by singing 'If you're happy and you know it' as they progressed on. Lance was happy, never having so much fun in his life. This hasn't gone unnoticed by Shine Boy.
Chet called from up ahead. "All clear up ahead!"
"Yep! Sun's shining and no sign of danger!" Gamer quoted.
Spike then stopped and sniffed around. Then everyone heard a rumbling sound.
Twilight noticed her dog sniffing. "What's up, Spike?"
"I smell water." the dog declared.
"What's that sound?" Love Shine noticed.
"Maybe a storm is coming." feared Fluttershy.
Chet calmed her down. "It's okay, Fluttershy. There's a waterfall ahead."
And sure enough, he was right. the group came to a giant waterfall. Gamer checked the map for directions.
"Where to, Gamer?" Starlight asked.
"We go up the waterfall." Gamer answered.
"We hafta climb up the waterfall?" Applejack asked.
"But we don't have climbing equipment!" Rarity feared.
"No problem. We'll throw our lines and climb them. And if anyone falls, Twilight can use her magic to catch them."
"I'm ready." Twilight saluted.
"Wait." Lance spoke up. "I got an idea."
Shortly after, Lance made a yellow substance with Sunset helping.
"Magic potion 902. Yellow goo!"
"So this stuff works?" Shine Boy asked as he dipped his grappling hook in the goo.
"A little something my uncle taught me. This stuff is stickier than marshmallow cream."
"That's pretty sticky!" Pinkie agreed.
"Here goes!" Shine Boy twirled the hook before throwing it on the ledge and the goo made it able to stick. "Okay. Going up?"
"I'll go first!" Chet volunteered.
Chet made up the ledge easily. Then Applejack climbed up next, followed by Starlight, Twilight who carried Spike, then Gamer, Shine Girl helping Fluttershy, Rainbow who tried to climb fast to impress Love Shine, who wasn't paying attention due to having Rarity on his back, then Pinkie.
As Sunset was next to climb up, All that were left were Shine Boy and Lance. Chet was making sure Sunset was coming up safely when he noticed something behind Shine Boy appearing.
"Shine Boy! Behind you! Look out!"
Shine Boy turned to Reva and Mortar appeared behind him. Reva saw Lance and smile.
"Lance dear! We've come to rescue you!" she gleefully cried.
"But I don't wanna be rescued!" Lance cried.
"Sure you do!"
Shine Boy stood with his staff in hand. "Get going, Lance! I'll hold them off!"
"But-"
"Go!" Seeing that Shine Boy was buying him time, Lance started to climb up while Shine Boy fought his aunt and uncle. He was skilled, but Reva and Mortar overpowered him. The others could watch in horror as Shine Boy was being doubleteamed.
"You'll pay for taking my nephew from me!" Reva cried. But before she and Mortar could finish Shine Boy.
"SHINE POWER!"
A beam of light shot from Shine Boy's insignia, able to repel Reva and Mortar long enough for him to climb up. After Shine Boy's blast wore off, Reva and Mortar could only watch as Shine Boy with Lance climb up the rope.
"Lance! I need you!" Reva shouted before breaking down in tears. This caught Both Shine Boy and Lance's attention.
"She's crying..... for me." Lance whispered.
Shine Boy caught up with Lance on the rope and noticed him hesitating. "If you wish to go back to her, I understand."
Chet and Sunset both noticed Shine Boy's nobility.
"I know I promised, but They are all I have." Lance said, shedding tears.
"Go ahead. I won't stop you. Even if means we'll be enemies again." Shine Boy confirmed.
Lance understood and slid under Shine Boy and drew his sword and cut the rope causing him to fall as he whispered to Shine Boy.
"Thank you."
Shine Boy pretended to reach for Lance as he watched him fall.
Reva noticed and raised her arms to catch him along with Mortar. "We got you, honey! We- We got you! Oh! Lance! My dear nephew!"
"Aunt Reva." Lance whispered.
Shine Boy smiled while he climbed the rest of the way up. Mortar watched him climb up.
"C'mon, Mortar. Let's go." Reva called.
Mortar nodded and followed. Shine Boy climbed up to the top where the others greeted him.
"What happened to Lance?" Applejack asked.
Shine Boy sighed. "He went back to his aunt and uncle."
Everyone either saddened or frowned as they continued their journey. Soon, Shine Boy was left with Sunset and Chet as Sunset walked up to the superhero and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Don't think that didn't go unnoticed" she whispered.
Shine Boy then embraced her crying softly while Chet patted his shoulder.
"You did good, my friend. You did good."
After a bit before breaking, the three hurried to catch up to the others, continuing their journey.
To Be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | Into the Caverns | After Shine Boy let Lance return to his aunt and uncle, The Heroes continue their journey to find the guardian. They soon come near flowers that were their size.
"Look at the size of these flowers!" gasped Twilight.
"They're beautiful." admired Fluttershy.
Gamer pulled out an analyzer from his utility belt and scanned a flower. "Well they seem harmless. Some body must know some good fertilizer."
"Whee!" Pinkie was swinging around on one of the flowers.
"We don't have flowers this big in Equestria." Starlight mentioned.
"Now I know how an ant feels." Rainbow said.
"It's nice, but how's one to venture here?" Rarity wondered.
"It ain't that hard." Applejack said.
"Look over there!" Shine Girl pointed.
There was some ruins in the midst of the flowers. There were statues, pillars, and they were around a giant rock.
"Is that part of where we need to go, Gamer?" Shine Boy asked his brother.
Gamer checked the map again. "This is it. According to the map, there's a secret passage way in there."
"I could make an entrance." Love Shine prepared his blaster only for Shine Boy to stop him from firing.
"Lets look around first. We don't wanna make a scene and destroy anything important."
"I'll check the high ground." Chet climbed the rock.
Everyone started to search the ruins. Fluttershy noticed one of statues mouth was open. She noticed there was a tunnel in the mouth.
"I think I found it." She said. But as she crawled in, the mouth suddenly closed in, shutting her in.
"FLUTTERSHY!" Everyone cried.
Meanwhile, back at the waterfall, Rutter and Gutter were climbing up the waterfall.
"I gotta tell you, Gutter, the berries on this island are delish!"
"Yeah, Rutter, That was a good snack break!"
"Well, we gotta make up for the last chapter. According to the boss, they were heading this direction."
"We better get going." Gutter agreed as they pressed forward.
Back at the ruins, Chet climbed down to where others were trying to save Fluttershy.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Fluttershy entered the passage when it closed up on her!" Sunset panted.
Suddenly, the statue's mouth opened up again as everyone saw Fluttershy all right.
"Guys! Does this count as a secret passage?"
"I'd say this qualifies" Shine Girl answered.
"C'mon! Maybe the guardian is through here." Shine Boy said.
One by one, they all entered in the passage. When she entered, Rarity slid in to land on Love Shine. Just as she started to slide, Rainbow pulled Love Shine away to Rarity's annoyance and fright. Luckily, Chet caught her with his tail. Even though she thanked the gecko, she huffed at Rainbow. Soon, Sunset was the last to enter and they looked around the cavern. It was pretty dark and the only lights were the water ways. Shine Boy turned on the night vision on his mask making it easier to guide the girls.
"This reminds me of the Dream Eater's realm" Twilight whispered to Shine Boy.
"At least he had torches there." Shine Boy remembered.
Spike was sniffing around as they progressed. He then looked up into the next room.
"Look!" he whispered.
Everyone looked in awe at the sight. It was a giant bed with a giant figure sleeping on it peacefully.
"That must be the guardian." whispered Sunset.
"Why are we whispering?" Pinkie whispered.
"We don't wanna wake up the guardian rudely!" Whispered Rainbow.
"And don't want him to wake up in a bad mood!" whimpered Fluttershy.
"Maybe if we give him the scepter, he'll wake up." Gamer hypothesised.
"It's worth a try." Shine Boy agreed as he pulled out the scepter and turned to Fluttershy. "You should give it to him, Fluttershy. After all, you found it."
"What if he gets upset?" Fluttershy whimpered.
"Don't worry. I'll go with you."
"Oh Thank you, Shine Boy." Fluttershy smiled as she took Shine Boy's hand.
The two creeped up to the bed. Fluttershy took a deep breath as she took the scepter. Shine Boy nodded and she walked up.
"Um, Mr. Guardian? If you would please wake up, I have your scepter. You can have it back if you would take us home please."
She put the Scepter by the Guardian. But the Guardian was still asleep.
"HEY! COULD YOU WAKE UP SO YOU CAN SEND US HOME?" Pinkie shouted. But the Guardian was still fast asleep.
"Well, that's a bust." Applejack sighed.
"Now what?" Rainbow wondered.
But before anyone could answer, a new voice bellowed in the room.
"WHO DARES DISTURB THE REST OF THE GUARDIAN?"
To Be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | The Other Rooms | "WELL? ANSWER MY QUESTION!"
The heroes gathered around each other near the Guardian's bed but they couldn't locate the source of the voice. Twilight then spoke up.
"I-I am Twilight Sparkle and these are my friends. We mean no harm. We just came to return The Guardian's scepter to him in exchange to go home!"
"HOW DO I KNOW YOU ARE TRUSTWORTHY?"
Rarity spoke up. "Listen, Whoever you are, we are on this island because of this necklace! So we at least earn the right for an audience!"
"DID YOU SAY NECKLACE?"
Before anyone could answer, a giant claw appeared on Sunset's left shoulder. Everyone looked to see a komodo dragon in gladiator like armor appear.
"I wish to see it" He said in a normal voice.
Rarity shrieked at the sight of the giant lizard. "GIANT LIZARD!"
"It's more than a lizard, Rarity. He's a Komodo Dragon." Gamer said.
"At least somebody knows a Komodo Dragon when they see one" the Komodo Dragon snorted. "I assure you all I mean you no harm. I am Hur. I am a soldier to the Guardian of this island."
Hur then jumped off Sunset and walked his way towards Rarity who grimaced but stood still as the lizard analyzed the necklace.
"Oh yes. That's the necklace alright. So I believe you. However, bringing the necklace or the scepter won't wake the Guardian anytime soon."
Hearing that depressed everyone.
"You mean we're stuck here?" Fluttershy was on the verge of tears.
"Which means no fashion! No malls! No Sweetie Belle!" Rarity fell on Love Shine.
"No Applebloom! Big Mac! or Granny Smith!" Applejack cried.
"No sports! or Scootaloo!" Rainbow embraced Love Shine.
"I'll never see my new niece! I'll fail all my classes!" Twilight kept going on and on.
"SHE'S TWILIGHTING OUT!" Pinkie cried.
"TWILIGHT! SNAP OUT OF IT!" Sunset cried as Shine Boy shook her.
"I don't know how but we will find a way home so everyone CALM DOWN!" Shine Boy stated.
"But how?" Twilight sighed.
"We can't give up." Chet stated.
"Or we'll never get back to Equestria!" Starlight added, which Hur took noticed.
"Did you say Equestria?"
"Yeah. It's where myself and Chet are from." Starlight answered.
"I remember hearing something about it. There might be a way to wake up the Guardian. Check out the other room."
"Other room?" Sunset asked
"Sure over there."
Everyone looked to see the room with glowing crystals on the wall. In the center was a table of some sort. Everyone was in awe of how beautiful the room was.
"It's beautiful." Sunset gasped
"Look at these crystals!" Gamer amazed.
"They look like TVs!" Rainbow stated.
Pinkie bounce around the room. "Where's the remote? Let's watch some cartoons! I'll pop popcorn!"
"I don't think that's how they work, Pinkie." Shine Girl mentioned.
Shine Boy was looking at the table when he noticed something. "Hey guys! Check this out!"
Everyone looked to see seven symbols on them. They each resembled the symbols the Rainbooms had on their attire.
"They look like the cutie marks of your counterparts" Starlight stated.
"That is more than just a coincidence" Chet added.
Meanwhile, outside the ruins, Rutter and Gutter were searching the place for the entrance but to no avail.
"The Boss says they should be around here." Rutter said.
"Yeah but we found nothing. Lets find some cheese!" Gutter said while leaning on a statue. Suddenly, the statue opened nearly crushing Gutter, revealing a secret passage.
"Nice work, Gutter!" Rutter cheered as he grabbed a crystal. "Hey boss! We found it!"
The rats turned to see Reva, Mortar, and Lance appear before them.
"Good. Good." Reva snickered. "Inside Everyone!"
No one noticed Lance with a sorry face as the villains entered the passage way.
Meanwhile, Back in the other room, Gamer noticed something with the crystals.
"Hey guys!" he called. "Look at this! one of the crystals isn't lighting up."
Sure enough, he was right. There was a crystal that was dark as coal.
"What happened to that?" Spike asked.
"I was told that the crystal was stolen by the one who The Guardian banished before he fell into his deep sleep." Hur stated.
"Who?" Twilight asked.
"Some witch I believe" Hur answered, causing Shine Boy, Twilight, and Chet to perk up. "The guard before me told me about it before he retired. We Komodo Dragons have a lifespan of thirty years."
Chet was looking at the table with Rarity and Sunset looking at it when Sunset noticed something.
"Everyone! I think I found something!" She called as everyone gathered. They looked to see an emblem that shaped like Rarity's necklace in the middle of the table.
"It looks like we can add the necklace there and activate this thing!" Sunset stated.
"It might be able to wake up the guardian or better yet take us home or to Equestria!" Chet smiled.
"That's just what I wanted to know!"
Everyone turned in shock to see Reva, Mortar, Lance, Rutter, and Gutter right at the entrance.
To Be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | Final Stand | The Heroes are confronted by Reva, Mortar, Lance, Rutter, and Gutter after the villains made their way to the Guardian's chamber.
"Identify yourselves!" Hur declared.
"Don't mind us. We will be showing ourselves out.... Through Equestria!" Reva declared.
"Now hand over the necklace if you know what's best for you!" Mortar demanded.
"Is this how you betray us, Lance? Selling us out to you aunt and uncle?" Applejack growled.
Lance could only look away in regret, which Chet and Shine Boy noticed.
Reva just chuckled. "It matters not. Are you gonna hand over the necklace willingly? Or will we take it by force?"
Shine Boy stood before them as he pulled out his staff. "You want that necklace? You'll have to go through us!"
Joining him were Gamer, who drew his blade, Shine Girl, who pulled out her baton, Love Shine, who's heart shields opened up and extended two glowing photon blades, and Chet, Who drew his blades.
"We are going to enjoy this!" Reva gleamed before shouting. "Destroy them!"
Soon, both sides were duking it out. Mortar was more than a match for Shine Boy, Love Shine, and Chet combined. Reva battled Shine Girl one on one while Gamer fought Lance who wasn't even trying.
Shine Boy battled Mortar only for Mortar to grab his staff and grab him by it and slamming him to a wall.
"ow." Shine Boy said before falling down.
Love Shine jumped in and slashed at Mortar with his photon blades. Mortar was able to dodge them only for one to slash at his cape. He then grabbed Love Shine's arms and the two wrestled each other. Mortar then headbutted Love Shine then kneed him in the stomach and kicked him away. Rarity and Rainbow Dash could only gasp as they witness the fought.
Chet then took over and fought Mortar. After a couple times dodging, Mortar grabbed Chet's blade and knocked it out of the gecko's hand, causing to fly at Shine Boy, blade first. Luckily,The blade deflected off Shine Boy's chest due to the magic preventing anything one good to be harm. But it still stung on Shine Boy.
"OW!" he cried.
Rutter and Gutter made their way to the Rainbooms, looking like they were ready to fight.
"If it's a fight you rats want, it's a fight you'll get!" Rainbow pumped.
The Rainbooms were prepared to defend themselves as Rutter and Gutter came closer.
Then...
"I quit!"
"Me too."
This surprises the Rainbooms.
"What?" Rarity screamed.
"Yeah. We never got paid."
"And we never beat Shine Boy."
"um....Okay?" Fluttershy said.
Unfortunately, Reva heard them and not pleased.
"TRAITORS!" She fired a blast at them. The shock of the blast pushed The Rainbooms back, causing the necklace to drop off Rarity.
"The necklace!" she cried.
Meanwhile, Shine Girl battled Reva while Gamer battled Lance. Gamer noticed how Lance wasn't trying to fight. But before he could talk, Reva threw Shine Girl on Gamer sending them flying near Shine Boy. Chet was still standing despite being tired.
"They are definitely worthy opponents" he panted.
With the heroes down, Reva picked up the necklace chuckling.
"At last." She chuckled as she walked up to the table. "Equestria. Here I come."
"No!" Hur charged at Reva only to be thrown by Mortar.
Reva was just about to put the necklace in place when she was suddenly tackled by none other than Lance.
"Lance! You!" she growled.
"I won't let you take their chance to go home away!" Lance stated. He tried to reach for the necklace only for Mortar to choke hold him.
Reva got up and glared at her nephew."Lance. Lance. Lance. You were full of promise. Until you let friendship weaken you! However, we won't end you since you're family."
"You are lucky we'll let them live" Mortar added.
Reva walked back up to the table. "Now where were we?"
As everyone watched in horror, Reva put the necklace in the port. As she did, there was a bit of silence.
After nobody saying a word, everyone realized nothing happened. Reva kicked the table but nothing still happened.
"Where is the portal to EQUESTRIA?" she screamed.
Team Shine and Chet got up and saw Reva and Mortar distracted and Shine Boy nodded, telling his team now's their chance. "Alright! Those jerks are toast!"
Shine Boy, Gamer, Love Shine, and Shine Girl lined up and started marching towards the villains.
"Symbols?" Shine Boy asked
"glowing!" they said as their insignias started to glow.
"Let's show these fools how we do things downtown!"
"4. 3. 2. 1."
"SHINE POWER!" They shouted as rays of light fired from their symbols.
The rays hit Reva and Mortar disorienting them. But The Rainbooms saw they were resisisting them.
"They need our help!" Twilight stated.
"So let's help them!" Pinkie cried.
"We will. Through the magic of Friendship!" Sunset mentioned as she motioned their geodes.
As they put their hands together, the geodes glew and transformed them into new attire.
As they transformed, Starlight noticed the symbols on the table were starting to glow. The Rainbooms then flew over to Team Shine placing their hands on each of the heroes' shoulders.
"Now, Reva. This will show you Friendship is no weakness!" Twilight declared.
As if on schedule, The Rainbooms began to glow. then the glow radiated through Team Shine causing their rays to grow bigger and powerful. This was enough to send Reva and Mortar flying while Chet pulled Lance out of there. But nobody knew, except Starlight, that the glow on the table intensified as the necklace absorbed the glow causing the whole table to glow.
After stopping, The Rainbooms and Team Shine saw they won and cheered.
"Shine-tastic?" Twilight asked Shine Boy.
"All the way." Shine Boy answered.
Suddenly, everyone heard giant footsteps. they turned to see a giant figure walking into the room.
And he had the scepter in hand.
"The Guardian." Sunset gasped.
To be Continued |
The Mysterious Island | Making Things Right | The Guardian had awoken and entered the room. He was about nine feet tall and looked like he was in his fifties. He wore armor on his legs, chest, and shoulders with blue gauntlets. He had a helmet with two prongs on the sides and a blue cape.
As he entered, he seemed happy to have his scepter back. He then looked to the people in the room and spoke a strong but gentle voice. "Who found my Scepter?"
Hur got up and shook off his injuries as he saw his master awake. "G-Guardian! You're awake!"
"Indeed. Someone activated my turntable."
Twilight stepped up. "I am to blame."
The Guardian looked to her. "Who are you? You look familiar."
"I'm Twilight Sparkle. And these are my friends."
"Twilight...... Sparkle."
Rarity came up. "Hi. I'm Rarity. Twilight's friend. Sorry for intruding on your island but your necklace brought us here."
"You brought my necklace back?"
"I gave her the necklace which was given to me by my sister-in-law, Cadence." Twilight explained as she pulled out a picture of her and Principal Cadence as the Guardian observed it.
"Ah yes! She looks familiar too. Did she speak of family?"
"Yes. She told me of her great grandmother having the necklace."
"Ah yes! I remember now. She was a scared girl when she was brought to my island. But I helped her nonetheless. Now, Who found my scepter?"
Fluttershy though frightened stepped up. "I did."
"This is Fluttershy. She's very shy." Rainbow mentioned
The Guardian patted Fluttershy's shoulder gently. "Thank you, child. I was afraid I lost it before My slumber. I am in your debt so you have nothing to fear." Fluttershy smiled.
The Guardian looked around at the other new faces. "Are they all your friends as well?"
"Of course!" Twilight introduced everyone to The Guardian before noticing Reva and Mortar getting up. "But they're not!"
Reva and Mortar were coming around when they noticed The Guardian was awake.
"The Guardian! He's awake!" Mortar shouted.
"Oh No!" Reva spewed. "Hurry before he-"
"FREEZE!"
Reva and Mortar were glowing blue and standing still as the Guardian held his scepter.
"Reva and Mortar. I don't know how you came to my island, but you've done enough! As long as you hold on to revenge, you will never return to Equestria! Now to send you somewhere where you both will do no harm!"
As the scepter glew, Reva and Mortar started to disintegrate into dust as they were teleported away.
Lance walked up to The Guardian. "I wish to join them"
"Are you sure? I sense the good in you."
"They are my family. They're all I have."
"If that is your wish, then I will send you with them."
as Lance disintegrated, he turned to his new friends. "Good bye, friends. I hope we meet again as friends."
"Maybe you'll be able to consider your aunt and uncle to be good too." Sunset said.
"Take it from former bad ponies" Starlight added as she put her arm on Sunset.
"I'll do my best." Lance finished as he was finally gone.
Sunset turned to The Guardian. "So, Mr. Guardian. If you don't mind me asking. How do you know about Equestria?"
The Guardian walked to the table. "I made contact there once. A long time ago, I was practicing my portal spell when I came across Equestria. There I got aqquainted to Princess Celestia and we became friends. One day, Equestria was threatened by an evil witch named Hydia. She used Reva and Mortar to try to seize the throne. Celestia and I knew there was only one choice. By combining my magic with the Elements of Harmony, we banished Hydia as well as Reva and Mortar from Equestria. But the side effect was my slumber. It was only by combining your geodes which are Equestrian magic, with the necklace was I able to awake after all this time."
Rutter and Gutter awoken from their attack and saw the Guardian looking down at them.
"Uh hi! Im Rutter and this is my brother Gutter."
"I-uh suppose we're banished again." Gutter gulped.
"Actually, I will offer my island as your new home so you both can be at peace."
"Do we have to be evil?" Rutter asked.
"I don't tolerate evil on my island."
"We'll be good" Gutter stated.
Chet bowed to the Guardian. "Sir, we were wondering if you would return us to Canterlot? It is why we searched this island for you."
"I can. I will even teleport you all to the exact time you left."
Everyone cheered hearing that.
"But I have to send you all to where you were last. Meaning I have to send you four back to Columbus." The Guardian added pointing to Team Shine.
The Rainbooms looked at each other and nodded. "Then they can go first." Sunset stated.
"You sure?" Shine Boy asked.
"Exactly." Twilight added. "Thank you again for helping us."
"What are friends for?" Shine Boy winked.
Gamer shook hands with Applejack only to be squeezed by a bawling Pinkie.
Shine Girl embraced Fluttershy. "Thank you for saving me and for being a good friend, Kyla." The shy girl smiled.
"You're a brave girl, Fluttershy." Shine Girl mentioned. "And a good friend."
Rarity was crying on Love Shine. "Oh Brandon parting is such sweet sorrow!"
Rainbow pulled Love Shine towards her. "Feel free to call me if you need help with anything at all."
Both gave a piece of paper to Love Shine.
"Well, it's great to have awesome friends." he smiled.
Shine Boy shook hands with Chet. "I'm glad to see you again, old friend." he turned to Starlight. "and to meet a new friend."
Starlight smiled. Then after saying their goodbyes, The Guardian used his scepter to send Team Shine home. After waving them goodbye, Rutter and Gutter walked up to the Rainbooms.
"I know you're leaving, but I don't suppose we could be friends?" Rutter asked
"And I don't suppose it would help if we said Sorry?" Gutter added
Sunset looked at the others who shrugged. "I can't see why not."
Rutter and Gutter smiled as they embraced Sunset who just smiled.
Fluttershy was embracing Hur. "Thank you for all you've done for us, Hur."
"It was my honor and pleasure." Hur smiled.
The Guardian walked up. "Are you ready?"
"We are." Sunset smiled as they all gathered around.
"Thank you once again, Fluttershy."
"You are very welcome, sir."
"And to you all. I am in your debt."
"It was an honor." Chet said, bowing in respect.
"And Before I forget" The Guardian raised his hand and from nothing created another necklace just like the other one. "For you, ms. Rarity. It will not bring you back here but as a reminder of your adventure."
"It's stunning!" Rarity smiled and accepted it. They all noticed the jewels on it were all the same colors as their geodes. "Thank you!"
"Farewell to you all." And With his scepter, The Guardian sent them all back to Canterlot.
"So what now?" Hur asked.
"First I must check the island. To make sure it is in order. May take a while."
"We await you're orders, boss!" Rutter bowed.
"Just say the word and we're there!" Gutter stated.
The Guardian nodded and they all left the room together.
To Be Concluded |
The Mysterious Island | Going out with a Bang | The Rainbooms, Starlight, and Chet all found themselves back at the Canterlot High Statue.
"We're back!" Pinkie cheered.
Applejack checked her phone. "And he was true to his word! Look! It's only 9:35! Five minutes after we left!"
"Which means we still have our weekend together!" Rainbow mentioned.
"Though are we going to do anything exciting? To be honest, I've had enough excitement for one day." Fluttershy sighed.
Rarity placed her hand on Fluttershy's shoulder. "Not to worry, darling. I remember we were going to the mall for shopping, lunch, and a movie."
"And we were going to the baseball game in the park later." Twilight added.
"Because Timber invited you." Spike teased, making Twilight blush.
"What about tomorrow?" Starlight asked.
"We're going to have a get together with some of our classmates because some of them heard of Chet after he and Shine Boy helped Twilight in saving Principal Celestia and wanted to meet him" Sunset answered. "Plus, I've arranged a little surprise." she winked.
"C'mon! Let's get going. Juniper is holding our tickets!" Rainbow called.
Chet raised his hand. "Wouldn't I need a disguise?"
"I got that covered." Twilight stated, putting on Chet a robe.
"Okay. Now I'm ready." Chet stated.
"Then let's go!" Pinkie cheered as they walked to the mall.
Everyone had a splendid time the rest of the day. The girls bought a couple clothes, even a souvenir outfit for Starlight. After a great lunch, They all went to the movie theater. Juniper was glad to see Starlight again and was able to get a ticket for her and Chet. Later, they all went to the baseball game. While Rainbow cheered for the teams, Fluttershy went to hang out with the birds nearby,Both Applejack and Rarity explained the game to Starlight, Twilight enjoyed the game with Timber, Chet went with Sunset and Pinkie to the concession stand and that was the last time he tried a hot dog after Pinkie told him what they're made of after he ate one.
The next day, Everyone arrived at the park for the get together. Their classmates consisted of Flash Sentry, Sandelwood, Micro Chip, Trixie, Wallflower Blush, and so many others. Principal Celestia and VP Luna even showed up to say hi and supervise as well as introduce Luna to Chet. After a bit, Twilight came up to Sunset.
"So, things are going good. But when's your surprise?" she asked.
Sunset just finished texting her phone. "They'll be here right about-" she pointed as if cuing someone.
"Hey, everyone!"
Everyone turned to see Shine Boy, Gamer, Love Shine, and Shine Girl carrying pizza boxes. A lot of the students cheered for they had seen Shine Boy on the news. After the heroes put the pizzas down, they all mingled with the students.
Shine Boy shook hands with a certain blue haired boy."You must be Flash Sentry. I heard about you from a friend of mine."
Flash realized who he was talking about. "You wouldn't happen to know how Tony is doing?"
"Oh he's doing great. In fact, he asked me to tell you he said hi."
"That's good to know" Flash smiled.
Meanwhile, Gamer was enjoying talking with Sandalwood and Micro Chip, Shine Girl was signing autographs for Wallflower and other girls, and Love Shine spent time with Rarity, Rainbow, and Trixie to the girls' irk.
Shine Boy then was standing with Twilight, Sunset, Celestia, and Luna watching everyone.
"I'm really glad Sunset was able to talk you and friends to come today, Shine Boy." Celestia smiled.
Shine Boy grinned. "I've been meaning to visit Canterlot again. Besides, she had me at Chet coming to visit. After he helped me, It was the least I could do."
"Where is Chet, anyway?" Luna asked.
Starlight walked up. "Well, he's got his hands full so to speak." She pointed to where Chet was.
Chet was being hugged by three girls who looked identical. They had bushy brown hair, wore pink or purple tanktops, and blue jeans.
"So cute." said one of them.
"I just love how polite you are." another said.
"You're outfit is so cool" the third complimented.
Chet blushed. "Thank you, ladies."
"Who are those girls?" Sunset asked.
Pinkie popped up. "I think they followed him from the game. So I invited them."
"Quite the ladies man, isn't he?" Luna joked and they all laughed.
"All in all, I'd say this was a Shinetastic day." Shine Boy said.
"All the way!" Twilight answered as she, Shine Boy, and Sunset high fived.
The End
Thanks for reading! |
The Mysterious Island | Secret Epilogue | Soon after the party, Starlight and Chet returned back to Equestria through the magic mirror.
"Chet! Starlight! Welcome back!" Twilight greeted.
She then noticed three identical green ponies emerging from the mirror.
"look at us!" Mimi gasped.
"We're ponies!" Didi bounced.
"Chet was right!" Lili added.
Twilight looked slyly at Chet. "I see you brought some friends, Chet."
"What can I say? They followed me home. I also promised to show them around." Chet shrugged.
As Chet lead the triplets on a tour of Equestria, Starlight walked up to Twilight.
"Speaking of friends, there are some friends you would love to meet as well."
Twilight smiled when she heard that.
The End. |
Background Pony | pre | The two pegasi slowly, sadly left his side. Their hooves were distant shuffles amidst the bonfire's crackling embers. Once his friends were nothing but a memory, Caramel sighed. He opened his eyes and dug twin circles in the dirt between him and the flames, as if mapping out a solemn eternity for himself.
It was precisely then that the music died. "It's a lot like dreaming, isn't it?"
Caramel blinked awkwardly. He raised his head, glancing all around, until his gaze finally fell upon me. "Uhm... What's like dreaming?" he asked.
"Living," I said. I stood a few meters behind him, my body leaning up against a wooden post. My lyre levitated in front of me as I reached two hooves up and lowered the stone-gray hoodie from over my horn. "Sunrise and sunset: our days pass by between sleeping and waking. It's like a constantly changing stage-play with the darkest curtains imaginable." I smiled softly and began magically plucking the strings of the lyre. The instrument was leading the conversation; my words were merely a background chorus. "You look like an actor who's lost his motivation. Dare I ask why?"
"Look, thanks for your concern, but I'm really just here to relax with my thoughts, if you don't mind," he said. "You can, uhm. You can play your music though. It's nice to listen to."
"Hmmm... Very well then." I smiled gently and resumed plucking my strings with soft magic. "Music it is."
But as the melody resumed, Caramel was hardly at ease. He fidgeted, his limbs jolting with an jittery nature that rivaled the snapping embers of the burning pyre. Finally, he spoke up. "My friends just wouldn't understand."
"Hmm?" I uttered from where I was strumming. "What was that?"
"My friends. The pegasi who were here just now."
"The ones who trotted off happily without you? Who can blame them? This should be a night of celebration, yes?"
"Well, yeah..."
"And is there a reason why you're not celebrating with them?"
"Oh, it's nothing important," Caramel said.
"Very well then. I'll just be here with my music," I uttered, barely hiding a smile.
His jaw tensed. After a flaring of his nostrils, Caramel muttered aloud, "I used to love this annual event. But this year, it's not so easy." He spoke to me, and yet I was a perfect stranger. Something in the worn edges of his face announced a desperate need to speak, or else I would have never bothered ushering the truth from him to begin with. "If nothing else, the Summer Sun Celebration reminds me that so much time has gone by..." He weathered a shuddering sigh, his blue eyes returning to the blazes before him. "...and so little good has come of it."
"I see." I nodded, filling the air with a somber melody that matched the pitch in his voice. "So, somepony has a hard time sleeping--much less dreaming."
He smirked slightly, then squinted at me. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"I'm not about to spread any horrible rumors that your acquaintances would ever remember, if that's what you mean to ask."
"Oh, it's not that," he spoke, though the wavering in his voice put his honesty in question. "It's just that... it's the Summer Sun Celebration, and everypony should be home where they're happy." He gulped and added, "They should be with the ones they love."
"I am... a long way from home," I said in a cold breath. It was all too quickly replaced with a warm smile as I plucked the lyre boldly, happily. "But the ones I love? Heeheehee. I wouldn't abandon them for an instant. Now, what about you, good sir?"
"I..." Caramel's face winced as if a horrible dagger was burrowing through him. "It's complicated."
"What can be so complicated that it wrecks something as simple as finding another Soul of Solstice?" I remarked with a grin. I hummed briefly to accompany the notes of my lyre before speaking once more, "It's a tradition as old as time. When Princess Celestia first raised the Sun over Equestria, she discovered three pairs of ponies--the ancestors of unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi--and she blessed these Souls of Solstice with the light they needed to begin a civilization of glory, honor, and love. To this day, everypony has a treasured soul that they cherish above all else. I'm sure you're no exception."
"Hmmm... Yeah..." Caramel mumbled. "I suppose it's just that I'm afraid."
"Aren't we all?"
"But it's no excuse!" he exclaimed, frowning, though the anger was hardly aimed at me. "Things have been so tough, lately. I can handle it all on my own. But Windy..." Caramel's frown dissolved to allow a grimace to cross his face. He sighed, slumping once more to the ground before the bonfire.
I hummed and strummed a few chords before glancing his way. "I assume you speak of this 'Wind Whistler' that your companions mentioned a moment ago."
"Hmmph... She's a very special mare in my life," Caramel said, his gaze melting in the flames. "You said that living is like dreaming, right? When Windy's around, it's always a good dream, and I never want to wake up. She's so kind, so cheerful, so honest and smart. She takes me apart with her laughter, as if I was made of matchsticks, and only the sound of her voice can put me back together again."
"Heeheehee..." I giggled and paused in strumming my lyre. "Methinks I picked William Flankspeare's bonfire this year."
He smirked and glanced at me through the corner of his eyes. "Wind Whistler herself has said that I sound like a poet. Though, when I'm around her, I feel like there are marbles in my mouth. I just can never say the right thing."
"Words seldom work when we want them to," I said. Righteously, I resumed strumming the lyre, filling the spaces between my breath with harmony. "So why isn't Wind Whistler here with you? I'd pay a hundred bits to see marbles spill out of a grown stallion's mouth."
"I'd ask her to be Souls of Solstice with me in a hearbeat. But..."
"But what?"
"It wouldn't be right," he said defeatedly.
"Oh?"
Caramel gulped. After a collapsing breath, he finally let it all out. "Life on my family's farm has hit rock bottom. Our celery stalks are dying, and we can't produce the crops to meet this year's coming harvest. My mother and father have resorted to selling livestock, but even that isn't helping us where we need it to. I've taken on two separate jobs in town just to provide the support that I can, but I fear that it's already too late. My family's gotten in contact with some distant relatives in Whinniepeg. We're seriously thinking about moving out of town before Hearth's Warming, ditching the farm--selling it and everything. I suppose I could stay in Ponyville, but what kind of a life would that be? In a best case scenario, I'd be living out of an apartment, barely finding time to sleep between two--maybe even three jobs."
"It most definitely sounds like a case of hard luck," I said with a sagely nod. "Though, I must be forward and ask--just what does this have to do with the fact that you're not spending time with Wind Whistler at the moment?"
"We've been getting closer and closer for the better part of a year," Caramel said. "She knows only so little about all of the horrible stuff that I've been going through. Things in my life are about to get crazier, and... and..." He clenched his eyes shut and shuddered briefly. "She's so happy and full of life. She doesn't need to be weighed down by a lousy earth pony like me. She doesn't need my troubles clouding her blue skies. I... I love her. I really do, and that's why I gotta let her go..."
I hit a heavy note. Its reverberations danced sharply between us as I cast a curious glance his way. "Oh really?"
"If I ask her to be my Soul of Solstice, it'd only be giving the wrong message," he muttered. "It's the Summer Sun Celebration, the mark of a new year--for me, at least. It's time I committed myself to what I need to do for my future... and for her future as well." He gazed woefully into the flames, as if the happier colors of his life were being tossed into the consuming fire. "It's time that I just... gave up... gave Windy up. It's all for the best."
"Hmmm..." I nodded. "It's always for the best when we let a dream die before it finishes itself," I said in a droning voice. "After all, when the dream gets us to where we want to be, then there's no point in dreaming any longer, is there?"
Caramel blinked. He glanced up at me with a scrunched face. "Huh?"
I giggled. "Heeheehee... Doesn't make much sense to you either, does it?" I resumed strumming, this time tossing a cheerful rhythm his way. "Tell me, have you ever heard the Tale of the Mad Pony?"
"Uhmm..." Caramel scratched his own head in confusion, then ultimately smirked at me. "What? You fancy yourself a bard?"
"I've been sillier things before. Would you like to hear it?"
"What, the tale?" He gulped and turned once more towards the flames. "I dunno. Is it long?"
I glanced up at the western horizon. There was still a sliver of crimson across the edge of the world. The moon was nowhere to be seen. "It's short enough, as are all good things in this precious world. If you would prefer, I'll say nothing and let my lyre do the talking. It makes very little difference either way--"
"Eh, I'm good. I'm not really going anywhere." He sighed and stared off at the distant bonfires where other ponies were currently engaged in crowded conversations, and all of them laced with the cheerfulness he was sorely lacking. "Besides, I could use a good story. Life's been a dull novel as of late."
I smiled. The best audience is an innocent audience. The challenge is in keeping that audience innocent through to the end of the story. Without a moment's hesitation, I raised the lyre high above my head and let the ensuing notes soar majestically above the reach of the bonfire's flame.
"The Tale of the Mad Pony starts in a town--much like this one--and during a Summer Sun Celebration--just as jubilant and fancy as the one we're about to enjoy now...
"The villagers of this town were full of ecstasy and joy. You see, the eve of the Summer Sunrise was a lot longer and immeasurably darker than most that year, so that when the Princess finally raised the dawn, it was all the more bright and invigorating. Everypony danced and sang in the streets with glee--all except for one pony, an equine from out-of-town who discovered that she had very little to be happy about. As a matter of fact, she would soon learn that she had every reason to be mad.
"It started very subtly at first. Ponies would look at her twice, each time with the same expression. Then ponies would wave at her more than once, as if greeting her over and over again. Then there were citizens that she absolutely knew she had come into contact with before, only they treated her as though she was as much a stranger as she was when she first arrived in town days before.
"'I don't get it. Haven't we talked before?' she would ask them. 'Weren't you there to treat me when I woke up in the hospital from a concussion? And you--weren't you two the ones who found me unconscious in the shadow of the town hall building just this morning?'
"The ponies merely gave her blank gazes, shook their heads, and carried on with their vibrant celebration. The entire town was in the throes of Summer Sun festivities, and there the one pony was, standing all by herself, coming to terms with the fact that she was not only alone in her predicament, but she was cursed.
"Of course she was cursed. What else would you call her sudden situation? She began shoving her face into the gaze of every pony she could find, her rapid breath reaching a fever pitch as she asked, begged, demanded that someone remember her. With each attempt, the villagers only grew more and more oblivious to her desperation. It was as though every single thing she said, shouted, or sobbed was immediately thrown into a deep well of forgetfulness. It's one thing to be ostracized, banished, even executed. It's a horrible thing to be ignored, to have one's worth and mettle treated like dust long before one's fate in a grave.
"'Why are you all doing this?!' she began to shriek, to scream. 'Is this some kind of cruel joke?! Somepony! Anypony! Please, pay attention to me!'
"But her pleas fell on deaf ears. No matter how startled or shocked a villager was, he or she would only forget about her moments later. She began to wonder if she was dreaming, for only a nightmare could be painted with such heartless colors. In desperation, the pony resorted to drama befitting an absurd stage-play, and began kicking her hooves all about, knocking down effigies of the Princess and shattering market vendors full of celestial trinkets.
"When even these feats of hysteria weren't enough to faze her fellow equines, she went against her better nature--against her last bulwark of decency--and tossed a Summer Sun torch into a nearby flower garden, setting ablaze the front of the town's court building. Immediately, the festival ceased as every villager within view of the smoldering chaos ran to grab buckets of water and stop the inferno. The pony merely stood there within the glow of her conflagration, boasting loudly about her horrible act of arson. And, sure enough, a pair of police stallions hoisted her towards the jail on the far end of town.
"The pony couldn't possibly have been happier. She greeted the officers with tears of joy, practically hugging them any chance she got, happily allowing them to cart her off to a barred cell--if only it meant that she did indeed exist somewhere, somehow. Imagine her dismay when by the time they dragged her to the station, they stopped dead in their tracks, blinking dizzily as if coming out of a sleeping spell. They apologized profusely to the pony for the trouble and set her free, so that she stumbled numbly through the streets, trying to imagine if what had just transpired was indeed real or a bitter hallucination.
"And then she returned to the town's court building and almost fainted. Not only were all of the flames put out and the damage repaired, but everypony was once again celebrating--oblivious to the return of the violent firestarter--as if not a single atrocity had been committed that day. The pony soon realized that she could be either a saint or a sinner, and yet neither side of the moral compass mattered at all. She was just as important as the shadows of her own breath, and even those were becoming threadbare things.
"That wasn't what made her mad. No, the final gossamer strand to her sanity had yet to be snapped. She trudged through town--her heart as heavy as her hooves--as she made for the village library. It was there that she'd find a pony whom she knew--beyond the shadow of a doubt--would remember her from their mutual childhood. It was the one soul who had brought her to the village for the Summer Sun Celebration to begin with, and surely she would break the dark cloud forming around her accursed life. As soon as she knocked on the door and her friend's bright face appeared, the pony immediately gasped for joy. But that rapturous exhalation would be her last, for the pony saw on her friend's face the same blank expression of confusion that had swarmed across the whole of town.
"Losing the love of a friend is like a death that has no funeral. Entire galaxies have dissolved over the eons and even they are worthless things. No living thing should face a reality like that, to be an island with no sea--only the perpetual blackness of apathy, encompassing. Ponies aren't born to be alone. It's just not in our blood. We attract to one another. We are cohesive: like water. The void of the universe exists only because we are here in the center to point in all directions away from ourselves and label that which is missing, that which is more cold and frightening than a winter's night, that which hungers for us because it can never understand--as we understand--what it means to be warm, to be happy, to be together.
"The mad pony's hope died that day, but she soon realized that it wouldn't be her only death. Her nightmare was a thick black prison layered with multiple fatalities. She died every time she so much as talked to a pony, looked at a pony, or shared the same atmosphere as them. It was horrible enough to be forgotten--but to be ignored over and over again by the same souls with no cessation in sight? She lurched through the streets like the corpse she suddenly realized she would forever be, woefully stretching the lengths of her mind in want of a solution to a horrible dream that she kept waking up from, and yet would never end.
"How do you wake from an endless dream? It was no longer a matter of living or not living. She had to assault the dream--that damnable masquerade of misery--and then the pain and loneliness would stop. What lay beyond the last breath of slumber may have been blacker than black, but the pony suddenly realized that oblivion was harmless to a soul no longer possessed with the ability to see.
"The day was coming to an end, and the Celebration had come and gone. All of the festive decorations had been removed from the center of town. It was late in the evening; citizens were getting ready to sleep. She was getting ready to sleep too.
"Then, all of the sudden, one of two earth ponies glanced up from where they were bundling equipment and saw the mad pony standing on the fourth story ledge of town hall. He immediately gasped, his sapphire eyes full of shock and horror, the same look that she had tried so hard all day to summon. Only, now it was too late. Regardless, he waved a hoof at her while shouting towards his comrade.
"'Oh dear Celestia! Quick, go fetch a pegasus--anypony that can fly!' As his buddy galloped off in a desperate breath, he trotted boldly to the edge of the building and peered up at her. 'Ma'am, I don't know what you're going through and I can't pretend to, but please--this can't possibly be the answer. There's got to be another way!'
"But the mad pony was past reasoning with. If her tears weren't evidence enough, then perhaps her disheveled mane and muddied coat spoke volumes to the shocked stallion below. 'Just stop! Just stop talking!' she shrieked. 'Your words are meaningless! They mean nothing! Soon you won't even remember me! I'm as good as dead--I should be dead already!'
"'No! Don't say that! Nopony deserves to die needlessly!' The stallion reached a hoof towards her from afar. 'I promise that we won't forget you! Just walk away from the ledge and let us talk to you!'
"'There's nothing you can promise me that won't get swallowed in time!' she said, hiccuping, struggling to maintain her breaths. Her soul teetered upon the brink and threatened to pull her body along with it. Ponies who fall in their dreams were never known to hit the ground. She was more than ready to test that theory. 'This village means nothing to me! It's a prison! Nothing more! Nothing!'
"'Look...' the earth pony below raised both of his front hooves and spoke calmly, soothingly, though his shivers briefly matched hers. 'Even if everything is as horrible and bad as you believe it to be, this isn't going to solve it! This isn't going to make anything better! You need to have faith and step away from the edge! Don't allow yourself to go before your time!'
"Finally, the mad pony had had enough. 'Why?!' she spat down at him, furious. 'Why shouldn't I just jump?! Why shouldn't I just end the nightmare once and for all?!'
"He looked up at her, but it was a different stallion somehow, or so she noticed him for the first time--as so many of the villagers had noticed her for the first time, only to forget. But this time, there would be no forgetting, and she realized it was because she was the means of that memory, a power that she always had, but was only then echoing across the cave of her punishing situation. Perhaps it was the drooping of his ears, or the soft shape of his lips, or the glossing over of his sapphire eyes that conveyed the meaning in his words to her. Whatever the case, a part of the mad pony that she thought had disappeared with her sanity suddenly bore the brunt of his message, like a little foal being woken up by a soft melody tickling the inside of her ears, and embracing the golden dawn with a chorus as old as time:
Because you are so special, so precious, and this world would be a lot less worth enjoying if you chose to leave it.
"The mad pony was silent. She stared down at the stallion. He was a perfect stranger. He didn't know her, and in a matter of minutes he never would again, and yet that didn't stop him from appealing to the deepest part of her, the part of her that was still warm, for he had reminded her that it was still there. In mere seconds, he could very well have made her... or remade her, for the very simple fact that he could, and wanted to. He was the one who was precious, for he didn't know that in a matter of time he would be gone, a mere shadow burned against the walls of the mad pony's beleaguered mind.
"And it was then that she realized how selfish she had been in her anguish and despair. She was not the one dying multiple times, over and over again. These ponies--these beautiful villagers were the ones dying repeatedly. They were nothing more than amnesiac shades of their past hosts, paper facades of souls that had once graced the earth with the right to bear every thought that crossed their mind into righteous permanence, but couldn't because the mad pony was there to bring their dreams to an end.
"The entire village was dying, with ponies falling left and right into oblivion, for she--a cursed pony--had the blatant audacity to gallop across their lives and impart her pestilence upon them. And there were so many of them, countless ponies who briefly laughed and smiled at her, far too many to dig graves for, only to sing songs of--like the vibrating tune coming to life in the back of her head, a chorus that repeated itself louder and louder with each hearbeat, for hers was beating for the stallion's, for his priceless words that would soon rocket their way into oblivion far faster than she could ever jump her pitiful self. All of these ponies' faces were snapshots, joyous and beautiful until the end of time, like she had every ability to be, if only she was courageous, if only she was mad--mad for the sake of making a life out of a nightmare and discovering the secret colors hidden within.
"Before this epiphany finished illuminating her more than any sunrise ever could, a cold chill ran across her body, and she knew that something that was briefly there was lost forever, because the stallion was already starting to blink dazedly like a waking infant in his crib. But as the stallion's dream ended, and his tears disappeared, they rediscovered themselves in her eyes. She smiled for the first time in days, and stepped away from the edge of the buildingside."
My lyre lamented the end of the day. Though it had a sad sound to it, it was laced with happiness, as my gentle smile was. I stood across from Caramel, finishing the story under the purple blanket-spread of falling night.
"The mad pony's curse did not end that day. As a matter of fact, it was only the beginning. But with it was born something else, a deep and sincere warmth that would carry her through the frigid months to come. Her madness would be her drive. It'd give her the bravery and persistence she needed to live the life of a lunatic's dream, singing songs to those who would forget the face of the performer with the meager hope that they'd find meaning in the performance. For, you see, a memory is only a shadow once it's been lived, once it's been drained of all its flavor. However, it is music that can carry the sincere vibrations of one's heartrstrings, like a tune that wakes us from our darkest dreams, or a timeless carol that pierces all of history's legacies of death and loss. The stallion taught this to the mad pony. In one simple breath, he showed her that no matter how bleak her curse was, she still had the power--and the duty--to seize the moment and live. Life is the only dream that we can control, and it only ends once we've searched every dark corner of it for color and transformed it into song."
My music ended, and the sudden void pulled the breath sharply out of Caramel's lungs. He gazed softly at me, blind to the bonfire flickering beside us, as though it was a far duller beacon than what I was shining upon him right then and there.
"That's a beautiful tale," he murmured. "It's sad. And yet... yet..."
"You cannot have sadness without felicity," I said softly, my grin as fragile as my next few words. "We are here now--happy and healthy and delightful. But, like a memory, even this too will fade away, and I'll then share songs with a void.. Loss and love have their places in this world. We can accept them with despair or with delight. I choose the latter, because it at least makes loss something that is quiet and serene, for I'll have known that I enjoyed the warm currents of my existence with grace and dignity. Our days on this earth can too easily become an asylum, built by our fears and patrolled by our regrets. We have it within ourselves to stop worrying about the towers of security we can build for ourselves in the future and simply enjoy the sizzling bonfires erected before us now. And--heeheehee--I assure you, it's not something that is even remotely cherished on our lonesome."
Caramel gulped, and his blue eyes glossed over. "Wind Whistler loves me, and I only want to love her back. But how can I love her if I have nothing to give her?"
"You can give yourself," I said, strumming the lyre so that the melody of the tale could reach his ears once again. "You can give yourself and live--live with her--so that the two of you can be more than just memories, and you can embrace the sunrise together, no matter how bleak the next day may seem, because you can afford to be so much, and because this world would be so much less enjoyable if you gave up something so precious."
He smiled painfully. Something bright lit up the edges of his eyes. I could recognize that bright, pale orb in my sleep, and I knew that I had been doing just that for a solid year. I struggled through a sudden shiver to stare at Caramel's face as he said, "Did this mad pony ever find an end to her curse?"
I gulped. "No. No, she never did," I spoke. "But she couldn't deny the fact that it gave her opportunities that no other pony could enjoy, opportunities to sing songs of things that even she realized she that had forgotten herself. Still..." I took a deep breath, gazing briefly into the fire. "She would give up all of that intuition and knowledge--even for a single day--if she could just find the stallion who had changed her life..." I slowly tilted my face up and gazed deeply into his sapphire eyes, my voice blanketed by a curtain of vapors separating us like the corners of the earth. "And tell him how thankful she is. She'd tell the stallion that she'd never stop dreaming; she would always remember him."
Sparks crackled and died in the bonfire, like a brief color that had twinkled in Caramel's eyes. He blinked, realizing that night had fallen, and he was alone. A horrible shiver ran through his body. Everywhere he looked, thicker and thicker shadows were encompassing his vision. So he stopped paying attention to his sight and trusted on his hearing instead. A beautiful tune tugged at his ears, like a morning sunrise lifting a waking foal out of bed. He turned and saw a bonfire several meters away, surrounded by laughing and celebrating pegasi. Caramel literally jumped up to his hooves and galloped there like a pony possessed.
A mare with sky-blue wings and a blonde mane was in the middle of chatting with a friend beside a burning pile of wood. Her giggling voice had the sound of bells. Caramel nearly fainted at the melodic tones as he struggled to stand upright behind her. Bravely, he cleared his throat and murmured, "Windy?"
Wind Whistler turned around. At the sight of him, her wings fluttered and her brown eyes lit up. "Caramel! I..." She lingered breathlessly, gulped, then managed, "I thought you told me that you weren't celebrating this year..."
"I know what I said. But I was just..." He began, but his words trailed off uselessly. He stood upon the precipice of confusion, his eyes gazing into the fire as if searching for the reason to why he had trotted over to her. Slowly, his ears twitched, for he once more heard a timeless melody, and it softly pulled at the corners of his lips. "I was listening to music. Very sweet, beautiful music," he said, grinning, then pivoting his gaze to drink in the image of her once more. "But it wasn't enough, because you weren't there to listen to it with me."
Wind Whistler's feathers twitched on end, and her golden tail curled in twice on itself as she smiled warmly up at him. "Oh sweety..." Her smile was as fragile as the sudden dam to her eyes. Her closest friends shuffled quietly away, giving her and Caramel enormous space--as if some ballroom dance was about to take place. "I missed you too."
"Windy, I was... erm..." Caramel bit his lip, his shivers returning as he was suddenly unworthy of her heavenly gaze. "I was wondering if... That is, if you aren't doing anything special this Celebration--"
"Yes, Caramel." She smiled wide, her teeth glinting like the moon above. "I would be happy to be Souls of Solstice with you."
Caramel blinked. He glanced across the bonfire to see the grinning and winking expressions of Thunderlane and Blossomforth. With a wry smirk, he squatted down beside Wind Whistler. "And just how did you know I was about to ask you that?"
"Mmmm..." She leaned in, nuzzled him, and purred deliciously into his ear, "Prove me wrong."
He exhaled sharply and nuzzled her back. His voice sounded like a little colt's. "Never." He sniffled briefly.
Wind Whistler gazed into his eyes with worry. "Caramel? Is... Is everything alright?"
His moist eyes glistened from the nearby flame. The sadness was canceled out by a warm smile as he spoke to her, "I'm just so happy to be alive, alive with you. You're like a good dream that never ends, Windy. I'm sorry if I've not said that enough."
She smiled back at him. "Well, you're saying it now, aren't you?"
The two of them giggled and leaned against each other, basking in the Celebration's warmth. I stood just beyond the dancing amber gleam of the bonfire, playing my lyre in the spot where I had trotted to after the moon sliced its way between Caramel and I.
Even now, I can't remember how much time had passed until the music stopped. As soon as I realized there was no more melody, I glanced down and realized I had been hugging my instrument to my chest. A sigh escaped my lips, sad and delightful at the same time. An instrument is only the start of a melody. It takes listeners to truly finish a composition to its end, even when there isn't an end.
The tranquility of the moment was interrupted by enormous thunder. Caramel, Wind Whistler, and the rest looked up and cheered as the first of the night's plentiful fireworks lit up the purple haze of the world. Ponyville had become a strobing sensation of amber flame and rainbow explosions. Ponies danced in the streets--fillies, colts, mares, and stallions alike--souls of solstice who mutually promised with their jubilant cheer to stay awake through to the next morning, when it was up to their patron Princess to bring forth a literal glow to the world that mirrored the prancing joy in their heart.
They were so busy with their festivities that hardly a villager noticed one pony marching through the heart of the event, a pony who was not lit up by the bonfires, a pony to whom the fireworks gave no shadow.
I paused halfway through trotting out of the center of town, looking over my shoulder. For a moment there I saw--or thought I saw--a trail of my own hoofprints disappearing behind me in the bright moonlight, at a hauntingly even pace. Upon such a dreamlike sight, I did what only a mad pony would do.
I smiled.
If all I care about in life is the imprints I make in this world, then the most I'll ever leave is a grave.
Background Pony
II - "Lunatic's Dream" |
Background Pony | III - Foundations | Dear Journal,
What makes a pony? Is it her dreams? Her thoughts and her ambitions? What she hopes to accomplish before she dies? Is it her fears and her worries, the many things that she dreads in life?
When I lived in Canterlot--when I was around my family--I knew exactly what my future was going to be. I knew the type of a career I was going to pursue. I knew the kind of stallion I was going to marry. I even knew the type of foals I wished to have. If someone had asked me then "what makes a pony," I would have answered with "the sum of all my talents."
That was an easy thing to believe while I had a home. When I arrived in Ponyville--when I was thrown through the frigid veil of endless night--it was as though a trial by fire had robbed me, had burned me of all the things that I had long taken for granted.
I don't think anypony can be prepared for becoming homeless, for what it means to be worth the sum of all one's talents and not a single one of them granting her food, bed, or a hug to safely surrender to. No amount of years of musical composition or philosophy could have prepared me for the nights I spent searching for food in the streets or a place to sleep in the shells of abandoned buildings. There were times when I could have given into dread. A sane pony would have had no choice but to give in.
But, as I soon realized, nopony could be any more prepared for becoming so blessed--as I would be blessed. If it's the home that makes a pony, then I'm built out of the grit of those far stronger and more generous than I. There are many souls in Ponyville who will never get to hear the songs I make for them. But that's hardly the tragedy I once believed it to be, for the building blocks of my chorus already exists in their hearts and throats. I know this, for they've been so gracious as to share such foundations with me.
My shivers stopped as soon as I heard her. It had to have been her; I knew no other pony who took that dirt path between my house and her farm. Under the roar of a summer's rainy downpour, I heard her scuffling hooves against the wooden stoop of my cabin's patio.
I looked up from where I sat with a pen and paper, finishing the final touches to a written composition of "Threnody of Night." Before me, the flames of the brick-laid fireplace had dwindled to a dim glow. I was so engrossed in work that the invisible winds of cold were barely bothering me. The rain continued to pound against the wooden rooftop shingles, and still I heard her lingering just outside. I was more curious than concerned. Adjusting the sleeves of my hoodie, I stood up, trotted across the cabin, and swiftly opened the front door.
Applejack jumped and spun to face the entrance, gasping. I wasn't used to seeing her startled... much less soaking wet. The poor mare stood on my porch, drenched from head to tail. Blond bangs framed a freckled face beset with shivers as she blushed a shade of red embarrassment.
"Greetings," I said with a placid smile, keeping the door ajar with glittering magic. "Kind of a lousy day for a walk, isn't it?"
"Oh. Pardon me," Applejack muttered and fidgeted. The world was a thick curtain of veritable waterfalls beyond her. The dirt path snaking past the cabin had long morphed into a dark brown river of mud, and the bright light of the afternoon refracted a ghostly gray sheen across the forest stretching beyond. "Uhm... Shucks, this looks really, really bad, I reckon." She chuckled sheepishly. I spotted a basket bundled with soaked towels beneath her, as if she was using the last vestiges of her own dry flesh to keep the package from being soiled any further. "I only meant to take a breather from this dag blame'd flood. I swear, pegasi don't give us as much solid warnings like they used to."
I shrugged. "It came as a surprise to me as well. Normally, I'm always out and about. Today, though, I just happened to be indoors, working on something." I smiled pleasantly. "Speaking of indoors, you look as though you need a change of scenery."
"Oh, ma'am, think nothin' of it!" Applejack shook her head and pointed out at the offending monsoon. "I'm sure it'll clear up... erm... eventually. Don't you fret none. I'll be out of your mane soon. It was never my intention to impose--"
"Now what kind of a pony would I be to leave a soul like you drowning out here in the rain?" I trotted backwards a few steps and motioned towards the inside of my cabin. "March inside. I've got a fireplace in here. Let's get you warmed up."
"Uhm..." Applejack bit her lip. She gazed at me, at the rain, at her basket, and at me again. "You absolutely sure I ain't bein' a bother?"
I grinned slyly. "Get your sopping wet tail in here before I change my mind!"
"Well, alright..." She shuddered before humbly shuffling into the cabin with the basket in tow. "Whew. Y'know, I don't rightly remember this place, which is odd--considerin' I walk this path so often. Didn't there used to be an abandoned barn around these here parts?"
"There could have been," I said with a smile, closing the door behind her so that we were both sealed off from the chilling moisture outside. "I'm rather new to town, relatively speaking."
"Well, howdy-do and welcome to the neighborhood," Applejack said. I slid a bucket towards her. Taking a hint, she placed her hat down on the floor and began wringing her long blond threads over the metal container. "I swear, though, this cabin must have sprouted up overnight."
"Mmmm... Not exactly," I said. I marched over towards the fireplace and levitated three fresh logs out of a metal stand to the side. "But I don't blame you for not noticing it." I dropped the new planks of wood at the base of the chimney and stoked the flame. Soon a brilliant glow was once again spreading through the cabin, this time heating up more than just myself. "I'm not... exactly the kind of pony who attracts attention easily. It's only fitting my house carries the same habit."
"I noticed the apple trees you've got planted between here and that shed you've got outback," she said. She paused, rolled her eyes, and smirked to herself. "Heh. Of course I noticed the apple trees."
"No crime in that."
"I noticed that they're grafted. Did ya plant them yerself?"
"Mmmm..." I trotted across the cabin, past my bed, and opened a wooden cabinet full of fresh towels. "Yes. But I had some help."
"I've got an orchard full of hundreds more like them just up the road."
"So we're neighbors!" I grinned at her.
"Heh. Reckon we are. Now I feel bad for not sayin' 'howdy' sooner. How's that for rotten hospitality?" Her voice trailed off as she gazed up towards the walls of the place. "Huh... Now will ya take a look at that?"
"Hmmm?" I trotted back towards her. I trailed her eyesight, observing the numerous musical instruments lining the wall. The two of us were surrounded by a rather familiar assortment of flutes, guitars, harps, chimes, violins, cellos, and clarinets--all hanging from metal fasteners across the interior of the small, fire-lit cabin. "Oh. Heh... I'm a musician," I hummed, as if that could succinctly explain the undeniable forest of orchestral tools surrounding us. "There's one good reason why I'm not living in the center of town. With all the racket I'm bound to make, the most 'hospitality' I'd get would be a swift kick to the flank."
"What? You compose tunes or somethin'?"
"I search for them."
"I..." Applejack stopped wringing her mane dry and bit her lip. "I-I reckon I don't get it."
"Neither do I." I smiled and handed the towel to her. "Until I find what I'm looking for, that is. And then it's another mystery." She took the towel and I marched once again toward the fireplace, stoking the flame some more. "The name's Lyra, by the way. Lyra Heartstrings."
"Applejack," she introduced herself like it was the first time.
It's always the "first time," and I can't help but feel charmed on each and every occasion. There's a melodic tone to a pony's voice when she thinks she's never spoken to you before, and Applejack's twang is something that violins can only dream of. I look forward to the day when I get to hear it again. My life's a symphony that way.
"And I swear I wasn't fixin' to burden anypony," she continued. "I would have made it home safe and sound had the rainstorm started just a sneeze later."
"Why the cross-town trek, if I may ask?"
"Cuz of this." Applejack draped the towel over her neck and began stripping the basket of its soaked wrapping. "Oh dear Celestia, please don't be ruined--Whew!" She exhaled with relief as she pulled a tiny alicorn doll out into the amber light of the fireplace. The toy was dry--about the driest thing in the cabin, and she nuzzled it like it was her own infant. "I would have plum tossed myself off a cliff if somethin' bad came to this."
"Well, your secret's safe with me, Miss Applejack," I said with a goofy wink.
"Huh?" She blinked up at me, then frowned. "Oh hush! T'ain't nothin' like that!" She cleared her throat and placed the doll back into the basket. "It belongs to my 'lil sister, Apple Bloom. Her Ma gave it to her, just before she and Pa tragically passed away. May they rest in peace." She squatted down and exhaled, reveling in the warmth from the fireplace as she continued speaking, "Apple Bloom's having a bout of the pony pox right now. It always happens to us Apple family ponies at her age. My experience was anythang but a bed of roses, so I wanted to make it easier for her. I went into town and had her doll patched up and freshly cleaned, but on the way back... well..." She motioned towards the walls of the cabin, still echoing with the deluge of rain pounding from the outside world. "I almost had a heart attack. I couldn't allow Apple Bloom's doll to get ruined. Maybe now you can understand why I stole your patio like I did."
"You didn't steal anything, Applejack," I said calmly. "I completely understand. But, if you ask me, the doll is the least you should be worried about. Here..." I reached towards my cot and pulled free a woolen blanket. "No need to have two members of the Apple family coming down with something nasty."
"Oh please, Miss Heartstrings. I can't--"
"Shhh." I draped the blanket over Applejack and shoved her closer to the fireplace. "You can. Just relax. You've been through a rain-soaked nightmare; it's the least I can do."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, and soon she was nestled comfortably before the flames as her body dried in the toasty aura. "Hmmmm... I reckon this feels mighty nice."
I smiled. "I would think as much."
"Kind of reminds me of the fireplace we've got back at the farm," she said, tightening the folds of the blanket around herself. Her green eyes danced with the crackling embers. "My Pa built it. He once told me that he went by the same unwritten blueprints that his father and his father's father before him used when the Apple family first settled in this part of Equestria. Can you imagine it? So many homes, and all of them usin' the same thang."
"It just goes to show..." I squatted down across from Applejack and gazed softly at her. "...you can get away with amazing things, so long as you have a good foundation."
Twelve months ago, I was a sobbing mess. I laid on my side in the shadowy corner of a barn on the edge of town, curling in towards myself and covering my face with a quivering pair of hooves. The only thing more potent than the pangs of grief blistering through me was an immense cold, something that chilled me to the bone. For days, the frigidity had been my nemesis, a cryptic sensation that haunted and horrified me through the streets of Ponyville. At that time, however--hidden in the dust and hay of the abandoned barn--I welcomed the freezing sensation, for the shivers it gave me nearly shook my tears loose, making me think that none of what I was going through was actually happening.
Through hiccuping breaths, I smelled the rustic surroundings around me. I felt one with the detritus, a lost and forgotten piece of history. My saddlebag full of meager belongings had been tossed in the corner upon my stumbling arrival, and in the sparse beams of sunlight needling through the barn's porous ceiling beams I could barely tell the difference between my lyre and the random bits of farm junk surrounding it.
Another sob, another shiver: I heard my voice squeaking free from my chapped lips, and it sounded like a perfect stranger. Oh, if only I could forget myself as well, I thought. My life would have been a great deal more manageable if I could no longer remember the sensations still hounding me, of a raving pony wreaking havoc across town, of Twilight Sparkle's face looking through me as though I were invisible, and of the great height that had stretched beneath me as I stood on the town hall building's rooftop and teetered on the brink...
I whimpered and buried my face in my hooves. I felt like a little foal. I had tried fleeing from this place, running eastward. If I could have galloped all the way home to Canterlot, I would. But no less than half a mile from the edge of Ponyville, a horrible wall of cold assaulted me, to the point that I started losing the feeling in my limbs. I rushed back to the center of town, collected my nerves, and tried trotting west instead. After the same distance traveled, an invisible blizzard struck my body, and I had to return to the heart of my sudden prison.
There was no sense in asking anypony for help. As a matter of fact, I didn't want to even look at them. The residents of Ponyville were cheerful. They had every reason and right to be, and I didn't hate them for it. I hated myself. Stumbling across their paths--being subjected to their rosy expressions--served only to remind me of how cold, hungry, and scared I was. So I did what all three of those factors persuaded me to: I hid.
I ran to the west edge of town--where the cold was bearable enough to endure but grating enough to keep me awake--and I threw myself into the hollow of that abandoned barn on the side of a dirt road. I had wanted to collect my thoughts, but soon I had an even more impossible task to accomplish. I had to collect my spirit, but that had all too swiftly shattered into a hundred unrecoverable pieces, like the tears leaking over my hooves and onto the dirt floor and hay.
Even if I could put myself back together again, I wasn't sure I wanted to. I didn't like the idea of what that soul would be tethered to, of what fate it had to anticipate. It's one thing to be homeless. But to be nameless? You can live in a mansion paid for with the world's largest fortune. You can own a million houses, a million acres of land, and a million servants dwelling on it to do your bidding. You can even have your very own plot in the ground reserved for you in the world's most sacred cemetery. So long as you're nameless, you don't have a place to call "home," not in this lifetime or beyond.
I was contemplating this, crying over this, despairing and shivering and collapsing over this, when she first arrived.
"Land's sakes!" her drawling voice echoed against the dilapidated walls of the barn. My ears picked up a quartet of hooves scraping through the wooden doorframe as the figure entered from the bright world outside. "I knew I heard somethin'! Uh... Hello? Somepony? Who's there?"
I didn't realize that I still had energy left in my body until I found myself bolting upright with a gasp. I turned towards her, and the first thing I saw were her freckles. A bright slit of light captured a pair of green eyes, followed by the warmest smile I had seen in three starving days.
"Whoah! Howdy there!" She waved two of her hooves high above her head to show she was harmless. I saw a brown hat, a ridiculously long blond mane, and two baskets of apples that hung from her sides. "Take it easy, sugarcube. I didn't mean to scare you or nothin'" She looked strong, fearless, the very definition of a working earth pony. Then all of those iron features immediately melted into a soft and sisterly gaze of concern. "Oh darlin', you look an absolute mess! I could hear ya cryin' like a poor widow from the road over yonder. Is everythang okay?"
What could I say to her? What could I say to anypony that would carry the smallest degree of weight? Life had given me a hammer and chisel, but my world had been turned to mud and sand. I almost wished I had played dead instead of responding to her. Maybe I would have gone unnoticed like the ghost I had become.
Instead, she stared steadily at me and said, "You do realize that this here barn's been abandoned for decades, right? Are you a long way from home?"
Her words were delicious, like soothing musical notes that I hadn't the fortune of discovering until then, and they were gracious enough to squeeze even more moisture from my eyes. I barely sniffled, though, for I was too busy staring--not at her, but at the twin baskets of red fruit adorning her figure. I was suddenly aware of how dry my mouth was. There was a deep rumble, like the wooden structure of the barn was settling all around us.
She heard it too, but was in a far saner condition to recognize it. "Heheh... Hungry, ain'tcha?" She smirked, following the angle of my eyes. "Let's start on the right hoof, shall we? My name's Applejack. Here." She twisted her head around, balanced a red fruit on her nose, and tossed it my way. "Have an orange. Heheheheh--Ahem. That's an old family joke."
I suddenly couldn't hear her. My taste buds were screaming over my ears, for I had scarfed down the contents of the apple in less than a minute. Choking would have been bearable so long as I wrangled a few tender morsels down my throat. Once I had bitten my way to the core, I wasn't entirely sure if it had helped my hunger any, but it had certainly dried my tears.
Applejack was whistling. "Whoa nelly! Easy there, girl! Heheh... Good thing I wash those things before takin' them to market, huh?" She sat down on her haunches in front of me. "Well, I toldja my name. Reckon I might get a chance to learn yours?"
I shuddered, avoiding her stare as well as her question. Even nowadays, I think I say my name out loud only to appease myself. I certainly wasn't the one to invent it, and if I was to give myself a fitting replacement, would anything announce it better than my lyre? All that mattered was that--at the time--something was gnawing at me far more than either cold or hunger. Applejack was so real, so warm, and so there. I was willing to do anything, or say anything, just to shatter the looming horizon of loneliness that threatened to drown it all.
"Lyra," I ultimately whimpered. "Lyra Heartstrings."
"Lyra," she murmured aloud with a nod. Reaching her hoof up, she tilted the brim of her hat and smiled placidly my way. "That's a mighty pretty name you have there, Lyra."
My vision instantly blurred again. I could feel my heart beating. I wanted to hold her. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted to be warm, to be safe, to be happy--and I knew that none of it would last. None of this would last. I should have ended the conversation right then and there. I should have grabbed my saddlebag, galloped out of the barn, and hid myself away in the forest where there'd be less intelligent creatures to smile at me, to feed me, to remind me that I was something worthy and capable of being cherished, just as Applejack's soothing voice was caressing all of the shivering ends of me, like I was not just some dirt-covered, tear-stained piece of refuse.
"I know this town like the back of my hoof," Applejack continued. "And I must say I've never seen you around these parts before, Lyra. Are you visitin' family or somethin'? Is there somepony I can take you to? There's no need to be wastin' away in some dirty 'ol barn, now is there?" She blinked and squinted at me. "Uhm... Miss Heartstrings?"
At first, I wondered why she was asking me so many questions. As soon as the image of her teetered and was swallowed by perpetual shadow, it suddenly made sense. I was blacking out. I fainted like some pathetic damsel, my whole body going limp. Starvation, it seemed, isn't so exhausting until you remind yourself that you're capable of eating something. I collapsed from such a sensation, and when I came to--the world was a thousand times brighter than the inside of that barn. I saw the ground passing beneath me, and when I glanced up the horizon was bobbing.
"H-hey there!" I felt the vibration of Applejack's voice. With a shuddering breath, I realized that she was carrying me across her back. A dirt road led towards a red barnhouse nestled in a sea of delicious apple orchards, and we were gliding towards the bright epicenter. The world beyond the crest of Ponyville grew colder and colder, but Applejack's warm body and breath melted all of my shivers away. "Just relax, sugarcube. I'm takin' you somewhere safe. Yer gonna be just fine."
"This..." I fought for an even breath, draped across her spine. Days of running, panicked, across the lengths of Ponyville brought an ache to my limbs that I was just then discovering. "This is where you live?"
"You betcha! Sweet Apple Acres, home of the finest bounty of red fruit in all of Equestria!" We passed wooden fences and apple carts. I could hear distant livestock and smell bales of hay. "But my family and I can give you the grand tour later. You look as though you've got a mighty nasty fever, Lyra. Let's get you warmed up."
I immediately gasped. "You... Y-you remember my name?"
"Why, of course, darlin'! Heh... Just cuz the Apple family is simple farmin' folk doesn't make us simple-minded!"
There are times when I feel as though the only infinite resource in the world is tears. Closing my eyes, I smiled--a fractured, porcelain thing--and clung securely to her. The world was bright all around me, as if a righteous fire was burning away the frayed edges of a nightmarish veil that had been hanging over my head for days.
I was almost sad to be let go. I opened my eyes, realizing that I was suddenly inside this blessed mare's house, having been plopped down on a sofa in the middle of an antique living room full of family pictures, heirlooms, and home-crafted decorations. There was a fireplace in front of me, and it was as empty as I felt. The sight of it made me shiver, and Applejack must have seen it, for soon she was grabbing planks of dried wood from a metal stand.
"Here, let me light this up. You make yerself comfortable and I'll get Granny Smith to fix you some soup."
"Granny... Smith...?" I murmured. Just then, my ears pricked to hear the sounds of voices in the far end of the house. Applejack and I were not alone. The place was alive, and I felt very alien there sitting on the family's immaculate sofa with my tousled mane and stained coat.
"Her name is Lyra Heartstrings, Granny!" I heard Applejack shout across the interior, continuing a conversation that I in my numb state was only partially privy to. "I found her just outside of town! The poor thing looks like she's long due for some real hospitality."
"I..." I bit my lip, squirming under a fresh curtain of shivers. "I thank you so very much, M-miss Applejack. But you really don't need to go to all this length just to... to..." My voice trailed off, for I was suddenly bathing in a sea of toasty warmth. The fireplace had been lit, and as my ears embraced the delicious crackling noises of the burning wood, my body veritably melted into the folds of the couch. "Ohhhhhhhhhh Celestia, that's nice," I murmured with a drunken smile.
Applejack's return grin was a lot more charming. "Nothing treats a sick spell better than bathin' in the Apple family's fireplace." She winked. "Shucks, I remember when I first had the pony pox. Cuddlin' up before this here mantle got me through all sorts of feverish nights."
"I'm not sick," I said as politely as I could. "I'm..." I felt a sore lump building in my throat. I didn't want to sponge up too much of this kind mare's generosity, but at the same time it felt like the first occasion I had in days to... relax and let go. I wanted to pour all of my troubles onto somepony, but I didn't want to burden them with something I barely even understood. "I'm lost, Applejack," I blurted. I ran a hoof through my frazzled mane and stifled my whimpers before they could form. "I'm so lost, and I don't know where to start."
"Well, I dunno about you, but I reckon that home is always the best place to start."
"Home?"
"It's what makes a pony, or so I've always believed." She placed the metal fireguard down before the brick-laid hearth and trotted towards me. "A while ago, when I was just a 'lil filly, I left this farm and headed out to the city, thinkin' that I could live a different kind of life than the rest of the family. Boy, was that one of the plum stupidest decisions of my life. Heh. I nearly cried my eyes out for days, until I ran back home, and everythang was just right." She stood above me and gently dragged a hoof over my mane, plucking free a random leaf and stalk of hay that I had collected in the barn where she had found me. "Sometimes we leave home--even if it means running away from the place that means the most to us--cuz we're so desperate to find ourselves. And what happens? We only get more lost."
"I didn't run away from my home, Applejack," I said with a soft sigh. An invisible gust of wind came from nowhere. The fireplace suddenly seemed miles away as images of Canterlot flicked through my mind. "I would give anything to go back there, but I can't."
"And just why is that, sugarcube?"
I bit my lip. Goosebumps were forming under my coat. I clutched my forelimbs to my chest and fought the icy shadows for as long as I could. Applejack had been so kind to me. The last thing she needed was an emaciated guest collapsing in the center of her living room. Never in my life had I anticipated becoming what I was then: a vagabond, a bum, a unicorn with no purpose or title. All my life, I had seen riff-raff gathered in the far shadier streets of Canterlot, and I had always regarded them with both pity and curiosity. Now I was sitting in their place, carrying the same disgusting scent, and even those impoverished souls had more hope than I did. Even if I could make my way back home, would I be able to stake claim to what which was once attached to me? Would my parents be able to help me any?
Mom. Dad.
"Nothing," I murmured, my lips quivering. "There is nothing for me to go back to." I huddled into the deeper contours of the sofa. For a moment, I wished that it was a coffin instead.
"Hmmm... Well, right now, we have a place for you here, sugarcube," Applejack said. Her selflessness was only outshone by the bright smile on her face as she swiftly trotted towards a closet, opened it up, and rummaged through rows of hanging jackets inside. "And I've got something else for ya. It's just the thing for them feverish shivers of yers." After a modicum of effort, she emerged with a stone gray article hanging from her mouth. She dropped it by my side. "Here ya go. A little something I used to wear when I was a bit younger, for workin' around the orchards in autumn and all. Of course, I rarely use it these days, on account that I've grown myself a second skin. Heh."
I looked at her, then at her gift. After a squinting study, I realized it was a long-sleeved sweaterjacket. Without a second thought, I encased the item in glowing telekinesis and all-but-flung it over my forward half. Finally, with only a little fuss, I slid my hooves all the way through and sat comfortably with the hoodie encasing my shivering limbs. Soon, the goosebumps shrank away, as if the jacket was somehow absorbing the heat wafting towards me from the fireplace. Looking back, I think it was the gesture itself that did the trick. Applejack was willing to give a little piece of herself, and it was like being engulfed nonstop in her hug. I couldn't help but smile, for I remembered what it felt like to be in the company of a pony who was more than a stranger. I was more than ready to call this polite and thoughtful mare a "friend."
"Th-thank you. Really, Applejack," I said, curling against the sofa's shoulderest and basking in the glow of the hearth. "For everything. I wish I could repay you."
"My home is your home." She merely shrugged. "Relax, rest up, and get better. Later on, we can see about helping you find yer place, ya reckon?"
I let loose the tiniest of giggles. "Sure, I 'reckon.'" I smiled, letting the gray sleeves of the hoodie dangle toastily over the ends of my front hooves. When I was young, I used to envy Twilight Sparkle, wishing that I too had an older sibling to look after me while my parents were away. I wondered if this was what it felt like. "Though I dunno if any place in the world has a fireplace as good as this one."
"It's a good fireplace," Applejack said with a nod. "My Pa built it. 'Always make sure that you lay down a good foundation,' he'd say. 'The rest takes time, but it works without a hitch so long as the foundation is solid.'" She gazed briefly into the fire. She looked a lot older suddenly, though she carried it with far greater strength than the frail melancholy that I see in most ponies' faces. "I reckon I've held much weight in them words of his. My Pa was the foundation of my life."
I was floating dizzily on a cloud of warmth, but still I was able to understand the gravity of my new friend's words. "I'm sure you've done him proud," I said.
"Hmm. I can only make him prouder." Her green eyes twinkled briefly as she smiled, then trotted past me. "I'll see how Granny's doin' with the soup. I'll be back in a jiffy."
"Yeah, okay," I said, adjusting where I sat on the sofa. Sparks danced against the fireguard before me. I stared into the flame, allowing the thoughts of my recent circumstances to melt away. I pulled the hood of the sweatjacket over my horn and exhaled deeply, as if giving up a somber part of myself that had controlled my frightened limbs for so many nocturnal hours of despair.
It was the first chance I had to sit and think deeply in days. As a result, something dark and mysterious rose to the surface of my mind, something that had danced around the miserable waves I had so fitfully navigated up until that point. The more I meditated on it, the more my ears twitched, for I realized that I was unearthing a melody from the deepest part of my psyche, an undying tune that had been born in the recesses of my mind and remained unsung since the very moment I woke fitfully in a dark alley, a scared and freezing victim of endless night.
So engrossed was I in these ponderings, I barely noticed a yellow shape trotting up to my peripheral vision... then gasping.
I glanced over. There was a little foal looking up at me with wide amber eyes. A red bow swayed in her crimson mane, for she was shivering. Was I not the only one who was cold? No, that wasn't it. She was afraid of me.
"Why, hello there," I said in as gentle and harmless a voice I could muster. I smiled at her and leaned over slightly. "You must be Applejack's sister."
The girl back-trotted from me, her eyes as wide as saucers. "Uhhh..." Her jaw dropped as a pale sheen danced across her irises, like moonlight rippling over pond water. "Uhhh... AJ?!"
"Shhh--It's okay!" I smirked. "I'm guessing your sis neglected to mention that you had company--"
"What is it, Apple Bloom?" A familiar orange shape strolled back into the chamber, then immediately froze. My heart jolted, for Applejack was suddenly shouting, "Apple Bloom! Get over here! Now!"
Panting, the little foal scampered over to her sister. I watched, blinking and confused, as Apple Bloom hid behind the mare. Applejack stood protectively in front of her while glaring down at me on the sofa. All of the sweetness and hospitality was gone, shattered to bits beneath an accusing frown as hard as diamonds. "Just who in the hay are you?! What are you doing in our house?!"
"Wh-What?!" I gasped. My heart was beating hard, as if it would tear a hole in the hoodie at any moment. "But... But... I was just.... I thought that--"
"Is that my jacket you're wearing?" Applejack exclaimed, her emerald eyes squinting harshly. I could hear Apple Bloom's whimpering voice as she cowered and hid her face. Behind both sisters, an old green-coated mare strolled up from the other room, curious about the violent commotion. "Have you been rummaging through our stuff?!" Applejack continued, almost sneering. "Spit it out!"
"Applejack, I'm--"
"You... You know my name?" Applejack cocked her head to the side. Her anger was briefly drowned in confusion, but soon that cloud faded and the scorn returned. "Did somepony put you up to this? If so, t'ain't funny! We already had a bunch of rambunctious colts vandalizin' our barn months ago! This here farm doesn't need no more mayhem on its plate! Now are you gonna answer me or not?!"
"I don't understand! I'm Lyra, remember? We were just--" I stopped in mid-speech. My heart briefly stopped, and I felt the warmth of the living room once again dissolving. The next breath from my mouth was a whimper, for I had been reacquainted with my own foolishness. "Oh dear Celestia, it's happening again."
"What's happenin' again?! Dang it, missy! I demand to know why you've trespassed into our very own home!"
"Look... Uhm..." I stood up from the couch, weak, my legs wobbling. "This is... I'm..." I gulped and backed away from them, waving a hoof. "I don't even know how to explain th-this..."
"Try me!" Applejack's iron frown carried her icily towards me. The fire bathed every hard line of her features and none of the freckles. "Before I call the police."
"We were just talking a moment ago, Applejack! You carried me here from the edge of town--"
"Carried you here?! I've never seen you before in my life!"
"I know you think that--But I swear to you!" I gulped before stammering like a fibbing foal who was desperate to avoid the paddle. "We talked! You lit the fireplace for me! You gave me this jacket--"
"Likely story. You reckon I'm stupid?"
"N-no! For the love of Luna, it's not what you..." I stopped in place. The shivers had quadrupled. I felt my bones turning to ice. My gaze swam dizzily over the many family portraits lining the living room. I saw nothing but the faces of strangers, like these three souls gathered before me always were and always would be. I grimaced as though I was giving birth to a familiar horror.. "I'm so sorry... I... I-I gotta go--!"
"Oh no you don't--"
I spun and galloped desperately towards the far end of the house. "I'm sorry!"
"Applejack--!" the old mare's voice started. "She's gettin' away!"
"Oh no she ain't! Macky?!"
Their shouting voices dwindled as I shot around a corner and bolted for the front door. Instead, I bumped into something large and red. "Ooomf!" I fell down on my haunches, reeling sickly. Looking up, I gasped. "Uhh!"
A tall stallion towered above me, his crimson coat rippling with a sea of iron muscles. On any other occasion, he would have been a delectable sight for a mare like me to behold. At the moment, however, he was as menacing as a leering minotaur.
"Big Macintosh!" I heard the elder mare's voice calling over the bounding hoofsteps of Applejack from the chamber behind me. "Grab her before she gets away--!"
I gritted my teeth, flashing a look left and right. I saw a bathroom within a leap's distance. Just as the red brute lunged at me, I bounded out of his reach and bolted towards the doorframe. The doorknob was already glowing from my telekinesis by the time I flung myself inside and magically slammed the thing shut. The house was rumbling from all of the bodies thundering after my hooves. I slipped on a rug, nearly fell, and scampered back on all fours in time to lock the door and press my weight up against it.
The door pounded once, twice. I shrieked and pressed myself desperately against it, trembling, my starved body and glittering magic acting as a frail bulwark against the entire family's righteous anger. "Oh Celestia. Oh Celestia please." I started to weep, my tears gathering at the collar of the gray hoodie that had been donated to me by a ghost. The door pounded a third time and I nearly fell back, struggling to keep my hooves firm against the slippery tile.
"Open this door!" I heard Applejack say. "I swear we ain't gonna hurt you, girl. But--carn sarn it--you've got some explainin' to do!" I heard the muttering of the other family members just outside. "Don't you know that the Ponyville Police can put you in jail for invadin' somepony's home?"
"Please! Just leave me alone!" I sobbed, on the edge of hyperventilating. I murmured into the wooden surface of the door, "The police will do nothing! Believe me! Nopony can do anything for me. Oh blessed Luna..." I hiccuped and slid down against the door, grasping my head and shaking. The tune was louder this time, as if it was wanting to burst out my skull and bathe the walls of the bathroom with what was left of my soul. "I just want somepony to help me, like you almost did. It's that so hard to ask for?"
There was no response from the other side. I sat there, sniffling, hugging my lower limbs and trembling for what had to have been one minute... two minutes... three. I blinked, dried my eyes with a stone-gray sleeve, and glanced up.
"H-hello?" I remarked, nervously. Again, there was no reply. "M-miss Applejack? Apple Bloom?" I gulped. "M-macky?"
Silence.
Pensively, I stood up. I stared at the doorknob for ages before finally summoning the strength to unlock it with my telekinesis. Pushing the glowing door open, I peered my head out into the hallway. There was nopony to be seen. I calmed my panting breaths long enough to sneak down the hallway. The floorboards creaked beneath me. With a wince, I inched my way, until I reached the edge of the living room where the entire debacle had started. I gazed quietly around the corner.
Applejack stood before the hearth, her flanks to me. "Hmm... seems like an awful waste of wood in the middle of summer." She lowered her hat and scratched her blond mane while gazing into the crackling fireplace. "Just who's idea was this? Apple Bloom?"
"Wasn't me, sis!" the little yellow foal trotted past her. "Besides, I'm not allowed to put logs in without yours or Big Mac's permission! Ain't that what yer always tellin' me?"
"As much as I fancy you bein' all obedient-like, there are times when I wonder..."
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Eh... Don't get in such a hissy fit over it, girls!" The elder mare sat her green wrinkly self down in a rocking chair and smiled, basking in the warmth from the fireplace. "After all, this is just what the 'ol doctor ordered for my bones. Eh heh heh. Ohhhh... Apple Bloom, be a dear and go grab Granny's quilt. There's a good 'lil filly."
"Sure thing, Granny Smith."
"I reckon I better go help Big Mac with the chores," Applejack muttered as she shuffled towards the back door to the house. "Heavens to Betsy!" She smiled and shook her head as she walked into the reddening sunset. "Just where does all the time go? I must be getting' old."
"Ohhhhh shut yer trap, ya stinkin' baby!" Granny Smith spat.
"Teeheehee..." Apple Bloom managed as she dragged a quilt over to her grandmother. In the background, Applejack rolled her green eyes and was gone.
Biting my lip, I stepped back away from this scene. I stood breathless in the hallway, alone with my shivers. I glanced briefly at my reflection in a circular mirror hanging across the wall. An unkempt, dirt-stained, sad unicorn gazed back. Raising a hoof up, I played with the hood dangling behind my neck. It was then that I realized the extent to which I could afford friendship in this life.
My stomach gurgled again. I glanced longingly at the house's exit, but it stretched away magically before my vision, as did the guilt over what I was about to do next. In a blur, I galloped into the family's kitchen. I flung open the first cupboard I could find. I discovered two loaves of bread, and immediately flung them into the front pouch of my hoodie. There were many other things inside that kitchen--expensive and luscious trinkets that could have sold for many bits around downtown Ponyville--but I didn't bother touching a single one of them. It was my first robbery; it might as well have been a tiny one. I prayed to Celestia that it would be my last, and ran out of the farmhouse in a desperate flight to reunite with my lyre, as if it was the only thing that could tell me what "home" was anymore.
When Applejack trotted around the bend in the road the next morning, I could instantly see her. It had only been a day since my little "experience" at her farm, and I hadn't slept a wink. My body was kept up by shivers; my stomach was full of stolen bread. Through a combination of guilt and loneliness, I didn't hide in the corner of the barn like I should have. I stood at the edge of it, in open view of the orange mare as she strolled down the dirt path.
Sure enough, she saw me. To my mixed dismay and relief, she stood dead-still in the middle of the road and smiled my way.
"Why, howdy!" Her smile was electric. She could have been the sunrise itself for all I could tell. "Fancy meetin' a pony out here this early in the day!" She shifted the weight of two apple baskets on her sides. "Hankerin'' for some breakfast? Normally its one-bit-per-apple, but seein' as I'm feelin' mighty chipper this mornin', how'd you like a two-for?"
Her freckles were a welcome sight, distant shadows of a loving sister I knew I would never have again. The longer I stared, the more the sight of her face gave way to the memory of wooden kitchen cabinets being flung open and pilfered. I wrenched my gaze away from her, refusing to so much as look at the delicious apples that she was willing to sell me.
"Uhm... Thanks but no thanks, ma'am. I... uhm... I'm just waiting for somepony."
"Oh yeah? Anyone I know? I've got quite the little circle of friends around town."
I bit my lip, leaning awkwardly against the wooden doorframe of the barn. "You... You wouldn't know her." I sighed and ran a hoof through my mane, trying desperately to not look like the pathetic, homeless vagabond I so obviously was in front of her. "But maybe... just maybe you'll get to know her someday." I tried to smile; it would have been easier to sprout pegasus wings and fly.
"You okay, sugarcube? T'ain't none of my business, but yer lookin' rather glum." Applejack adjusted her hat and flashed me a sympathetic glance, warm like a fireplace. "It's a beautiful mornin'. No sense aimin' yer horn at the ground. You should try lookin' up at the sky for a change."
I felt the edges of my lips finally curving upwards, something I couldn't manage on my own. I breathed a little more easily, my shivers dissipating somewhat. "I was... uhm..." I spoke before I knew what words were coming out of my mouth. I wondered how much I'd have to be rambling before I produced a truth that was applicable enough to a given situation. "I was just wondering about this barn..."
"Yeah? What about it?"
"Who does it belong to?" I glanced up at the shoddy, wooden structure where I had spent the last two fitful nights. Somewhere inside, my lyre and saddlebag were lying like the accursed treasures of a splintery sarcophagus. "Does anypony own it?"
Applejack snickered and trotted over to stand beside me. "A better question is 'would anypony want to?'" She heartlessly kicked at part of the doorframe, causing a vertical plank to fall ineffectually into the dirt between us. "From as far I recollect, this here barn's been around far longer than I have. My Ma and Pa never talked about it. Odds are it belonged to Filthy Rich's family before they went into the retail business, but that would have been ages ago. Nah, from what I gather, this here land's plum for the takin'. Though I doubt any pony's gonna want it." She glanced at the solid line of trees that bordered the dirt patch on the other side of the old structure. "Even if these trees were chopped down, it'd take either hundreds of ponies or a heap'o'magic to make the ground soft enough to plant anythang. Long story short, darlin', the barn's just a fadin' memory... like so much of what's left of Ponyville's past these days."
I gazed up at the structure, running an affectionate hoof across the doorframe. "I know a thing or two about fading memories," I murmured in a distant voice.
"Hmmph. That's funny."
Curiously, I glanced at her. "It is?"
"No, not that." She rubbed her chin, squinting towards something below my neck. "I used to have a jacket just like the one yer wearin'."
I gulped and fidgeted with the long sleeves. "You don't say...?"
"Hmmph... Heheh... But it's been ages since I wore the thing."
I raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing, from working in the cold weather for so long, you've grown a second skin?"
Applejack's eyes twitched in thought. "Well, that's a nifty way of puttin' it."
I took a deep breath, then cleared my throat as I gazed at the fragile lengths of the barn. "Tell me... What's a good way to... uhm... to earn some money around town?"
"Money?"
"Bits, yeah." I nodded and looked at her. "You know of any Ponyvillean hiring for..." I bit my lip and navigated the impossibility of the thought just as I was producing it. "... for freelance stuff?"
"If you want to learn a thang or two about job openings, just go take a gander at the bulletin board at main street," Applejack said. "Though I doubt yer gonna find anythang aside from full time offerings."
I gulped and stared down at the dirt. "Right. Figures..."
"Though I'm sure there're plenty of freelancin' stuff for a musician to do," she said pleasantly.
I looked up at her, blinking. "Musician?"
"Well, shucks, girl!" She pointed at my cutie mark with a chuckle. "You didn't get that cuz you like to lick stamps, now didja?"
"M-my special talent," I uttered in a numb voice, as if a sheet of ice was clearing from over my head. "Right..." I looked towards the distant pocket of hay inside the barn where my lyre was hidden. "Hmmm...." I glanced back at Applejack and pointed at her cutie mark. "I see your special talent is selling oranges."
She blinked at me, then snorted. Her hat nearly fell off as she let out a loud guffaw. I joined with my giggles, for suddenly the day was feeling warmer.
When Applejack trotted around the bend in the road, she paused to stare at the wooden barn. It was obviously the same wooden barn she had trotted past every morning on her way to town, only now there was a green tent pitched next to it.
"What in tarnation...?" She squinted curiously. Her ears tickled with a gentle melody wafting through the branches bordering either side of the dirt path. "Is the circus movin' into town?"
"Try 'a traveling minstrel.'"
Applejack looked my way. "Huh?" She jolted as four bits flew towards her and landed on the brim of her hat.
I was standing in the doorframe of the barn, leaning against the dilapidated entrance while strumming my lyre. "Is that enough for two of those delicious apples, ma'am?"
Applejack glanced at the baskets in question hanging from her side. She lowered her hat and retrieved the bits. "Well, to be honest, missy, that's enough for four of 'em."
I gave her a practiced smirk, something that I was getting better at after so many weeks spent performing in town. "Alright, then. Four. They look absolutely scrumptious, and it so happens I have the bits to spare."
"Is that so?" Applejack spoke while picking four of her best fruit from the baskets and bagging them. "I'm guessing you're a mare on vacation."
"More or less, though I must say that this town's looking brighter and brighter with each passing day. I'm thinking of staying for a while longer." I strummed the lyre and motioned towards her. "You look rather fit, if I may say so, ma'am. Tell me, do you work on a farm?"
"Heh, as a matter of fact, I do." She smirked at me and held the bag of apples out in one hoof. "And if yer truly fixin' on hangin' around here, then you're bound to get to know me and my family. We've been harvestin' apples here for a long time."
"A long time, huh?" I gently took the bag from her in glowing telekinesis and laid it beside the tent next to the barn. "Then perhaps you could answer something for me."
"Shoot."
"This barn: it looks abandoned. Is that true?"
"Well, uhm... Pretty much, yeah."
"Does that go for the land as well?"
"As far as I know."
I smiled knowingly. "So I'm guessing this structure's standing here for no reason?"
"What are ya gettin' at?" Applejack glanced at me sideways. "Thinkin' of doing some demolition?"
"Well, it depends." I strummed on the lyre and kicked my rear hoof playfully against the wooden side of the building. "Would you happen to have some experience in the matter?"
"Hah! Sorry, missy, but you're askin' the wrong pony."
"Oh?"
"I'd love to give ya some advice, but truth is I'm not all about barn-tearin' as I am about barn-raisin'." She fanned herself in the morning sunlight before planting the hat back atop her blond mane. "As a matter of fact, I've watched my Pa build many a thing in his days. May he rest in peace." Her nostrils flared as she murmured, "He could build log cabins in his sleep if he wanted to."
I raised an eyebrow. "Log cabins?"
"Lickety split! They used to call him 'the House Planter' around these parts. Heh. But--yeah." She trotted back into the dirt road. "I'd better be off to market. Still, though, if you wanna see about tearin' barns down, you'd best be askin' ponies around town."
"Ponies like who?"
When Applejack trotted around the bend in the road, she froze upon hearing a roaring voice. Splinters of wood flew through the air, followed by a blur of bright colors darting in and out of view.
"Rainbow Dash?" She squinted awkwardly in the morning air. Slowly, she lurched towards the side of the road, shocked to see an old barn being torn to shreds--plank by plank--by a familiar blue pegasus who was sailing her agile body violently through the wooden structure. "Whoa, there, girl!" she ducked as a wave of wooden bits splattered over her head. "Watch where yer divin'! Seriously! Is there a war I don't know about?"
"Here." A helmet floated magically towards her. "You might need this," I said with a smile from where I stood beside my tent and supplies. "She gets a little crazy from time to time, but it makes for a fun show."
"Uhm... I reckon it does." Applejack removed her hat and slapped the helmet on awkwardly in its place. "Any chance somepony might help this make a lick of sense?"
"What's so hard to understand? There's a barn here now, but soon it won't be. Isn't that right, Miss--Rainbow Dash, was it?"
"Nnnnngh!" The goggled pegasus was busy smashing a wide gaping hole in the middle of the barn. She yanked a support beam loose with her bare teeth and prepared to kick a chunk out of the ceiling loose with her rear hooves. "Haaaaugh--!"
"Yoohoo?!" I shouted, cupping my muzzle with a pair of front hooves. "Earth to Rainbow Dash!"
"What?!" Rainbow Dash looked down at me. Slowly, the berserker sneer across her face melted. She greeted each wave of confusion with a series of blinks. "Wait. What? Who are you again?"
"Lyra."
"Lyra who?"
"Lyra Heartstrings." I leaned forward, glowing my horn through the hole in my helmet like it was a symbol of trust. "Remember? I'm the pony paying you fifty bits to tear this barn to the ground."
"Hold up." Rainbow Dash levitated above the two of us, her ruby eyes bright. "You mean to tell me that I get to break stuff and get paid for it?"
"Absolutely!" I grinned.
"Wicked sweet!" She coiled up in mid-air and sprung like a missile towards the remaining structure. "Eat it, barn! Rrrrrrgh!"
There was a resounding explosion. Applejack and I flinched under a shower of splinters.
"Well, I see you're new in town!" Applejack grunted, then brushed flecks of sawdust off her baskets of fruit. "But you must have some sort of fancy gift of gabbin' to get RD here to do such hard work so early in the mornin'!"
"She's a friend of yours?"
"A loyal one at that, though she can be a loyal pain at times." Applejack managed a smirk, and the volume in her voice playfully picked up some. "Like when she accidentally delivers a rain cloud to the wrong end of the apple orchards!"
"Hey!" A spectral bolt of lightning shouted overhead before exploding once more into the barn. "I heard that!"
"You own a farm?" I struggled to ask amidst another spray of debris.
"Ahem. Yup. Sweet Apple Acres."
"Now there's a marketable name."
"Eh. When it matters. Why? You fixin' to get into the fruit sellin' business? Cuz that job's kind of filled enough as it is around town."
"It's not that," I said, glancing at Rainbow Dash's chaotic job. More and more sunlight covered the patches of dirt alongside the road as the barn was slowly disassembled before our eyes. "I was hoping to find a pony who's had some experience with the land around here. I've been needing to ask for some advice, you see."
"Really? Like what kind of advice?"
"You see I'm... uhm..." I shifted a bit where I stood and smiled gently. "My stay here in town... it's like a vacation, more or less. But I think I'm going to be here a lot longer than I originally anticipated. I mean--why not? Heh... It's a beautiful village."
"I've always stood by that," Applejack said with a smile.
"You wouldn't happen to know any pony who's an expert on building?"
"Building what?"
"Oh..." I took a deep breath, glanced at the line of oak trees surrounding the collapsing barn, and murmured, "Log cabins."
Applejack instantly brightened. "Well, shucks! Heheh... funny you should mention that!"
I gulped and murmured, "You don't say..."
"I happen to know a thing or two about that!" She smiled. "My Pa could build log cabins in his sleep. He taught me everything he knew. May he rest in peace."
"My condolences."
"Much oblidged."
"Well..." I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie and turned to face her. "If you don't mind my asking, how's a good way to start?"
"You start with a good, sturdy axe."
I blinked. For some absurd reason, I hadn't expected that. "Oh?"
"Heheheh..." Applejack squinted slyly at me. "Unless you're rich enough to buy the lumber...." She pointed straight at the woods. "Seems to me like you've got plenty to work with here. That's how every family in these parts got started."
"Yes." I gulped and managed a brave smile. "I guess that makes sense. Uhm..." I scratched my neck and looked humbly her way. "Could I trouble you for some advice on where to get the right axe... not to mention other tools?"
"Hey! No trouble at all!" Applejack leaned against a nearby tree and smirked. "Though you might wanna write some of this stuff down, assuming you can concentrate while Rainbow Dash reenacts the Lunar Civil War over our heads. Ain't that right, Rainbow?!"
"Hnnngh--Huh? What?" Rainbow Dash stopped and hovered above us, panting and sweating. "Applejack? Why are you wearing a helmet?" She went cross-eyed and tapped the goggles on her own face. "The hay is all this?"
"Did ya bang yer head too hard that last time or somethin'?" Applejack stifled a guffaw. "Better not hurt yerself until after yer done with Miss Heartstrings' job!"
"What job?!" Rainbow Dash frowned. "Who's Miss Heartstrings?!"
"Hi there!" I waved up at her, smiling. "I'm the one paying you one hundred bits to tear this barn down!"
"Hold up. You mean to tell me that I get to break stuff and get paid for it? Wicked sweet! Raaaaaugh!"
When Applejack trotted around the bend, she immediately made a face. Slowly, under the fall of amber-colored leaves, she trotted straight towards a rhythmic thwacking noise. "Uhm... Ma'am? Do you need a little help there?"
"Nnngh... No!" I exclaimed. It came out as a snarl, but I was too exhausted to apologize. I sweated as I levitated the axe three feet in front of me. I was hacking away at the side of a thick oak tree. My horn pulsed atop my skull, the invisible leylines of magic tingling in agony as I stretched my telekinetic muscles to the breaking point. "I've got this covered! I just need to convince the dang tree to work with me! Nnngh!"
I swung the floating axe once more. Wooden chips and sawdust splashed across the broad patch of dirt beside the path. No matter how much I cut and chopped and bit at the tree with my blade, the natural structure wasn't showing any signs of falling anytime soon.
"Ahem. As much as I hate to get in another pony's business..." Applejack smiled gently and paced at a safe distance around my clumsy task at hoof. "...but I really do wish y'all'd let me give a little demonstration."
"Mmmff... Don't you..." I chopped. "...have an..." I hacked. "...Ironpony Competition..." I flailed. "...to get to?!--Whoah!" I fell down on my dainty haunches, breathless, as the axe plopped down to the soil beside me.
"Just how many ponies know about that thang between Rainbow and I? I swear--she must be braggin' around town for perfect strangers to have caught wind." Applejack trotted over and touched a hoof to the axe's handle. "Seriously, though. May I?"
I took several deep breaths, wiped the sweat from my brown, and motioned towards her. "Knock yourself out..."
"Well alright." She smiled and hoisted the axe up in her teeth. Trotting over to the tree, she leaned the tool against it and paused to glance back at me. "Ya see, darlin', you're goin' about it all wrong. If a pony wants to chop down a tree like this beaut here, ya gotsta judge where the weight of it is leanin', on account that yer fixin' to make it fall where y'all want it to." She circled the tree and slapped a part of the trunk perpendicular to where I was pathetically chiseling into the thing. "Right here's the best part. Then, once you've chosen the proper place to start cuttin', you do it like so."
Applejack once more gripped the axe in her mouth. Her muscles tensed and her hooves dug into the earth as she flung the whole weight of the blade repeatedly into the trunk. Her incision was noticeably angled, biting at a forty-five degree towards the tree's roots. Once the diagonal slice had been made halfway through the tree, she pivoted her swing and chopped horizontally, so that a visible notch formed neatly in the thick of the structure.
"Yeesh..." I couldn't help but scratch my head and gawk in wonder. "You must have some really, really strong teeth."
Applejack finished her task and spat the axe onto the dirt. "Hmmph... Yup, I reckon I'd have to." She hadn't even broken a sweat. I watched as she paced around to the side of the tree opposite of the notch and squinted at it closely. "I've dealt with trees all my life. I live on the apple farm over yonder. No doubt you've heard of 'Sweet Apple Acres'."
"I just might have," I said with a smile. "Still, thanks for the help--"
"Oh, we ain't done yet, sugarcube." Applejack pointed at the bark. "Now's time to slice straight into the trunk from the other side of the cut we just made. Once you've chopped through what's left of the width, the tree should collapse in the direction of the angled notch. You feel me?"
"I feel you." I marched up to the tree and levitated the axe into position. "Though, I gotta ask, do you always spend your mornings helping random unicorns fell trees?"
"Just what's so random about it?" Applejack stood safely back from my task and smirked. "You're here in Ponyville, tryin' to make an honest livin', from what I gather. It wouldn't be right neighborly of me to just walk by and let you burn out your magic horn all crazy-like!"
"Heh..." I concentrated as I hacked away at the tree, parallel to the horizontal slit she had formed at the base of the notch. "You make it sound as though just any pony you run into could be your neighbor."
"Yes, well..." Applejack dusted her hat off and watched me at work. "That's a mighty fine strategy in my book. The golden rule ain't so golden if ya don't bother polishin' it with every soul you meet, ya reckon?"
I paused briefly in cutting to meditate on that. I inhaled the crisp autumn air and smiled, as if reenergized. "That's a very solid thing to live by, ma'am." I resumed chopping. The entire height of the tree wobbled precariously, slowly leaning in the direction that Applejack had expertly designated. "No wonder you're prime Ironpony material."
"Heh. I hate to say it, but I'll hardly get that title by bein' nice."
"I beg to differ."
"It's funny..."
"Hmmm?"
"Oh, nothin'..." Applejack scratched her chin. "I could have sworn there used to be a barn around these here parts."
"I'm sure it did what all useless things do," I murmured while giving a few last, final thwacks. "It disappeared." The tree snap, and started to lean away from us. "Heeeeey... There we go!" I backed up, grinning wide.
"Ahem. Now's where ya shout 'timber,' missy."
"Oh, uhm." I took a deep breath and opened my mouth wide. Just then, the ground rolled with thunder. Loose leaves fluttered all around us from the tree's heavy collapse with the earth. I blinked and blushed slightly. "...timber?"
"Snkkkkt--Heheheheheh."
I looked back at the giggling mare and smiled. "I don't suppose I can carve the thing hollow and just live in it, huh?"
"Ya gotta make the notches deeper, Miss... Miss..."
"Heartstrings," I said, grunting a little as I carved at the sides of the oak logs with my hatchet. The trees that were left standing beside the clearing around us were barren, devoid of leaves. A sharp chill hung in the air as I prepared to add to the rectangular pile of wooden beams being slowly built along the side of the road. "And this is coming along nicely. I hate to bother you on such a beautiful day."
"Don't mention it!" Applejack waved a hoof, smiling. She wore a plain brown scarf around her neck to protect her from the bitter November chill. "I always take my sweet time headin' home, just in case there're ponies like you roundabouts who need a helpin' hoof."
"Well, I'm thankful. I really, really gotta get this finished," I exclaimed, sweating, concentrating hard to make the notch perfect so that it'd fit with the rest of the beams I had stacked up. "It's taken me too long as it is. My magic just can't replace sheer experience, if you catch my drift."
"Absolutely. I always feel bad for unicorns--" Applejack began, but then blinked and blushed. "Erm. No offense."
I smiled at my work. "None taken."
"It's just that y'all are always fancyin' yourselves as capable of doin' all sorts of amazin' grunt work with them horns yer sportin'. Two of my best friends are unicorns, and I know for a fact that liftin' too much weight with magic can give a pony an awful bad headache. I think it's good that yer pacin' yerself. I only wish I'd had the opportunity to see ya and help ya out sooner."
"Oh, Miss Applejack..." I smiled as I put the finishing touches to the wood with my hatchet. "Trust me. You have nothing to fret about."
"If you insist. Ready to put the thang in place?"
"Care to spot me?"
"Can do!"
I took a deep breath, tensed my muscles, and channeled a surge of magic through my horn. Slowly, I raised the entire beam of wood and levitated it across the dirt clearing towards the rectangular base I had started. With Applejack guiding me, I gently lowered the log in place so that its notches matched those of the beams already in place.
"There... That'll do it! Yeeeha! See? It fits a lot better than your previous ones, I'm willin' to bet!"
"I can see it already." I exhaled sharply, adjusting my collar and drying the sweat from my neck. I gave her a sincere smile. "Thanks, Applejack. I couldn't have done it without you."
"Pfft." She shrugged and adjusted her scarf. "I only gave ya one tip and now yer thankin' me like I'm yer contractor or somethin'. I'm only happy to lend some help, Miss Heartstrings. Just don't forget to apply the mortar between the beams. I could show you how, if ya like. My father was an expert at buildin' log cabins, you see."
"Really, now?" I took a deep breath of the cold, autumn air and glanced softly her way. "Dare I ask, did he have a lot to do with the making of this town?"
"Funny you should ask that, missy." Applejack's breaths came out in misty vapors as she stood on the plain wooden scaffold beside me. Together, we finished plastering mortar inside the upper beams of one the cabin's completed walls. "A lot of ponies don't know this, but Ponyville's size tripled while my Pa was alive. He was responsible for many decisions that the City Council made, includin' the expansion of housin' projects in the north side of town."
"Really?" I smirked as I applied more mortar. Flakes of snow drifted down and dotted the blue tarp that acted as the cabin's temporary ceiling. "So he wasn't all about apples, apples, apples?"
"Hey! T'ain't nothin' wrong about apples, apples, apples!" She briefly frowned while I let forth a foalish giggle. With a tranquil smile, she gazed off into the wintry lengths of the forest and said, "My Pa believed in lookin' after oneself, but his conscience extended well beyond that. Every soul he met was a pony in need, and he never stopped workin' for one second in his life to make sure they got as much a chance to shine in life as he did. Why, I'd reckon he'd make a mighty fine mayor..." She sighed heavily and her green eyes fell. "If fate had decided to smile on him and Ma."
"I'm sorry," I murmured.
"Heh. Don't be." She smiled up at me. "I regret nothin', on account that Pa taught me everythang I needed to know to keep supportin' my family and loved ones proper."
"You strike me as a very lucky pony, Applejack," I couldn't help but mutter. My work paused ever so briefly as I endured a wave of chills. "To know where you belong, and those whom belong to you..."
"My Pa used to say 'Always make sure that you lay down a good foundation. The rest takes time, but it works without a hitch so long as the foundation is solid.'" She looked me in the eyes after saying those familiar words. "The way I see it, Miss Heartstrings, we're all in this heave-ho of life together. What better a way to enjoy it than to make sure we do it proper? Right now, there's no place I belong more than right here, helpin' you."
I exhaled softly, adjusting the sleeves of my hoodie, feeling the toasty fingers of a fireplace in the back of my mind. "The world could use more ponies like you, Applejack."
"Heh..." Her cheeks flushed slightly. "Shucks, I'm only doin' what I was taught was right. There are heaps of ponies way more neighborly than myself."
"Yeah?" I leaned forward on the scaffold and applied more mortar. "Like who?"
"Take for instance this one pony," Applejack handed me another brick. "Granny Smith insists that she's a she. Big Mac thinks it's one of the local mules. Whatever the case, we never see an inch of the soul, but that hasn't stopped whoever it is from dropping by every Saturday morning for the last three months straight and leaving a gift basket by our back door."
"Oh?" I reveled in the feel of a campfire just beyond the partially finished wall of the cabin. Reaching into a heated trough of plaster, I gathered some of the aggregate and plastered it to the brick before stacking it atop a slowly rising chimney along the north side of the house. "Just what kind of a gift basket?"
"Funniest thing--Two loaves of bread, and each time they're still piping hot... as if freshly delivered from a local bakery!"
"Heh..." I smiled placidly to myself as I stacked the bricks higher and higher under Applejack's guidance. "Somepony must think you haven't a lick of baking skills."
"Ha! Fat chance. Still, we never did figure out which of the townsfolk is makin' the dropoffs, nor why they're choosin' to do it all secret-like. But I ain't about to complain! The bread's delicious, and it saves me the trouble of havin' to bake my own on a regular basis. More time for workin' the farm, ya reckon?"
"That doesn't sound like much of a gift."
"The best gifts involve givin' us things we need, not so much things we want." She exhaled a vaporous breath into the wintry air and motioned towards the slowly rising chimney. "For instance, who else in their right mind would be spendin' Hearth's Warming Eve puttin' the finishin' touches on a log cabin?"
"It's my own fault," I murmured. "I should have had this finished long ago."
"At least yer dead-seat on workin' on it." She smiled and winked at me. "A good work ethic means bein' willing to learn while you go against the grindstone."
"I have you to thank, Miss Applejack," I said pleasantly, wiping a smudge of plaster off my brow and grinning. "This fireplace is all you. I'm just glad I tackled it before winter was completely done with."
"Well, I reckon you can still use it for when a cold spell hits," Applejack said as she handed me another pair of nails. A white world of snow and frost lingered behind her as she stood on the scaffold in her green vest and brown hat. "Still, it's a mighty fine chimney. Right now, what's best is that we get this here rooftop finished."
"Much appreciated, Applejack," I grunted as I concentrated hard, hammering the last of several wooden shingles into place atop the log cabin. "But I've taken enough of your time as it is. Don't you have some seeds to plant?"
"As if any other ponies are awake at this hour. Heh." She rolled her green eyes. "One thing at a time, I reckon," she said, casting a glance towards the center of Ponyville over the threadbare treetops. "Winter may get wrapped up by tomorrow morning, but it'll still be a cold spring for a few weeks. It'd be a shame for you to not have yer house all fixed up by then."
"You're a very important pony in town, aren't you?" I smiled and hammered more of the shingles into place. "I imagine all of the farm owners owe you bigtime each spring for clearing the fields of snow."
"Eh... I'm pretty good at barkin' orders, if that's what yer implyin'." Applejack smirked with a glint of pride. "But I'd gladly ditch the megaphone and take to the plow if it meant gettin' things done on time for once."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Applejack sighed. "Only that every year Ponyville is late in gettin' Winter wrapped up, and a lot of that is on account of so few ponies bein' early birds like you and me."
"Hmmm..." I hammered a final nail in and looked at her. "Seems to me like you could use some organization."
"As much as I wanna share y'all's faith, I can only do what's best and make sure the fields get cleared and planted. I may not exactly be timely, but I sure as hay can be precise."
"You're more than just resourceful, Applejack," I said with a smile. With a brief chill, I adjusted the hoodie around my neck and exclaimed, "You're the kind of mare to lend a hoof to each and everypony you see. So long as that's your main concern, who cares about timing? You really think it's just the land that needs Wrapping Up? Ponies gotta live on that land, y'know."
"Hmmm... I suppose that's a good way of lookin' at it," Applejack scratched her chin. "Still," she exhaled. "I'd give my bottom bit just to be on time for once."
"Well, maybe I can help this year!" I placed the hammer down and swiveled about to face her. "That is--if you don't mind a stranger taking part in the labor."
"Heh..." Applejack smirked. "You're never a stranger so long as y'all got a helping spirit and four strong hooves to guide it with."
"A saying of your father's?"
"My own, actually, though I'd be lyin' if I said he didn't inspire that none." She winked. "So, I reckon we should get you a vest or something."
"That depends..." I ran a hoof through my mane and smiled into the frigid air. "Do they come in tan?"
"What are the wooden stakes for?" I glanced up from the row of blossoming shoots sticking up from the soil. "The pony at the gardening shop didn't exactly explain it well to me."
Applejack walked down the rows of infant apple trees. "They're to make sure that the trees grow straight and proper. The thing about graftin' is that the scions aren't exactly prepared to stretch just right from the root-stocks. So long as you use the stakes in the dwarf-trees' infancy, you can make sure they don't keel over or somethin' worse."
I chuckled. A flock of birds sang musically overhead, flying low over spreading leaves of green that surrounded the sunlit clearing in which my new cabin resided. "You must know apple trees like the back of your hoof."
"I only wished they knew themselves half as much. Life would be a lot easier if the trees would just plant themselves."
"Then where would all the fun be?"
"That's what I try to tell my brother, Big Mac, all the time." She walked with me around the green yard of freshly planted grass. "One spring, he talked us into tryin' our hooves at growing pears. I still have nightmares about the next summer after," she muttered with a slight shiver. "We've since agreed that I'm the entrepreneur of the family, not him. Heheh."
"I'm guessing he'd make a better mascot," I said with a wink.
"Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "Y'all can ask half the mares in town and I reckon they'd whole-heartedly agree. There aren't enough sticks in the world to fend them off at times, I swear to Celestia."
"Say, in speaking of summer." I glanced up at the front of my cabin. "Could you give me some advice on adding a wooden outcropping to the front?"
"What, like a porch or somethin'?"
"Yeah," I said with a nod. "This town is a lot prettier than where I moved from, and I wouldn't mind spending some afternoons sitting out here." I shrugged. "And--well--you never know when it might decide to rain."
Applejack looked up from the fireplace. Her body huddled securely under the woolen blanket as she gave me a squinting glance. "I'm mighty curious, though." Her voice was a gentle murmur, barely heard under the roar of the rainstorm pounding in on the cabin walls surrounding us. "What's a musician like you doin' out here on the edge of town? Most artists hang out in the center of Ponyville. Seems like an awful shame for somepony as kind as you to be dwellin' someplace all lonesome-like."
"Believe me..." I breathed easily, sharing the heat from the crackling flame with her. "I'm not half as lonely as you think I am."
"You get plenty of visitors?"
"Oh... on occasion." I smiled. "One friend in particular makes a habit of dropping by on a regular basis."
"Oh yeah? What's her name? I bet I'd know her."
I took a deep breath, my face melting into something cold and melancholic. "No. Unfortunately, you wouldn't."
"Well, it's good to know you're not entirely alone. After all, you've got yerself a cozy little cabin here." She smiled as she gazed once more into the soft red hue of the fire. "Must be awful peaceful."
"Yes. Very."
"Mind if I ask just what you do for a living?"
"What do I do for a living?" I repeated, gazing up at the rows of musical instruments haloing us along the walls. "I... live. I live to live happily, to compose musical accompaniments to the beauty that I see, to record that which is sad and that which is lost, for the somber things in life are mere shadows to the warmth and joy that we're often too busy to recognize." I adjusted the stone-gray sleeves of my hoodie and smiled. "But I'm never too busy. I'm a pony who listens, Applejack, and more often than not I like what I hear, because what's the point in hating the few cherishable treasures that we are given? It's taken a while for me to discover what I've been blessed with. But I'm grateful for that time. It's like building a house: you learn more about the process as you erect the walls and rooftop for the very first time. Once it's finished, it's hardly a project of your labor and your labor alone. Rather, it's the sum of all the love and support that dear friends have contributed to it. In the end, a home is just an extension of yourself, something that couldn't exist without the foundations set forth by those you care about." I closed my eyes and exhaled peacefully. "When I'm living here, all of my newfound friends are living with me, so that this place is something permanent... like a memory that never fades. How could anypony call that lonely?"
I wasn't exactly expecting a response to my heartfelt words, but I wasn't expecting utter silence either. As the seconds ticked away, the glow of the fire grew dim beyond my eyelids. I felt a cold wind billow through the cabin, though not a single window was open. When I opened my eyes, I saw a misty vapor wafting from my lips. With an inescapable chatter of my teeth, I glanced aside.
"Applejack...?"
She was rubbing a hoof over forehead, reeling in a brief dizziness. As soon as she came to, her green eyes flew wide open. "What in the hay...?" Confusion swiftly blossomed into panic as she gazed fitfully at her bizarre surroundings, feeling the folds of the woolen blanket enshrouding her like a straight-jacket. "Where... in Celestia's name...?"
"Applejack..."
"Dah!" She gasped and jumped up, nearly tripping over the basket with Apple Bloom's doll. "Wh-what happened? What am I doing here? Why's my mane so soaked...?!" She started to shiver, like a frail soul that she had once carried out of a barn in some ancient place long forgotten. "Aww shoot... I collapsed in the rain, didn't I?"
"Please..." I stood up and raised two hooves. "Just calm down--"
"I'm so sorry to be a burden, ma'am. This is just so..." She bit her lip and ran a hoof through her wet bangs, quivering all over. I had never seen Applejack look this weak or frightened before. I immediately wanted to hug her. Nopony should ever have to feel the weight of the world crumbling atop her shoulders--nopony but me. If the cabin had fallen into dust all around us, I bet she would have been less scared. "How could I let myself faint in a rainstorm?" Her voice was breaking, as if she was on the verge of doing something I was hardly worthy of witnessing. "What's wrong with me? I'm never this... this..."
"Applejack... Listen to me..." I marched up to her and planted my hooves on her shoulder, forcing her gaze to be swallowed in mine. "You are a strong mare. But it takes strength to trust other ponies. So trust me right now. Everything is all right. You got caught up in the rain, and I took you in." I smiled earnestly, replacing the warmth that she had lost when she stepped away from fireplace. "My home... is your home."
Slowly, Applejack's shivers melted away, like mine always do... and so many of those occasions being owed to her. She gulped and nodded, her lips curving slightly. "Reckon that has a nice sound to it."
"It'd better," I said with a smile, ushering her back down to the fireplace where she could bask in the glow. "I'm a musician, after all." I draped the blanket over the confused mare's shoulders, calming her further as the rainstorm persisted outside. "What about you? Do you sell oranges?"
Applejack blinked at me. It came out first like a stutter, but soon she was guffawing like the proper pony that taught me how to swing an axe. Soon, her breaths slowed to an even pace. "Ahem... So, uhm, I reckon you have a name? It's a shame to not know the pony who's given me such good hospitality."
"Lyra," I said with a gentle nod of the head. "Lyra Heartstrings."
"Lyra," she repeated it, her eyes dancing across the musical instruments above us with foalish wonder. "Now that's a mighty pretty name..."
"Hmmm... So I've been told."
We talked for two and a half hours, during which Applejack never forgot me, and I couldn't have been more thankful. Most of the things she told me were stories that I had heard before, from months of gently coaxing such information from the many freckle-faced, amnesiac prototypes that I had been blessed with meeting before. Not once did I even consider interrupting her anecdotes, no matter how familiar they sounded. The sweetest melodies in life are the ones you're willing to listen to over and over again. No record player could do Applejack justice. She's a symphony I've been lucky to attend on several occasions, and every single time it demands an encore.
The rainstorm ended. Reluctantly, I helped her gather her things. While she fiddled with her hat, I personally bundled the basket with Apple Bloom's toy. I gave it to her and we parted ways. A quiet part of me felt as if I had finally discovered my older sister, only for her to be going away on a long trip.
I watched from the patio at the front of my cabin while Applejack trudged away in the mud. As I predicted, there came a point where she stopped in her tracks just before marching around the bend. I kept watching, for something was evidently weighing on Applejack's mind beyond plain forgetfulness. I saw her dangling the basket up and down in her grip, as if alarmed by how much heavier it felt. Swiftly, she unbundled the blankets keeping the contents dry. What followed next was a shocked expression that no painter could do justice. She reached into the basket, for nestled beside Apple Bloom's doll were two loaves of bread, a day's freshness still wafting from their crust.
Applejack's lips pursed. Murmuring mute words of wonderment, she scanned the horizon. She saw trees, mud, a misty rainbow, and even a peculiar log cabin. But she didn't see me.
I was back inside, nestled under blankets in front of the fireplace as I finished composing the last written bits of "Threnody of Night." Soon, I would have the instrumental finished, and the last step before the magical performance would be acquiring more ingredients to act as a protective buffer. I remembered what happened during my last experiment. A frightening chill ran up my spine, so that I scooted closer to the flames.
But then I felt the folds of the hoodie around my body, like a sisterly hug that never ended, warming me far more than any burning logs ever could. For another night, I fell asleep with a smile, instead of tears. I didn't worry about the ashes of the fireplace spreading beyond the hearth. After all, it had a good foundation.
I don't know how long it will take for me to find my way home, but so long as I am living, I will never run out of neighbors.
Background Pony
III - "Foundations" |
Background Pony | IV - Symphony of Solitude | Dear Journal,
What does it mean to be alone? I mean truly alone? Have I come to a point of understanding the feeling? Is it enough when I fall asleep to my shivers and wake up to my tears?
I've gone beyond feeling sorry for myself. I like to think that the pony I am today is somepony older, braver, stronger, and smarter. But no matter how many qualities that pony may possess, she is still alone.
I... am still so very alone. I cannot deny that. Yet, I can't allow myself to be obsessed with that. After all, what purpose is there in such a fixation? What purpose is there in anything?
There has to be a purpose in all of this. Believing in some sort of purpose is what keeps me going, what keeps me banging my head against the thick wall of my predicament. It's not that I don't have enough things ushering me forward. I want to be remembered. I want to make a true impact on these wonderful ponies' lives. I want to walk up to those whom I once knew and have them recognize me on sight. I want to be able to make new friends and have them look forward to seeing me in the future.
But as I write all of these things--and remember that I am, in fact, the only one writing them--I wonder if I'll only ever be the single, solitary pony dreaming of them... instead of living them.
"And so..." Pinkie Pie plopped a box full of chocolate cupcakes atop the table in the center of Sugarcube Corner. She gazed at her two friends with excited blue eyes. "Then he says, 'The pegasi are promising beautiful weather for Ponyville this weekend. What are you up to Saturday afternoon, Miss Pie?'"
Twilight Sparkle and Rarity gawked at her, their faces blank. "Yes, and?" Rarity chirped emphatically.
"I say to him 'I'll be up to what I'm always up to on Saturday afternoons: ten bottles of sarsaparilla and a prayer!' Snkkkt--heeheehee!" Pinkie Pie's forelegs curled up against her chest as she giggled, gasped, and finally exclaimed, "Then he laughs and says, 'The shores of Lake Marestrom look really pretty this time of year.' Pfft!" She rolled her eyes. "Like that has anything to do with sarsaparilla!"
"Pinkie..." Twilight breathily remarked.
Rarity was leaning forward, her blue eyes sparkling. "You do realize, of course, that the stallion was trying to ask you out?!"
"Oh." Pinkie Pie blinked. She narrowed her eyes with a quizzical expression. "Really? What for?"
"I think someone's smitten with you, Pinkie." Twilight smiled and levitated a mug of tea to her lips. "Please tell me you at least acknowledged his gesture."
"Uhmmmm..." Pinkie Pie scratched her chin as her blue eyes swam across the ceiling. "I can't remember if I did or not. He kind of galloped out of here really quickly."
"Oh?" Rarity's face sunk. "Whatever for?"
"Beats me, though it was after I tossed the lemon custard pie into his face."
Twilight Sparkle spit out a mouthful of tea. She teetered over her edge of the table and gasped for breath.
Rarity was almost fainting. "You... It... He...What?!"
"P-Pinkie?!" Twilight rediscovered her voice in time to sputter forth, "What could possibly have possessed you to toss a pie into a poor stallion's face?!"
"He was only trying to bridge communication between the two of you!" Rarity was still reeling. "What in Equestria were you thinking?"
"I was trying to do him a favor!" Pinkie Pie barked in her defense.
"And just how was that a favor?!" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed. "He wanted to go out on a date with you!"
"Hmmmmm..." Pinkie bit her lip, then shrugged. "I guess I just remembered something Dashie told me: 'All stallions ever want from a mare is some pie.' The poor guy was so shy; I figured I'd cut to the chase!"
Twilight and Rarity stared at Pinkie Pie for ten numb seconds, until finally they cracked. A snorting sound shattered into a series of unrelenting giggles. Their half of Sugarcube Corner vibrated with pure joy's melodic cadence.
Pinkie joined in the laughter, though an undeniable redness was blossoming beneath her cheeks. "Heeheehee... Uhm... I-I don't get it! Should I have tossed a cake at him instead?"
"Heeheehee--Oh Pinkie Pie..." Twilight Sparkle could hardly breathe.
Rarity leaned over and nuzzled Pinkie with a warm smile. "Don't you ever change, darling. One of these days, we're going to find you a gentlecolt who'll gladly take p-pie in th-the face fr-from youuuuu--Snkkkttt--hahahaha!"
"Heeheehee..." Twilight Sparkle stood up and levitated the box of cupcakes with purple telekinesis. "Come on, girls. Let's get to the park before the other three think we ditched today's picnic."
"What about strudel?" Pinkie Pie bounced happily after them as the three made for the exit of Sugarcube Corner. "That's a little less messy than pie! Though it's kind of crusty. Oh! I know! I could avoid the glaze! It'd make it much more aerodynamic when I toss it at him!"
The other two laughed merrily, their high-pitched chorus ringing in my ears as they brushed past my table. I gazed over my shoulder from where I sat. Suddenly, the scent of dust wafted up to my nostrils, and I realized I was squeezing a pair of ancient history books to my chest. Sighing, I relinquished hugging the library checkouts and opened them up atop the table before me. The inside of Sugarcube Corner somehow felt less colorful. It was less warm too. I felt a chill dance through my body as I heard the last traces of Twilight's harmonious voice trailing from my ears.
With a shudder, I pulled the stone-gray sleeves of my hoodie over my hooves and absorbed myself in a sea of text as forgotten and timeless as I.
It's been almot thirteen months since the curse began. In that time, my life has gotten calmer. My days now are filled with tranquility, purpose, and resolve. I'd be lying, however, if I said that things have gotten any easier.
There are some nights when I don't have a magical tune echoing loudly against the walls of my mind. These would be blissful evenings, except that they afford me a chance to dream. There is nothing that makes a prison more painful than being able to dream. After all, what is the power of damnation without a slice of hope to merit its potency?
When I dream, I see myself trotting across an empty Ponyville. There are no other ponies besides me. I am the only equine soul to be seen or heard. Every hoofstep is mine. Every written word belongs to me. Every breath and song and sob holds anchorage in my throat and mine alone.
While this may seem like a nightmare, there are times when I prefer the world of these dreams to that which I'm forced to endure everyday. At least in my dreams I am encompassed by desolation, a far more sensible prison than one that is barred with the faces of so many happy and warm ponies.
Seeing Twilight Sparkle's smiles, hearing her voice: I am reminded of what we used to be. I'm reminded of the days when we and Moondancer were foals, when we played in the parks of upper Canterlot, reenacting major events in Equestrian History. Moondancer liked to pretend she was Princess Luna and Twilight--of course--was always Princess Celestia. More often than not, I was stuck with playing the role of Starswirl the Bearded. The other two would giggle and poke fun at me for having to portray the surly stallion sorcerer in our little get-togethers. It was worth it, though, because nothing made Twilight more happy than to be Princess Celestia. The world seemed a lot more colorful when she was smiling, and that was something I never wanted to disturb.
When the years went by, and Twilight left Moondancer and I to live under the wing of Princess Celestia, I didn't realize it at first--but something had been drained from my life that could never be refilled. We three were young unicorns then, and like all magical ponies our age we were far too eagerly swept up in learning history and spells and various Canterlot arts. Moondancer relocated to a Fillydelphian university to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. I studied music and composition at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Our days were spent in becoming living repositories of knowledge; we pursued the future in our separate ways. As a result, our companionship dissolved, allowing our education and careers to take the forefront of our lives.
Not once, however, did this bother us in any way. Our friendship was something immortal, something immaculate. Occasionally Twilight Sparkle, Moondancer and I would get back together and talk about the directions our lives had taken us. We'd muse about the things we did in our foalhood. So long as we had the memories of what we once were, we could accept what we had become. Our friendship would last as long as we could remember that which united us.
Today, I am the only pony who can afford those memories. Moondancer and Twilight have lost something, and they don't even know it. But do they have to know it? As long as I remember them, as long as I let them laugh, smile, and play Luna and Celestia in my mind, then nothing is lost. I believe this with all my heart.
Then why is it that I see Twilight day in and day out, and I feel as though a phantom limb is speaking to me, that something lopped off my soul is screaming to be reattached, only to remain a numb spectre of something warm and irrecoverable?
I am so happy--so exceedingly enraptured--to see Twilight Sparkle having made so many friends in Ponyville. There was a time when I was worried about her. Moondancer and I pursued our careers with great vigor, but Twilight Sparkle had treated her career like a veritable obsession. On so many instances, I attempted to have the three of us reunite, and only Moondancer would show up. Together, we'd worry over Twilight's path in life. We missed her and shared a mutual concern over the future she was paving for herself. In her foalhood, Twilight always held a major attachment to Princess Celestia, but Moondancer and I both doubted she was aptly prepared for the consequences of being so closely connected to an immortal alicorn.
That's why it fills me with such joy to see Twilight Sparkle having relocated to Ponyville. There are ponies here with whom she's had the opportunity to commune. I truly think they've saved her from a life of perpetual isolation, a fate that would have stripped her heart of the opportunity to feel with the same vitality that she's exercised her mind.
And yet, every time I see her and her friends, I can't help but wonder if things could have been different. I came to Ponyville to visit her during the Summer Sun Celebration. What if the same opportunity that blossomed for Twilight would have opened a door for me? Perhaps I could have been making the same friends as her, attending the same gatherings as her, going to the same picnics and laughing over the same anecdotes and smiling at the same thoughts with her.
I've lived long enough to know that life is the sum of its days, and yet the flavor of its dreams. Sometimes the most beautiful choir is the one you can't join, the one you can only listen to. It's been many years, and I feel like I'm still playing the role of Starswirl the Bearded, giving the spotlight to Twilight Sparkle, allowing her to illuminate the stage with her smile. It's a wonderful play, and it deserves an encore. I just don't know how long I can sit here alone with my applause.
A few days ago, I stumbled through the door to my log cabin, and it felt like just any other afternoon I've ever lived. The same walls embraced me, dangling with the many musical instruments I made to be shared with nopony but myself. A fireplace yawned in waiting, something that would be lit at night--a night just like any other, spent alone with my thoughts and shadows.
This routine I live by is mind-numbing. As soon as I step over the hearth that I've built for myself, I know what the next few hours are going to consist of. I know that I'll be reading one of the many ancient tomes checked out from Twilight's library. I know that I'll be scouring the texts for any tiny bit of info that can clue me into the magical secrets behind Nightmare Moon. I know that I'll come up with either nothing or very little to go by, and the rest of the daylight will be spent sitting out on the patio, attempting to eke beauty from the fringe of the wilderness around me. Then, when evening falls--and the shivers make my bones twitch on the verge of a moonlit waltz--I surrender to the blankets of my cot, staring into the fireplace, trying to imagine another world where there is a smile for every tear, a laugh for every sob, and a pair of ears besides mine for every fear I have to stammer into the gaping abyss of the night.
Why do I even write this? Every ten journal entries or so, I ask the same question, and it is just as pointless and rhetorical as all the others. Right now, as I ramble poetically, I am sitting on a bench about twenty yards from the Carousel Boutique. It's a sunny day. There are very few clouds in the sky. The same squirrel has crawled up to me for the fifth consecutive occasion. I don't know if it realizes I've given it the same morsel of food four times in a row. Candy Mane has flown by three times, each time waving and saying the same greeting. Miss Hooves has trotted past the bench with Dinky, giving me the same smile and nod that she did yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Twenty minutes ago, for the sake of whimsy, I stood up from the bench and scuffed my name in the dirt path with my rear hooves. Sitting back down, I decided to count the number of ponies who stopped to give the four-letter word a cognitive glance. Twenty minutes have gone by, and my count is still at zero. An hour will past, four hours, five days, or a thousand years--and I don't expect that number to go up any.
Who do I write this for other than myself? What other pony do I have to look after, to provide for, to feed or to blanket or to comfort? Who else will read this? Who else will have the ability to read this? Am I just circling words down a gaping funnel? There are times when I feel as if I'm only indulging myself with a great bowl of nothing. It would make far greater sense to write nameless songs in the dirt, or to fatten a squirrel to the bursting point.
There was a time when I used to compose music for a hobby. After all, why study music if you're not going to make more of it? It used to bug my parents. There were nights that I spent in my upstairs bedroom, repetitively strumming away at the same stubborn tune with a lyre or harp, attempting to unlock a musical symphony that I knew for sure would be Canterlot's next masterpiece.
These days, my symphonies are not my own. I go to bed and wake up with tunes haunting my mind, resonating in my horn like some accursed tuning fork. I do everything in my power to drag them out of me, just short of screaming. The nights are cold, freezing, and frightening. When I finally break the music down into a palpable composition, it hardly brings warmth, for another melody is there to take its place, filling my ears like ghost whispers. There are no strings left to pluck and call my own, for I am still threading loose the shadows of Nightmare Moon's endless night.
Perhaps, then, what's left of me to claim as my own is my words. This journal is a solitary piece, performed in a capella, an ode to joy... so long as I have joy to perceive, like a glimpse of the past or a hope for the future. I know very well that I may be the only pony to read what I am writing right now, but perhaps such is for the best. So long as I fill these entries with that which is beautiful, that which is inspiring, then it's a symphony that I can call my own. There are many tunes I've yet to unlock before I can even hope to tackle this curse. However, I must never lose grasp of the most important composition, to which I am the one true conductor.
I only wish the elegies were so clearly defined.
"Are you sure these are the books that you wanna check out?" Spike looked down at me from where he stood, perched, atop a rolling ladder that was leaning against a bookcase full of dusty tomes. "They're not written in Equestrian Basic. From what Twilight Sparkle says, many are written in Moonwhinny. I don't suppose you've got a laypony's knowledge of the lunar tongue, Miss...?"
"Heartstrings," I murmur. I trot across the library and stand at the base of the ladder. "And you shouldn't concern yourself too much. I know this is dense reading material. Let's just say that I've had... time to invest in learning some of the old languages."
"Hey, that's fine with me," Spike said with a shrug as he pulled two large books out from their shelving. He winced at the sight of a scurrying spider and brushed loose a few flimsy cobwebs. "Honestly, I think it's kind of cool. Most ponies who visit this library--and Twilight Sparkle will be the first to tell you this--they come looking for a cook book or an adventure novel or some other really simple thing. It's a shame that she isn't here to help you find this sort of stuff. Then again... Heh..." He smiled as he crawled his small, portly frame down the ladder, balancing the books in a tiny hand. "Maybe it's all for the best. She'd get all excited that a fellow unicorn was checking out stuff this old and would talk your ear off about ancient Equestrian history."
I couldn't help but brandish the thinnest of smiles. "You say that as if it's a bad thing."
"Eh. To each their own. I kind of feel bad for some of the ponies who come here to study, especially when it's a gorgeous day outside. It seems like some of them just never get to leave."
I took a deep breath and took the book from him with gentle telekinesis. "Believe me. I understand completely." I adjusted the collar of my hoodie with a slight shiver before adding, "Still, it's worth it when we have forgotten treasures to uncover."
"Hmm. That almost sounds exciting." He smiled, his rows of tiny razor sharp teeth showing. "You must be doing some sort of wicked cool research project, Miss Heartstrings."
"I'll settle for 'cool,' alright," I said with a nod. "The jury's still out on 'wicked.'"
"Jee, I dunno." He scratched his green spikes and gave the books in my levitating grasp a slightly detestable glance. "I always get the chills when I touch books from our 'Lunar Collection.'"
"You're not the only one."
"Cuz--Really!--Twilight's told me enough about them. The legacy of Nightmare Moon used to be a big deal long before Princess Luna returned from her whole thousand year imprisonment and all. Twilight says that many of the books written in Moonwhinny were banned from libraries all across Equestria. Can you believe that? It had something to do with... uhh... Princess Celestia being concerned that mortal ponies would read what Luna had written and somehow be afflicted by the taint of Nightmare Moon."
"It was called the 'Great Canterlot Eclipse,'" I explained to him, mentally quoting Twilight as I shuffled over to a desk and prepared for a long afternoon of studying. "Scholars write about it to this day. It was a dark time in the aftermath of Nightmare Moon's tyranny when literature underwent a great deal of censorship. Eventually, as a few centuries rolled by, Princess Celestia realized the error of her ways, and she lifted the ban. This gave birth to the Modern Equestrian Renaissance, and Canterlot was founded as a center of art and learning, ultimately leading to it becoming the capital city of Equestria. Still, the effects of the Great Eclipse are evident in pony culture, and many things written down in the lunar archives remain undiscovered to this day."
Spike whistled. "Wow. That's different than how Twilight explains it."
That struck me rather curiously. "And just how does she explain it?"
"Simply that most ponies are too scared to read things that were once held in the library of Princess Luna."
"Well, that's perfectly understandable," I said sagely. "There's a great deal of darkness and loss attached to the name 'Nightmare Moon.'"
"Yeah, well." He winked and pointed my way. "If it gets too freaky to research on your own, just give me a whistle. Even Twilight will say that I'm a pretty good research assistant. Don't be afraid to ask if you need help with anything, Miss Heartstrings."
"Really?" I opened one of the old tomes, waved the cloud of dust away, and squinted over the many alien words. My question was a very droll, tone-deaf plea. "Could you, by chance, tell me anything about the Cosmic Matriarch?"
"Uhhhh..." Spike's emerald eyeslits blinked dazedly. "The Cosmic What-now?"
"It's an old mare's tale, as far as most ponies are concerned," Twilight Sparkle had once said. "But I happen to know it's a lot more than that."
I gulped. I shivered. It was barely two months into my curse. I was living out of a green tent pitched alongside an abandoned barn just outside of town. That day, I sat in the waiting room of Aloe and Lotus' Day Spa, pretending to be another anxious customer--just so I could interrupt Twilight for this one desperate conversation. To this day, I thank my lucky stars that she was gracious enough to ignore the sight of the shivering bum in a stone-gray sweatjacket, looking like she needed far more than a frivolous massage or pedicure.
"How's that?" I murmured, trying to keep my composure. The world was a frigid tomb. My mind reeled from the same miserable tune spinning like a broken record in the thick of my skull. "How do you know it's more than an old mare's tale?"
"Because Princess Celestia has spoken about it... or her..." She giggled. "Or perhaps them. Whatever the case, I have no doubt that the Cosmic Matriarch is real. I've been our magical ruler's apprentice long enough to hear her infer as much."
"Infer?" I gulped, struggling to remain still in the chair. The shivers were unbearable; I fought them courageously. I had to appear as interested in this conversation as my heart genuinely felt. "You mean to say that she's never outright come out and told you what the Cosmic Matriarch is?"
Twilight shifted with momentary discomfort. For a moment, I was afraid that I had struck a nerve, that I had lost her desire to educate me. To my elation, she continued, though pensively so. "It's very personal to her, I think. And I don't say that lightly. Princess Celestia has lived for a very, very long time. It's very difficult to stumble upon things that she takes personal stock in."
"But she does with this?"
"Mmmmhmmm. And Princess Luna as well. You see..." Twilight smiled and brushed a hoof through her mane as we waited "our turns" with Aloe and Lotus. "The Princesses who look after the Sun and Moon are immortal. However, while that fact is irrefutable, it makes ponies overlook something very important. Ironically, it's the one thing that every magician in Equestria has to learn before starting their career."
I swallowed hard and uttered, "Everything has a beginning."
Twilight glanced at me with pleasant surprise. "Why... yes! Heehee--How would you know that? Are you also a magician, Miss Heartstrings?"
I bit my lip and avoided her gaze. This was my fifth identical conversation with Twilight Sparkle, and I was only just then getting used to the whole ritual. "I've... done my fair share of reading," I confessed and lied at the same time. All I knew were words, terms, names, and very few of them in Equestrian Modern. "But it's my understanding that nopony has ever been taught the true origin to the Princesses of Equestria."
"And for a good reason," Twilight said with a nod. Her lavender features were bathed in the gentle light of an aroma candle, giving my foalhood friend an ethereal quality as she spoke of holy things. "Mortal ponies live--what? Sixty to seventy years? Ninety years at most? Starswirl the Bearded was a major exception, of course, but most ponies are lucky if they see so much as a century go by before their time on earth is over. Can any of us really imagine what it's like to be an alicorn? To have lived for eons? To have seen the foundation of this world, and the birth of the Sun and Moon themselves?"
I fought another wave of chills, staring off into the distant candles as if they were alien stars twinkling beyond us. "I can imagine many things. It's a whole different situation to feel." I glanced back at her. I could only hope my eyes were as sincere as my words. "What does Princess Celestia feel? Do you know?"
"I wish I could tell you, Miss Heartstrings. I wish I could know--so I could tell it to all of my friends, or to anypony for that matter. But, even though I am Celestia's apprentice, there are many things that are still a mystery to me, and I think when it comes to the topic of the Cosmic Matriarch, it's far too sensitive a thing to press the Princess for information about."
"You think she isn't willing to share what she knows?"
Twilight squirmed with a sudden awkwardness. "Erm... No. It's something far different than that, I think... or at least I theorize."
"Oh?"
She looked at me. Her eyes were surprisingly vulnerable. "Would you, Miss Heartstrings, attempt talking about your mother... if you had lived for so long that you could hardly remember her?"
A sharp breath left me. The shadows in the room doubled, like the thick curtain of night. "I... I never once thought of that..."
Twilight gently nodded. "I imagine Celestia thinks of that everyday, which is why I'm so reticent to bring it up in conversation."
I let my gaze fall. "I'm sorry..."
"Hey..." She smiled and leaned forward. "Don't be. It's healthy to be curious, but we mustn't forget that there are still sacred boundaries in this world. Besides, though Celestia may not have much to talk on the subject, she did once say something that has stuck with me for as long as I've known her."
I glanced at her again. "What's that?"
Twilight was grinning, a very soft and childish expression. "When I first became her apprentice, I asked her about the creation of the world. She was very vague in her answer, except for one curious detail." She stifled a giggle, cleared her throat, and quoted her mentor. "'The world began like all things began, my apprentice, not with a mere breath... but with a song.'"
What is this song? Is it the same thing that gets stuck in my head every morning and every night of my life? Have I been made capable of sensing something that no other Equestrian soul has been blessed--or cursed--to witness? Why me? Why me alone? And what does Nightmare Moon have to do with it?
This is what I struggle over. This is what I wrack my brain with. Day after day--in Twilight's library, on park benches, before the fireplace of my cabin, under candle-light, in the frigid glow of the moon and the gentle kiss of the morning sun--I rummage through books, tomes, scrolls in search of an answer, until my eyes gloss over with the dust and exhaustion of all the ages this mortal soul is constantly struggling to catch up with.
It's taken me several months, and I am only barely scratching the surface of history's forgotten answers--assuming that they are indeed answers, and just not red herrings disguised by the obscure layers of time. The richest details are lost in several languages, and most of them dead. I've relied on codecs, translations, almanacs, and various other legends that dig and chip away at mountains of lunar speech, and the most I know is that there is even more that I don't know, and may never know.
Was Nightmare Moon a musician first and a despot second? This should come as no surprise. My constant research over the last year has granted me remarkable insight. It turns out that every sentient culture in Equestria has a common retelling of a great deceiver whose gift was in the musical arts before turning into a bane of righteousness. Minotaurs write of a royal lyricist who--once scorned by a lover--trapped his entire kingdom in a labyrinthine spell. Diamond Dogs, often considered to be illiterate, actually possess several scrolls depicting a tribe of murderers who led their brothers astray with a 'Howl of Cyclones'. Even dragons have a spoken legend that tells of an ancient queen who petrified her brothers and sisters using a magically resonating diamond.
Perhaps my discoveries are a result of me--a cursed unicorn--looking specifically for information that relates to her plight. Still, I can't shake the uncanny coincidence of so many similar legends being told across multiple, different civilizations.
It's no secret that Princess Luna has an appreciation for musical arts. Then again, so does Princess Celestia. The sisters are both alicorn rulers of ponydom, and it'd be a heinous crime to not invest in the same culture that defines those whom they rule over. However, it's always been an accepted notion that ponies of ancient times relished more in the daytime than in the nighttime, and as a result Celestia's patronage was expressed in song and dance whereas worship of Luna was far more subdued. It doesn't take an immortal soul to imagine Luna seeking music of her own to fill in the gap.
But what connection could that have--if any--to the Cosmic Matriarch? I am certain--no--I am convinced that there must be a common thread. Twilight Sparkle is an apprentice after Celestia's own heart. If she quotes the Princess, saying that "all things began with a song," I simply have no choice but to believe her. Our alicorn rulers began when the rest of the world did; they're the only ones possessed with the ability to remember. What better a way is there to preserve memories than through music?
Yes, this song is real. I am a lone soul, imprisoned in a cold bottle echoing with these ghostly melodies, like hidden phantoms on the dark side of the moon. Once I find them, I can find myself, and maybe--just maybe--I can rebroadcast them to the world, so that more ponies than just the alicorns can remember what has been lost since the foundation of everything, and then I can be as real as the song too.
Just yesterday morning, I knew it was time. I had put off the performance of the Threnody of Night for far too long. I had run out of excuses just as I had run out of fear. There comes a time when the desperation to find answers overcomes the trepidation of the cold journey ahead. Yesterday was just such a time. I had all the bits I needed to buy the ingredients. I had all the time to make my trip. I just didn't look forward to the energy it was going to sap from me.
I needed to go to the Everfree Forest, and that meant bundling up. Where I was headed, the hoodie simply wouldn't be enough. It started with woolen socks. I slid these over my hooves, then slipped them into thick goulashes that went halfway up my fetlocks. I grabbed a thick brown cloak that I hadn't worn in over a month and draped it over my entire body. Next came a familiar yellow scarf that still carried with it the felicity of an elegant unicorn's generous smile. Finally, I grabbed a black snowcap that I had sewn for myself, with a hole made to allow my horn to pierce through. Grabbing a bag of bits, I telekinetically flung the dual hoods of the sweatjacket and cloak over my head and stumbled out the door to my cabin.
It was a thirty minute trot until I would get to the edge of the Everfree Forest, to where the thick bundle of clothing would prove useful. Until then, I sweated uncomfortably, assaulted by a warmth that was actually unbearable for once. Despite the temptation to strip of at least the cloak or goulashes, I pressed on, knowing that soon I would be wishing for all of the world's blankets to be engulfing me. I wondered what I looked forward to the least: making this trip, or performing the instrumental once I had acquired what I needed. I had to keep my mind distracted, if only to give me strength, if only to make me think of other situations where sweating profusely was as comical as it was awkward, like trying to explain my cutie mark for the millionth time to Applejack's and Rarity's sisters, or receiving a flower from Morning Dew.
Morning Dew.
A sigh escaped my lips, and I smiled for the first time in days. It's funny: all of my writings on the beauty of friendship and my hopes for relinquishing the binds of this curse, and it's still those two words that can bring me joy without fail. My burdensome journey became slightly more bearable, and I marched into the thick forest refreshed, so that I meditated calmly for once and did what every musician does when she's relaxed.
I composed.
There are seven lunar elegies connected to my curse. I know this only because they are all that I have discovered so far. They come to me without warning or announcement, infecting my mind, born in sleep or in waking fright. If it was a song that began the world, then it was one that ended me, and I must carefully bridge the gap between creation and annihilation.
Lunar Elegy #1, as Twilight helped me discover, is the "Prelude to Shadows." Referred to only once in The Royal Equestrian Compendium Volume Twelve, it's the first piece of evidence in the Lunar Archives that suggests that Princess Luna ever took a hobby in musical composition. To that end, it was the first tune that was stuck in my head the very moment I awoke to a world that perpetually forgot me.
Like all of the elegies that come to my mind, I endeavored to understand the nature of "Prelude to Shadows." That meant performing the melody myself once I had completed the composition. I knew that there was something mystical and enchanting about the piece. What I didn't bet on was an actual magical effect for playing it out with my lyre. No sooner was I done with "Prelude to Shadows" when I found myself experiencing a severe mood shift. I became nervous, paranoid, and easily frightened. Every loose shape and beam of light spoke to me, as if something beyond the walls were closing in. I was almost mortified when another tune immediately took the Prelude's place in my mind.
Lunar Elegy #2, also thanks to Twilight, would turn out to be called "Sunset Bolero." When performing the Prelude and the Bolero back to back, I realized that the music called for a smooth transition. It was then that I realized that the elegies coming to my mind weren't just random tunes. They were a suite, and I was on the verge of unfolding a grandiose symphony of mysterious proportions.
When I first played the "Sunset Bolero," I was pleased to not experience a wave of uneasiness the likes of which the Prelude afflicted me with. Instead, I was overcome with an excitement I didn't expect. My heart's pulse rate went up and stayed that way for over thirty-six hours. I felt like I could run a marathon. Whether this was magically the result of the Bolero's heavy percussion or some sort of unexplained impetus that only Nightmare Moon could understand, I was at a loss to know. I was merely a mortal playing the tunes of an unearthly alicorn spirit. I was willing to bet that with only two performances, I was retaining more knowledge than even poor Princess Luna herself was capable of knowing at that point in time.
Lunar Elegy #3 took me a while to figure out, for I at first thought that I was simply hearing "Sunset Bolero" over again. It took several hours of meditating into the long cold night, but finally I realized that the third elegy was a modified version of the Bolero, slowed down, with a melancholic dissonance. Desperate for an explanation, I rummaged through the lunar texts available to me in Twilight's library. It took over two months, but upon mastering enough words of the lunar tongue, I was finally able to look up an ancient passage depicting Princess Luna and a second composition of one of her previous songs. This was how the "March of Tides" was born.
Performing the "March of Tides" had an instant effect on me. It made me light-headed, and time seemed to slow down. I realized then what the "Sunset Bolero" was preparing me for, because if my heart wasn't ready for the creepy effect of the March, I may not have been able to finish the composition. It was at this point of discovery that I realized that not only were these elegies meant to be performed in time, but they were being fed to me in just the perfect order, as if there was some invisible purpose behind the whole thing. I now had an even greater reason to practice these enchanted tunes, for I suddenly felt that some other spirit besides myself was involved.
Lunar Elegy #4 had no title, because for the longest time I didn't desire to name it. After the first performance, I had a panic attack, because I was blinded halfway through the instrumental. There's really no better a way to describe it. Halfway through the performance, all of the lights and colors were sucked out of the world. I remember collapsing in the middle of my new cabin that night, shivering, clutching at the shadows. I think I may have even screamed for help--not that anypony could have heard me. It's difficult to remember. The important detail is that when the morning sun came, I could see it, and I was enraptured.
After that, I gave up on pursuing the elegies for over six weeks. Could you blame me? I was dealing with a symphony that was beyond my control. My curse certainly wasn't being lifted with any of my subsequent performances. Besides, understanding it didn't make me any less vulnerable a mortal soul to the work of an equine goddess. However, as the days wore on, and the fourth elegy resonated in the recesses of my mind, I was drawn back to the lyre like a mother to her sickly foal.
I picked an evening when the moon was full. It was a pale glow of comfort to my frightened senses as I plucked forth at the strings once again. I performed the first elegy, then the second, then the third. Sure enough, halfway through Elegy # 4, my vision left me. Bravely--blindly--I strummed on, and when I was finished with the composition, my vision returned. Not only that, but I was experiencing a strange peace, a tranquility that kept me awake and resolute in the middle of the night's freezing stare. The next day, I did some research at Twilight's library, and almost immediately stumbled upon an ancient tale about Princess Luna curing a village of a pestilence that had afflicted the ponies' eyes. What was more, she did it with a song, and the name of it was "Darkness Sonata."
After the harrowing circumstances involving the Sonata, I felt as though I could take on anything. So I engaged Elegy #5 with great courage and vigor. It turned out that my guile was almost for nothing. The fifth elegy resulted in a very comforting--almost whimsical experience. I wouldn't necessarily call it "happy." A more appropriate word for it would be "secure." According to Twilight Sparkle, the name of the instrumental is "Waltz of Stars," and it's an appropriate name too. Its cadence mimics the uplifting beat of the "Sunset Bolero," while incorporating a dissonance akin to "March of Tides," whereas "Waltz of Stars" achieves a far more transcendental effect.
Playing the "Waltz of Stars" was ultimately a neutral experience. While the tune's whimsy and ethereal quality enchanted me at first, I felt for days after the song's performance a sense of longing. I couldn't sleep, on account of how pathetically lonesome I felt. I couldn't stop thinking about the song, about the void through which my strings echoed, as if I was calling out to long lost sisters I could never see again. Why siblings? I still don't quite understand it. But when I think about the song, I look up at the starry expanse and suddenly I feel as if I have all the answers, even if they're not all discovered yet.
Then there's Elegy #6. Twilight Sparkle immediately recognized the tune, and then she shocked me when she said that it was none other than the Anthem to the Lunar Empire. She explained to me that the song had in fact been used as a military call to assembly in the years preceding the rise of Nightmare Moon. Before Princess Luna was banished with the Elements of Harmony, her tainted spirit tricked many unicorns into following her will. The result was an army that had gathered under Nightmare Moon's lead. Using these ill-fated ponies, the dark alicorn attempted to usurp the power of her sister and all souls who defended her.
It pains me to think that I was being taught by invisible tongues to learn a tune that had once meant the bane of my very own ancestors. Unicorns almost went extinct as a result of the war between the holy siblings of Equestria. The elegies I was uncovering were frightful and mysterious, but they were not without their own sense of beauty. I think it goes without saying that even the most insidious of tools we invent in this world all start as a noble work of art.
So, with great zeal, I poured through the pages of every ancient tome I could find. I soon discovered that almost anything related to the sixth elegy had been eliminated from modern history. In a way, it makes sense. Nopony in their right mind would want to see something like the Lunar Empire become reborn in our day and age. Still, it's such a tragedy that fantastic works of art--beautiful by their merit alone--must absolutely be destroyed along with the nefarious shadows of the past. As my mind swam with the melancholic tunes being sung to my mind, it soon became clear that I didn't need to know the actual name of the elegy to ascertain its composition. Ever since my plight began, I've possessed an inexplicable sense that is not blemished by the fears and prejudice of time. Furthermore, I of all ponies should know that words are meaningless in my search. I can only imagine how much of Princess Luna's heart went into her symphony before her poisoned mind transformed it into something wicked.
I decided to call the sixth instrumental "Moon's Elegy," and it's impact upon me was immediately noticeable upon performance. As soon as I had finished strumming the composition, I felt the chills of my curse doubling... tripling. It was as though every warm piece of the world had been pulled away from me. I felt numb, cold, hungry, and very impressionable. It suddenly made sense why this was such an easy song for corrupt warmongers to wield. If enough zealots were exposed to the "Moon's Elegy," I could see a despot like Nightmare Moon making them do anything with the simple promise of lifting the very effects of the tune. As a matter of fact, the only way I was able to free myself from the paralyzing cold was to play my way back through elegies # 1 through 5.
Perhaps, then, it's excusable as to why I've been so hesitant to tackle Elegy #7, a tune that Twilight Sparkle has herself called "Threnody of Night." A threnody is a song of tribute to the dead. I've hoped to be many things at the end of unraveling this curse, but dead isn't one of them.
And yet, what else am I to do? I certainly can't quit on these instrumentals. I learn them as I discover them. There is no skipping a tune, no jumping ahead to see how the entire symphony ends. I can't track down Princess Luna and ask her for help. I can't send a letter to Princess Celestia and call upon her wisdom. With the exception of Twilight's insight and Spike's research skills--both of which are fleeting assets at best--I am alone on this journey. It's a cold and treacherous trek, like a tiny pony flung into endless night, or a lone body trotting through a gloomy jungle.
Yesterday, at noon, I marched slowly through the Everfree Forest. I had no choice but to take it easy. It didn't matter how desperate I felt. Breaking into a full gallop would waste my energy, and I was utilizing every bit of stamina in keeping myself from passing out in the middle of that dense foliage.
It was cold. So very, very cold. My teeth chattered and the hairs of my coat stood on end. Even beneath all of my bundled clothes--the cloak and the scarf and the snow cap and the sweatjacket--I was about ready to shatter into a million frozen pieces.
When the curse struck me, I was located in the center of Ponyville--at ground zero--where Nightmare Moon first touched down upon the earth after a thousand long years of banishment. For that reason, apparently, I am the warmest in the heart of Ponyville. Moving out, I am shivering along the town's fringes, freezing at my cabin, and downright numb at places very distant from the center, places such as Sweet Apple Acres.
In the Everfree Forest, I might as well be dead. The temperature is unbearable. To any other pony, I must look like a feverish mess, shivering beneath layers of wool and cloth. It's a feat in and of itself to pass my condition off as a temporary illness. I rarely ever trot out this far, and when I do it's only when it's absolutely necessary. I needed the materials for performing the "Threnody of Night." As a result, I had to keep going. I had to keep piercing the forest. Soon enough, I would have found my destination.
Everytime I looked at the uneven path ahead of me, the trail appeared to stretch on even further. To avoid fainting, I tilted my gaze upwards and allowed the frail specks of sunlight to bleed through the foliage and play with my eyes, keeping me awake. I've been told that the Everfree Forest is supposed to be frightening, that the unchecked growth of nature is a scary change from the orderly world that stewards like the pegasi maintain for us. As far as I'm concerned, all of the nightmarish things of Everfree are invisible and harmless, at least in comparison to the very real cold that assaults my body each time I venture out there. Making a sort of trek like I did yesterday is the mystical equivalent of diving into a subterranean lake hidden beneath a polar ice cap. I'd be warmer if I gathered a syringe full of permafrost and shoved it into an open vein. Toying with the mystical effects of a lunar curse is hardly a game, and yet I have no way of dissecting my situation unless I play with it just a little bit.
I had to keep myself distracted. I thought of the Threnody. I thought of the musical notes burned into the back of my brain. My ears twitched as I imagined each tune long before I performed them. In the streets of Ponyville, before the gracious bits of other ponies being flung before me, I had practiced the tunes--but each occasion was a purposeful alteration of the true composition. I couldn't practice the actual instrumentals by striking each note true; a perfect playthrough meant activating the magical spell attached to the elegy I was performing. I very deeply feared afflicting other ponies with the same mystical burden that I and I alone was enduring. After all, the purpose of freeing myself from the curse was finding a way to commune with such souls in the first place. It was a noble goal, and it was worth all of the trials, tribulations, and shivers... most of the time.
I felt a great shadow looming over me. With a gasp of joy, I realized that I had finally stumbled upon the treehouse. Various masks of exotic design greeted me as I all-but-stumbled into the door, rapping upon it with a shuddering hoof. I clung to myself, shivering upon the threshhold. I felt weaker this visit. I wasn't sure how long I was going to last.
Thankfully, I didn't have to wait for long. I heard her voice almost immediately: "Come. Come and enter, stranger or friend. For I have brews for all ills contained within."
I took a deep, deep breath and opened the door. I had to work every quivering muscle into producing a neighborly grin. "Good afternoon, Miss Zecora." I nearly stumbled dead across her floor. I locked the joints in my legs and stood as tall as I could, my teeth showing in the green torchlight. "I'm so sorry to bother you."
"It is hardly a bother, kindly mare," said the meditative zebra. She stood over a bubbling cauldron, squinting at a series of herbs that she was sprinkling over a new and experimental concoction. "So long as you are in my house, you are in my care."
"Well, th-that's good..." I winced past a wave of chills. I was afraid to look up, as if expecting the dangling decorations from her desert homeland to be replaced with deadly icicles. "Uhm... I've been told th-that you're a local hermit, and that you rarely wander into town..." The fact that this was the fifth (or sixth?) time reciting these words didn't make the task any less awkward. "...but I'm desperate t-to finish this scientific experiment that I'm working on for the Manehattan University, and I'm sh-short four reagents. I'm t-told that you have several sound stones that you c-commonly sell, is that true?" I clenched my teeth. I knew Zecora's answer before she said it. I only needed her to come out with it quickly. If only zebras were as punctual in their predictability as ponies.
"Hmmm, magical sound stones, a ram-crafted delight." Zecora murmured to the hazy atmosphere of her home as she stirred the broth before her. "I say five pony bits per rock sounds about right. I wish I could charge less, but unfortunately sound stones are acquired through much trial and difficulty." She trotted over towards a shelf where a black box resided. In so doing, she cast me the first glance since I entered, and her blue eyes widened. "By the shadows, pony, your attire! Is Equestria due for a blizzard most dire?"
Here we go...
I swallowed hard and did a very brave thing. I lowered the hoods of both my cloak and hoodie. Whether or not Zecora spots the chattering teeth beneath my smiling lips, I can never tell. I can only hope the gesture is enough to distract her, and so far it's worked every time. "There's no c-cause for alarm, Miss Zecora. Ponyville's not expecting inclement weather. It's just me and my c-condition."
"And what condition, pray tell, is that?" Zecora grabbed four dark crystals from the black box and cradled them in a prehensile tail. She trotted towards me with an expression that was half concerned, half amused. "Before you, the most I've seen a pony wear is a hat!"
"It's genetic, so n-none of your m-medicines will help me." After so many trips, it was the best excuse I had for making these visits short. I have nothing against Zecora. I'm sure I would love her company, and if I could predict her trips to downtown Ponyville I would visit her there in a heartbeat. It was just that the longer I stayed in her home the more certain I was that my hooves would go permanently numb. "Seriously, all I c-came for was the sound stones." I was already reaching telekinetically into my floating bag of coins. Several weeks of street performances went into this shivering moment, and I wasn't about to tarry. "Five bits per stone? It so happens I have about twenty bits here..."
"Surely, there is more for you that I can do!" Zecora's face was long, sad. Then suddenly it brightened. "Ah! Perhaps a sample of dragon's brew!"
Oh shoot.
She had never said that on any of the visits before.
"Uhhh..." I stood, frozen in mid-payment, like a tourist who had suddenly gotten lost in the middle of a horrible jungle. "Dragon's b-brew? Miss Zecora, I swear, all I need is--"
But she was already reaching for a jar from a nearby counter and pouring red liquid into a wooden bowl. "If there is any noble truth taught me by ponykind, it's that one must keep hospitality first in mind. You can consider these sound stones as good as sold, but it would be cruel to let you leave so infirmed and cold!"
"Miss Zecora, seriously..." I ran a hoof over my face. Why? Why do I have to be cursed in the middle of a sea of blessings? I could have just grabbed the stones and ran. I could have even stolen them and used the twenty bits for my own benefit later. What would it have mattered? Zecora wouldn't have remembered me, whether I was a robber or a saint. Why? Why do I have to play by this code? Haven't I gone through enough as it is? I'm alone in this nightmare. Don't I deserve to play a little dirty for once, especially if it means me getting what I need faster? "You don't need to give me anything..."
"Your words say 'no' but your voice says 'yes'." She pierced me as much with her smile as she did with that statement, all the while motioning me towards the fresh potion she had prepared. "Your trembles should decrease as soon as you ingest."
I sometimes wonder if I'd be any less transparent if those I live with actually remembered me. With a defeated breath, I marched over and gracefully accepted her medicinal gift. The taste wasn't half as bitter as the knowledge of its uselessness. I've no doubt Zecora's brews could cure pony pox, leprosy, or even pegasus arthritis. The only thing capable of appeasing my situation is a smile--blissful and ignorant--and it was my job at the moment to aim it at her.
"Thank you very much, Miss Zecora. That was very generous of you."
"It should provide enough heat to carry you back from which you came," she said. "And now that you've sampled the dragon's brew, might I trouble you for your name?"
"Lyra," I recited. "Lyra Heartstrings." I set off the invisible metronome inside my head in anticipation for what would come next.
"Ah, such a delightful name is 'Heartstrings.' If only every soul was designed after beautiful things."
I can't help it. I giggle everytime I hear that. That alone--far more than the brew--made the cold momentarily manageable. "Jee, thanks. Too bad you don't have an instrument to read such lyrics off to."
"My spoken rhyme is merely shamanistic tradition," Zecora explained as she marched over to the nearby counter and picked the stones back up again. "I dare not encroach upon the ways of a musician."
"Why not?" I asked. As I spoke, my gaze fell upon a wooden engraving lying on a nearby shelf. I saw the illustration of several zebra figures gathered around what looked to be a pair of festive drums. I felt my heart beating at the very notion. "Music is the best expression of the soul," I murmured, my eyes dripping forlornly over the desert illustration. "Be it zebra or pony."
After a pause, I hoofed her the twenty bits and slid the four sound stones she offered into my pouch. Zecora had said something new to me this visit, so I felt like saying something "new" to her.
"I'm sure there're plenty of songwriters in town who'd love to work on something with you that doesn't involve herbs or potion-making. Twilight Sparkle and her friends speak highly of you, otherwise I would never have thought to come here for these rocks."
She replied, "I am sure they have better ways of spending their time than attempting to shape melody around a zebra's rhyme."
"But... you're so..." I gazed around at the walls surrounding us. All too soon, I felt the shivers returning, but this time they were for her and not for me. I realized that the only alien thing in that place was me. Zecora had made a home away from home for herself, and the foundations of her little nest were as beautiful as they were strange. "You're so alone h-here," I eventually murmured, failing to hide the trembles in my frame once more. "And I get the feeling it's because you choose to be, M-Miss Zecora. If I were you..." I bit my lip. What was I doing? I should have just left and been done with it all. I had gotten the stones. Foalishly, I continued, "If I knew that I had so many friends in town, I wouldn't spend half as much time alone as I already do."
Zecora seemed unaffected by my impassioned plea. She trotted back to her cauldron like a soldier returning to her post. "What I do in solitude, I do for the best. A shaman's work isn't done until she's finished her quest."
I gazed forlornly her way. "And all of those years that we spend working on something so important to us..." I struggled through a wave of frost. I felt like my eyeballs would freeze in their sockets, and yet I struggled to keep staring at her. "That's a long time to live without a soundtrack, don't you think?"
At that, she glanced curiously up at me. She gave a gentle smile. "I am curious that you would speak of 'we'. Is there a shaman in this room other than me? Heheheh..." I'm sure that the chuckle coming out of her lips was meant to be whimsical. However, to me it felt like a bitter pill, more nauseating than all of the world's exotic brews sloshed together.
"Shaman... Musician... Goddess...?" I gulped hard. The walls were closing in, and all of them laced with ice. I stumbled backwards out of the treehouse as if I was tripping over a snowbank. "What's in a title if we don't have anypony but ourselves to share our gifts with?"
Something reflected in the surface of Zecora's bubbling cauldron other than her face. To her squinting blue eyes, it looked like a fine mist of vapors. She glanced up at the walls of her home. Aside from the curious sensation of having just used her voice to speak, this revelation had no effect on her. After all, she was always alone.
I returned to my cabin well before the sunset. Even then, I didn't immediately start performing the "Threnody of Night." I had to recover from my trip into the veritable tundra that the Everfree Forest was to me. I laid in the center of my cot, huddled beneath a mountain of blankets. I stayed there, weathering the fading waves of cold, practicing the Threnody in my head. But I did more than that. I had to steel myself for what I was about to do, for what no amount of meditation could truly prepare me for.
You would think my life is predictable, given the circumstances. That couldn't be further from the truth. My entire situation is one immense dive into the unknown. Even the very alicorn who invented these tunes is oblivious to the masterpieces I'm endeavoring to unlock. The only soul who possibly knows an ounce of truth is Nightmare Moon, and all ponies--those cursed and those blessed--are equally happy to see her gone for good.
It is the task of mortals to make sense out of senselessness. Goddesses have galloped among us for millennia, and this has never stopped being true. When my task becomes too formidable to bear, I simply remind myself that while I may be alone with my memories, I am hardly alone in my struggles. I take little comfort in this understanding, but I do take a decent amount of strength.
After an hour and a half of rest, I decided that I was ready. I grabbed my lyre. I grabbed a torch. I grabbed my music sheets, my notes, and an oil lantern. Finally, I brought along the four dark-crystal sound stones, devices that had been used for ages by rams and unicorns alike for absorbing acoustical frequencies. After hours of reading in Twilight's library, I learned that these same materials were used by proto-Equestrians in harnessing the frequencies of mystical enchantment. It's hypothesized that the substance had originally been made out of a vibrating stone whose age predates the first Rise of Discord. As a matter of fact, the rocks were believed to be immune to waves of chaos energies. After utilizing them myself, I realized that I could properly channel the effects of the lunar elegies and contain them to a small area of focus, so that the instrumentals I performed became much more manageable. If there was anything I needed from that evening, it was a way to properly manage whatever would come next.
With beautiful irony, evening had fallen. I trotted the dark length from my cabin to a tiny wooden shack positioned along the edge of the woods. My dim lantern illuminated my path. Reaching the shack, I unlatched the wooden door and opened it, revealing a hidden flight of wooden steps that led down a steep trench dug out of the earth. I had shoveled the hollow myself, spending several months of flexing my telekinetic muscle. Closing the door to the "shack" behind me, I marched down the depth of fifteen feet until I was finally standing in the center of a twenty-by-thirty foot rectangular cellar. When I first started these experiments, I wasn't sure exactly what danger the magical instrumentals might pose upon the residents of Ponyville all around me. I decided to play it safe and fashion for myself a "bunker" of sorts within which I could perform my lonely symphonies, in full confidence that no other soul could hear the compositions of Princess Luna besides my accursed self.
I hung the lantern from a metal hook implanted in the roof of the underground niche. A dim amber light danced across the wooden boards barricading the walls of soil all around me. The floor was a sea of even gravel that crunched under my hooves, except for a plank of wood in the center, atop which a metal stand resided. Upon this pedestal, I planted my lyre. With magic, I floated a wooden stool over and propped it in front of the instrument. I then laid the sound stones in key positions in the four corners of the wooden plank, so that they surrounded me and my instrument. I meditated, focused upon the leylines of magic attuned to my horn, and enchanted the four crystals. They glowed with a dark emerald haze that played with the amber kiss of the lantern above, making it feel like Hearth's Warming morning. Sitting down in the center of the ethereal halo, I collected my breaths, then propped the notebook full of musical notations in a notch positioned halfway up the pedestal.
For several numb minutes, I sat in dead silence, half buried in the earth like the ghost I was made to be, teetering upon the edge of unknowing. The hardest part of experimenting is always starting the experiment to begin with. What am I to discover? What horror or elation waits for me at the end of my last strummed note? Will I find a cure to my curse, or a deeper degree of damnation?
I thought of Zecora, for some reason. I thought of her sitting in the middle of her house, just as alone, just as far away from home, working on the latest of her shamanistic experiments. I wondered what drove her to do what she did--and in such solitude as well. Was it all pure, medicinal altruism? Did she have a goal in mind? Did she benefit from everything she ever did... and did alone?
I envied her zeal, her courage, to embark on a daily basis to work on things nonstop, for the simple sake of being busy. The day that my curse is cured, what will I do? Will I have as much of a drive as Zecora? Will I live up to all the things I've ever wanted the ponies of this town to see in me?
Nothing ever seems to get done when I think too much. That's why it helps to just do things, and the only thing I had to do yesterday was the experiment. I forced myself into the first throes of it, breathing evenly, sitting in a calm pose atop the stool as I forced the first of several strings to vibrate along the channels of my telekinesis.
"Prelude to Shadows" began, and with it came the shivering waves of paranoia. I felt the amber shadows of the lantern dancing above me as the dissonant cords came to life. I kept playing, choosing to focus on the protective green aura of the sound stones surrounding me. Soon enough, the Prelude's eerie melody ended. It is a short instrumental after all. My heart was ready for the "Sunset Bolero." The cellar resonated with its pulsating tempo as invisible percussion instruments sounded off in my head. I felt the glow of green light increase, and I realized it was from my horn and not the crystals engulfing me. The emerald brilliance began to shift and flicker, and that's how I knew that the "March of Tides" had begun. I allowed the numbness of the music piece to creep over my body, sending me weightless and fearless into the instrumental that was to come.
The "Darkness Sonata" started, and already I felt my blood beginning to freeze over. The lanternlight was growing dimmer, or so I told myself. I stifled a whimper deep in my throat and kept my eyes wide open to the subterranean blackness that was burying me. I felt as though the weight of twenty thousand generations of moon phases was bearing down on my body. In desperation, I swam towards the pale orb in some imaginative sky, and I discovered several invisible arms carrying me there upon streams of mesmerizing cadence. I no longer felt afraid, for the "Waltz of Stars" was accompanying me. My vision returned, and I embraced the lanternlight once again with steely determination, for the hardest veil was just about to come. It hit me like a solid block of ice. I nearly fell out of my chair as the frigid kiss of the "Moon's Elegy" ripped through me, threatening to shatter my soul like glass. I skated across the alabaster surface of its melody with tenacity, utilizing every nimble talent in this lone musician's arsenal, for it was the last layer of mystery I knew how to pierce.
The "Threnody of Night" was next, the death of all my music and the anthem thereof. I tackled the dirge like a monk, pure in form and devoid of flare. One does not show off before the reaper; I was not about to turn a masterpiece into a farce. The solemnity of the tune was excruciating to my ears. I felt my breaths like delicate punctuations between each string pluck. If I hadn't seen the walls around me with my naked eyes, I could have sworn the cellar had morphed into a bottomless ravine. Where had all the echoes gone? Was it the sound stones creating this deathly silence that gobbled up the vibrating edge of each cord? Did the acoustics simply die?
I couldn't panic. There was no way to afford an error at this point. Who knows what would happen if I stopped in the middle of this instrumental, especially after I had played so much of it so perfectly. Was it perfect? It had to have been. What could have been more melodious than this? I had played variations of this tune so many times in the streets of Ponyville, and never once did it appeal to me with such beauty, a haunting beauty, a beauty that could tell a diseased foal that it was okay to embrace the darkness, for there was something beyond the black veil that was even more comforting than a mother's kiss.
Dear Celestia. What was I thinking? What was this Threnody speaking to me? I tried to call back to it, but something was deafening my ears. I heard the rattling of infinite chains, swirling into the dark navel of the world like cyclonic, black intestines. Art teachers lied to me when I was young, for there have always existed colors that were never meant to be seen, and suddenly every single one of them was reaching out from the Threnody's throat for me, blacker than black, like the blood of something that had crawled and wheezed across this world long before the goddesses gave birth to air, light, and sorrow.
I was too cold to be scared. The "Moon's Elegy" had made sure of that. I was a flightless insect being shoved down the maw of something far too enormous to be put into words, for the only way to recognize all that's existed was to forget it. My mind was not large enough. I tried stopping my music, but the lyre was going on without me. If I had a hammer, I would have smashed my horn to dust, but I found that the same thing was happening to my hooves. I looked down at my forelimbs and all I saw were tears.
The air grew sour. I looked without looking; I couldn't feel my body anymore. The light of the lantern had gone out. The crystals had all but shattered. A gray haze had filled the cellar. It tasted like a baby's first nightmare. I entreated the walls and the walls buckled. They leaked in a thousand places. They must have been as sad as I was to be crying so much. When their tears broke through--with the gloss of ages overcoming me in a frozen deluge--I gave up trying to count the many places in the world through which they shattered. There were so many dying, black stars, like the sand of a beach catching fire and burning out forever.
I fell back and the cellar fell with me. Into the blacker than black we swam, past the chains, past the strings of the lyre stretching like wingbones from horizon to horizon, submerged, glittering with the pale sheen of endless moonlight. There, hidden beyond all shadows, I finally found my voice, and it was sobbing.
Alone in the penumbra of all my hopes and horrors I cuddled that voice and I heard...
I heard...
"Lyra?"
The gazelle of the northern Zebrahara have long employed the hollows of milkwood reeds to craft the flutes traditionally utilized in their wedding ceremonies. However, upon the introduction of polygamist rituals brought in by the migratory wildebeests, they've replaced the flutes for ocarinas crafted out of dried river mud, and this has been the standard form of social instrumentation for the last five decades.
"Lyra?!"
Ever since contact has been made with the zebra tribes of the southern plains, the gazelle have learned to incorporate percussion instruments into their native songs. This has led to the first known case of Zebraharan songwriting since the rams performed their exodus to the Northern Mountains following the Age of Discord.
"Lyra Heartstrings!"
Mom's voice...
I look up from a sprawling assortment of textbooks and notes across my bed covers.
The rooftops of Canterlot outside my windows are every color of the rainbow.
Mom's mane is somehow brighter than everything else.
I wish I could say the same of her frown.
"Uhhhh..." I sit up straight, blinking. The air is cool, but that's not why I'm suddenly shivering. "Am I forgetting something...?"
"Your train leaves in less than two hours!"
"Oh shoot!" I scramble to scoop up all of my study materials and shove them into a turquoise saddlebag. "The Summer Sun Celebration! Twilight's going to kill me!"
"Kill you? She hasn't seen you in months!" Mom chuckles. I can never recreate the tonality in her voice. I wouldn't want to. "But seriously, Lyra. Must you take all of those things? You're going to meet with Twilight to celebrate. You'll have plenty of time to study when you get back."
"I'm just zero point two grade points away from being top in class!" I exclaim as I gather the last of my things and tie my saddlebag shut. "I can't let myself slack off for even a second!"
"Well, at least try not to be rude when you're around Twilight by studying instead of catching up with her."
"I think I know better than that, Mom." I wink at her. I gallop to her side for a quick nuzzle before scampering down the stairs. "I'll send a postcard once I'm in Ponyton."
"Ponyville." She calls after me. "And Lyra..."
Her tone stops me dead in my tracks. I linger in the middle of the stairs, groaning. "Don't tell me... What have I forgotten now?"
"What else?" Her horn glows with aged grace as she floats an embarrassingly familiar instrument into my peripheral vision. "Even if you don't use it for your studies, perhaps you can play a song or two at the celebration."
I smile. I feel my cheeks flush. "Thanks, Mom." I grab the lyre with my magic and stuff it down my saddlebag. "I swear, I'd lose my horn if it weren't attached to my head."
"So long as you look after your horn, then our baby genius has her future set out for her," she says. The last I see of her is a wink.
I descend the stairs.
The windows are wide open.
The air of Canterlot is crisp, rich, full of delicious sounds.
Dad stands in the middle of it, fiddling with his latest painting.
"Darn it," he mutters. "I can never get the colors to blend just right."
"It looks just fine, dad." I say in a sing-song fashion. I dash over to give him a swift peck on the cheek. "Photo Finish is going to love the portrait you're making of her."
"Actually, it's still-life of a bowl of cantaloupes."
"Erm... Yes. Well... She seems to be into fruity things." I giggle nervously and bolt towards the door. Bright sunlight engulfs me. "Gotta go! See ya soon!"
"Don't grow too attached to Ponyville, Lyra," Dad mutters. "It's farm country. I've been told the smell takes forever to get out."
"Daaaaaad... I'll only be there for a few days! Heehee! You won't even know I left!"
He disappears along with the painting.
Everything's a blur.
The train car keeps jostling.
It's hard to concentrate.
There's a foal crying two seats ahead of me.
I'm reminded of a Ponyrecki composition.
I scribble a few things in my notepad.
There are thirty-five lines left on the sheet, and I wonder if I could fit Octavia's latest "Adagio for a Bearded Sorcerer" on it by memory.
"Ponyville! Next stop! Next stop! Ponyville!"
Dear Celestia, there's so much noise.
The train's making a massive turn around the bend.
I feel myself tilting towards the window.
In my annoyance, a flash a glance outside.
I see apple trees, a windmill, thatched roofs, a bell tower, and more apple trees.
"Yeesh..." I chuckle to myself. "What a flippin' hole in the ground."
I look at the blank sheet again; it's a lot more interesting.
I hum to myself.
Goddess, I'm so jealous of Octavia...
"Twilight?! Yoohoo!"
I jump--grinning like mad--my muzzle bouncing over several heads of ponies.
"Hey! Twilight! Over here!"
She's sitting at a picnic table, surrounded by farm ponies.
A half-devoured pie rests on a plate before her.
It glistens like all the apples surrounding us, like her violet eyes briefly do when they look up to see me.
"Oh, Lyra. Hey." She struggles to smile. There is something weighing on her, and I think it's more than just the farm family's sweets forming a bulge in her belly. "Moondancer told me in her letter that you'd be coming. I'm really glad that you did."
"Well at least one of us is." I wince at the backsweat wafting off the multiple workhooves prancing through the apple orchards around us. "Whew! You smell that? Why is Princess Celestia choosing the boondocks of Equestria to raise the Sun at this year?"
"It's not so bad a town, really. The ponies here are insanely friendly, though. But I guess it can't be helped."
"Heeheehee... You look like you could use a long night's sleep." I wink and point at her belly. "Or a stomach pump."
"I can't, Lyra," Twilight groans. "As Celestia's personal protege, I've been charged with overseeing the ceremony. This was to be my first stop. But at this rate, I dunno if I can so much as stand up--much less interview the rest of the ponies running the show."
I glance all around us.
Everypony is looking the other way.
I've never once let a magical opportunity go astray.
"Pssst..." I lean towards Twilight. "Perhaps simple ponies could do with a simple distraction?"
"Oh please--!" Twilight's lavender hooves are held together across the table from me. "Anything, Lyra!" she pleads. "You've gotta help me out!"
"Don't worry." I pull my lyre out. "I've got this."
I strum every string in succession, then shout before the air.
"Oh my stars and garters! Is that Whinny Nelson over there?!"
To my dismay, the huge family of farmers merely blinks in confusion.
After a beat, I clear my throat and utter, "Oh, also, the apples are on fire!"
Everypony is immediately shrieking and running straight towards the fields.
Soon, Twilight and I are alone with our gasping breaths.
"Now's our chance!" Twilight shrieks and leads the charge.
I gallop after her, giggling.
"Twilight! There you are!" Spike gasps from where he waits in the middle of the road. He gives his mentor a strange look. "Holy guacamole! Did you have enough of their apple treats?"
"Unnnngh..." Twilight gulps something down before it has the chance to rise out of her throat. She smiles sickly my way as we trot towards her assistant. "Thankfully Lyra arrived just in time to save my tail."
"You should thank Spike too." I say with a smile. "He told me I might find you here. I had no idea you'd be forced down a gauntlet of pies."
"Please..." Twilight sighed, her face long. "Don't say that word. It's not like I don't have enough on my plate."
I trot around to get a better look at my foalhood friend's expression. "Something eating at you, Twilight? Last time we hung out, you couldn't stop rambling excitedly about the latest spell Celestia was teaching you. She's gonna be showing up here tomorrow to raise the Sun, right? Why aren't you chomping at the bit to see her--erm--if you pardon the old mare's expression. Hehehe..."
"Lyra, you're always studying about the history of music, right?"
"There'd be something terribly wrong with me if I wasn't."
"Have you, in your studies, ever chanced upon song relating to the 'Elements of Harmony'?" She clears her throat and further utters, "Specifically dating back to more than a thousand years ago?"
"Ugh... Not this again." Spike rolls his eyeslits and trots off towards the center of town beyond the bend in the road. "I'll go scout ahead for this 'Dashing Rainbow' pegasus or whoever we're supposed to meet next."
I scratch my mane and squint curiously after him. "Just what's gotten his spines in a bunch?"
"He thinks I'm overreacting."
"Overreacting about what?"
Twilight sighs. She's a wealth of knowledge, and yet so much of that is forever a mystery to me. I can never understand her: only admire her. If only Moondancer was here. Together, we might make her giggle.
Her smile is half-hearted as she trots toward me. "Never mind, Lyra. This... This is a year just like any other. We should be happy and celebrate the warmth that's given to us on a daily basis."
"Hey, works for me," I say with a smile. "I heard you're going to be at the library in the center of town tonight."
"Yes. It's where I'm staying during the Celebration."
"Think you'd mind an annoying, mint-green unicorn knocking on the door and chatting it up about music?"
"Hmmm... I'd love to sit and talk with you again, Lyra. But I've got a lot of work to do." There is something distant in her face. It draws the smile away just as it draws her near to me for a friendly nuzzle. "Still, it's nice to hear your voice. It's like a song that I'm happy to remember every time you stop by. Things have been so strange lately. Princess Celestia's been really distant, and I can't get her to give me a straight answer."
"About what, Twilight?"
"Things. Important things. Mysterious things." She steps back and runs a hoof over her head and sighs, as if the entire universe is weighing in on her horn. "There's no time to explain."
I gulp and gaze at her in concern. "Not even time for friends?"
At first, she says nothing.
She trots down the road, and only once she's become a shadow does she glance over her shoulder and say with an awkward smile, "Let me just get my work done. Then we'll see what comes next."
"I'll still drop by the library later!" I call after her. "Do you want me to bring some food and games?"
"Please! No food!" She exclaims back, then practically growls, "And no games! I'm not in the mood for surprises tonight!"
"Alright, Twilight! You can count on me!"
"So, like, you should totally surprise her!" I say with a grin. "Spring this party you're planning on her like it's a lightning storm!"
A pink pony gasps from across the dessert counter of Sugarcube Corner. "Ohhhh I knew it I knew it I knew it!" Her blue eyes sparkle with electricity. "The first moment I saw her I knew it was a pony who needed to have a surprise welcoming party thrown for her! Is it true? Is she going to be in the library this very evening?!"
"Heehee! Yeah! And she'll likely be there all night until the raising of the Sun at your mayor's town hall."
"Perfect! Not all ponies are into bonfires, y'know. Too many mosquitoes. Bleachk! Eeeheehee! This is so super-duper-perfect! I'll throw an indoor banquet and have all of Mrs. and Mr. Cake's finest treats lined up and ready for the scarfin'! Oooh! Hot sauce! Mustn't forget the hot sauce! It goes great with sarsaparilla, don't you think?"
"Yeah, yeah. We all love sauce." I'm already reaching into my saddlebag. "So how much is this little shindig gonna cost me?"
"Heehee! Nothing!" She grins wildly. "Consider this on the house--and when I say 'on the house'--I really mean 'on the treehouse', cuz that's where the library's built. The pony who decided to build that must have had a thing for termites cuz I swear--"
"You're pulling my tail, right?" I raise an eyebrow. "I'm from Canterlot, you know. If I wanted to, I could afford to hold three banquets and a dance party and still have room left in my saddlebag to rattle at bellhops."
"Hehehehe--silly unicorn! Bells don't hop! They ring!"
"You know what?" I smirk and zip my saddlebag shut. "Who am I to refuse a kind offer, Miss Pine?"
"Pie."
"Whatever. Just make sure you're there on time."
"Wooooohooo!" She jumps and pumps her hoof in the air. "We're gonna party and we're gonna party loud!"
"Mmmmm-heeheeheehee--" I giggle devilishly. "Somehow, I have no doubt of that."
Spike marches out of a tiny room with a lampshade covering his head.
Less than a minute later, Twilight rejoins the loud and raving party in the center of the library.
She has a burning frown, and it's aimed directly at me.
"All. My. Hate."
"Heeheehee..." I fall back on my haunches and hug myself. I wink at her. "Love ya too, lavender lumps."
"Why doesn't anypony get it?!" she grumbles. "Why can't anyone see what this coming day means?!"
"It's the Summer Sun Celebration, Twi!" I scoot over and engulf her in a deep hug. "Come onnnnn! Smile! Want me to play the Smarty Pants Song?"
The hairs on the back of Twilight's coat bunch up. "No. No!" She hisses and stares worriedly at all of the ponies around us. "You promised never ever to mention the Smarty Pants Song!"
"Heeheehee... But it always made you smile when we were little fillies!"
"Things have changed, Lyra. I don't have time for horsing around--figuratively and literally! There's so much at stake!"
"Yeah? Heehee..." I wipe a tear free and grab a bottle of soda from a nearby table. "Like what?"
She hangs her head and groans. "In less than an hour--when dawn arrives--it will officially be the longest day of the thousandth year, and things that have been set in motion long before history can remember will come into fruition."
"Heh." I stifle a burp, wipe my lips, and place the beverage down. "Sounds freaky. Uhm... thousandth year since what?"
"Lyra, have you ever wondered where the Mare in the Moon came from?"
"We've all been taught stories about the exiled princess, Twilight--"
"Her name was Luna."
"Whatever. The fact of the matter is, that's way in the past. What we don't remember has been forgotten for a reason, don't you think?" I smile at her. I can see my teeth glinting in her eyes. "You're getting all washed up over nothing, Twilight. If Moondancer was here, she'd say the same! Don't let a bunch of old pony's tales keep you from enjoying your chance to live in the moment."
Twilight bites her lip. Before she can respond, there's a loud shuffle of hooves.
Everypony is exiting the library, joining a thick herd that surges towards the town hall on the other side of town.
"Princess Celestia..." Twilight murmurs.
I smile and nudge her with my horn. "What are we waiting for? Let's go and meet your mentor, shall we?"
"Yes... I've missed her so..."
Twilight breathes a little easier. She isn't smiling, but I can see the color returning to her face.
She trots out briskly, and I'm immediately behind her.
Then I stop.
I remember...
"Shoot... Never fails!" I gallop straight towards a far corner of the library. "I'll be with you in a sec!"
I have to shovel my way through a mountain of confetti and a tossed pin-the-tail-on-the-pony poster.
I finally find it, glistening and golden as ever.
"I should just sew you to my tail and be done with it." I slide the lyre into my saddlebag and trot happily out of the library.
"Okay... Where the heck is the stupid town hall?"
I groan.
The streets are suddenly empty.
All the ponies had cleared out of the library in a flash, and I am completely alone.
I should have gotten a lay of the land instead of setting up the silly party; it's not like Twilight really enjoyed it anyways.
"Ugh! Idiot!" I roll my eyes and chuckle into the starry night. "Just follow the noise!"
I do just that.
In the center of town, there's a symphonic murmur of noise, giggles, voices, and cheers.
I take my sweet time heading towards the place.
There's something magical about being somewhere strange and unknown.
I could almost write a song about it.
I hum a melody to myself, already planning out the chorus, when something flickers above me.
I glance up and I see the moon--only it's not the moon.
There's something different about it.
"That's weird..." I stop in my tracks. I squint up at the familiar object. "The blemish is gone. Where is the Mare in the Moon...?"
No sooner do I utter this, but four specks of light twinkle around the lunar sphere, as if framing it.
I am filled with so much wonder, I hardly even notice my teeth chattering.
"What... Wh-What?" I shiver and rub a forelimb over a sudden coat of goosebumps. "Where did that come from? It's in the middle of Summer. How...?"
My voice stops. No.
My voice is being taken from me.
I am speaking, but I cannot hear myself.
I cannot hear anything.
Dead music.
It tilts my head up, like a mother introducing an infant foal to the hush of night.
I gaze into the stars.
The stars part ways.
The blackness in the center has wings.
She is coming towards me.
I have fallen to the earth long before her arrival shakes everything around me.
The sound returns, and it is laced with thunder, for she is standing above it all.
Ink black coat.
Onyx wings.
A helm and metal shoes.
Polished silver, like the exposed bones of a diseased goddess.
Eyes of pale blue, carved with the lifeless knife-point of a crescent moon.
Her breath is frigid, colder than death, and it sucks the life out of me.
I can't scream, even when I try to.
I'm just a discarded scrap of refuse, cluttering the ruptured ground beside my fallen lyre and tattered saddlebag.
I gaze towards her, and it's like being swallowed up by a deep abyss.
A sea of ethereal blue taint engulfs me.
I am her first.
She is my last.
There are no words, only a song, something resonating from deep behind her deathly dark nostrils.
It sings of nothing, for she is nothing, and nothing is her gift to me.
I receive it.
I receiveth it, thine reaper of warmth, steward of annihilation until the fading whimper of time.
We receiveth it and become it.
We, vanquisher of the morning light, stern guardian against the pollutants of the indignant spectrum.
We art one with the timelessness, faithful sage of the eternal yesterday.
Blissful oblivion, we maintain, until the Cosmic Mother wouldst return thy glory to the firmaments.
We shall sing of the songless, as thou wouldst have of thy precious daughter, and keepeth thy glory submerged in the world beneath worlds.
Thy will is ours.
Thou shalt remember bliss.
And we shalt remember nothing.
"Nnnngh--Gaah! Aaaaahh!"
I flail.
Bright light.
Burning.
A pair of forelimbs kicking at the Sun, trying to push it away.
Two faces.
They gaze down at me, alarmed and frightened.
I feel hooves holding me to the alleyway's cobblestone.
"Just relax! We're going to get you to Nurse Red Heart! You're gonna be alright!"
"Where..." A weak voice. So small, so frail. "Nnngh... Where art we?"
"Huh?"
"Dear Celestia, she's delirious."
I wince, struggle, and whimper. "We... I... Wh-Where am I...?"
"It's okay. Just calm down."
"So... Much noise..." I'm shivering all over. Something is piercing my head, drilling my horn straight down through my skull with the force of a million burning stars. "So... much." I sob and choke. "Please... make it stop..."
"What's she talking about?"
"I dunno. She's rambling. Help me carry her..."
"So loud... Make it stop... I can't hear..." I'm sobbing. We're moving. There are tear drops on the ground where chains and ice should be. Everything is bright, too bright. And the noise. "Somepony stop playing... Stop playing the song. It's not supposed to be heard. We must wait for when she returneth--Nnngh..."
My vision is blurry.
All is bells and voices.
"Quick. I think she's going into a seizure or something!"
"What happened to her?! She's all wet, like she's almost drowned or something!"
"You ever seen her before? I thought everypony was hiding indoors while Nightare Moon was about."
"Nnngh... M-Mother..." My eyes roll back in my head. I cannot find her. I'm so alone. "M-Mother! Do not listen! We... I beg of you!"
I shout.
I scream.
The music's so loud; she's going to hear it.
She cannot hear it.
We mustn't allow it.
"Mother!"
"Oh dear heavens--She's a mess!" A snow-white mare is leaning over me inside someplace. "What happened to her?"
"She... Uhm..."
"Well, we... That is..."
"Well?! Where did you find this poor filly?"
"It... Uhm..."
"I don't remember. Do you, Cloudkicker?"
"It was in town, I guess."
"You guess, Miss Raindrops?!"
"Uhm... Or just outside the hospital? Don't be angry with us, Nurse Red Heart. We're just as confused as you are."
"This Celebration! I swear to Celestia--they should stop hoofing cider around like party ribbons." She's peering at me with several instruments, poking me, prodding me. "Tell me, do you feel any pain?"
"I... I..." The world is spinning. "My head. The music..."
"Your head hurts? How about your horn, Miss..."
"Heartstrings. Lyra Heartstrings. Will you please turn off the music?"
"I think she has a concussion. Nurse Weaver?! Go fetch some water and--"
"Please, just stop the music. That's all I ask..."
"We're going to make your head feel better. Just try to relax and... and..."
There's a chill in the air.
I shiver and clutch myself.
My eyes focus, and all I see is vapor.
Vapor and lights.
"What is... What just...?"
"Uhm... I'm... I'm sorry..."
I gaze across the hospital bed.
A nurse is reeling beside me. She leans against a wall and shakes her head before looking at me crookedly. "You were suffering from... from..." She winces. "Blessed Haypocrates, what was I doing just now...?"
"I think..." I gulp. "You think I might have a concussion. You said--"
"I'm sorry, can I help you?"
"Uhm..."
"Are you ill? We have a process for checking patients in, you realize--"
"These two pegasi just dragged me in here..." I pointed to one of the two young ponies standing across the room. "I was... in a street somewhere, and they... they..." I stop to gaze at them.
They are gazing back at me, twice as blank. "I'm sorry, Nurse Redheart. But we've never seen this unicorn before in our lives."
I exhale sharply, my face wretching. "I... but... Wh-What?!"
"If this is some sort of practical joke," Redheart grumbles, frowning at all three of us. "I'm not even close to laughing."
"I... I told you..." I rub my forehead and nearly whimper. "My name is Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings. I was going to fetch my lyre." I gulp and shudder. It's so terribly cold. I hear the music again. It comes and goes like crashing waves, and I'm falling apart piece by piece. "I grabbed it, and I was walking under the moon and..." I hold a hoof over my face. "Oh Celestia, she was right there. She was right there and I couldn't do anything. I looked into her eyes. I looked into her eyes and I fell. I fell so far and for so long..." I gulp as I shake all over. The walls melt together to form a blur of noise and tears. "Where was I? Somepony tell me, please..."
I am returned with silence, like a song with no cadence.
Fearfully, I glance across the room.
Everything comes into focus.
Three faces are staring at me.
All blank.
"I'm sorry. Uhm... You are...?"
I stumble into the brightness.
I am dizzy.
I am teetering.
I can't stop looking.
I can't stop blinking.
Ponies are dancing.
Ponies are celebrating.
Fireworks explode like gunshots all around me.
Banners of the sun are being hoisted all across the village.
I am nothing but a shadow of the spectrum, engulfed in noise, born unto confusion.
"Please... Somepony help," I mutter. I point back towards the hospital from which I have trotted. "There's something wrong with the ponies in that place." I wince, but continue speaking. "Something's wrong with all of them. Their heads are messed up or something. I think... I think there might be some sort of an epidemic or... or..."
I linger in place.
Something's wrong.
Something's horribly, horribly wrong.
"Hello?" I murmur. The pain in my head is replaced by an all-numbing confusion as I gaze at the many celebratory faces bouncing around me. "Uhm... Excuse me?"
Ponies look at me. They blink in alarm. Then they're shoved back into the crowd. The village full of churning bodies circulates, and the faces rotate back to once again embrace me, and they have the same smile as before... innocent and unblemished.
"My name's Lyra Heartstrings. Please, listen. Something's wrong in the hospital. I think that--Hello?!"
The faces are there and gone again. Everytime I see them, they look at me just as stupidly as the first time. It's like I'm being introduced to the same party over and over again. Just like Twilight, I don't like surprises.
"Look, this is serious! Somepony pay attention to what I'm saying! There's something terribly wrong with--Why aren't you paying attention to me?!"
"I'm sorry?" A laughing pony bounces past me. To my horror, it's one of the pegasi who picked me up just a moment ago. "And you are...?"
I almost snarl. "Lyra!" I point a hoof angrily at her chest. "And what are you doing out of the hospital?"
Just then, a pale body prances past me. "Enjoy yourselves, everypony!" Nurse Red Heart cheerfully shouts above the noise of the Summer Sun Celebration. "But remember! Safety first! My station's open all day!"
I gawk at her. I can feel my heart beating. It's so terribly cold. The adrenaline does nothing.
"Hey! HEY!"
I bark.
I wave my hooves wildly.
I surf through the crowd and all but collapse against a table full of cupcakes outside of Sugarcube Corner.
Panting, I grab the shoulders of the pink mare tossing samples out to passing celebrators.
"I'm so glad I found you, Miss Pine."
"Heehee! Actually, it's Pinkie Pie! But I wouldn't mind be called 'Pinkie Pine' once in a while!"
"Heh. My bad." I smile nervously and squeeze her forelimbs. "Look. You gotta help me. Twilight must be paying me back for the surprise party from yesterday--"
"--because pine smells sooooo goooood, don't you think? It reminds me of Hearth's Warming Eve and opening presents! Why, this one time, I was unwrapping a box covered in silver glitter and a baby alligator popped out! Swoosh! Bit me over the head! Heeeheeeheee--Good thing the little fella had no teeth! That's why I named him 'Gummi'--"
"Please--Listen to me!" I all but snarl at her. I bat away a few ponies before they can grab some cupcakes and interrupt this little "meeting" of ours. "Where's Twilight? I gotta apologize to her so she can stop this practical joke. I knew she could organize a Summer Sun Celebration but--ho ho ho hoooo..." I chuckled madly, my lips crooked. "This sort of stuff takes the cake!"
"Mmmmmmm... Cake."
"So where is she?"
"Huh? Where is who?"
"Twilight Sparkle!"
"Why? Did she do something wrong?"
"Yes. I mean no. I mean not really. Look, I just need to find her and apologize for the surprise party yesterday--"
"You were at the surprise party yesterday?!" Pinkie grins wide. "Cuz that was sooooo fun! I'm glad that I thought it up!"
I do a double take. "The heck are you talking about?! I thought up the surprise!"
"Hmmm... And you are?"
"Lyra!" I shout. "Lyra Heartstrings! The rich unicorn whose friend you agreed to spring a party for 'on the house?'"
"Heeheehee... That's a pretty name, miss." She smiles innocently at me. "But I'm sorry. I've never seen you before."
I stare at her blankly. My veins are filling with an iciness as cold as her blue eyes suddenly appear.
"Cuz if I had, I would have totally sprung a super-duper welcoming party for you too. I wish there were more ponies around town with green coats, cuz green coats are so hard to come by and... and... Hey, where're you going?"
I'm leaving.
Leaving her.
Leaving this town.
Leaving the noise and the brightness and the madness and...
"Unnngh!" I fall back in the dirt road and curl my legs to my chest. "Nnnngh... Celestia, Please..."
It is cold.
It is colder than cold.
I can't trot any further.
I'm on the edge of town. The sun is burning high in the sky. I feel as if my legs are made of glaciers.
"Nnnngh... Augh!"
I shriek.
Frozen needles are bursting out through every square inch of my flesh.
I can barely move.
I'm too scared to proceed any further in the direction I've been heading.
So I crawl.
Like a lame little foal, I crawl.
I inch my way back towards the heart of downtown.
Slowly, the frost in my veins melt away.
It is still bearable, but the agony permeates everything.
And the noise and the music and the tears...
"Somepony... Anypony..."
I whimper. I sob. I climb up and break into a desperate gallop.
"H-Help me!"
"What's wrong with her?"
"Did she have too much cider?"
"Heheh... party animals will do as party animals do--"
"Please!" I pounce on the first pony I see in downtown. In her eyes is the reflection of a hyperventilating unicorn with a disheveled mane. I want to jump in those pools and drag her out, but she keeps shrinking away from me. "You've got to help me! My name is Lyra Heartstrings! I have a family in Canterlot! I gotta get to them! I gotta get to somepony who remembers me!"
"Hey! Relax! You need help, we can find you a pony who can... who can..." The pony suddenly teeters, her eyes turning thin. There's a vapor of cold mist between us, and she's already murmuring, "Nnngh... Whew. Too much sun." She smiles weakly at me. "I'm sorry. Can I help you?"
"What's wrong with everypony?!" I shove her back and angrily growl at the many equines circling me in the street. "Is something stuffed in your ears?! You're all sick! I swear!"
"Did somepony say that they're sick?"
I spin around with a hopeful breath. My heart immediately shrinks. "Nurse Red Heart..."
She squints at me from where she stands in front of the hospital. "I'm sorry, have we met? Did somepony send you to meet with me?"
I backtrot away from her, but nearly trip over something. I tumble into a tiny bundle of purple scales. "Ooof!" I snap out of it, and gasp for joy. "Spike!" I lift the purple whelp with two forelimbs and grin madly in his face. "Thank Celestia I found you! Spike, you gotta help me find Twilight! Something's horribly wrong and maybe she can help! She's good at magic spells and stuff! Where can I find her?"
"Uhhh... Uhh..." He stammers, struggling to hold a sun-colored candy-on-a-stick in his grasp. "Twilight Sparkle's at the library with her new friends. But why would you want to speak with her?"
"Why else?! If anypony can understand what I'm going through, it's her! I haven't seen her in... in... well, dozens of hours!" I gulp and exclaim, "Hasn't she asked where I went off to? Where I've been all this time?"
Spike's green eyeslits bounce all around the scene. He bites his lip and nervously squeezes forth, "Uhm... ma'am? Until today, Twilight's only had one real friend, and she's off doing studies in Canterlot."
I let forth a shuddering breath. "Moondancer," I whimper, like a kitten. "But... But what about me? What about Lyra?"
"I've been with Twilight literally all my life," Spike says with a nervous smile. He avoids my gaze. I can feel a twitch of fear surging through his scaled body. "She's... uhm... She's never mentioned no 'Lyra.'"
I gaze blankly at him. He drops to the floor with a grunt. I'm looking around. Nurse Red Heart is off talking to another pony, as if this scene hasn't even happened. The mare I grabbed earlier is gone. No single pony is looking at me.
I feel my heart racing a mile-per-minute. The blood rushing to my head is almost drowning out the music. Almost.
"Well, maybe you're just--" I turn to look. Spike has waddled off, completely ignoring me. He's already several yards away, gawking and clapping at a magic act along with several colts and fillies. "...delirious."
I start to hyperventilate. Every time I close my eyes, I see something beyond the darkness, a place where songs go to die. I feel as if I'm headed there too. The gravity tugs at me, so I defy it by breaking my hooves into a frenzied gallop.
I practically fling myself against the wooden door of the library.
I pound on it.
I scrape against it.
I can't stop panting. I feel like I must outrace something, but I don't know what.
Finally, the top half of the door opens. An obstinate looking mare with an orange coat and white freckles is glaring at me.
"Uhm... Can we help you? Reckon you do know this here's a library, right?"
"Where's Twilight?!" I lunge towards her. The mare jumps back with a start, her hat nearly falling off. "Where is she?! I have to speak with her! It's urgent!"
"Uhhhh... Missy, have you looked at yerself in the mirror lately? Yer ten bushels of 'messy' in a ten pound sack. I think somepony should lay off the cider. Heh--I can't believe I'm hearing myself say this."
"Applejack?" A voice murmurs from the deep recesses of the treehouse. My heart instantly leaps. "Who is it?"
"Eh, some mindblown unicorn, Twilight. I think she's done a tad bit too much celebratin'."
A blue pegasus floats by the foyer. "Hah! There's no such thing as too much celebrating!"
"Oh will you two cut it out?" Twilight Sparkle giggles as she trots into view. "This is going to be my new house. Let me take care of this."
"Ya sure, sugarcube? I don't think she's right in the head."
"Element of Magic, remember? Hehehe. I think I'll be more than okay." She brushes the farm filly aside and smiles at me. "Now, what seems to be the problem--?"
"Twilight!" I grasp her hooves, almost yanking her over the bottom half of the door. Something is twinkling in her eyes, until I realize it's the reflection of my own joyful tears. "Thank Celestia! I've been looking all over town for you! You were right! Something crazy is going on! Thousandth year or not, you were onto something! I can't explain what's happened to me, but it's suddenly like I'm not here! But I am here! Everypony's ignoring me! Not just them--but Spike too! At first I thought it was a joke, but now I think it's something else! Please, you've got to help me! If you can't, then maybe the Princess can! I think it's... uh... it's some sort of degenerative brain disorder or some crud. I remember reading up on it once in a copy of Canterlot Health Monthly. If... If we get all the ponies checked, th-th-then maybe we can--I dunno--figure out what's wrong and get them all cured! They owe it to you after all the preparation you did for the Celebration after all! And I'd be more than willing to... to help... help..." The warmth left my voice, like a song interrupted. I gulped a painful lump down my throat and searched for answers in the blank canvas staring back at me. "Twilight...?"
"You... You sound like you've been through a lot," she says. Her voice is placid, like pond water that not a single pebble has been able to disturb. I stand upon the brink, looking in, but I can no longer see myself. "But you have to start over from the top. Calm down and speak slowly. I'll do anything I can, Miss..."
It's too cold for me to melt. The only thing that cracks is my voice. "L-Lyra..." Something has died, and I suddenly realize I can't bury it. "I'm... Lyra. Your Lyra. Your friend. Twilight, why don't...?" I stumble backwards from the library. I'm a limb cut off from the tree, forever a lost element. I try to speak, but all that comes out are breathy palpitations. I see her in the doorway, and yet she's squatting on a sidewalk of Canterlot, two blocks from my house, having tripped after trying to read a book in mid-trot. I shuffle up towards her, the first unicorn my age that I've seen since we moved from another district, and I pretend to ignore her tears as I pick up the book for her. We talk about things. She likes magic. I like music. Someday soon, we both meet another unicorn who likes playing "pretend," and thus begins an unwritten chronicle of adventures just outside our homes.
Our homes...
Mom.
Dad.
Something else has died, and I wish it was me.
"Please, let's just talk--Wait!" She reaches out for me, but I am gone.
"Listen to me! Look at me! Please! Somepony! Anypony!"
There's a mad unicorn running through the streets of some backwater town.
I hate her.
I don't want to be around her.
She follows me like a tune that will never leave my head.
I want to rip it out.
I want to rip her out.
I want to rip her asunder.
"Please! I beg you! Pay attention to me!"
I am surrounded by laughter.
I am surrounded by dancing.
Everywhere I turn, the chorus gets louder and louder.
I can't even shut it off with violence or flame.
"My name is Lyra! For the love of Celestia, please! Listen to me! I am real!"
There are eyes, and then there are no eyes.
The only thing constant is light, and soon that is swallowed by an all encompassing darkness.
"I am real!"
I woke up, accompanied by my own yells. A wall of trees resonated with my voice, echoing my agony beneath the stars of the night. I flailed--soaking wet--rolling over leaves and grass in pitch-blackness, until the moon found me. Even then, I couldn't stop making noise. One million invisible forgotten creatures screaming in the night: and I was one with them.
When I paused for breath, I realized that I wasn't where I last was. This wasn't my cellar. The lanternlight was gone. The sound stones had disappeared. I was in the middle of the forest, surrounded by the bright, looming bodies of trees. And the "Threnody of Night"...
It had been replaced.
"Nnnngh--Celestia!" I gripped my skull and gnashed my teeth, plowing my muzzle through the damp earth. I was crawling over with moisture, but it wasn't my sweat. What was this mess? What hidden ocean had I emerged from? And this tune... this new and infernal tune. "Dear Celestia, no," I whimpered. "Not another elegy. Not an eighth!"
I stumbled up to my hooves, only to slip immediately into a huge puddle. My body screamed. I was freezing again. This was ten times worse than Everfree, and what's more: I was naked.
My limbs were the tendrils of a numb ghost; I floundered for a hoof-hold. By the time I entered a swift trot, I couldn't tell which way I was going. All I saw was an endless sea of trees, all shining in the pale moonlight like bright femurs planted in the ground: just as sterile and lifeless. It was with miraculous luck that I stumbled onto a dirt path, and from there I knew where to go. As I stumbled along, a trail of moisture dribbled off my coat and stained the ground behind me. What was all this? Where had I been?
I found the cabin and immediately flung myself through the door. It took three petrifying minutes to summon enough nerves in my limbs to start a fire. When I did, I didn't bother with subtlety. I flung ten whole stakes of lumber onto the blaze and planted myself before it, drowning myself in a sea of blankets.
There, upon the hearth, I quivered through the agonizing night. There was no way I could sleep, no way I could rest. The trembles shook my body so hard, I feared that my spine would rattle out through my skin. I prayed for the daylight to come. I was tired of this darkness. I was tired of this waiting and waiting, of fighting my way through nameless songs in a futile attempt to find a purpose to my solitary pestilence.
When the gray haze of morning wafted in through the window, I took a look at myself. There was still a sheen of moisture. It had no color, no odor, and--to my daring taste--no flavor. I could only guess that I had been soaked in none other than pure water. But why?
What had happened in the middle of the instrumental? Why had I been relocated to the middle of the woods? Was this the purpose of the Threnody? Was this what all of my work had promised me? Was this what unraveling the symphony of Princess Luna had in store?
It wasn't until noon that I dared to go outside. I trotted forlornly into the cellar beneath my shack, as if afraid of the evidence I was going to find. I discovered nothing: no footprints, no scrape marks, no signature at all to suggest what may have dragged me out into the darkest folds of the night. I found my lyre where I had left it, my sound stones--no longer enchanted. And, of all things, I found my hoodie... lying perfectly dry and deflated on the floor... where my body had collapsed halfway through performing the latest instrumental.
At least, it was the latest instrumental. Now my head was full of something else, something terribly, damnably new. It filled me with more fear than the "Prelude to Shadows." It chilled me to the bone far more mercilessly than the "Moon's Elegy." I already absorbed enough into my memory to compose the first ten cords if I wanted, but I couldn't allow myself to do that.
"But if you're all about trying to discover these mysterious tunes, what's stopping you from composing this new one?"
"Maybe because I'm sick of going on a wild goose chase, only to be awarded with fainting spells, freezing blood, and migraines!" I snarled, slapping the dusty books down onto the library table and fumbling to yank my notepad out of my saddlebag. "Maybe because after thirteen Goddess-forsaken months, I can't help but ask if it's worth it! It's not like I'm making any progress! It's not like I'm--Nnnngh!" With an angry shriek, I tossed the notepad against the wall and slammed my hooves into the nearby bookcase with loud punctuation. "It just feels so pointless! Why do I even bother trying?! Why do I even bother..." I stopped in mid-sentence, for I realized I was not the only one trembling. I glanced to my side.
Spike stared back at me, nervously toying with the end of his tail. Upon receiving my glare, the library assistant gazed away, as if guilty for not relating to this infernal unicorn's frustration.
My heart sank. I remembered the day Twilight Sparkle first showed him to me, a young hatchling fresh out of the egg, a gift to the Princess' new apprentice as much as he was a gift to the very notion of life. I again saw a tiny little whelp who once dangled--confused and frightened--from my forelimbs in the middle of the Summer Sun Celebration. Existence is too precious a thing to have attacked something so sovereign not once, but on two separate occasions. I immediately deflated, calming myself with a deep breath and smiling as genuinely as I could the youngster's way.
"I'm sorry. You... You don't deserve to hear me go on like that. You're only trying to help me. It's just that I'm so frustrated and my head hurts and... and..."
I shuddered. My eyes closed on their own. Once again, the darkness was so familiar, the bitter black birthplace of black songs. They had shaped me for the better, now that I think about it. They had chipped away the sour edges of the unicorn I used to be. If I had the ability to reverse time, I don't know if I would want to anymore. I'm not nearly as proud of the filly I once was. I'm constantly endeavoring to discover the mare I someday wish to be, so that what emerges from this amnesiac prison is something worth being proud of, something worth being remembered. But on the fringes of that darkness, I see the same unicorn shivering--by herself--before the ashes of a dying flame. And I wonder, in over a year of trial and error, have the things I've gained outweighed the things I've lost, or would forever lose? Just like the words slipping, unguarded, from my trembling lips...
"I'm just so alone," I murmured. I couldn't help it. I didn't want to help it. "I'm just so alone, and it's so hard... it gets so very hard, trying to do this research. Even with all the help in the world, I'm on my own. This is my symphony alone to discover, and I have nopony else to turn to. Though it's as if opportunity is knocking everywhere I look. I... I'm not sure if you know what it's like to be so cold and yet surrounded by so much warmth. It's... It's trying sometimes, and I apologize. I apologize for snapping. You're young and you're loved and you're blessed to have a home. You don't need to hear any of this."
I sighed, bowing towards the books, the holy relics of forbidden languages that I was forced once again to peruse.
Then Spike's words melted through the veil, startling me. "Actually... uhm, ma'am, f-forgive me for saying so, but I kinda-sorta do understand."
I glanced curiously towards him. I was silent.
He looked like he wanted to be as well, but could afford it even less than I. "I know that I'm loved. I know that I have a home. But that doesn't change what I am." He smiled bashfully. It was a forced thing, and he wrung his fingers over the edge of his tail, as if struggling to produce the words. "I'm a dragon, a purple magic whelp. Even Celestia herself has told me that I'm the only known one of my kind. I'm... I-I'm really thankful that Twilight Sparkle and so many other ponies look after me. And I know that they care for me a lot. But... But I can never make them understand what it means to be what I am. I'm not sure if I can ever learn everything that there is for me to know about myself--or about dragonkind, for that matter. But, that's not gonna stop me from trying to find out. Maybe not now, but perhaps when I'm older. I'm gonna give it all that I've got. And though I know that Twilight would gladly try to help me, I really don't think she can, y'know?" He sniffled slightly, but his ensuing grin was braver than anything I could ever muster. "Sometimes, though, I think it's okay to be alone. If we needed other ponies to discover ourselves, then--well--we just wouldn't be ourselves, now would we?"
I smiled painfully his way. I stretched my forelimb out and rested it on his purple shoulder. "Spike, I have no doubt that you will find yourself. And if what you discover is anything nearly as genuine and sweet as what's standing before me right now--well--I wouldn't be surprised."
Something was bridged between us. I was thankful for it, because whatever tears had almost begun welling up in his eyes very swiftly dried. "Twilight always tells me that 'I should be true to myself.' I used to think it was a bunch of sappy hoopla, but I think it was her way of telling me that there comes a time when we can only help ourselves. It may be kind of scary to face challenges in life alone, but... well... things would be boring otherwise, don'tcha think?"
He giggled at his own attempt at a moral. I was confused at first, until a part of me--the portion that was thirteen months older than the other half--very easily understood this child's statement.
"Yes," I murmured delicately, smoothing back his spines and giving him an affectionate smile. "Yes, it would be very boring indeed."
"So... Uhm..." He cleared his throat and attempted to reattach the conversation to the dusty tomes resting in front of this moody unicorn. "Ancient Moonwhinny. Heh. Think you need any help with the translation? I've got an antique lexicon somewhere on the other side of the library."
I knew what would happen as soon as he walked away. "No. I mean... if you'd like, just hang out here for a little bit longer," I said quietly. I took a deep breath. I fidgeted with my hoodie's sleeves while my eyes searched a distant, cold place, dense and sacred. "Some of us are alone by choice. Others..."
There was a knock on the treehouse door.
"Come. Come and enter, stranger or friend. For I have brews for all ills contained within."
With a deep, wooden creak, I entered the zebra's household. I immediately lowered both hoods from over my horn and spoke bravely into the freezing air. "Are you Miss Zecora?"
"Yes, yes," she murmured while perusing several scrolls mailed in from her homeland. "In the households of Ponyville, my name goes about. My medicinal remedies you've heard of, no doubt."
"Well, I wouldn't know a thing or two about that, but some pony sent me to give you something."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. These things were found lying in the middle of downtown, and nopony around these parts has ever been known to own them. We figured they belonged to--well--the only resident mare who wears her mane in a mohawk, if you catch my drift."
"I'm afraid you have to be more clear," Zecora rolled her scrolls up and gave me a suspicious glance from across the wooden atrium. "Just what curious things do you bring here?"
"Eh..." I nonchalantly unwrapped a canvas bundle and held a pair of drums up for her inspection. "Do these mean anything to you?" I bore a poker face. I waited.
For a moment, I could have sworn the stripes in Zecora's coat had paled over. Her mouth fell agape, and she shuffled slowly towards the items in my possession. A murmur escaped her, undoubtedly a flimsy thread of her native tongue. Finally she swallowed and exclaimed, "Sundried snares, vestiges of a Zebraharan soul. By the shadows, I've not seen the likes of these since I was a little foal."
I squinted knowingly at her. "So I was right. They do have 'zebra' written all over them?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," she stammered, holding a hoof up to her chest. "Of their value to my kind, I do not jest." Something melted across her face, a sweet smile forged by a dozen memories all flashing across her blue eyes as she stared at the drums and past them all at once. "My siblings would play the drums for me when I was but a child. Just thinking about it now makes my spirit feel young and wild."
"Yeah. Nostalgia will do that."
"But their presence here truly baffles me," she stated with a confused expression. "To think that a pony could stumble upon them so casually?"
I glanced towards the far ends of her workstation. A wooden engraving lingered before my eyes, like a warm sunset too far away for either of us to taste in that cold domain. In truth, I had made the drums--just like I had built all of the tools, both conventional and unorthodox, which were presently hanging along the walls of my cabin. Sometimes, half of being alone means struggling to find the purpose in being alone. Standing there, nearly freezing to death in the presence of such a secluded zebra, I had discovered something far more sacred than a forgotten song.
"Well, stranger things have happened," I flippantly mused. "Whatever the case, nopony in town wants them. Seems only fitting for them to be yours."
Zecora bit her lip in a sudden pensiveness.
"What's wrong?" I pretended to ask. "Oh, right. The ponies in town say that you're a shaman. Lemme guess, your order forbids you to play music or something?"
She fidgeted slightly, though she couldn't tear her blue eyes from the wondrous instruments of her use. "I must solemnly admit my dismay, for I have been committed to work and not to play. Why else would I be working in a faraway land if not to seek the mysteries of the world so that I may understand?"
"Miss Zecora, I shudder to think that a seeker of knowledge forgets to also be a seeker of the self."
She said nothing to that. She sadly hung her head.
However, I was smiling. "Well, if you're not allowed to play something so dear to you..." I shuffled over to a wooden stool and plopped myself down. Miraculously, the shivers had stopped, so that I embraced that precious moment with a pair of hooves hovering deliciously over the twin snares. "Is there any harm in letting someone else give it a shot, so that you can at least enjoy listening to it again?"
She gawked at me as if I was on fire. "You mean to tell me that it's true? That the art of Zebraharan percussion is housed within you?"
"Hmmm... It must be if it can make you force your own rhyme that blatantly to believe it." I winked at her and motioned towards another stool. "Have a seat. No good song is ever meant to be listened to alone. Even a shaman can afford company once in a while, right?"
She smiled, and the moisture in her eyes was like that of an enchanted young filly's. Zecora squatted across from me, her face eager and bright, just as I began my rendition of a ritualistic chant that I had researched long ago--accompanied by a drumbeat that I had mastered with enough time, patience, and solitude. The two of us converged, lonely souls in the middle of an alien cold, to indulge in the beauty of something that was lost to both of us. And though we may not have made any progress, we reminded ourselves--ever so briefly--of just what progress is meant to serve.
Someday, I will cure this curse of mine. Maybe it will take picking up the pieces of the "Threnody of Night." Maybe it will take piecing together the bits of this new song in my head. Maybe it will involve tackling the elegy after that, or ten more elegies, or a thousand. Suddenly, it no longer matters how long the road ahead of me is. I have friends in waiting on either side of me, and though they don't know my name, I see and hear my spirit reflected off them--off their warmth and sincerity. The thought of their eyes looking at me, and one day not losing sight of the thing that holds my soul: that is a goal I shall pursue with joy, for what other impetus is there to pierce the freezing depths of this universe?
In this life, I am guaranteed to have at least one friend.
So long as I am true to myself, then I can be true to everyone.
Background Pony
IV - "Symphony of Solitude"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Seattle_Lite, TheBrianJ, Laichonious, and Gamestop
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | V - Industry | Dear Journal,
What does it mean to be cursed? What does it truly mean? Does it mean that I've been robbed? Does it mean that I still possess things that have yet to be stolen from me? Have I experienced the worst that fate has to offer, or am I simply lying in wait for the darkest, cruelest punchline in life to come?
It's so very easy for me to feel sorry about myself. It's something that I cannot help but dwell upon each and every day. For a while, I've feared that I would let things like this get to my head, that I would resort to doing acts both desperate and pathetic that would only hurt the ghostly shades of friends I pretend to be surrounded by on a regular basis.
Then I met souls--amazing and inspiring souls--who each were born with a chance to shine, like I once was. Only, though they were never magically robbed of their ability to achieve greatness, I soon realized that they too were at a loss to encounter an opportunity to surpass the limits of themselves. After all, what is life if not a complex game with both winners and losers and not enough points to happily placate both?
The fact that I'm a pony with no perceivable future cannot be denied. Until I can somehow unlock the magical power of the elegies--the thick black borders of my invisible prison--I cannot hope to anticipate anything but a future of oblivion, obscurity, and emptiness.
What, though, can be said of those around me? As a matter of fact, ponies have always been cursed since the beginning of time--not by a frigid dome of amnesia, but by a transitive sphere of ignorance that constantly threatens our very dreams and aspirations from their genius conception to their desperate expression.
I, at least, have a hope that nopony else seems to have. As soon as I end this curse, I expect to immediately start existing again. However, it's been my experience that there are mares and stallions--gentle hearts, all of them--who may never exist, at least not as brilliantly as they would desire to, no matter how hard they struggle. What solution do they have to pick out of a hat? What silver bullet will slay the beast that consumes their artistry with as much ease as I can slay mine?
No. No, I am not cursed. I am simply less blessed, less polished, less shiny than those around me. With time, I have faith that I will enchant that which has been struck dead in my life. I will bring shine back to a dull existence. And yet, no matter what progress I may or may not make, I cannot stop hoping--I cannot stop dreaming--that those around me can become just as lucky too.
A dangling bell above the door shook as I entered. The lavish interior of the fashion shop rang with a gentle melody. Soon, though, an eloquent voice surpassed even that heavenly jingle with a chirping tone of its own.
"Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique."
I couldn't help but smile. Now that's a fabulous greeting if I ever heard one.
"Excuse me..." I spoke as gently and politely as I could. Almost a week had passed since I performed the Threnody in full. Most of my nerves had recollected, and I was happy to be in public once more. The eye-pleasing curtains and smell of clean fabric lulled my spirit as I marched into the luxurious establishment with my rough saddlebag and unassuming hoodie. "I was told that a mare by the name of Rarity works here. Is there a chance I might speak with her?"
Long ago, I had established for myself a simple rule when "greeting" ponies with whom I had become quite familiar. For the sake of simplicity, it seemed a good habit to feign ignorance. I didn't want to alarm any soul by immediately addressing them by name. For the longest time, I never second-guessed this "code" that I lived by.
"Oh, but darling, you are speaking to Rarity. The one and onlyyyy." She was chiding me, like a princess correcting an uncouth servant. At the same time, her voice had a melodic edge to it, as if she was satirizing the very notion of such haughtiness. "Oh dear, do listen to me go on," she exclaimed, stifling a giggle. "My apologies, ma'am. I swear, there's something to be said about working on a gorgeous dress when one feels good inside. It's like grocery shopping on an empty stomach. It's only asking for trouble, hmm? Hmm-hmm-hmm..."
It was a beautiful day outside, and I could already tell that much of the brilliance had seeped in through the ornate windows and walls of the place. The white unicorn in question was busy fiddling with a ballroom gown that was halfway through becoming a satin masterpiece. The tone in Rarity's voice matched the artistic whimsy of her present project. I almost felt like a criminal for interrupting it.
"Nothing to apologize for," I said with a smile as I stood behind her. I craned my neck to squint over her figure, as if instantly drawn to the curious sight of her work. There are things in this world that are unexpectedly absorbing. The Carousel Boutique had an air of enchantment; I felt like I was in the birthplace of magical things. "I heard about your talents and craftponyship around town," I exclaimed, fighting the shivers long enough to maintain normal composure. "I was wondering if you'd be willing to earn some extra bits."
"Doing what, pray tell?" Rarity murmured without looking. She added another stream of blue ribbon along the edge of the blue gown's flaring skirt. She was one with her work; I was merely a curious satellite in orbit of her sacred project. "As much as I hate to sound dismissive of new and fantastic opportunities, I do happen to be overloaded with a most demanding list of requests at the moment. If you have indeed heard of me around town, no doubt you've become aware of my rather strict schedule of appointments as of late. Pay the front desk a visit, dear, and you'll find a very thorough list of guidelines by which I perform commissions."
"Oh, it's not a dress that I want to have made," I said with a nervous smile.
She yanked too hard on a length of ribbon, nearly ripping it loose from its fresh seams. I could sense her hard blinks without looking. "Oh?" her voice cracked slightly. The room dulled for the briefest of moments. "If not a dress, then what, if I may ask?"
I decided that it was best to be as direct as possible. "I heard that your special talent is in jewelcrafting." My eyes danced briefly over her sapphiric cutie mark as I fiddled with my saddlebag. "Ponies have told me that you're good at locating and enchanting gems of absolute scarcity."
"H-have they now?" Her tone was flat, resembling the unfinished lengths of her dress. She stood in place, as if gazing at a blank space beyond her work. "Well, those ponies were certainly being honest. What was it that you needed, Miss...?"
"Lyra Heartstrings. And I need to have some enchanting done," I said. Feeling a chill in the air unrelated to my curse, I added with a smile. "And I didn't want to ask any other craftspony around town unless I had to. I heard you were the best, so why settle for less?"
"Hmmm..." She turned slowly to look at me and the smile on her face formed just as easily. "They said I was the best? Well, I do suppose that speaks for something."
"But, I didn't realize just how busy you were," I said, squirming slightly. I learned long ago that I will perpetually be a splinter in this town. No matter what I do or say, the situation is never as placid after I've arrived as it was before. "You're working on something really beautiful. Don't let me interrupt your concentration with such a trite request."
"Oh, darling, perish the thought!" She immediately rushed towards me as if I was an infant foal teetering at the top of a staircase. I was suddenly the most important thing in her world. I wasn't quite expecting that, and it made my heart trip over itself. "Not to toot my horn, as it were, but I can enchant stones in my sleep. If anything, it only helps me focus my mind all the more, so you'd actually be doing my dress-making a favor! Now--ahem..." She smiled regally at me. There was a sparkle in her gaze that never went away. I suddenly knew where she got her eye for beauty. "Just how many gems are we talking about, Miss Heartstrings?"
I looked into my saddlebag. The four soundstones that Zecora had sold me days ago were completely drained of enchantment. If I had any hope of performing this new song stuck in my head--assuming I could build the courage to do so--I wouldn't make any progress whatsoever until I had all four rocks completely recharged with magical potency. The sooner I had them brought back to their original glory, the sooner I'd be in the cellar, performing the elegies, throwing my soul deep into a dark abyss of mystery, cold, and shadows...
"Just one gem," I told her. I took a single dark crystal out of the saddlebag and floated it in front of the mare. "I'm working on some new music, and it helps to have a mana battery nearby to... to... well..."
"To get that special spark of inspiration?" Rarity immediately snatched the rock like it was hers since the beginning of time. She telekinetically spun it at multiple angles in front of her eyes, examining it with an expert gaze. "Tell me no more. I know the feeling quite well. A unicorn is all too often the sum of their surroundings. I almost feel bad for those not blessed to be connected with the generous leylines of our supernatural world. You ever heard of Hoity Toity? Such a diamond in the rough of earth pony couture, he is. Popular legend says that he made his first line of successful outfits while working in a wooden shack outside of Las Pegasus. Hah! Can you believe that?"
"Uhhhh..."
"Hmmm... Oh my my my--I see why you had to come to the absolute best gem enchantress in town," she said with a playful wink tossed my way. "This poor thing has been through a lot! It's practically a doorstop! What-ever did you do with this, darling? Did you use it to summon a Windigo from the nether?"
I bit my lip. I struggled through a fresh wave of memories, and all of them laced with frost and shadows. "Let's just say that I'm not your average composer of music," I eventually murmured. My ears twitched as I tried to shake the tune in my head long enough to cast my voice evenly. "Sometimes I have to reach deep down--further than what history provides--in order to restore the most sacred ballads lost to us. I believe that there are songs that mean so much to ponydom that we no longer have the capacity to remember them, and the act of finding them saps more from me than just my talents. It takes a lot of... uhm... magic energy as well. Does... does that make any sense to you?" I winced openly. I was already planning to just ditch the Carousel and attempt to repeat this entire meeting the next day.
But something that would have been lost was immediately saved by Rarity's grace and her grace alone. "What's obvious to me, darling, is an artist in search of beauty, and that is something I can instantly respect." She smiled over the dull jewel at me. "I too have a deep admiration for classicism. If I could invent a time machine and go back to the period of Starswirl the Bearded..." She drew a hoof over her forehead and painted the rooftop of the Boutique with rolling eyes. "Ohhhh stars, so many fabulous designs, lost to the hungry moths and bitter decay of ages! If I could just bring back a single illustration to present day, I'd reintroduce modern Equestria to real taste and elegance. But, alas..." She focused once more on the dark gem and murmured lovingly, as if caressing a reflection hidden beneath the onyx surfaces. "What are we here for if not to invent, inspire, and illuminate?"
I gulped and smiled awkwardly. "I can't say I'm nearly as creative as you, Miss Rarity. I'm just a historian."
"Nonsense! Don't sell yourself short!" She smiled my way. "Nopony is ever really just an appendix of the past. We all have the future to build--together--in our unique and special ways, don't you think?"
I turned my gaze from her. The walls were be-speckled in random places with shiny jewels and mirrors. I saw Rarity's white coat and purple mane reflected in a glittering kaleidoscope. My colors were nowhere to be seen.
"I don't hold too much stock in the future," I eventually muttered and glanced back at her. "Is it such a crime to live in the now?"
"It's my experience that saints and criminals often have the same things in common, so why stress it, hmm?" she remarked flippantly, then cleared her throat. "Now, darling, about... re-fabulousing your once-fabulous jewel..."
"Oh, uhm..." I shifted where I stood. "I know it doesn't look like much now, but it's a--"
"Ram-crafted sound stone. Trust me, dear, I know my rocks. I must say, this is a remarkable find. Where rams lack in aesthetics, they certainly make up for in substance. If this was produced by any other culture in Equestria, it'd be a loss cause to attempt re-enchanting it."
"How much would be appropriate for such a service?"
"Hmmm..." Rarity murmured aloud as she trotted towards a nearby window, parting the curtains with telekinesis so that a brilliant beam of noonday sunlight poured directly into the heart of the boutique. "It has been a terribly long time since I provided enchanting services, come to think of it. But if I recall the rates I used to charge..." She paused for several seconds, to the point that I could only guess she was pretending to think for the sake of pretending. She soon tossed a tranquil glance my way. "Three bits, dear. Seems fitting, don't you think?"
I couldn't help it. My gaze was crooked as I blinked at her, and I fumbled a bit before answering, "Erm... Yes. That is... rather generous of you."
"Hmmm... I do get that a lot, it would seem." Her voice shook at the end of her utterance, like she had woken up that morning giggling and still couldn't stop. The air was alive with more than her sparkling telekinesis as she floated a metal stand over from a closet. She blew the dust off, coughed briefly, and positioned the tripod directly in front of the window. "Oh, how glad I am that this thing hasn't rusted. It would be doing my family a great disservice if I ever let this heirloom go to ruin."
"If you don't mind my asking... uhm..." I trotted over towards her and the contraption. "What exactly is it?"
She gave an airy laugh. "You really have had your horn stuck in the history books, haven't you? I weep quietly inside whenever I meet a unicorn who hasn't experimented with more than one style of magic." She cleared her throat and spoke while methodically floating over a glass lens and fixing it to the upper stalk of the metal device. "This, my dear, is a celestial magnifier. All things that stand to be enchanted in this world have one element that can almost always bring luster back to their magic without fail."
I blinked and uttered, "Sunlight?"
"Mmmmhmmm," Rarity hummed as she tilted the lens and positioned it at just the right angle to focus a thin beam of magnified light through a ring of metal clamps at the top of the stand. "Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, gives us more than just the warmth and beauty of the day. She grants us the very essence of her being, something sacred that was hoofed down by the Cosmic Matriarch herself. If we focus the energy of the sun just right, it's like grabbing magic from the air." She tensed her facial features as she carefully, carefully floated the dull stone over and positioned it tightly within the polished ring of the metal clamps. "Aaaaaaand... there! Ah... Tell me, have ponies been given anything more generous than the Princess' very own shine?"
I trotted over and stared closely at the gem with subtle, foalish fascination. Indeed, before our eyes, the dullness of the sound stone gave way, and I saw a glow emanating from the center of the dark crystal in direct response to the focused beam of light. It was dim at first, but soon the familiar emerald haze was coming to life underneath the glossy surface of the jewel.
"That... is indeed beautiful," I remarked. "It's like capturing an alicorn's glory in a bottle!"
"Not yet it's not," Rarity boldly said. She brushed me aside and approached the gem like it was an altar. "Ahem. This is where I come in, darling." She winked, and it was then that I realized she was about to earn my bits. With great concentration, Rarity focused magical energy into her horn. A second glow filled that part of the Carousel, and soon she was encompassing the gem with a cascade of sparkles.
I realized that she was using her talents to plant a containment spell on the sound stone. It was something I could never imagine doing myself. After a year of studying every book on lunar magic in Twilight's Library, I've learned to perform many fantastic feats, and yet still I was in awe of Rarity's gifts.
"That's... That's amazing." I looked from the gem to her and smiled. "And you make it look so easy."
"Only because it is, dear. Mmm... for me, that is." She murmured aside, all the while concentrating. "I don't mean to sound like a braggart. We all have our places in this world. I've met unicorns who could do something like this in half the time, and yet they charge three times as much. I've endeavored to not be like them. True talent is about earning more than just money, after all."
"Well, you've earned my thanks, Miss Rarity." I chuckled briefly and floated three golden coins out of my saddlebag. "A well as my bits." After she graciously took the payment with her own telekinesis, I said, "Though, nothing I could pay you would come close to how golden this day appears to be."
"Oh?"
"If I may be so bold, you seem to be in a fantastic mood. I wish all ponies had as sunny a disposition."
"Is there any reason why they shouldn't?" She continued enchanting the stone while casting me a sideways glance. Her lips were curved, as if she was born with that smile. "Well, perhaps I'm one to talk. It so happens that I've been struck with a great deal of good fortune as of late. Do forgive me if it comes across as a little uncouth"
"Nothing uncouth about being happy, Miss Rarity. Dare I ask what's the occasion?"
"Tell me..." Rarity's melodic tone didn't falter for one instant. "Have you heard of Silver Seams?"
My eyes swam over the rich decorations of the boutique, and I was at a loss to form an answer. "I can't say that I have. But then again... heh... what's in a name?"
Her reaction was rather explosive. "Why, everything, Miss Heartstrings!" For a second there, I thought she might accidentally knock over the stand atop which the gem was being enchanted. She glanced back at me, and her eyes were as hard as diamonds. "It's what defines a pony! A title is one's vessel for notoriety and purpose."
I said nothing.
Thankfully, Rarity wasn't finished. "And Silver Seams' fame proceeds her! She is only the most prestigious dress designer in the Manehattan scene! She's made top-of-the-line gowns for every annual fashion exhibit in Fillydelphia and Trottingham over the last decade! She produces the luxurious costumes for the regular Hearth's Warming's Eve pageant at Canterlot, and she's even designed the latest uniforms worn by the Wonderbolts!"
"Wow, sounds like quite the career."
"It is more than that. Silver Seams' impact on Equestrian culture is positively legendary! And I can't wait to speak with her face to face."
"I bet you can't," I said with a nod, then jolted as the realization hit me. I glanced at the sparkling-clean lengths of the boutique, the fancy dresses that were on exhibit, even Rarity's latest project. "Wait, so Silver Seams is coming here?"
"Squeee-heeheehee-Yes!" Rarity squirmed in place. It wouldn't have surprised me if she suddenly sprouted pegasus wings and performed laps around the ceiling. "It turns out she's making a trip to Trottingham and will be stopping by Ponyville along the way. Hoity Toity--with whom I have a good business acquaintance, ahem--had an opportunity to speak with her, and he personally suggested that she stop by my Boutique! Silver Seams! The divine queen of fashion! Stopping by here!" She seemed on the verge of fainting. A magical beam of light pulsed from deep within the soundstone, shaking her out of her felicitous spell. "Oh, but that is merely my own little life. I just feel so... so... bubbly, as Pinkie Pie would put it. Do forgive me for not being able to contain my excitement."
"Sounds like you have every reason to be excited!" I said with a smile. She levitated the re-enchanted stone towards me and I gladly took it. "You have an obvious eye for beauty. No doubt Miss Seams would love having a look at your work."
"What?!" Rarity gasped at me, her voice hoarse and mortified. She gave the lengths of her boutique a flippant wave of the hoof. "You mean these paltry attempts at day-to-day garb?"
I glanced at the rows of flowing, shiny dresses on display. "They seem very lovely and impressive to me--"
"That's just it!" She trotted limply past me, her voice orating towards the dull mannequins suddenly surrounding her. "If I wish to impress the likes of Silver Seams, then I need to be more than lovely and impressive! I need to be absolutely stellar! I need to eke supernatural feats of whimsy from the creative nodes in my mind!" I felt like I was suddenly privy to a dramatic one-mare-show, and it was worth every golden bit. "She will be here in less than a week! I only have a few days to make this Boutique worth its weight in polish! I need to make a dress that will shock her, flabbergast her, and make her leave this town with my name engraved in her head as succinctly and righteously as her name is emblazoned into the heart of every self-respecting fashionista from here to Blue Valley!"
"Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you," I said. I dropped the sound stone into my bag, zipped it shut, and smirked at her. "I have no doubt that you'll find the time to make something absolutely dazzling."
"It's not so much a matter of time, dear. Inspiration is as spontaneous as it is divine. I've been toiling through my lists of paid projects in hopes that an idea would bloom from mundanity. Alas, it doesn't help that most if not all of my clients make... eh... rather plebeian requests at best. Celestia forbid that a pony would commission something with flare so that I could truly put my mind at work..."
"I guess I couldn't understand," I murmured defeatedly. "I almost wish there was some way I could help."
"Hmmm. You've helped me quite enough, darling. You let me ramble on right when I needed to." She gave an aristocratic laugh, then turned to look me over. "Though..." She rubbed her chin in thought. "It would be only fair if I had the chance to help you."
I blinked. "I don't understand." Perhaps I was still dazed from tackling the Threnody a few days previous. Otherwise, I have very little reason to explain my obliviousness. "You've already helped me with the enchantment."
"Never mind a glowing rock, darling. I suddenly can't help but notice your rather... warm looking choice of wear."
Ah. But of course.
"What about it?" I gave her a sly glance. "Let me guess, it looks 'worn-in?'"
"Yes, to put it lightly." She smiled and leaned in to me, raising a hoof just an inch from my forelimbs. "Uhm... If I may..."
"Sure..."
She fidgeted with the sleeves and hood and length of the stone-gray material as she trotted tightly around me. "Mmm... Yes, yes, yes. It's getting positively threadbare at the cuffs. And--oh dear--these patches! Aside from their unsightliness, the seams are starting to pop loose! Darling, I know you're only trying to keep warm in this thing, but with the way it's falling apart, I can't imagine that it's doing a very good job of living up to such a task!"
I merely shrugged. "It's worked well enough for me. Besides, when I get cold--er--when I get really cold, I have other ways of taking care of myself."
"It's one thing to take care of your senses, but what of your presentation?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your coat's a rare color, a very fantastic one at that, Miss Heartstrings. And you keep your mane so well. You're obviously a unicorn with a soul of refined grace. What a shame it would be to constantly wrap such a pretty package in veritable rags." She took a step back and tilted her horn upwards with authority. "I insist! You absolutely must let me make you something new that will do the same job and even better!"
"Oh, Miss Rarity." I shook my head. "Seriously, it's fine..."
"All things dull and commonplace are fine, until we have the wherewithal to make them better. Please, I promise it will make you feel better." Her teeth glinted with the enchanting sunlight wafting in through the window beside us. "I won't even charge you! If nothing else, this will be a way for me to flex my mental seamstress muscles and give you something worth wearing proudly all at once! What better a way to celebrate the arrival of Silver Seams than to celebrate fashion in mutual company of a graceful mare such as yourself?"
"Please..." I took a deep breath, clutching at the ends of my stone gray sleeves, feeling as if I was clinging to the edges of so many sacred, cold, yet altogether holy memories of solitude. "As much as I admire your generosity and willingness to do me a favor..." I shuddered briefly. I had gotten what I needed for the time being. There's only so much I can do to interfere with the lives of these beautiful and blissfully ignorant residents of Ponyville. Rarity had so much on her plate, and I didn't feel right in devouring the excessive byproduct of her current joy. So, I decided to tell her the truth, "But I couldn't part with this sweatjacket even if you, Hoity Toity, and Silver Seams all worked together on making me something new. I... I have something of an attachment to it. It was a gift that a very nice pony gave to me when I most needed it."
"Hmmm... Very well then." I was surprised with how easily that won my case. I felt a tiny bit disappointed, actually. "I can't force you to let me make you something, darling. Besides..." She winked as she strolled back towards the dress that she was working on when I had first arrived. "I know better than to undermine the power of a true gift. Sentimental value is like an extra pony sense. Without it, I doubt very much we'd remember what made us who we are today."
I gulped and nodded towards the shadows of the place. "That's something I tell myself every sunrise."
"But I'll be here, Miss Heartstrings, in case you ever decide to return and accept my offer." She added more ribbons to the skirt of the dress she was making, her voice stretching as her mind went into a mode of deep focus. "I may look forward to impressing the likes of Silver Streams, but I'd hate myself forever if I forgot my own clientele, if even for a single moment."
It took a mountain of effort to keep my smile alive, though I knew she couldn't see it at that moment. "Of that I have no doubt, Miss Rarity. I... I wish you a good afternoon." I turned around, my hooves sounding loud and invasive as they scraped against the tile floor of the boutique. Without looking back, I made straight for the door.
The bell rang melodically throughout the lengths of the dress shop.
"Excuse me." I trotted into the main foyer with my saddlebag in tow. "Is Miss Rarity around--?"
"Oh my stars!" She gasped. All four of Rarity's limbs flailed as she struggled to yank a dull black tarp over the body of a mannequin positioned atop the center stage of the Boutique. She panted heavily, as if having run a ten-mile marathon at the first sound of my voice. As she clung to the shrouded dress, I saw her surrounded by a veritable warzone of scattered pincushions, measuring tape, sewing needles, and all sorts of multi-colored fabrics. It had been nearly a week since I had seen Rarity last, and every single day hung like a weight from her features, pulling at the skin beneath her eyes, yanking at the frayed edges of her mane. A pair of working glasses reflected my blinking face as she gawked at me. "I... I-I thought I had locked that door!"
"I'm... I'm sorry!" I felt genuinely shocked. I always fear that something like this might happen with the nature of my curse. There are times when I wonder if I'm just as incorporeal as I am invisible. "You're supposed to be closed? I... I didn't see a sign or anything..."
"Ohhhhh where has my mind gone?!" Rarity rolled her eyes back as her voice took on a breathy growl. "I must have forgotten to lock the front entrance after returning from lunch! Nnnngh... I've just been so, so terribly busy. Ahem." She stood tall and proud, brushed aside a few strands of purple hair, and brandished a polite smile. "I am exceedingly sorry, Miss..."
"Heartstrings."
"Do forgive me, Miss Heartstrings, but the Boutique is--as a matter of fact--closed for business at the moment. I finished the last of my clients' current projects two days ago, and I won't be accepting any more requests until after the weekend. There's been... pressing business, as of late."
"Pressing business?" I blinked, then brightened with a smile. "Oh, you mean that dress for Silver Seams that you were planning--?"
Rarity's face became paler, if that was even possible. "You... It... She..." Her lower left eyelid began twitching. For a moment there, I thought she was going to teeter backwards and collapse completely. "How did you know about Silver Seams' visit?!"
I winced immediately.
Whoops.
"Did... Did one of my friends talk?" She blinked, then her expression became a hard-edged sword. "Pinkie Pie. Somehow, she's always putting her tongue to improper use..."
"Uhm. No. It's n-nothing like that! I... uhm..." I fiddled desperately for an explanation. I still don't know why I do this at times. I very seriously doubt that whatever I say--fabrication or not--will be explicitly carried over past my visitation with a pony soul. What is there to cover for? I suppose I want each encounter I have with these Ponyvilleans to remain as sacred as I consider them to be. "I-I-I'm visiting from Las Pegasus, and I had attended a fashion show--"
"Las Pegasus?" The menace in Rarity's face immediately dissipated as soon as the word "fashion" bled from my lips. She even smiled for the briefest of moments. "Then you are familiar with the work of Hoity Toity!"
"Yes! Hoity Toity! And... uhm... supposedly he ran into Silver Seams and suggested that she stop by here..."
"And if you made the trip from Las Pegasus to Ponyville in such short time..." Rarity's gasped breathily as a thought of great enormity rocked her mind. "There's no telling when Silver Streams herself may have arrived! She could be checking into the downtown hotel right now as we speak!" She grimaced visibly and began pacing a panicked orbit around the tarp-covered dress. "Oh blessed Celestia, I'm not nearly finished! I've wasted enough time as it is! Oh, whatever shall I do?"
"Hey! It's okay! Just... uhm... Just relax!" I gestured at her with two hooves and gave a gentle smile. "Silver Seams is an affluent, well-to-do pony, yes?"
"Oh, absolutely!"
"Then, like all rich and famous mares, she's probably taking her sweet time." I grinned and touched the tarp with a hoof for emphasis. "I'm sure you'll have every opportunity to finish this masterpiece--"
"No!" She blurred over and quite forcibly removed my hoof from the material that was obscuring the dress. "You mustn't look!" she hissed. "You mustn't!"
"Uhm... I wasn't about to, Miss Rarity. Not unless you wanted to share--"
"Out of the question!" she exclaimed, nearly snarling as she hugged the bulky item like a dying pet. "No way in Equestria could I let anypony see this now!"
"Oh, very well then." I gulped and ran a hoof through my mane. I cast her a nervous glance. "Er... may I ask why?"
"Why?!" Her eyes turned into bright blue saucers. "Why?! Because, darling, a work of art is always pathetic and unseemly in its most primordial stages! I would be outright cursing the dress to defeating scrutiny if I allowed another pony to see the ugly building blocks of the final product before it even has a chance to shine! A self-respecting seamstress never exhibits a work until it is close to completion!"
"Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense." I should have just let the conversation end there, but something about seeing Rarity so nervous and disheveled put a bad taste in my mouth. Why do I always make friends with ponies I can never afford to commune with? "But... I'm not Silver Seams, am I?"
"Erm... Your point being?"
I glanced around the shadowy lengths of the Carousel Boutique. Half of the lights that were on last week were dimmed that afternoon, so that a single utilitarian spotlight was cast upon the dress Rarity was working on when I had shown up.
"I get the feeling that you've been holed up here for quite a while, working on this thing..."
"Why, but of course! Silver Seams is visiting and I must do all that's in my power to give her something worth writing home about! After all, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
"And in all that time, have you had any critical eyes other than your own to judge the work in progress?"
Rarity said nothing. She merely blinked.
I gazed past her expression. "Not even your friends?"
She bit her lip to the bleeding point.
I smiled gently. "What I'm trying to say, Miss Rarity, is that maybe it wouldn't hurt to get an opinion about it this early on." I smiled and turned my flank aside so she could see my cutie mark. "Experience with writing music has taught me that the final composition is always a heck of a lot more spectacular if I've had some other pony other than myself be a critic through the creation process."
"Mmmm... Yes." She breathed slightly easier. It appeared as though the wrinkles in her mane were smoothing away magically as she ingested my words. "Yes, I do believe that is a very... intelligent observation."
"So then..." I turned to face her straight-on. "What's the harm in heading outside, seeing some sunlight, and fetching one of your closest acquaintances to provide you a critical eye?"
"Mmm. No. N-No, we can't be having that."
I blinked. "We can't?"
"The girls--erm--my friends, they are a darling bunch, but so many of them are prone to exaggeration for the sake of placating me." She paced slightly about the Boutique. "There are times when I enjoy such bias, even moments when I need it." Her jaw clenched tightly as a fire burned in her blue eyes. "But this is not one of those times." After a pause, she tilted her face back up with a bright expression. She glanced at me. "Miss--Heartstrings, was it?"
"Err... Yeah?"
"Would you be willing to tell me what you think?" Her eyes were sparkling as she asked me this.
I wish I could have said the same about mine. "Uhm... Eheheh..." I shifted nervously where I stood and waved my left forelimb so that she could get a good look at a patch on my "worn-in" hoodie sleeve. "Honestly, Miss Rarity, do I look like I'm qualified to say what is or isn't acceptable in fashion?"
"You're a perfect stranger; that's qualification enough!" She smiled with the rising layers of hope emanating from her being, making it increasingly difficult to deny her with each passing breath. "What's more, you're obviously a refined unicorn who's both blunt and eloquent. Please, would you do me this favor? I'm sorry to bother you with it, but I am at my wit's end at the moment!"
"But I thought it was practically criminal to look at a dress before it's completed!"
"Thankfully, dear, you've just convinced me otherwise!"
"Ehh... yeah..."
"Just what were you coming here for in the first place, if I may ask?"
"Uhm..." I opened my saddlebag and produced the second dark crystal. "There's this stone I need enchanting and--"
"Ah! I can do enchanting in my sleep! Let's consider it an even exchange, hmm?" She practically grabbed the rock from my grasp with a pair of hooves and shoved me towards the dress. "Please. Be a dear and look at what I've crafted so far. I'll be ever so grateful!" That said, she aimed her horn and effortlessly slid the tarp off of the forbidden work of dressmaking.
For a moment there, I thought all the lamps that were previously dormant in the Boutique had suddenly been switched on. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was actually the shiny, alabaster material of the silken dress reflecting the meager light from all the windows around us, positively magnifying it. The gown's upper collar was a shimmering array of ivory beads. The sash about the middle of the dress was also studded with glittering spheres. The hem of the skirt--obviously unfinished--was nonetheless remarkable at this stage, with several layers of laced edges accentuating the weight of the fabric.
I suppose, as fillies go, I've never held much stock in fashion. Like Twilight, I often had my young nose stuck in history books more than dress catalogues. It was Moondancer who was the little princess of the foalish trio, and no doubt she would have been beside herself to see such an amazing gown propped before her. And yet, I couldn't help but feel my breath taken away. This work of Rarity's was something befitting royalty. I was afraid that I'd go to sleep depressed that night after staring for so long, because nothing I'd see for the rest of that afternoon could possibly match the beauty of what stood before me. A real critic would have written an essay about this. All I had to say was...
"It's beautiful."
"Just that?" Rarity, as it turns out, was directly beside me. I nearly jumped in fright. "Simply 'beautiful'?"
"I... Uhm..."
"You barely looked at it for ten seconds! Please, I implore you!" Her body hung low to the ground, as if the aristocratic fashionista was willing to beg. "Take your time! Get a good look at it! A real close look and then tell me what you think!"
Okay then...
Taking a deep breath, I approached the dress like a polite dancing partner. I squinted at the thing. I poured my eyes over the length of the skirt. I marched in circles around it. I stalked it like a lion hunts its prey. I made sure that my eyes covered every silken inch until I had enough sufficient details to sputter forth.
"It's still beautiful."
I briefly feared that Rarity was going to explode.
Swiftly, I followed that up with, "I-I just realized..." I pointed at the glittering spheres along the middle of the dress. "These... These are all pearls?"
"Mmmmhmmm. Yes. Natural as oxygen. Straight from the river basins of Blue Valley!" She smiled wide. I could see the pools of her eyes quivering with each anxious heartbeat. "Spared no expense! I stored them for a rainy day--eheheh--as it were. Aren't they splendid?"
"And they're making up the collar," I pointed out.
"And... And-And-And--" She scampered around and stood next to me as she pointed out the many layers of the skirt. "And there're more to be applied! Each of the final three seams shall be accentuated with them! That makes a total of five layers of pearls!"
"That's... That's bold..." I nodded, rubbing a hoof along my chin. "Extravagant, yes. But... It just shouts confidence and beauty... a natural beauty."
"Yes! Yes! Heehee--Ahem." She calmed herself and spoke in a duller voice. "Remind you of anypony?"
I blinked. I looked at her, then at the dress. "Uhm... Wouldn't you have put more blue gems into the design if you meant it to represent--?"
"Hmmm?" She squinted awkwardly, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, bah!" She chuckled airily. "I would never think to be so narcissistic! Erm, at least not in this scenario. Ahem. Think harder..."
"Uhm..." I scratched my skull through my mane. "Is it for Silver Seams herself to wear? I'm... Not entirely familiar with the color of her coat. Does it match?"
Rarity gawked at me as if I was committing some blatant crime. "You... You mean you don't see it? You don't see what I've done?"
I gazed at the dress, frantically searching for a clue. Everything was white, brilliant, pearlescent, and magnificent. What else was there to say?
"Is it not the tenth of August in two days' time?" Rarity finally clued me in.
I glanced at her. I wracked my brain for a connection. "August Tenth... August Tenth..."
Rarity paced around me, orating with authority, "Not only is it when I'm expecting Miss Seams to visit, but it's none other than the birthday of the legendary Princess Platinum of Unicornia!"
"Oh..." I blinked. "Oh!" I blinked harder, the dress suddenly coming into greater focus. "One of the three founders of Equestria!"
"Aaaaaand..." She leaned towards me with a proud grin. "...the first royal family member to have united the five tribes of unicorns into solidarity!"
I stared back at her. Seconds ticked into breaths. Her resounding sigh felt like a cannonball to my chest.
"Oh, darling, do remember your roots!" She said as she sashayed back towards the dress and pointed at the many rows of pearls. "What was Princess Platinum's gift to the founding matriarchs of the five tribes?"
"Uhm..." I thought out loud, and grinned as the realization came to me. "But of course! She gave them pearls excavated from the long lost Sapphire Lake of Dream Valley!"
Rarity grinned at me, like a teacher congratulating a learning foal. "And as she gave them these pearls--the symbol of her grace and generosity--she declared a new era for unicorns, when they would invest all of their magical energies in guiding the path of the Sun and Moon for generations to come." She pointed at the obvious layers on the dress where the pearls would go. "Five tribes, five layers, a whole ensemble of beauty, grace, and promise." She stood up straight and tall. "Silver Seams is one of the most prominent members of Manehattan elite, and as all ponies know, Manehattan was formerly Neigh Amsterdam, the central capital of Old Unicornia!"
"And she's arriving close to the birthday of Princess Platinum herself. How old would that make the monarch anyways?" I glanced at her with a curious grin. "Two Thousand Years? Her reign began almost a millennium before the fall of Luna."
"Don't you get it?"
"Absolutely, Miss Rarity. I just..." I gulped. "I guess my head wasn't in the right place. But Silver Seams?" I winked at her. "It seems like you know your audience. This is all... well... this is all positively dazzling!"
"Do you really think so?!" Rarity almost giggled like a foal, but once more covered it with an air of restraint. "Ahem--But I did not ask for your observation to simply gush over my own labors. Tell me, do you think the message is too obvious, now that you know the appropriate angle and all?"
"Rarity, it seems to me that you put a lot of thought and effort into this work. Not only do I think that the message will hit Silver Seams close to home, but I think it will impress her greatly that you were capable of thinking of something so fantastic on such short notice."
"Yes, funny that you should say that. I only had a week to work on it." She gulped and gazed at the dress with a rediscovered pensiveness. "Still, it's not been enough. I have so little time left, and so many pearls to apply. I fear as though I've embellished too much on the front half of the dress as it is. I don't know what I'd do with myself if I ran out halfway through the last layer."
"Surely you've taken the right measurements..."
"Hmmm. Yes. But I won't know how much to apply until the dress has been worn, so that the fabric has been truly flexed to allow for a proper estimate..." Her words trailed off as she attempted to think up a solution halfway through uttering them.
"Have you tried it on yourself?" I asked. "The dress that is."
"Hmmmph! Don't be so absurd! A proper dressmaker could never do her work while wearing it--" She stopped. She looked at me.
I looked back. "Uhm... What are you...?" I felt my cheeks burning suddenly. "Oh no. Seriously, Miss Rarity. There's no way I could do that."
Thirty minutes later, I was doing that.
The sound stone was resting atop the metal stand before the window, glowing slowly with enchantment while Rarity focused on another "magical" situation altogether. I stood atop the stage as she trotted and hovered all around me, forcing my limbs apart so as to get proper access to all the layers of the dress she had left to apply the pearls.
"You have no idea what this means to me, Miss... Heartstrings, was it?"
"Yes."
"Erm--Yes. My apologies. It's simply horrible to get a mare's name wrong."
"I wouldn't be offended." I tried to breathe evenly. "Trust me."
"I'm just so beside myself right now!" She giggled nervously before proceeding with the task, her eyes squinting earnestly from behind her spectacles. "If you hadn't come out of the blue--unlocked door and all--I'd be at a loss for time! Oh, thank Celestia! I swear, you're like a guardian angel!"
"An... angel?" I gazed off towards the windows. I thought of Morning Dew. A warm toastiness spread through me that made the awkward situation instantly bearable. I imagined wearing this fabulous dress for another occasion altogether, and I couldn't help but smile and sigh. "Generous ponies are as generous ponies do."
"Hmmm..." Rarity smiled as she floated needle and thread between us, fastening the pearls one at a time to the seams of the skirt. "Some of the things that you say, Miss Heartstrings: they're quite poignant. I'm tempted to ask if you've heard more about me than my gifts in sewing and enchanting."
"Oh. Uhm. Not much more than... er... they say around town."
"Yes?" Rarity paced around me and squinted hard at her work. "And just what do they say about me around town?"
I bit my lip. There are times when it's not so bad being backed up into a wall. I'd have expected not to be wearing a fragile, expensive dress at such moments. "Well, ponies say that you're a good seamstress and very dedicated to your work."
"Oh." Her voice had a dead tone to it. She threaded the needle with far less enthusiasm, suddenly. "Is that all? Why am I not surprised..."
"B-but I'm not exactly from around here!" I tried to make up for it.
"Visiting from Las Pegasus, right?"
Was that what I said? Dear Celestia, I should have been better at this. "I'm sure that if I had stayed around here longer, I would have heard more about you. But, honestly, I try not to stake too much claim in gossip." That, at least, was true. I relaxed with a gentle breath and allowed her more room to work around me. "Besides, being popular has never exactly been my schtick." I gulped. "Especially as of late."
"And why would you say such a thing, darling?" Rarity's voice became melodic once more. My attention was instantly grabbed. "You're a pretty, elegant, intelligent young mare--if I may be so bold. I'm sure you're the object of stallions' desire and the target of fillies' envy wherever you go!"
I chuckled at that. "I think your friends' tendency to placate has rubbed off on you, Miss Rarity."
"Oh please! A good compliment is just like any other gift! Why shoot it down so?"
"I'm..." I fidgeted. "I'm sorry."
"And none of that! There's a thing to be said about excessive humility. But, just like with my good friend Fluttershy, it can be a tad bit grating at times."
"Do you lavish this 'Fluttershy' with compliments as well?"
Rarity's lips curved. "As I do with all kindly ponies who deserve it."
"All I've done is help you with your dress."
"Oh, but it's more than that."
"Like what?"
"Why, the little things, darling. Such as you asking for me by name when you first marched in here."
I stared down at her. "You... You really appreciate that, huh?"
"Oh, don't let me get started!" She briefly paused in sewing to roll her gorgeous blue eyes. "If I had a shiny red apple for each time a pony marched in under that doorbell and failed to recognize me or my lifelong work, I swear, I would put Sweet Apple Acres out of business with my bounty! Hmph!" She smiled. "That's why I'm so proud to have had a perfect stranger like you come in asking to see me, even if I was... erm... h-hardly welcoming when you first entered. Eh heh heh..."
I was gazing off towards the corner of the place. I've never liked thinking about it, but for a solid year I've always been the first pony to say my own name in a given situation. I'm not sure a year' worth of journal entries is enough to explain just what that feels like. There are times when--I swear--I forget I was ever once called "Lyra." Those are dismal gray mornings, waking up to my own fears and regrets, the casual detritus of an indefinable curse.
"It's a wonderful thing to be recognized," I found myself saying out loud. "But that's as far as I could ever hope to dream. I like my name. I just wouldn't care for it being waved around like a flag."
"Are you afraid of the spotlight, dear?"
"The what?"
"The spotlight." She smiled at me while a few glittering pins floated before her. "It is my belief that we're destined to experience it at some point or another, whether we ask for it or not. I've endeavored all my life to be prepared for it."
"You say that as if being popular was what a pony was made for."
"Isn't it?"
"I..." I chewed on my lip briefly. "Maybe once I believed that. Nowadays, though..." I felt a wave of cold, but did my best not to shiver while wearing Rarity's unfinished masterpiece. "It's my hope that when my time on this world is done, I'll leave everything behind while remaining perfectly content with myself."
"Good heavens," she almost grunted. "That's remarkably grim, don't you think?"
"I-I like to think it's an affirmative perspective." I gave her a reassuring smile. "I at least believe that it's possible to end things happily. Just how does popularity fill that niche?"
"Well, I can't presume to lecture a pony on philosophy," Rarity sewed another pearl in and paused altogether, her eyes swimming in the alabaster fabric of the half-finished dress before her. "But I firmly believe that a pony's essence is not only defined by her notoriety--it is, in fact, improved by it. It's not half as shallow as many are prone to think, though I don't blame them. It all deals with what we are, and what we were made to be."
I admit: that definitely got my attention. I gazed earnestly at her. "Oh really?"
"Mmmhmm..." She stood before me and rested on her hind legs with a tranquil grin. "Being popular means more than having fame or fortune or good standing with the citizenry of ponydom." She fluffed her mane elegantly with her hoof, all the while casting a glance towards the sound stone being enchanted across from us. "Ponies, after all, are social things, finely crafted jewels of Creation that are all meant to shine together. When a strange pony walks into my store and has the good grace to know my name, a part of me feels reborn. It means that something that I've done, something that I've contributed to the canvas of this world has captured their attention, and our hearts have been connected." She gazed back at me, and her face was as bright as the painting she was attempting to illustrate in my mind's eye. "We are all artists deep down, Miss Heartstrings, every single one of us, and we make our mark on this world with the brushstrokes of our indomitable spirits. I have only ever sought to paint a masterpiece that can inspire others, for why else do we exist than to do so remarkably?"
As she spoke, the haunting chords of the eighth elegy were returning to my mind. But instead of drowning her out, they were highlighting every word that came out of her mouth, as if she had been designated the lunar instrumental's choir since the dawn of time. I remembered ever so briefly what it meant to compose music before the curse drowned me. Making music was something to be shared, along with every glorious facet of existence.
No, I could never judge Rarity for wanting to be bigger than life itself. A generous soul deserves to rest on the highest pedestal. How else was she to shower the rest of the world with gifts? Like the gift she was giving me right then, a most precious gift that would be done with far sooner than I had the desire to believe, only the good wisdom to expect.
"I wish I could be as remarkable as you, Miss Rarity," I solemnly said, though my smile was joyful. "But, I think some of us were born to shine, and others simply to twinkle."
I don't know if she understood what I said, but her coy wink told me that there was something else I hadn't gathered until then. "That's the biggest misconception about popularity, darling. It is not a competition. Much rather, I like to see it as a marathon." She trotted back over to my side and resumed work on the gown's skirt. "One of these days, Miss Heartstrings, you are going to break into a full gallop, and I sincerely envy the ponies who will be there to witness your shining moment in the spotlight."
Rarity's words filled my mind, generating an awe that was as numbing as it was felicitous to my spirit. It was distracting to the point that I couldn't focus on the eighth elegy. As a matter of fact, I lost track of time, so that I hadn't counted the days between helping her with the dress and returning to the Boutique with the third stone.
All I could think about was making her day, hopefully in some fraction of the manner in which she had once made mine. So when I stepped through the door and heard the ringing bell announcing my entrance, I immediately chirped forth into the domain of fabric and sparkles, "Hello, Miss Rarity? My name's Lyra Heartstrings, and I heard lots about you. So long as you're not busy with something at the moment, I was wondering if I could borrow your infamous talents in enchanting this gemstone that I've--"
I froze in my tracks.
A tall, brown-coated mare with a gray mane stared haughtily down at me over the crest of her thick-framed, dark spectacles. She was dressed in a black blouse and matching slacks with room for her flaring tail to poke through. Nothing about her straight-laced outfit succeeded in hiding the thin and rigid frame that encompassed her being.
"Huh..." I blinked.
"Hmmm..." Was all she uttered at first. Her eyes narrowed on me. When she next spoke, I wasn't entirely sure whom she was addressing until I heard scampering hooves in the distance. "A regular of yours, I gather?"
"Oh! Uhm... Eheheh!" Rarity--a frazzled and sweating mess--dashed over between me and this angular stranger. "It's the middle of the day! I'm bound to have clientele visiting as they see fit!"
"I could have sworn that you were going to close regular business for my visit..."
"Ah! Yes! Hah! Funny, I did say that, didn't I?!" Rarity spun to face her, all but bowing to kiss the deadpan mare's hooves. "Heheheh--Absent mind of a genius! Our words go places but our hooves seldom follow them!" She turned to face me. "Uhm... Can I help you? Erm--that is to say--" She shook her head, blurredly, then exclaimed, "I would ever so like to help you, but at the moment I'm afraid that I am predisposed. Still, if you leave a brief description of what it is that you require, I am certain to leave for myself a detailed note so that I can properly serve you first thing tomorrow morning, as I am prompt and diligent to pay heed to all of my loyal, well-paying customers! Eheheheh..."
"Uhm..." I glanced forlornly at the mare standing behind her, above us, like a grand looming shadow. "It... It's not important," I eventually murmured, backing out of the store with my saddlebag and shivers. "Really. I can come another time."
"Oh, but please! Let me know what it is that you want so that I can help you tomorrow!" Rarity's pleading eyes briefly broke the walls of sheer panic. "Yes, I'm closed for business, but I would hate myself for sending away a pony in need without finding a way to get back to her..."
"Undoubtedly she's in need of new winter wear," the mare said, and my attention was drawn to her bored gaze being aimed at my hoodie. "Or else a severe alteration." She glanced lethargically at Rarity. "From what Mr. Toity said, I had assumed all of your fellow residents wore the Canterlot line you sewed for him a year ago."
Rarity gulped, then glanced aside at me. "Well, yes. I do seem to... erm... have quite the following in Canterlot. Hereabouts, however... erm..." She gnawed briefly on her hoof and tried to cover it with a smile. "Well, this is farm country, Miss Seams. And you know how earth ponies are. They rely a great deal on hoof-me-downs..."
"And your establishment..." Silver Seams paced across the boutique. "It's been here for the better part of five years?"
"Erm. Yes. I graduated with a minor in business, and my mother's an entrepreneur, so--"
"That's a long enough time to make an impact on the local fashion, wouldn't you think?"
"Erm. Yes. I suppose that--"
"Well, I came here to be thrilled." The first thing that resembled a smile graced Silver's lips, but even that was something of a stretch, like trying to carve a thin line out of black granite. "So, here's your chance, Rarity dear. Thrill me."
Rarity was in an entirely different world, and I was obviously not part of it. "Oh! Absolutely! I have just the thing that I've been dying to show you!" A chill ran through the room, but I already knew the real reason why I was invisible. The young unicorn trotted eagerly over to Silver Seams' side. After a great deal of dramatic narration over the details of Princess Platinum's legacy, Rarity yanked at a cord, and a pair of curtains unfurled, revealing the completed dress on the center stage of the Boutique in all its majesty. Rarity went over every detail, highlighting each of the five rows of pearls with magical blue luminescence, all the while lavishing Silver's ears with the timeless tale of Unicornia's unification before joining the Equestrian herd. "And as she gave a gift to her fellow unicorns, I present you this gift for your eyes! Doesn't it positively shimmer with Platinum's eternal spirit?"
"Mmmm. Yes. It is quite beautiful. I can see you put a great deal of time and effort into it."
"Oh, absolutely! Though, I must have been incredibly inspired, for the entire fabrication went by in a delightful blur. I swear, it's as if the last five days flew by on wings of inspiration--!"
"But, if you would, I'd like to be shown the floor models of your Canterlot lineup."
"My... C-Canterlot lineup?"
"Yes, the ones you supplied to Hoity Toity's marvelous boutique. He's the top supplier in the upper district, or so I've been told."
"Oh... Oh! Uhm... Y-Yes!" Rarity gulped and side-stepped away from her detailed work as I gazed from afar. "I... I do believe I still have some of those... erm... year-old models lying around. Give me just a moment and I'll get them properly displayed--"
"You mean that you don't have a showcase on hoof already? I'd imagined that your customers would like to see your finest work on a day-to-day basis."
"Oh, they are hardly my finest work. Heheheh--I've sold so many of them that they are practically commonplace in the streets of Canterlot by now--"
"Yes, yes. And from Hoity Toity's profitable sales, I imagine that means something. So where are they, darling? My time here in Ponyville is short, after all."
"Uhm--R-Right this way, Miss Seams! I promise you. Eheheh--You won't be disappointedddd!"
As the two trotted out of view, I stood forgotten as always in the shadows. The pearlescent dress in honor of Princess Platinum shimmered brilliantly in the spotlight, but for the first time in nearly a year, I couldn't conceive of a lonelier image than what I saw right then. I longed for the words of Rarity, but whatever could have floated across the lengths of the Boutique were instantly drowned out by Silver's absorbing presence. I trotted slowly out of the shop. The bell was a dull and heartless noise. I did somepony a favor of switching the sign in the front window to "closed" on the way out.
The next morning, I entered slowly, saying nothing. The Boutique was open early for business and all of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling were lit. Two things shone in the center of the shop. One was the dress of pearls, untouched and unmoved from where I had last seen it. The other thing was Rarity's snow-white coat, reflecting sunlight like a precious diamond.
Her brilliance, however, was drowned out by a dull expression as she unemotionally fiddled with a scarf that she was sewing telekinetically in front of her. The skin was weighted under her eyes, so that I was afraid to find out what--besides sleep--had tugged at her spirit.
Bravely, I cleared my throat, and asked, "Miss Rarity?"
In a flash, the artist's eyes lit up at the sound of her name, as if a torch was ignited deep inside her. Rarity turned to gaze at me, her expression bright--but blank--like an untouched canvas. "Oh! Why, hello." It was her turn to clear her throat. She straightened her legs so as to no longer appear so stooped. "Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique."
I smiled genuinely, hoping that it would be infectious. It wasn't. I nevertheless spoke, "I'm visiting from out of town--" I paused. I started over. "My name's Lyra Heartstrings, and while I was visiting, I was wondering if I could pay you for some services, Miss Rarity."
"Hmm. Yes. I would be more than happy to help you," she said, though her voice hardly matched the enthusiasm her words had meant to convey. It's always a tragic thing when a song is sucked from a pony's throat. "Though I must apologize in advance. I have this scarf to finish for another client of mine, and I promised them that I would do it first thing when business hours began."
I glanced back at the door, then at her once again. "You're open earlier than the sign outside says. I couldn't help but notice that while I was strolling by for a morning walk."
"Well, I did not get all that much sleep last night, so I didn't see the purpose in waiting another two hours."
"I'm so sorry to hear that, Miss Rarity." I gulped and backtrotted slightly. "If it helps, I can just come another day--"
"No! Absolutely not! I forbid it!" she said with a slight growl. Then, after blinking at herself, she sighed and ran a hoof over her forehead. "Oh, I do apologize. I know that sounded awfully forward of me."
"I've heard ponies say worse," I said with a gentle smile.
"I've never turned a pony away for services. I don't want you to be the first, Miss Heartstrings." She took a deep breath, her gaze locked onto nothing in particular beyond the nearby window frame. "'Heartstrings.'" She smiled. "Now that's a delightful name that deserves to be famous."
My heart skipped a beat. At first, I thought it was because a part of me actually, foolishly thought she had remembered it. I then realized that I was simply being overwhelmed by a sinking feeling, and every time I tried to rationalize it, all that my mind's eye could come up with was Silver Seams' dark, emotionless stare. It's times like this when I do something impulsive and desperate to shake the stupor that's overcome me. Perhaps it wasn't an accident that I did such a thing in Rarity's presence.
"I heard that you got a visit yesterday," I blurted. "From Silver Seams, no less." I then attempted to rationalize what had to have been no less than a kick to the gut. "That's one reason why I came here." I tried to give a playful grin. "If Silver Seams shops at Carousel Boutique, then that must make this a place of high class!"
My rather awkward compliment had no effect on Rarity. I should have known better, but I was just so desperate to get her to cheer up. I only wished she was nearly as desperate herself. "Hmmm, the jury is still out on that, I'm afraid," she ultimately said.
I gulped. "Why... uhm... Why do you say that? I imagine a seamstress would be excited to have somepony like Silver Seams pay her a personal visit."
"If you can call it a visit," she murmured aloud, struggling to fix the scarf with a sudden frustration. "Nnngh... Oh bother, who am I kidding?" Her lips curved slightly. "It was a delightful encounter. Truly, it was. Silver Seams is an amazing mare, and she is an utterly bedazzling conversationalist. Why, I spent two hours, mesmerized, as I heard her tell about her designing exploits in the grim streets of Stalliongrad. A pony of her age and grandeur is remarkable. Truly remarkable." Rarity's nostrils flared briefly as her eyes lost themselves in the sea of fabric she was shaping into being. "A pony like that has truly earned her fame."
I fidgeted, standing behind her, like the shadow to something that once shone inside that place. With a cheerful voice, I boldly asked, "And did you tell her anything at all about yourself? It sounds like Silver Seams travels around a lot. I'm sure she'd like to know more about the Ponyville scene."
"I'm afraid our conversation never took such a turn," Rarity swiftly replied. "She had to take leave for a meeting with one of her agents. Right now, she's likely having breakfast in bed, waiting for the afternoon train to take her off to Trottingham, and onwards to another season of lavish fashion shows. Hmmm. I will always admire the swift pace and courageous restlessness of the working elite. Though, I suspect, it will forever be from afar."
I didn't know how else to get her to say more than to utter, "I... I don't understand."
"What's there to understand?" she retorted coldly, so that I wondered if she was even talking to me anymore. There was a cold tap-tap-tap of her floating needles coming into hard contact with one another, almost snapping loose the thread that she was knitting into place. "That I set myself for yet another fall? I only have myself to blame, of course, putting so much weight into a single moment, a single glance, a single blasted opportunity, as if the entirety of one's life is determined in a blink. I don't know what's more foolish, the fact that I had stooped to relying on something so desperate or the fact that this wasn't my first time doing so!"
I gulped and said, "The way I see it, it's not so much that we learn from the mistakes in life, but that we learn to encounter future mistakes with greater tenacity."
"Well maybe mistakes are the problem in and of themselves!" Rarity finally grunted, all but slapping the knitting materials to the floor as she flashed a very familiar dress the angriest of glances. "Maybe genius shouldn't have room for stupid errors, or else it isn't actually genius in the first place!"
The room was silent, save for the pistoning sounds of her enraged lungs. Slowly, the elegant unicorn composed herself. The voice that came out of her next was still embroiled, but collected.
"Miss Heartstrings, whoever you are, I can only guess that you are a musician, and a talented one at that. Am I correct?"
I swallowed and gently nodded. "Yes. At least, I'm inclined to agree with you on that. Talent, however, is relative--"
"But it is real," she said, her eyes briefly hot as she glared back at me. "Or else, why would you even subscribe to that name?"
"Er... It was the name I was born with."
"Was it?" she asked sharply.
I blinked at her. "Well, yes, for your information."
"And does it define you? Does it convey to other ponies who and what you are when they say it out loud? Does your name fill their mind with delight and joy just to think of it, because they have utmost confidence in what you mean to them, and what you provide to this beautiful world of ours?"
I took a deep breath, and my gaze fell defeatedly toward my hooves. "I... I couldn't say..."
"Well, allow me to be so bold, but I hear your name, and I see your cutie mark, and I am instantly proud of you, even if I don't know who you are," she said. Her face was too tight to express a smile, too proud to grimace. She continued, "Because if there's one thing I believe in, it's that we're all here for a purpose. We're placed on this earth to shine. Some of us do so better than others, but that's not the argument I'm trying to make. In order to be successful, Miss Heartstrings, to be popular, to make our mark in society, two things have to happen. We have to be sure of ourselves, and the gifts that we have. Secondarily, we have to meet others who share that vision, so that they may properly channel the contributions we have to make in the world of expression." She sighed and looked towards the brilliant dress once more. "With each passing day, I feel as though there are fewer and fewer ponies in existence who know how to properly keep those channels open. Complacency has taken the place of creativity. At least, I hope that's the case, as horrible as that may sound. Because if I'm wrong, and it's all just me..." Rarity's breath came out ragged. She ran a hoof over her face, muffling her next utterance. "Then, dear Celestia, how far have I fallen...?"
I pretended to follow her gaze, just so that I could have an excuse to make mention of the beautiful masterpiece in the room. "I have to say, though. I can't stop staring at that gown since I walked in here. Did you get a chance to show it to Silver Seams while she was around?"
For a moment, Rarity was without words.
So I continued. "I think it's absolutely gorgeous. But, it's more than that." I opened my mouth to continue, but a very tender part of me hesitated. The moment was too thin. After a quiet struggle I dared to say it anyways. "Funny that you would choose a pearl motif, considering it's a day after the anniversary of the legendary Princess Platinum's birth."
Rarity immediately flashed me a glance, one that was frozen for a few pale seconds. Her face broke into something that was halfway between a chuckle and a sob. I was briefly mortified to hear her sniffle. Soon, however, she composed herself in time to smile and murmur, "You really do live up to your name, Miss Heartstrings. I only wonder where your sentiment was yesterday, when the legacy of Unicornia utterly failed me."
I bit my lip. "I'm starting to wonder too."
"To think, she carries the name 'Silver' like it's a copyright, and yet she dares to dress all in black."
"I'm sorry?"
Rarity looked at me. "I'm guessing one of my friends directed you here, or one of the more high-standing members of Ponyville? Hmmm?"
"I-I came here only to do business! I promise." It was the truth. Most of it, at least. "I think you're more famous around town than you give yourself credit for, Miss Rarity."
"Correction, darling. I'm a utility."
"You're what-now?"
"A household name," she said with a smile that obscured the layers of disappointment pouring out of her gaze. "A common noun. I'm the local seamstress that a pony sends a friend to when they need a seam realigned or a hem fixed or a cuff mended. Undoubtedly they say my name a lot, just like anypony in Equestria would say 'Silver Seams.' But do they think twice about it? Do they have the vision--the innate desire--to look even further, in expectation that there are ponies that bury treasure deeply enough to reward souls who look for it? I'll have you know that I wasn't born with the name that you've heard villagers call me by. I wasn't always Rarity."
I blinked. I hadn't expected that at all. "You weren't?"
"No, darling," she shook her head slowly. "As a matter of fact, I was born under the name 'Sapphire Sight.' I come from a long family of jewelcrafters and enchanters. It's only fitting that they expected me to fall in line with what is undeniably a biological tradition. Sure enough, the day I discovered my cutie mark, it was in the act of finding a miraculous repository of natural gemstones. But while my talent may have been determined by fate, I had no intention whatsoever of letting it determine my lot in life. My horn owed its talent to precious rocks, but my heart belonged to my dreams and what future they could provide me. That's why--at a very young age, even before finishing elementary school--I changed my name to 'Rarity'."
"Why?" I asked her. "Why 'Rarity?'"
She stared deeply at me as she said, "Because I wanted a name that I could live up to." She looked sadly at the dress. "And, furthermore--with time and effort--to surpass. I wanted to be special. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be the pony that everypony would know, not just for the sound that her name entailed, but for the hidden and deeper meanings held within, like a multi-layered diamond would offer. Precious rocks aren't meant to be just mined. They exist to be put on display, to fill the world with glittering wonder because--after all--there are things born in this world that are granted the gift to see and admire that which stands out among us. Long ago, I stopped being 'Sapphire Sight,' and chose to be 'Rarity.' How else was I to aspire to greatness? What other choice did I have? Would I follow the hoofsteps of my family and remain a mere blemish in their shadow? The most I would ever accomplish was being a grain of salt in the steep well of tradition, or else a mere cog in some unimaginative industry."
"Industry?" I remarked, an eyebrow raised.
"That is what everything becomes, sadly," Rarity murmured. "Given enough time. Given enough ritual. You go through the motions until the motions become you, and then what is life beyond the utter necessity of the mechanization? Yesterday, I had an entire afternoon to look into the eyes of Silver Seams, to hear her voice, to bask in her aura. And when the whole encounter was said and done, and after I had finished digesting all of her words for whatever palatable merit there was left to savor, I realized that I could have gotten as much of a catharsis from a machine. And do you know why? Because Silver Seams has become part of the industry, a process born from art yet blind to it. She was once an aspiring daredevil of Manehattan couture. Today, she's an old and jaded mare who designs with her hooves, but they're no longer attached to her heart and soul. All that matters is the profit behind the process, something that is measured in money and not in magic. I would almost feel sorry for her... if it wasn't for one thing..."
"Yes?" I leaned forward, curious. "What's that?"
Rarity gulped hard. She seemed to be dealing with her own brand of shivers by the time she eventually said, "That she's the one mare in Equestria who has it right. That everything today is nothing but industry, for what is commonplace is not only accepted, but worshipped on high, because everypony is afraid to think, to challenge, to find things that are new... that are special... that are rare." She exhaled long and hard. "And all awhile, I'm wasting my time looking for ways to stand out, saving all of my pearls to make one beautiful dress when I should be making dozens that will earn me a proper spot, even if it is just another part of some grand, bland machine."
I was listening to her, but somepony's words were rising to the surface, and that pony was me. I thought of my journal entries--so many identical to this one that I'm writing right now. If I wasn't writing for myself, what kind of exposure could I actually hope to achieve, assuming that a pony had the blessed sight to see what I had enscribed? Would it be a deep and thoughtful critique, or an errant flip through the pages before those same hooves tossed the text back into a dusty pile of all of yesterday's tragedies? Even a song can move a soul only so far ahead until a different tune shoves that spirit in the other direction like a gale force wind. How, then, does a pony build a proper sail to navigate the storms of this saturated world?
"Maybe..." I spoke. "Maybe... you're still just waiting for proper exposure." I glanced up at her. "It's a long wait, sure, but that doesn't mean it won't come to you, Miss Rarity. Perhaps the day will come when you will rise up--like Silver Seams has--only you won't settle for being commonplace. You won't make the same mistakes she did."
"Hmmm... Mistakes?" Rarity smiled. "Miss Seams has achieved everything I've ever wished I could, and did she get there by making mistakes? If that's true, then I obviously need to make such transgressions myself." She took a deep breath. "But I have never, ever worked that way. Nor would I wish to."
I said, "I'm guessing life is cruel to perfectionists."
"I've never blamed life for the world's cruelty," Rarity muttered. "Only ignorance." She smiled painfully my way. "And I would hate to be such a transgressor, especially before a mercifully patient and gracious mare such as yourself. Please, do forgive my self-absorbed ramblings, Miss Heartstrings, and tell me how I may be of service to you today."
My heart immediately fell down to the bottommost part of my gut. "Oh. Oh... Uhm..." My saddlebag weighed as though it was full of cemetery gravestones. "You know what? We had a delightful conversation. I think I got exactly what I needed from this visit--"
"Come now, do not let my passionate goings-ons frighten you away, dear," she said softly. "My best friends have occasionally labeled me a 'drama queen,' and they would more than occasionally be correct. Please, tell me what you came here for. You have my full and undivided attention. You've earned it."
I gulped, shifting guiltily like a young colt who had just killed a bird with a slingshot. I fiddled telekinetically with my saddlebag and avoided her gaze as I stammered forth, "I came here... I-I came here because... uhm... I heard that you were good with enchanting gemstones." I should have given her the last two stones. Instead, something sincere inside me only produced one. "And I very desperately need to have this imbued with magic once again. I.... uhm... I've been told that you're the best in town. I didn't want to settle for less."
Rarity's response was a sincere breath and a nod of her head. "Nopony should ever settle for less, darling."
I immediately winced. "But. But you're busy with the scarf and I'm sure you've got other dresses to make and--"
"Miss Heartstrings."
"I'll understand if you're just not up to it--"
"Miss Heartstrings." She grabbed the rock with a forced charge of telekinesis. Standing up straight, she gave me a placid grin as she trotted towards the necessary equipment beside the window. "Enchanting gemstones is just one of many ways I make a living. Ever since I came to Ponyville, I've done just that--living. But that doesn't mean I can't do it gracefully, and proudly. Please, let me be of service to you."
I reached a hoof towards her from afar, but it was as if she was slipping away from me. What broke my heart was that I realized she had no other place to slip away to. This was her home as much as it was mine. She was as much a prisoner, and yet she wasn't cursed. Or was she?
Just what pony isn't cursed, come to think of it? I hadn't put that much philosophical thought into the idea until then, until I saw Rarity going through the motions, being reborn as "Sapphire Sight," setting the lens up before the window and capturing the sunlight like a piston would be powered by steam. In the end, I would give her three golden bits and she would give me a smile, but I suddenly no longer knew which was more jaded.
Once I had left Rarity's presence, she would forget that I ever existed. But she would not forget her troubles. Her concerns were as real as oxygen, and she depended on them just as desperately. What place was it of mine to try and convince her otherwise, even if I had the power to do so? Fame means nothing to me, but that is simply my curse. How much worse is it to have an opportunity that is never realized, though the potential is always there?
Was she making a mountain out of a molehill? Did society think of her as just any other contributing part of the machine, assuming it thought of her at all? I wondered if there was any pony qualified to do proper, unbiased research on a soul's notoriety, and then I realized that such a proper pony was me.
"Rarity? Yeah, I know her. She's the pony who operates the carousel besides the Ponyville fairgrounds, right? Wait--Huh? You mean to tell me it's not an actual carousel? Yeesh. What's with all the flippin' tents around that side of town, then?"
"Hmmm... Miss Rarity... Miss Rarity... Oh! I remember her! White coat? Bluish mane? I listened to her perform once at a dance party in Town Hall last Summer Sun Celebration. What's her call sign again? 'DJ-P0N3?'"
"She's a tailor, right? She puts together dresses and stuff? Or is that the unicorn with the streak in her hair? Whatever. One of them lives in a tree. Can I go now? I'm late for a lunch in downtown."
"I vaguely remember something about a unicorn who nearly died at the Best Young Fliers Competition in Cloudsdale. Hey, did you hear what our neighborhood weather flier Rainbow Dash did on that day? She produced a brilliant sonic rainboom--right in front of Princess Celestia! Swooosh! Kablaam! Yeah! She saved--like--three entire members of the Wonderbolts at the same time too! Talk about your fifteen minutes of awesome! Heh!"
"Isn't that the mare who sounds like a vampire and visits Aloe and Lotus' Day Spa twice a week?"
"Why, I go to Carousel Boutique all the time! You're telling me that she owns the place? My goodness, I always thought she was just an intern. I mean, what unicorn at that young age doesn't inherit a business like that? Do you get what I'm saying?"
"I know that there's a white unicorn who's one of the rumored Elements of Harmony. Y'know--cuz supposedly the Elements are no longer sacred objects like in olden times, but they've instead been fused with the spirits of living ponies. All I know is that one of them is Loyalty and she's a white unicorn. Or maybe it was the Element of Beauty. Hmmm... Why're you asking me this again?"
"Scram, lady. I'm trying to eat my sandwich here."
"Come to think of it, we had a fashion show here in Ponyville once. It was almost a year ago. Some fancy schmancy art critic from Canterlot came for the whole event. Wouldn't you know it? It was all just some practical joke on the poor schmuck. It had to have been! The dresses that were on display were gaudy as all get-out! I swear, I've never seen a posh know-it-all get so engraged. Heh--Wait, what? Why does this come to mind? Cuz the whole dang prank was this 'Rarity's' idea, wasn't it? I mean, that's why you're asking around about her, right? It's about time karma caught up with the mare."
"Ew--like--why would I go shopping at some overpriced hole-in-the-wall place on the far east side of town? I totally--like--do all my shopping at Rich's Threads. After all, that's where all the popular fillies go. Leave Carousel Boutique to the upstart snobs who run the place!"
"How dare you!"
I glanced over from where I stood inside Sugarcube Corner, interviewing a pair of young mares with pastel, permed manes. The two gazed in the same direction, looking bored beyond all measure.
The author of the last exclamation immediately wilted upon our combined glance. "Uhm... Not that I have anything against you as ponies... but..." Fluttershy took a deep breath and summoned the same frown that had empowered her voice just seconds go. "But Rarity is not an upstart snob! She's a talented pony with a gift for making beautiful dresses and she most definitely does not overcharge her customers! What's more, she's my friend, and she deserves more respect than that!"
"Heh... Schyeaaah..." One of the fillies rolled her painted eyes. "So--like--if that was true, then how come I never knew her name until now?"
"Yeah..." The other joined in, glaring Fluttershy's way. "If she's so great, shouldn't she be hanging out in Trottingham and not hickville-central?"
"Only figures you're defending her cuz you're her friend." The first one scoffed once more. "Heh--Lemme guess. She totally gives you discounts just to say nice things about her."
"I... I..." Fluttershy's blue eyes quivered. "That's not true! Rarity--" She gulped. "She just--"
"Heh. Just what I thought." The two fillies marched off, their bright tails swishing in unison. "Come on, let's ditch these lame-o's. The smoothies totally stink here anyways."
"Like--omigoddess--I was about to say the same exact thing!"
"No way! We should sooooo take notes about it!"
The two left, along with their perfume. I glanced crookedly at their absence, cleared my throat, and pivoted slowly to face Fluttershy. "So... You say that Rarity is a talented pony and deserves respect?"
"Mmmm..." Fluttershy was obviously still reeling from the duo's heartless words. She hid behind a satiny lock of pink hair and turned to walk towards the far end of the semi-crowded eatery. "Never mind. Forget I said anything. It was rude of me to have interrupted."
"But what if I wanted to hear more of what you had to say?"
She merely walked away, slowly, like a rain drop sliding downhill.
I shrugged, adjusting the sleeves of my hoodie. "Oh well, then. I guess I've learned all I needed to know about that upstart snob at the Carousel Boutique."
"Nnnnngh--" I saw the tiniest hint of gnashing teeth, and soon she was aiming an angelic frown at me once more. "You take that back right now!" A blink, a fluttering of her lashes, then a deep blush: "Erm... if you don't mind, that is..."
I smiled her way. "So now you want to defend her again?"
"I..." She shuddered and brushed away a few bright bangs from before her blue eyes. "I never thought that I would have to. Rarity has always had a good reputation. At least I've always thought so." She glanced up at me, and the smile that came from her was as soft and gentle as her voice, and twice as sincere. "Just like anypony, you have to get to know her to understand her. She's the most generous, elegant, thoughtful, and giving mare that I know."
"The question that's on my mind..." I leaned against a counter of glass-cased desserts as I gazed at Fluttershy. "Is whether or not Rarity is satisfied with that?"
"Uhm... Satisfied with what?"
"With somepony having to get to know her before she can understand her. Rarity's an artist, yes?"
"Oh. Most definitely..."
"You say that just because you're her friend--?"
"N-no!" Fluttershy exclaimed, her wings flexing in time with her exhalation. "Her works speak for themselves! She's designed hundreds of dresses for all kinds of ponies, from local celebrities to visiting diplomats to close acquaintances!"
"So then..." I glanced towards the exit through which our two "companions" had just exited. "How is it that most ponies I ask know very little about her?"
Fluttershy chewed on her bottom lip and looked away shamefully.
I gave her a curious glance. "Have I struck a bad chord? I'm a musician. So be honest with me, cuz I really hate doing that."
"Why... do you want to know so much about her?" Fluttershy gulped. "About my dear friend Rarity?"
I scratched my neck and weathered a wave of chills. "What's your name?" I asked just to hear her say it herself.
"Um... Fl-Fluttershy."
"Do you know your mother's name?"
"Erm. Yes. Why is that important?"
"Humor me, if you will."
"My mom's name is Windflicker. She was born in Stratopolis."
"And your grandmother's name. What about hers?"
"Fluttersky. I was... m-more or less named after her."
"Her mother had a name too, yes? Your great grandmother?"
"Uhm..." Fluttershy had to think about that for a second. "Silvercloud... I think. Oh dear, I feel terrible for not remembering immediately..."
"And..." I leaned forward slightly. "What of your great-great grandmother? Do you know her name?"
Fluttershy drew a blank. Her cheeks were rosy as she fidgeted before the unexpected inquisition.
"If you must know, I don't remember my great-great grandmother's name either," I murmured. Then gulped. "Nor do I recall my great grandmother's. So you're one point above me, Miss Fluttershy, if it's of any consolation."
"What... uhm... What are you attempting to prove with this?"
"Rarity is here. Unlike your ancestors and mine, she's alive. She lives among us, barely a few walls away from where other ponies dwell. Why is it that so few of them know her name, even when she does so much to establish a reputation for herself?" I adjusted the collar of my hoodie and murmured towards the walls. "And just how many generations will it take to forget she ever had a name to begin with?"
"To be honest, I've never thought of it in that detail."
I nodded slowly. "Neither have I. Not until lately. I have long... taken such things for granted. Now I can't afford to do anything but obsess over it. Only, I believe, Miss Rarity has made it the focus of her whole entire life, and just what has it earned her?"
"You obviously care about her to have analyzed the matter this much," Fluttershy said woefully. "I only wish I was as considerate."
I gave her a curious glance. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you her friend? What could make you think that way about yourself?"
"Because..." Fluttershy struggled to push the words out. "Because when I should have been there for her in the past, I failed. And I wasn't the only one. All the ponies she depended on failed her as well."
"I don't see how that could be."
"It's true," Fluttershy murmured. "For this year's Grand Galloping Gala, Rarity and myself and five others were all invited to attend the royal ceremony. In honor of the occasion, Rarity took it upon herself to make us all dresses, free of charge. I've never seen a pony do something so generous before or since. But after she had put so much time and effort into the gowns, we... uhm... we didn't show any gratitude."
"No?"
"Mmmm... no." She guiltily shook her head. "Not at first, at least. We had our own ideas of what our gowns should have looked like. Any self-respecting seamstress would have quit on us all right there and then. But not Rarity. Her desire to make us happy was bigger than her desire to express herself, which she had every right to do. She sewed the dresses we wanted to have made, but they were simply horrible. We were just too blind and selfish to realize it. And then... mmnngh..." She winced as if a wave of nausea was passing through her frail body. "There was this fashion show, and those terrible dresses were put on display for the likes of Canterlot's own Hoity Toity. It was Rarity's one chance for the spotlight, a moment she had always dreamed of, and we had ruined it for her."
"That..." I bit my lip and helplessly nodded. "That sounds horrible."
"It was. She was devastated. But we all tried to make it up for her. We finished the dress that she was making for herself to wear at the Gala. Then, after grabbing Hoity Toity's attention, we were able to perform a second fashion show--a private one--and he got to see all of Rarity's marvelous designs for the first time. He was impressed, and he ended up paying her a great deal to have her line of fashion sold in his boutique at Canterlot."
"Huh..." I smiled warmly. "Well, there ya go. Friends to the end. Sounds like you paid her back proper."
"Paid her back?" Fluttershy gave me a sad, wilted expression. "Oh, if only that were true. Don't you see? The damage was done. Even if Hoity Toity was impressed, did that really mean anything for Rarity's fashion career?" She gulped hard and shut her eyes shamefully. "Yes, she earned a lot of bits from the private show. But what had happened in town ruined any chance she had of coming public in this part of Equestria. She's sold hundreds of dresses in her line of work throughout Canterlot, but right here--in her home--where her reputation matters the most, she's had her chance to be in the spotlight... and it's gone. Gone forever."
I stared around the lengths of Sugarcube Corner, entrenched in thought. Finally, I couldn't help but ask, "Then why does she stay here, if her opportunity had come and gone for her elsewhere?"
"I wish I knew. I'm only glad that she's around because she's my friend and it fills me with joy to be in her presence." Fluttershy smiled painfully. "Especially since it wouldn't be the last time we... erm, that is I put a dent in her dreams."
"How... H-how so?"
"Something like that happened again," Fluttershy once more avoided my gaze. "A famous photographer named Photo Finish came to town. Rarity had an opportunity to show off her fashion, and she needed a model. She chose me. I was so honored, but then something unexpected happened. Photo Finish focused entirely on me. She paid no attention to Rarity's beautiful outfits whatsoever. It was because of Rarity that any attention was paid to me in the first place. I wasn't a huge fan of it, and it didn't last for long, but I was somewhat famous in modeling for a while."
"And in all that time, Rarity didn't receive an ounce of fame..."
Fluttershy's voice was shaking somewhat as she spoke, "All that sweet mare wants to do in life is make her name known. She wants to make beautiful things and have other ponies share in it. And at least twice already, fame has passed her over. You can even say three times, if you count her connections with Princess Celestia's star pupil."
"Twilight Sparkle..."
"That's a name that is bound to go down in history," Fluttershy remarked. "And I know Twilight. Just like myself, fame is not important to her, and to Rarity--our mutual friend--it means everything. And she has given everything, over and over again, with a generous heart that amazes me each and every day."
I took a deep breath and laid a gentle hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder. "I envy you, in a lot of ways."
"Me?" Fluttershy blinked awkwardly. "Why?"
I smiled. "Because you're close friends with a living fountain of blessings such as Rarity."
"I know that. But then there's one thing that I can't understand." She entreated me with soft eyes, as if begging for an answer to an impossible question. "Why is it, in this world, that a fountain of blessings seems to be so terribly cursed?"
I didn't know either.
But I was almost willing to ask Rarity herself.
"Hello," I spoke under the resonating tone of the Carousel Boutique's entrance bell the next day. "My name's Lyra Heartstrings, and I was wondering..." I froze in place, blinking, as several flailing bits of fabric flew past me like silken comets. "Uhm... Is something wrong?"
"Oh, what ever could be wrong?!" Rarity grumbled. She was a purple-capped volcano waiting to burst, or else she had burst several hours ago. Her voice was as hot as her bloodshot eyes as she fiercely rummaged through the messy sea of sewing materials that the center of the Boutique had become. "Could it be wrong that I don't have the lace I need to finish a dress order that I should have tackled a week ago?! Could it be wrong that I've put my trivial problems ahead of everything else in life, such as my duty to my clients? Could it be that I swore I bought some yellow lace just three days ago, and now it seems to have grown hooves and galloped away?!"
"Er..." I gulped nervously and stood still as an iceberg as she darted all around me. "Would you... Would you like some help with--?"
"With what?! I put myself into this situation! I should be the one to pull myself out of it! As if I haven't allowed myself enough distractions already." She paused briefly, knee-deep in a hill of fabric, to sigh and groan my way. "Ma'am, I am exceedingly sorry for this immature show I seem to be putting on, but I'm afraid you've caught me at a bad time. I'm behind with several projects, and though I'm willing to take orders, I doubt very much that I can make my services available to you anytime soon."
"And I c-completely understand!" I said, shoving a smile past my chills in an attempt to solace her. "I just heard about your work around town, Rarity, and I wanted to see--"
"Oh! I'm surprised the local gossip had a breath to spare about me!" She smiled bitterly as she dug through another messy mountain of unkempt materials. "They do seem to be all too eagerly enthralled in covering every inch that the genius hooves of Silver Seams have covered!"
"Silver Seams?" I leaned precariously on the edge of multiple responses, before deciding to play blissful ignorance. "You mean to say that she was here? In Ponyville?"
I had forgotten how much Rarity hated ignorance. "Hah! But of course, she no longer is! But that's not enough to silence the sound of her name in the air! At least not enough to hide the fact that she didn't leave for her trip to Trottingham empty-hoofed!"
"She..." I blinked awkwardly. It was obvious that Rarity's ire was steering this whole conversation. I was merely the rudder. "She didn't?"
"Why? Haven't you heard?" Rarity spun to face me, slapping her hooves onto the tile floor as deadly parentheses to her next exclamation. "She bought an entire wardrobe of fall clothing from Rich's Threads before boarding the train heading east! She even paid the store owner a generous commission!" Her eyes lit up like twin meteors of murderous blue. "Here's something nopony has likely heard! She paid the Carousel Boutique a visit too! What did she have to donate me? Only a purse full of yawns and two hours of autobiographical anecdotes that I couldn't possibly write a book about! She barely even glanced at my work, even the dresses that she pretended to be interested in! And now she's leaving Trottingham with half of the inventory from Rich's Threads! Bah! I swear, all that was holy and decent in this world went into the grave with Starswirl the Bearded!"
"I... uhm..." I shifted nervously. "That sounds rather... odd." I cleared my throat and braved a glance at her. "I've never been to Rich's Threads. Is the fashion establishment anything to shake a stick at?"
"Fashion Establishment? Snkkt--" Rarity all but spat her tongue out. "Fashion Establishment?!" She marched halfway towards me and pointed a vicious hoof. "Darling, let me tell you something about the stallion who owns that place. Filthy Rich and his entire family became rich by selling apples--apples that they didn't even grow! He's an accountant attached to a gallon of hair gel--albeit a good one, but nothing more! He knows about as much concerning fashion as a minotaur would recognize a can of potpourri! He'd sooner dedicate a department of his store to dresses as he would to apples or to bear traps or... or... Celestia-knows-what-else!"
Rarity seethed and strangled an invisible neck in front of her grinding teeth.
"And... Silver... Seams... Nnnngh..." She clenched her eyes tightly shut and exhaled hard. "No doubt she dredged him of all his feminine attire just so she can haul the gargantuan bounty all the way to Trottingham, disassemble the gowns to their base materials, and have the means to lazily slap together some uninspired, gaudy, but altogether successful line of autumnal pish-posh! Because, after all, that's what the art of the dress is anymore! A heterogenous assortment of scraps that we have the divine authority to pilfer and reintroduce into the world as new, though it's painted with all the vomitous colors of yesterday's garbage!"
At the end of such a tirade, she indeed looked close to retching, so she sat herself on the edge of the stage beneath a familiar white dress in order to collect her breaths.
"Nnnngh... It just maddens me so." She fanned herself with a dainty hoof as she mumbled. "All it is anymore is a process, a factory proceeding of mundane proportions. We have it within ourselves to do better... to be better. What is the point in expression when what is popular is expressionless?" She gulped and gazed down at the floor, her mane bordering either side of her face in frazzled, purple tributaries. "I always wanted to make a difference. With this shop, with my trade, I wanted to share my inspiration with all of Equestria. Then somepony like Silver Seams comes along, and yet again I encounter a soul who has risen as far as I want to rise, and just what does that make her? What does that make what I desire to be?" She closed her eyes and ran two hooves over her face. "Mmmmmmfff... I swear, I wonder if there's any point in trying. All of this... this taste. I am sick to death of this taste..."
I stood in the silence that followed, afraid to break it, as if the shattering was something neither of us would have been able to withstand. I realized that it was my place to say something, where it was nopony else's. My voice was something that would only be forgotten. I've come to expect my echoes, however, to be something immaculate.
"Perhaps what matters, Miss Rarity, is that you have a taste of your own?" I said as I marched over and gently brushed a length of the pearlescent dress' skirt. I smiled softly and spoke, "In a bland world, somepony is bound to be attracted to your sweetness."
"Hmmm... a noble dream," she murmured, then lowered her hooves. She gave a frown to the same dress that I was smiling at. "But how long must I dream it, too afraid to wake up?" She gazed up at me. "Would I find myself turning into an old mare by the time my ambitions finally paid me back? I shudder to imagine my genius then, a soul with all of its inspiration sapped from me, and so that I would walk in the shadow of those like Silver Seams and Hoity Toity because I too will have become too sensitive to brilliance."
"I... I wouldn't know about that..."
"Neither can I pretend to." She stood up and gazed dismissively down at the dress like a gray-maned creature I had once seen. "I tell myself that I think of the future, but dreaming of it is not the same thing. I only have so many years of my youth left. It's time that I decided to make the best of them. For too long have I chased the flighty streams of an enchanted filly. The likes of Hoity Toity and Filthy Rich have found their successful places in this industry." She gulped in resolution. "It is high time that I found mine."
"But Rarity..." I gazed at her. "This dress! It's... It's beautiful
"And, indeed, it will find it's place in somepony's memories forever." Rarity's nostrils flared. "For the right price. After all, it's the way of things." She turned towards me, a deadpan ghost of somepony that had once giggled like a songbird. "Might I, perchance, assist you in such a purchase, today? I assure you, my dear, that though I may be a tempestuous personality, I am nothing but a perfectionist in my services."
"I... I..." I gazed at her, at the dress, then at my saddlebag. I choked on something briefly, then murmured towards the walls. "Actually, I wasn't wanting to buy or order anything..."
"Oh?"
"Uhm... As a matter of fact..." I gazed at the dress. Something within me bubbled, something that had--on occasion--deeply desired to mimic the crackling blazes of the fireplace back at my cabin. I needed to know that there were things in this world capable of rising from the ashes. The only thing real about "defeat" is the letters comprised in making up that word. "I was... I was sent to deliver a message?"
"A message?"
"Yes." I gulped, trembling with the realization of what I was suddenly planning to do. "From some pegasus I met in Sugarcube Corner, a very sweet mare with butterflies for a cutie mark."
"Fluttershy?" Part of Rarity's face inescapably brightened. Her eyes blinked. "What could be so important that she was incapable of informing me face-to-face?"
"She says that she... That she needs a sweater made for her pet hedgehog back at her house... uhm... because the poor thing is sick."
"Pet hedgehog...?" Rarity scrunched her face. She scratched her chin in deep thought. "Odd. I wasn't aware that she was in possession of a hedgehog."
"Uhm. She said that she found it just this morning. The thing must have fallen into the river overnight, and she thinks it's suffering pneumonia. If she doesn't have a sweater or blanket made for it soon--"
"Say no more." Rarity waved a hoof, sighed, then gave a tired smile. "The poor darling must be sick with worry. I'm more worried about her than the little animal, truth be told. Everything else can wait for as much as I'm concerned. Thank you for delivering the message, Miss..."
"Heartstrings. And... uhm... my pleasure." I gulped and smiled nervously at her. "I don't suppose you have the makings for knitting a sweater in all this mess?"
"Ugh!" Rarity tossed her head and marched towards the far end of the room. "Don't remind me! I'm struggling with a dress order involving a great deal of satin and lace. If I just calmed down and opened my eyes, I'm sure I'd find what I'm missing. No doubt your selflessness in listening to me helped with that some." She next marched completely out of view, her voice trailing from a deep closet adjacent to the main foyer. "Now... please, Celestia, tell me I'm not missing my knitting materials either! Bah! This whole Silver Seams business has me all flank over elbows, I swear!"
As she rambled on, I bit my lip and inched towards the dress of pearls. Only when I was satisfied that she wasn't immediately trotting back, I opened the lid to my saddlebag...
That afternoon, I expected Rarity's expression to be full of anger the first moment I saw it. Instead, it was full of shock--immense, numbing shock. That's how I knew that I had achieved what I wanted.
It was hard to see her face at first, not so much that she was so far away, but because of all the other sensory details I was too busy juggling at that very moment. As she trotted across the center of downtown Ponyville towards where I stood, I drew my attention away from her pale gaze, away from the bright crimson sunset casting a spotlight on me, away from the chorus of crickets accompanying my strings into the edge of night, and finally away from the dozens upon dozens of awestruck pony faces forming a solid ring around me. I telekinetically plucked each of my lyre strings in precision, grabbing the delightful melodies of the past and repainting the living present with them, in an attempt to form something that was twice as inspiring as it was graceful.
Beneath the chords, I heard my audience, and I reveled in their sound--for they were Rarity's audience too.
"Have you ever heard anything so beautiful?"
"She's playing 'Platinum's Ode to Union,' I do believe, but I've never heard it performed so delicately before!"
"When was the last time you heard something like this in Ponyville?"
"Shhh--Please! I want to listen!"
"I can hardly listen! I'm too amazed by that dress she's wearing! Where did she find such a regal garment?"
"Are those real pearls? Those are remarkable!"
"Oh, how fitting! It was Princess Platinum's royal birthday only a few days ago..."
"And here I thought you could only witness the likes of this in Canterlot!"
"Brilliant. Simply brilliant, I tell you."
"And that dress! Did she have that tailored?"
"Don't be absurd! That gown must belong to royalty!"
"Who is that mare?"
"I've no idea! She just trotted out into the open here and started playing!"
"I must ask her where she got that marvelous dress! I swear, it's made my whole evening..."
From the corner of my vision, I could see Rarity's purple mane bouncing as she tossed her gaze left and right, her jaw dropping further and further towards the ground with each subsequent murmur of awe from the crowd. As she tried to scrounge an explanation from her stupor, a soft yellow shape trotted up and stood beside her.
"Oh! My goodness, Rarity! Isn't that--?"
"Yes, Fluttershy. It's... It's the dress that went missing a few hours ago! I was on my way to the police station to report a theft, but now..." She gulped. "My stars..."
"Do you think that unicorn must have stolen--?"
"Shh! Fluttershy, dear! Will you listen to that?"
"Huh? Oh. It is very nice music. 'Platinum's Ode to Union,' I think..."
"No no no--To the ponies!" Rarity hissed. "Do you hear them?"
Both friends leaned into the crowd, their ears pricking to the symphony of murmurs that continued to form a backdrop to my relentless symphony.
"I swear, it's as though that dress was crafted out of the sea foam of Blue Valley's shores!"
"Could it be a seapony import?"
"Are you daft? They're a myth!"
"That gown is too gorgeous to be real, if you ask me."
"It fits the performance so well. It's like Hearth's Warming's come early."
"Heeheehee..."
"Tell me, does this unicorn take bits?"
"Or her dressmaker for that matter...?"
I inhaled every word I could hear. I stood with my eyes shut, smiling meditatively, as I finished the last few notes of the song. Only when I was finished did I open my eyes, and when I did, my gaze was locked on Rarity's. I gave her my full attention, all the while the crowd's applause broke the crisp advent of night. I let my teeth show through my curved lips before giving a graceful curtsy, then resting the lyre down beside my saddlebag.
"Bravo! Bravo!"
"Magnificent performance, young lady!"
"It's been a long, long time since I heard the 'Ode to Union' in its entirety, and that was by far the best solo I've heard!"
"Tell us, please, are you from Canterlot? Are you representing one of the noble houses?"
"Before you answer that, tell us--where did you get that marvelous dress?"
The crowd laughed from the sheer joy electrifying the air. I let my giggles join the chorus, then bowed my head.
"I may be dressed royally, but that's only because royal attention was given to the making of this outfit." I stared across the crowd and pointed with a hoof. "Why... there the seamstress is! None other than Carousel Boutique's own Rarity! It was she who made this gown. After all, was there any doubt?"
The entire crowd spun in two halves to gawk at her, as if they had melted down the center from the sheer path of my gesture. Rarity nearly stumbled back, stunned by the forest of bright eyes suddenly assaulting her. Fluttershy blushed beet red and immediately marched away as a fresh throng of ecstatic ponies surrounded her fashionista friend.
"Rarity! I should have known!"
"A pony with your taste wouldn't have settled for less!"
"Good to know that you're putting your heart and soul into your crafting still."
"Yes, Ponyville could sure use more of that--All of Equestria, for that matter!"
"Oh, please! Please tell me that you have more pearls left in your shop!"
"We absolutely need to have matching dresses like that for the Trottingham Garden Party!"
"Oh! And Nightmare Night! I've always wanted to dress as Princess Platinum! Surely you have it within you to make something just as beautiful as this marvelous ensemble before us!"
"How appropriate to showcase your work with a performance of 'Ode to Union'. It makes me feel as though we've gone back in time."
"Yes. Such beautiful music to go along with a beautiful dress!"
"Please--tell us--are you accepting commissions?"
"Do you and this musician work together, Miss Rarity?"
She bit her lip and slowly spun to meet all of the entranced faces. Her body was trembling noticeably, but there was an undeniable sparkle in her eyes. "I... erm... Eheh... That is to say... uhm..." She glanced over the many heads and manes until her vision locked with mine. "I'm... just as surprised at this as you all are." She gulped. "It's... funny how spontaneous inspiration can be, yes?"
The group chuckled. Fluttershy smiled with pride. And I...
I was alive.
"Seriously! I had no idea that he had stolen the gown!" I exclaimed. It was an hour later and we were both trotting into her Boutique, alone. The world outside the windows had grown dim and purple. I knew I had very little time left to "wrap things up," but I was convinced that I had done all that I needed to do. "Do forgive my naivete, Miss Rarity," I disrobed from the dress slowly, careful not to add so much as a wrinkle to its unblemished lengths. "I get carried away sometimes while I'm on vacation like I am now. When a pony offers me a dress this gorgeous for such a generous price, I'm usually wise enough to think twice on the matter. Unfortunately, I'm a long ways from Canterlot, and I think I left my good sense back there. Heeheehee!"
"Oh, I understand the feeling quite well, Miss... Heartstrings, was it?"
"Mmmhmmm."
"On my first trip to Appleloosa, I nearly engorged myself on the general store's supply of cactus nectar toffee. It's something that my friends and I seldom wish to recollect."
"Heeheehee--Yeah!" I gracefully finished disentangling myself from the garment and hoofed it to her. "I can only imagine."
She gently took the dress, levitating upwards in translucent telekinesis. Her face was calm and unemotional as she hummed and asked, "Could you describe this stallion again? The ruffian you claim to have peddled this to you in the streets behind town hall?"
"Mmmmm..." I pretended to think hard, my eyes scanning the ceiling of the shop. "He was short, stubby. A pegasus, I think. One of his wings was molting. Yellow coat, I believe. A sickly color."
"It can be, on occasion," Rarity flippantly droned. She hung the dress neatly over the body of a mannequin. She spoke without facing me, "And just how many bits did he take from you?"
"Oh, you won't believe this, but--three hundred bits! Isn't that insane?" I rolled my eyes and gestured dramatically. "Dear Luna, if my parents knew, they'd kill me! Ahem. I'm just sorry that it all turned out to be the result of a pathetic robbery. The stallion said that he bought this gown from 'Lady Rarity's Boutique, in the east side of town.' Nowhere did he even bother telling the truth: that he outright stole the thing."
"He must be a rather fastidious robber," Rarity said. "We both owe him for keeping the dress in good shape, at least." She finally glanced my way. "No doubt you'll wish to pursue a means of retrieving your bits back."
"Eh..." I waved my hoof and made a face. "My parents have blown their noses on twice as much as three hundred bits before. Teehee--How else did you think I got through Canterlot music school?"
"And quite a remarkable talent you have there, Miss Heartstrings."
"Eh, it's a hobby." I then grinned widely at her. "But, hey! It worked out for us both in the end, didn't it?"
"I'm afraid you're going to have to be more obvious, dear."
"Why, that crowd I gathered!" I gestured out the door with a drunken grin. "To be honest, I was just wanting to show off the dress I just got..."
"Did you now...?"
"But I had no idea that I'd get nearly three dozen ponies willing to listen to my performance! I'm telling you what, Miss Rarity, your dress is something else! I've never gotten that much attention before!"
"Truly?"
"Yeah. It felt like cheating in a way. Seriously! I owe it all to you and your dress."
"Hmm-hmm-hmm..." She chuckled breathily, trotted around to face me, and planted a pair of hooves on my shoulders. "Miss Heartstrings, sit with me, if you would, darling."
I blinked at her, my mouth frozen in the middle of trying to reply. I felt my heart beating oddly, as if I was missing a chord for the first time that evening. Nervously, I did as she was told. I felt like I was having time-out with my mother.
As Rarity spoke, I soon found out I wasn't that off. "My dear, no robber with any form of self-respect would steal a work of art like mine and sell it for anything less than two thousand bits."
I gulped, and resumed smiling as plastically as before. "Well, uhm, maybe he was... uh... d-desperate! Yeah! That's why we have criminals in the first place, right? Some ponies are in such need for money right away, that they'll sell just about anything!"
"It would have been far easier for such a thug to have broken through the window of a grocery store overnight and grabbed himself a bite to eat." She glanced out the window. "As a matter of fact, Ponyville is farm country. My friend Applejack tells me that she has her fruit nabbed off her very own orchards all the time."
"But... Maybe..." I gnawed on my lip. I was losing grip of this situation at a frightening plummet; my brain just wasn't ready to accept it. "Maybe he wasn't all that bright--"
"It would have to be quite the mental affliction for somepony to ignore the value of so many natural pearls lying in his possession. If such a pony was expert enough to grab that dress from my store, he... or she would have made a year's worth of profit by placing the outfit on the Manehattan black market."
I tried to say something else, but my mouth was dry. It was hours after I had done the unthinkable, and only then was I starting to feel the initial waves of horrid guilt.
Thankfully, Rarity's gentle voice lulled my throbbing pulse into a tranquil stream. "You strike me as quite a resourceful, intelligent unicorn, Miss Heartstrings. This afternoon, I came into this very room after searching for something. What it was that I was looking for, I can no longer recall. All I know is that my latest dress was suddenly missing, and I had no proper explanation for where it could have gone or who could have taken it... until now."
I gazed down at the floor between us. I kneaded my hooves against the tile as I felt the first waves of chills hit me that night. "Miss Rarity, I won't judge you for any of the action you're about to take. But stop for a moment. Stop for a moment and think about what happened out in the center of town."
Even without looking, I could tell she was making a strange face. "What about the center of town?"
I looked back into her gaze. I couldn't tell if her eyes were glossy, or just my reflection. "The ponies you live with, Rarity! They love your dress! They love the quality of it! The meaning behind it! The expert craft and work that went into it!"
"Correction, darling." She smiled painfully. "They adored your performance. It just happened to have been painted in the colors that I had once made."
"But... But it's one in the same!"
"No." She shook her head, gently exhaling. "No it isn't."
"You... You just needed a way to get attention!" I exclaimed, my breath becoming ragged as I too was becoming witness to my own desperation. "Your dress is fantastic, Rarity! All it needed was its time in the spotlight and... and..."
"Shhh..." She gently caressed my shoulder with her hooves, staring positively into my soul as her words came out. "I don't know who you are, Miss Heartstrings. I don't know how you've heard of me, or what you presume to know about my artistry. All I know is that you're a perfect stranger. However, in spite of this, I do believe that there is one thing that we both have in common, and that's the knowledge of the fact that there is nothing left in that dress that I believe in anymore, save for a lesson on how to drive my talents down brighter, wider roads."
"But..." I tried my best not to whimper. I felt like a little foal as I sat before her. I avoided her gaze, absorbing myself in the sight of the dress, as if trying to scoop the pearls up with my tears. "But you deserve to be remembered, Miss Rarity. You're such a talented, hard-working unicorn. You deserve attention--"
"It's never a matter of what we deserve, darling." She leaned towards me, stealing my gaze. "It's a matter of what we earn. Has anypony ever told you that I'm a living piece of the Elements of Harmony?" She leaned back and spoke sagely. "Destiny, for whatever reason, has designated me as the Element of Generosity. I was instrumental in the exorcism of Nightmare Moon's taint from Princess Luna. Ever since then, I've been privileged and blessed to be tied to the hip of Twilight Sparkle, the only unicorn in five long centuries who's been made the personal protege to Princess Celestia herself. Don't you think that if I wanted to take advantage of my connections--and sealed myself a high seat in the Canterlot fashion scene--I would have easily done so by now?"
I reflected quietly on that, a sore lump forming in my throat.
"Hmmm..." She smiled at a warm thought. "I would be lying if I said that I wasn't tempted in the past to do something so pathetic and shallow, but I like to think that I've become a better mare since then." She gazed sideways at me, her gaze gentle but piercing. "There are many things in this world that I want. Fame is one of them--even my closest friends will tell you that. What they don't know, but should be obvious to everypony, is that a soul such as my own greatly desires to better herself as a lady and an artist, more than any other dream of mine that I pretend to call supreme. You see, Miss Heartstrings, if I don't earn my place in this world, then the most I'll ever become is the queen of hollow victories. No such matriarch of mundanity would ever deserve a tiara--heeheehee--no matter how sparkling."
I took a shuddering breath and gazed out the windows, at the darkening approach of night. "I have that desire too, Rarity. But... But I learned long ago that I can't pursue them so easily anymore." I sniffled and put on a brave face, albeit a deadpan one. "I just wish I could help those around me shine where I can't."
"We're all born with the ability to shine, Miss Heartstrings. But we can't force the spotlight on each other. Otherwise, we'd just be dancing to an old, boring tune, conceived only once, but never allowed to blossom on its own. And if there's anything I can't stand, it's a performance that doesn't earn itself an encore."
I gave the dress one last, forlorn glance. It was a chuckle that escaped my lips, instead of a sob, as I painfully let forth, "I suppose some things in life can't stand to be re-enchanted."
"That's why I live to invent newer and prettier things." Rarity smiled. "And so should you." I watched as she stood above me and paced across the way. "I hate refusing gifts, especially ones so sincerely and passionately donated." She telekinetically picked up a black tarp and carried it back over to where the gown of pearls was residing. "What you did today... what you tried to do today was daring, brash, yet altogether generous. Which is why I'm not about to press charges for a theft that lasted the entirety of what would otherwise have been a boring afternoon." She hung the canvas material over the dress. The room grew dimmer, so that her bright features suddenly stood out like polished ivory. "I very much envy your talents, dear. A dress is dazzling for an evening or two. But music... gorgeous music... It lasts forever. Oh, how I wish I could start over sometimes, and engage myself in an art that was... far more immortal."
I swallowed hard and tilted my head away so she couldn't see the tear rolling down my left cheek. In my mind, I saw the smiling faces of listening ponies all around me, and they once again mimicked the dying ashes of a cabin fireplace. "Don't envy too much, Miss Rarity, or else you'll find yourself doing nothing but st-starting over..."
"Hmmm..." She smiled softly my way. "I shall remember that."
I dried my face and nodded. "Somehow, I think you will..."
We spoke of a few things as night fell. We talked about gossip. We talked about popular celebrities. She told me the names of a few famous musicians she had met, and I once again cursed the stars for never having a chance to meet the legendary Octavia up close. As the stars began to form, I decided to take my leave, or else risk the moon curtailing what had become a most gracious visit.
"It's just as well. I really do need to get to work," Rarity said. She had finished cleaning up the mess that an angry doppelganger of herself had left in the center of the Boutique hours earlier. "This one dress I'm working on won't finish itself, after all."
I watched her trotting up to the half-made dress in question. Lingering in the doorframe to the Boutique's exit, I exhaled the first wisps of vapor from my lips. "Will you ever be done working, Miss Rarity? Will you ever finish?"
"That's up to the industry to decide," she said. The tone in her voice was threadbare, like so many materials gathering dust in the far corners of the place. Perhaps she was talking to nopony all along. "Hmmm... What does this one need?" Her voice rang in the direction of the gown. "It's got lace. It's got emerald." There rose a sigh across the room, colored with the pale kiss of moonlight. "More ribbon..."
The ringing bell above the door was deafening.
It had been three weeks. I felt like an archaeologist stumbling upon a sacred temple left abandoned for ages. My heart actually sunk--instead of danced--when her singing voice spun across the morning light to welcome me.
"Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique."
"Hello, I'm..." I bit my lip, hesitated, and exhaled. "I'm just visiting in town. I'm not looking for anything special. But..." I marched stiffly into the center of the place, already digging into my saddlebag. I produced the last stone, raising the dull thing up like it was an errant piece of lint. My head wouldn't stop hurting with the eighth elegy, but that morning I was too tired to cry. "I was wondering if you were skilled in the arts of gem enchantment. As you can see... uhm... this needs a lot of work."
"Here, let me take a look at it, dear." Rarity sashayed over from a jacket she was working on and took the gem from my grasp. She adjusted the spectacles on her eyes and hummed to herself. "Hmmm... Yes, it does seem as though this has been through quite a lot. It's rather unusual that I get requests to re-enchant old rocks, but the day I can no longer bring luster back to a jewel is the day I retire. Eh-heheheh..."
"I... uhm... I'm sure you have plenty of more important things to be working on."
"Oh, nonsense! It's a slow week." She rolled her eyes. "Nothing to do but fiddle with a few drab sheets of wool and see if I can outdo the latest craze mailed in from Canterlot. Ahem. Honestly." She gave me the sweetest of smiles, and no less elegant. "You are the absolute highlight of my morning. Care to have a seat while I work?"
"It depends. How much do you think I have to give up?"
"Why, when you put it like that, dear, I'm tempted to ask for a lock of your first-born's mane! Eh-heh-heh-heh-Ehhhhh I don't know how Pinkie does it." She cleared her throat and marched over towards the metal brace positioned by the window. "In all seriousness, about three bits will do. This will only take but a moment."
"Much appreciated..."
"Though I must say, I wish you would let me give you more time." She gazed up from where she was fixing the gem into place and focusing the sunlight through her containment field. Her eyelashes battled like those of a fairy tale filly as she chirped forth, "You have a very utilitarian outfit there, darling. But I must say it looks positively worn-in! I have the good mind to fix you a new sweater, one that could warm the eyes of others while it warms you... if you catch my meaning."
"Thanks, but no thanks. You're very generous, but I..." I stopped immediately. The dryness in my throat left me as I saw the jacket that Rarity had been working on. I saw the fine seams woven intricately in floral designs across the pockets. I saw the layers upon layers of fabric forming a mesh of beatific color blend. It occurred to me--like a spontaneous burst of inspiration--that a pony with nothing to lose has everything to give. It may not have been my destined time in the spotlight, but I wasn't about to back down from an idea so beautiful that I immediately knew it deserved an encore. "Yes, please."
"Hmm?" Rarity glanced up--somewhat surprised--from the menial task she was doing for me. "I beg your pardon?"
I looked towards her, smiling gently. "Yes. I would like it if you made me something new to wear. Something warm... and fabulous."
Rarity blinked. When her eyes reopened, they not only shined, they positively sparkled. "Oh. Oh, yes! But of course!" Her breaths were like cosmic bursts that carried her--skipping foalishly my way. "Oh, it's been ages since I've made something for a mare with a green coat, especially one as bright and shiny as yours! Hmmm--What about a new sweaterjacket, this time with a shiny gold seam running down the sides? Or perhaps a fancy yellow scarf--Ooh! But of course! A gorgeous red sweater with amber bands to match your eyes! It positively screams 'Hearth's Warming'! Heeheehee--" She suddenly clamped a pair of hooves over her lips. "Oh! My heavens, listen to me go on! You... uhm... must have your own idea in mind, of course."
"No..." I breathed, slowly shaking my head. "I couldn't possibly think up something as marvelous as you could. Design whatever you want."
She gasped sharply, her features illuminating like the sun itself. "Really? Do you truly, truly mean it?"
I grinned wide at her. "Thrill me."
"--so I carried on and on quite melodramatically, insisting that the brazen canines had attempted comparing me to a mule. I put up quite the show, if I do say so myself. If it wasn't the act of deep horror that I was portraying, then perhaps it was the sheer volume of my whining voice that finally broke their brutish resolve. They ceased their attempts to enslave me into jewel-finding, and by the time my dear friends had arrived to save the day, I had just about freed myself from those terrestrial ruffians' clutches. Ahem--How do the sleeves feel? Are they too tight?"
"No, Miss Rarity," I replied, sitting on a pedestal as she circled around me. A sea of sewing utensils levitated all around her latest work of art, a bright and colorful sweater adorning my turquoise limbs. "They're just perfect. You got the measurements down right."
"Are you certain of that, darling?" She tilted my forelimbs up and down, closely eyeing when and where the material of the sleeves grew taut. "You haven't stopped shivering since I began. Is the sweater not giving you enough insulation? If so, I should fix that from the start before I let myself go with the aesthetics--"
"Trust me." I smiled up at her as soon as her face moved into my peripheral vision. "I'm going to be absolutely fine. I'm loving this sweater already."
"Hmm... Well, that makes the both of us!" She stifled a tiny squeal and began tightening the cuffs at the end of one sleeve. "I haven't had a chance to work my talents this freely in ages! I do apologize that it's taking so long. Perfection and genius seldom tango when they can instead waltz."
"Take as much time as you need, Miss Rarity," I said. "You were going on about Diamond Dogs?"
"Oh! Yes. Would you like to know a secret?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"Heeheehee--I told all my friends that I simply relied on the refined talents of a lady in dissuading those brutes' demands. As a matter of fact, that's only partially true. It so happens that my family has dealt with Diamond Dogs before, and I knew well in advance how to take advantage of--oh, how should I put this--ah yes, their pathetic simple-mindedness."
I giggled. "You don't say."
"Oh, but I do!" She fiddled and worked and painted a linen canvas all around me. "As a matter of fact, it was the poor fortune of my great-great grandmother, an aristocratic mare named Ruby Joy, to have stumbled on an entire colony of those digging mutts! However, she was a very calm and intelligent lady, and soon she not only had all of the dogs eating out of her hoof, but she got them to fetch a gigantic node of diamonds and carry them home to my ancestors' dwelling in Chicacolt. Hmm-hmm-hmmm... just where do you think my family's affinity for rare rocks got its start? Heeheehee..."
I smiled. I listened to her. I modeled for her. And for a blissful afternoon, I didn't think one bit about my future. After all, it takes a curse to make generosity truly, truly delicious. The things that I've grown most thankful for in life are the things that come at me by surprise, like a spotlight from out of nowhere.
Who's to know how much opportunity we'll have to truly shine in this life?
But so long as we can help it, we must never let ourselves become dull.
Background Pony
V - "Industry"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Spotlight
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | VI - Heroes and Bards | Dear Journal,
Do heroes exist only because history chooses to write about them? Are the greatest ponies who ever lived so legendary because they earned that status, or on account of their being in the right place when fate struck? If the ponies of our epic poems surpass the slings and arrows of time simply by the whim of popular knowledge, then could we accidentally be worshipping villains in this day and age?
I never sought to be a famous pony. Not really. Sure, I wouldn't have mind a tiny bit of popularity. Certainly, when endeavoring to make waves in the music scene, I would have been happy if my name had been passed around. However, I never expected to do anything dramatic enough that it would have had my name exalted on high.
Now, I can't help but think otherwise. I toss and turn at night--fighting shivers--fantasizing that one of these days I will walk into town and somepony--anypony--will actually be heard saying my name, if even in a passing joke or upon the flippant waves of gossip. I don't want to make the history books. I don't even want to see my name in lights. I just want to witness somepony speaking of me, and I want it to be something positive and joyful.
It's been a long year of dealing with this curse, and I know the difference between thinking rationally and fancifully. I've encountered many fears, and I've endured my fair share of distress. Is it too selfish of me to think that I could at least earn myself a tiny bit of recognition?
No. No, it's not selfish of me. However, it is foolish. After all, who will sing of this composure's tragedies or triumphs? Who will chronicle her actions and discoveries into an epic chorus?
Now, I'm starting to realize, that chronicler is me. I do not sing of a fearless vixen, one who faces the darkest shades of freezing night undaunted. No, I speak of a lonesome learner, one who traverses the blackness with only her own hoofsteps to keep her company. Whatever she salvages, she does so by herself, which is a very frightening task to say the least. If saving the knowledge of myself makes me a hero, then I treasure that with every fibre of my being. After all, I wouldn't be much of a hero if I didn't save an audience, even if it's an audience of one.
Ten little chords.
Ten little chords beginning Lunar Elegy #8 were playing through my mind; it was far from enough. I needed to discover more if I wanted to come anywhere near close to composing the entire musical number, much less running the tune's authenticity by Twilight Sparkle.
Of course, the beginning process of mapping out an elegy is always the hardest. I wake up to a melody stuck my head. I let the tune play itself out repeatedly. The music takes shape, forms chords, and grows into an ancient composition that I must then struggle to translate back into the world of the living. There are times when a phantom tune simply takes forever to come into fruition. It pays its toll on my mind, which is the least I can say about my sanity. So, to assist in the evolutionary process, I usually busy myself with menial yet functional activities in an attempt to get the juices flowing out of my mind instead of stirring for an eternity within.
Which is why I was squatting by my garden the other day, dutifully tending to the carrots and planting new vegetables for a solid two hours, around the time I first heard her.
There was a resounding thunder across the face of the woods, followed by a cracking voice behind me. "Ow!"
I looked up and wiped my sweaty brow with a forelimb. She was earlier than normal. These collisions, after all, usually take place way later in the afternoon. I got up and trotted slowly towards the side of the cabin where I saw her lying on the ground, rubbing a bruised muzzle.
"Ahem. Can I help you?"
"Nnngh... Maybe if you had a thicker skull among your gardening tools to spare." Rainbow Dash winced and glared up at the offending structure. "Where'd this stupid cabin come from?"
"It's the rain season," I said with a smirk. "Some things just spring up out of nowhere."
"Hey! I'm a pegasus!" Rainbow Dash hopped up to her hooves and dusted herself off. "If anypony should know a thing or two about the rain season, it's me! Still, I have no buckin' clue where this building got off thinking it could block my usual flight path!" She fumed briefly, then cast me a sideways glance. "Good morning, by the way," she muttered.
"Back at you," I said with a nod. "Is your head okay?"
"For what it's worth." Rainbow Dash gripped her skull in two hooves and pivoted it to the side. A number of ritualistic cracks sounded off from the top of her spine. "Whew! At this rate, I'm not gonna have enough brain cells left to pass the Wonderbolts Entry Exam, assuming they finally start flippin' inducting for another wingpony soon. Heh. Been waiting for six long years for a new position to open up, ever since Fleetfoot from Trottingham joined the team. Ugh... That lucky, feather-brained--"
"Well, it sounds like you have your future cut out for yourself!" I said with a gentle smile. It was a beautiful morning, and this living spectrum of colors was a pleasant addition to the breezy moment. I briefly forgot how cold I was. "What's the big hurry? Speeding around in the air with no care: you'll get a nasty concussion at this rate!"
"Hmmph..." Rainbow Dash smirked and stretched her wingfeathers. "I wouldn't be living up to my name any other way."
Ah, there it is. Should I? Yes. Yes, I should.
"And just what name would that be?" I tossed her way with a wry grin, knowing exactly what would happen in response.
I could have witnessed the same reaction even if I had my eyes closed and my ears plugged. Rainbow Dash looked at me, gasped, and floated in midair as if the very grass below was as toxic as my ignorant response. "No way! You mean you don't know about me?! Rainbow Dash?! Ponyville's chief weather pegasus?! Master of the Sonic Rainboom and winner of last year's Best Young Flier's Crown?!"
I giggled. Some of the best entertainment in life is free. "Well, my apologies! You certainly sound like a very important pony!"
"I'm more than important! I'm... I'm radical! That's like four 'importants' stacked together in an awesome sandwich with slices of tubular bread!"
"Am I supposed to praise you or eat you?"
"Neither! Er--I mean... nnngh..." She hovered around me, squinting suspiciously. "Is this some kind of a joke? Surely no pony around here could live under that big of a rock!"
"Believe me: sometimes I wish I had that excuse." I gazed over at the carrot garden while producing a melancholic exhale. As lovely as this encounter was, I was getting even further away from bringing the Eighth Elegy to reality. Every now and then I'm reminded of how my life has become nothing more than a hall of mirrors, and even the most colorful hues are merely the reflections of yesterday and tomorrow cascading onward into a dull infinity. "I apologize, Ms. Dash. I guess you could say that I'm new to town. It's comforting to know, at least, that a mare like you is fully aware of how famous and important you are."
"Heck yeah!" Rainbow Dash smiled proudly. With fluttering wings she "backstroked" playfully in the air around me and the cabin. "From warning the local ponies about stampedes to driving out smoke-snoring dragons, I never leave Ponyville hangin'! Why, I'm even buddy-buddy with Princess Celestia's magical apprentice!"
"Hmmmm..." I squatted back beside the garden and resumed inspecting the carrot tops. "You don't say...?"
"Mmmmhmm!" Rainbow Dash's wings settled as she perched herself down atop the wooden patio at the front of my cabin. "It's why I was out here to begin with. I'm practicing!"
"Practicing?" I glanced over my shoulder. "Practicing for what?"
"Ponyville's egghead extraordinaire, Twilight Sparkle, is helping some big-wig science professor from Trottingham with a teleportation experiment. And they need help from a fast-flying pegasus to keep track of... uhm... the test subject, or something. I dunno. All I know is that Twilight promised me there'd be lasers involved, and lasers are cool!"
I raised an eyebrow and glanced back at her. "Did you say... a teleportation experiment?"
"Y-Yeah!" Rainbow grinned wide. "Haven't you heard? Oh wait, you said you were new in town. Hmmm... Well, I can't even begin to explain all of the boring numbers and figures involved, but basically this stallion--'Dr. Hay'... 'Dr. House'... 'Dr. Horse', whatever--is trying to capture the magic of unicorns in a bottle. Not that all of you are capable of blinking around great distances or whatnot, but he's trying to find a way for non-magical ponies to have access to teleportation. Supposedly it can have a major effect on transportation, economy, and other stuff that makes me yawn."
"Really?" I stared off into the wooden bodies of the trees surrounding me. I hadn't expected this leg of our conversation. I felt a chill for the first time in hours. "That's... That's quite remarkable."
"Meh... If you say so. The way I see it: it's been thousands upon thousands of years since Equestria began, and still other ponies are trying to be as cool as pegasi." She winked with a smile. "Heh, like teleporting is really gonna help them get around as much as us! But I don't care. The experiment gives me a reason to hang out with Twilight, and Twilight's cool so long as she's blowing stuff up in a lab instead of digging her nose in a book." Rainbow Dash smirked and took off for the bright sky above the woods. "Anyways, I've got some cloud kicking to get to, and then I'll be heading over to Twilight's to help 'make history', as they put it. I'm like 'whatever.' If we get a small scrap of manadust to explode or something, that'll sure as heck make my day."
I mumbled absent-mindedly. "There's something to be said of short scraps and explosions."
"H-hey! I like your style!" Rainbow Dash chuckled and soared past me. "Next time I run into you, remind me to share how it all went down! I'm sure I'll have done something awesome to brag about when the time comes."
I saluted her as she flew off. In the windy vacuum that followed, I murmured to the air. "Awesomeness needs only to remember itself." I didn't feel sad about Rainbow Dash's absence. I'd gone through the motions of introducing myself to her on so many occasions that the bittersweet departures had long lost their cathartic edge. In many ways, I've forced myself to become acquainted with a necessary apathy upon the culmination of these painfully short meetings. To do otherwise would mean drowning in tears.
However, I couldn't stop thinking about what Rainbow Dash had just spoken about. It had to have been an immeasurably fascinating endeavor in science if it could get her to ramble on about it.
Twilight Sparkle and a professor from Trottingham were experimenting with non-unicorn teleportation? Could that have involved some sort of localized spell? Leyline manipulation? A machine of sorts?
I tugged the strings of my hoodie and fought through the shivers as I allowed several memories to resurface. I remembered several of my early interactions with Twilight after the curse began. I remembered our desperate attempts to convey my existence to Princess Celestia. Written letters hadn't worked. Either my words vanished or the scrolls themselves turned to ash on the other end of Spike's green-flaming breath.
It was then that she had resorted to teleportation. After a great deal of meditation and focus, Twilight Sparkle teleported the two of us as far as her expert leylines could reach. We landed two and a half miles outside of Ponyville's town limits. Twilight's plan was to rest, concentrate, and then perform several more concentrated teleportation bursts until we got to the city gates of Canterlot to the far east. This, however, failed after the first immediate blink because two things happened. For one, Twilight had forgotten about me after the first teleport, as if the sheer magical strain of the act was enough to jump-start the curse into infecting her. For another, two miles' distance from the center of Ponyville was akin to dropping a guillotine blade of ice across my spine. Never before in my life did I feel that cold and never would I feel that cold again. I galloped straight to the abandoned barn where I was living at the time and built the biggest campfire any pony in history ever likely conceived. Even still, it took me two solid weeks before I could feel my extremities once again.
But now I had just learned about an experiment to make transportation possible beyond the limits of unicorn manipulation. Seeing as I was an inconceivable distance away from ever mastering Twilight's gift of spatial blinking for myself, what were the odds that I could somehow take advantage of such a remarkable scientific development? I couldn't help but feel my blood pumping in opposition to the deadly shivers. I had to learn more. I had--
My thoughts were immediately interrupted by a loud thudding noise against the side of my cabin. At first, I thought it was poor Rainbow Dash again, cursed by her amnesiac state. But then the voice squeaked forth, "Owie! Who put this cabin here?" It was too high to belong to anything other than a young foal.
"Uhm...?" I turned around and trotted back towards the side of the barn. "Can I help you?"
A tiny orange filly sat in the dirt where she had been thrown back on her haunches. A collapsed scooter--its wheels still spinning--was lying on the ground beside her as she pulled a purple helmet off, flung a pink mane loose, and rubbed a throbbing bump on the front of her skull. "Ugh. Yeah. Can you tell me which way the earth is?"
"Right where you left it. It's the thing covered with grass and aphids."
"Jee, thanks." She blinked up at me with violet eyes. "Hey, you're a unicorn."
I couldn't help but chuckle. The utterance was as cute as it was random, two things I could already use to describe this kid. "Last time I checked. Why, is that a problem?"
"Erm, no. Not really." She stood up and pulled the scooter back up into her grip. "It's just... Well. This is the middle of the woods. I've never known unicorns to be outdoorsy types."
I shrugged. The urge to let my teeth chatter was bearing down on me, but I wasn't about to give into it in front of this young foal. "A unicorn's capacity for magic is equal to her capacity for change. I've long been acquainted with urban living, but I find myself developing a delightful affinity for far more rustic surroundings."
She stared up at me, blinking. "Okay. I'm sorry. You lost me at 'capacity'."
I sighed. "Yes, well, if you run into nearly as many dictionaries as you do houses, then we might have a pleasant conversation."
"Dictionaries? Hah!" She stood and balanced herself playfully on the wobbling scooter. "I've got a best friend for that."
"And the reason you aren't hanging out with her on a beautiful day like this is...?"
"Hmmmm..." Her face scrunched up into a stubborn scowl.
I blinked. I glanced up at the tree tops, many of them still glistening with dew. "Wait. Isn't this a schoolday--?"
"You've got a really swell place here..." She pushed herself on the wheeled contraption so that she was leisurely drifting past the front of my cabin. A whistle escaped her lips. "Did you build it yourself?"
"Uhm..." I blinked awkwardly at her. "Yes. As a matter of fact, I did."
"Cool..."
"How did you know?"
She blushed slightly. "Lucky guess?" She ran a hoof along a pair of wooden beams forming the front exterior of my dwelling. "You can tell when a place was built by hoof. One day, I plan to live on my own, and when I do I want to have every say in where and how I live. There's no better way to do that than to build your own house."
"It's not as easy at it seems," I said to the kid as I trotted slowly after her. "It takes a great deal of time, strain, and sweat. Still, it is worth it in the end." My smile lasted as long as my good manners did. "Ahem. So, uhm, haven't your parents ever preached to you about talking to strangers--?"
She swiftly interrupted me. "It must be awfully scary to live on your own, in a place that you have to build by yourself," the filly murmured. Suddenly her bright features looked jaded, as if several years had piled up on the filly's face all at once, casting its shadows over every corner of her orange coat. "But I kind of see that as a good scariness, like the type of scariness that's worth living through."
I ran a hoof through my mane as I gazed thoughtfully at her. I wondered why I hadn't run into this little soul before. It was my proud habit to be familiar with every living soul in town, both young and old. In so many months of concerning myself with the lunar elegies, I wondered if I had finally become oblivious to the same background I had been relegated to.
"What's your name, kid?" I blurted out.
She looked up at me. "Hmmm?" She blinked, as if snapping out of a stupor she was experiencing parallel to my own. "Oh. Ponies call me 'Scootaloo.'"
"'Scootaloo,'" I repeated with a nod. I glanced at her flank, observed the lack of a cutie mark, and then smiled at her face. "Named after your love for elegant ballet, no doubt."
That jab worked. She frowned and stuck her tongue out at me. "Hardy har. Very funny. I'd rather be caught dead than have that be my special talent!"
"Why does that not surprise me?" I remarked.
"I mean it!" She hopped in place, her hooves pounding on the base of the scooter. "Someday I'm gonna earn a cutie mark for something really awesome! Like flying through hoops of flame! Or base jumping! Or becoming a rock'n roll singer! Or doing stunt pony tricks just like Rainbow Dash!"
"You don't say? You know, she was here just now--"
"She was?!" Scootaloo beamed, and I was surprised to see a pair of stubby wings sprouting up from her sides. I honestly hadn't noticed she was a pegasus until the very notion of that name sparkled across the violet shores of her eyes. "I knew it! She was doing some super cool cloud-slicing moves, wasn't she?!"
I blinked at her. How old was this filly? And she was still flightless? My eyes wandered from her tiny wings to the scooter's wheels to the fresh ditch that she had made in the earth after colliding with my cabin. I realized that the same excitement and impulsiveness that had flung Rainbow Dash like a missile into my house had brought another pony along for the ride. Very calmly, I nodded and said, "Well, she said she was practicing for a science experiment she was going to help her friend Twilight Sparkle with--"
"Oh! Oh!" Scootaloo hopped in place, beaming, her bright face like a second sunrise to that crisp morning. "She told me all about it! There's gonna be explosions and lasers and stuff! Rainbow Dash said herself that she'd be lucky to get through the experiment without her mane and tail-hairs being burnt off!"
I squinted at that, then smiled at her. "Did she, now?"
"Uh huh!"
"Sounds like you've got a very courageous friend."
"Yeah! Isn't she--?" Scootaloo stopped in mid-speech. Pensively, she let her gaze fall to her hoof digging in the earth. "Erm. Well. Heh. I can't really say that I count as her friend..."
"Why not?"
She spoke on. "But someday, I'm gonna be as brave as her." She gazed up again, but this time her smile was softer, gentler, more serene. "And then I'll get to do cool stuff! And maybe I'll know what it's like to be just as awesome."
I smiled back at her. "Scootaloo..." I squatted down so that my face was level with hers. "Tell me, what's so awesome about a life when it's lived in the exact same way as a pony that has lived it before you?"
"I..." She blinked confusedly at me, but something twitching in her eyes told me she was curiously intrigued. "I don't understand. Why would a pony not want to be like Rainbow Dash?"
"I don't mean to say that there's anything wrong with that. After all, she's made a major name for herself in Ponyville, hasn't she?"
"And how!"
I chuckled and gazed deeply to gather her attention. "But even still, there is only one way for a pony to be like Rainbow Dash. While that's all good and fine, there are at least a million ways to be a different pony, and all of them just as exciting and awesome, wouldn't you think?"
Scootaloo stared at me, and for the briefest of moments she could just as easily been staring into an abyss. If her cutie mark appeared right then and there, I was almost afraid to discover what it would look like. Even if I went back in time and built my cabin blindfolded, it wouldn't be nearly as scary as when a young foal discovers the glorious yet all too bitter taste of opportunity.
Before she could formulate a response, a voice was calling out from around the bend in the road.
"Scootaloo?!" A white-coated mare with a yellow mane was wandering around the dirt path, frowning and stomping a hoof. "Scootaloo--for the love of Celestia--is that you?! Get over here this instant!"
"Ugh..." Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "Milky White. Will you ever let it rest?" With a sigh, she slapped her helmet back onto her head, tucking the pink mane underneath. "I'm coming!" she shouted over her shoulder.
I glanced at the mare from a distance. "An older sister of yours?"
"Pffft. Please." Scootaloo smirked devilishly. "As if I could be that lucky. So long, lady!" Her petite wings blurred, and I watched with muted marvel as she propelled herself up the path atop her scooter, joining the mare's side. "Milky! I've been looking all over for you--"
"Save it for somepony who's gullible!" Milky White snapped. She wasn't half as angry as she was concerned. In addition to that, I noticed that she was an earth pony, which made me stare a little bit longer as she ushered the sulking filly towards the heart of Ponyville beyond the treeline. "Why aren't you at school already? Cheerilee's class begins in less than half an hour!"
"Awwww, come on, Milky! I was just taking a side route! Rainbow Dash was flying around here and--"
"No more excuses! And unless Rainbow Dash is acting as one of Cheerilee's chaperones, I don't want you following her or any other adult pony around town unsupervised! Do you understand me?!"
"Ughhh... Yes, Milky..."
"And don't give me that attitude! I'm only trying to look after you, Scootaloo. Remember that talk we had...?"
The two were soon gone beyond earshot. I sat beside the carrot garden, alone in thought. I suddenly wondered if the lives of so many ponies--cursed or not--remain blank because we're afraid to test the limits of ourselves, especially when those limits are painted with the shades of those who had failed or succeeded before us.
I looked once more towards the woods, and I thought of a dark night when I awoke--naked and screaming--soaked with the chilling mystery of the Threnody. It was something horrific and unexplained, but I had survived it. I knew that it was more than luck that made me survive such an ordeal. What more was there in life that I had to experiment with, and how much of it was barricaded by fears instead of fate?
"I thank you so very kindly, Miss Sparkle, for assisting me in this endeavor."
"It's my pleasure, Dr. Whooves," she said with a smile, telekinetically lowering the last of eight crystals into place. Soon, a ring of identical gemstones was surrounding a metal box located atop a metal pedestal in the center of the town's library. It wasn't just any ordinary box, but a complex, hollow cube with several perforated grooves forming intricate runes along the silver surface. The very top of the cube bore a cylindrical platform that glowed dimly with residual enchantment. "I hope this doesn't come across as too silly," Twilight murmured as she straightened the last crystal into its copper brace in the middle of the makeshift laboratory, "But I've always been a great fan of your scientific documents. I find the idea of this experiment beyond fascinating. I, for one, believe that all ponies should experience the benefits of magic, regardless of what they were born as."
"You have no idea how delighted I am to hear a gifted unicorn such as yourself say that," Dr. Whooves replied. His ocean-blue eyes shone as he leaned into the complex equipment and adjusted a metal panel on the side of the cube with a pair of pliers gripped in his teeth. He dropped the tool onto a tray and resumed speaking, "If earth ponies had half the resources available to unicorns, it would allow their tasks to yield far greater bounties than that of their last five generations of ancestors combined. I only hope you understand that it is not my attempt to abuse magic, but to find a way to facilitate it through safe and applicable means."
"If you asked me, I'd say it was high time that the Equestrian Science Committee reconsidered the prohibition of the public use of machina in channeling magical leylines," Twilight said as she trotted around the array of equipment in the center of the room, assisting the Doctor in a last-second, careful examination. "After all, it's been nearly a thousand years since the Civil War and its legacy of infernal weaponry. With Princess Luna returned and exorcised of Nightmare Moon's taint, I doubt very much that the world could ever consider using magical machines for evil again."
"I shudder to think of such a thing!" Dr. Whooves took a deep breath and glanced at his young partner in science. "I spent months on my hooves and knees before the Committee at Canterlot, trying to convince them that a teleporter device could only be used for good... to assist agriculture and industry. If this week's procedure goes as planned, I'm bound to win their financial backup for sure!"
"There's only one way to find out if this was worth all the time and sweat, right, Doctor?" Twilight Sparkle gave the arrangement a final glance and smiled with pride. "Are you ready to get started?"
"After you, ma'am." The Doctor bowed from where he stood with a wry grin. "It takes your spark, after all."
"First thing's first." Twilight remarked. She turned towards the corner. "Hey, Rainbow Dash!"
Rainbow Dash sat, slumped on the stairs leading up to the library's second floor. She was snoring loudly.
Twilight frowned. "Rainbow!"
"Snkkkt--Nnghh...Nyup...Naaugh--Huh? What?" Rainbow Dash looked up, blinking dizzily. "Are we ready? Is it time for explosions yet?"
"For the last time, there aren't going to be any explosions!"
"Awww..."
"Not if everything goes right," Dr. Whooves nervously added.
"Oh!" Rainbow Dash smiled, her wings flexing. "So there's still hope?" She exhaled sharply as a pair of goggles were thrown into her chest.
"Put them on and get ready to fly!" Twilight Sparkle said firmly. She turned and gave the Doctor a far more pleasant expression. "Just what should we test the machine on?"
"Erm... Oh dear, I should have given that more thought, shouldn't have I?" Doctor Whooves gulped and glanced all around the room. "It obviously has to be something inert. Perhaps a metal weight or a container or... or... even a blank book!"
"Heh, yeah, forget that!" Rainbow Dash droned as she slipped the goggles onto her head. "I didn't volunteer to help you guys just to go chasing after falling books! I could do that for Twilight any day of the week!"
"Well..." Twilight rolled her eyes, but suppressed a smile. "She's got a point there. Perhaps..." She scanned the familiar contours of her library, then brightened. "Ah! I know just the thing!" She levitated a wooden unicorn carving off a pedestal and levitated it before the Doctor's eyes. "Would organic material be a problem?"
"So long as it's no longer alive, it's perfect!" Doctor Whooves grinned wide. Grabbing the carving's "horn" in his teeth, he carried it over and planted it on the cylindrical platform at the top of the cube. He then backed away to a safe distance and stood beside Twilight. "Alright, Miss Sparkle. Everything has been accounted for. Whoops!" He scrambled a bit before finally picking up a switch that was attached to a wire strung into the body of the cube from afar. "Ah, there we go. Couldn't very well get started unless we had access to the ignition, yes?"
Twilight giggled. Rainbow yawned.
"Alas, no need for pomp or gravitas. Let's get on with it, shall we?"
"Here goes..." Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath. Her violet eyes narrowed and her mouth tensed as she aimed her horn at the nearest of the crystals. After a minute of concentration, she fired a purple beam of bright light into the array. The luminescent laser flew through the stone and refracted so that it bounced solidly through the rest of the seven crystals. Once the beam of light had made three full orbits, all eight stones directed a piece of the glow into the body of the cube in the middle. Soon, the hollow container started glowing from the inside as the light spell from Twilight's own horn energized the leylines etched into the machine's silver body. A high-pitched hum filled the room, causing the windows around the library to vibrate within their frames.
"Hey, my teeth are shaking like guitar strings!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed above the rising noise. "That's cool and all, but does that mean we're the ones that are gonna explode?!"
"Rainbow Dash..." Twilight hissed aside.
"It's almost reached maximum intake!" Dr. Whooves shouted as a mysterious wind began building up. "By Celestia, it's going just as I planned!"
"How do we know it's time to hit the switch?!" Twilight replied.
Just then, the wooden carving atop the cube started shaking uncontrollably.
"Uhm... Guys...?" Rainbow Dash pointed at the bizarre spectacle.
"Doctor--?!"
"Right! It's a go!" He twisted the node in his hooves. A spark shot through the wire and into the machine. There was a brief flash of light as all of the lasers shot one last time from the crystals into the cube. The center of the room turned black, then the darkness dissipated like a fine mist.
The wooden carving was gone.
"That did it!" Doctor Whooves exclaimed. His grin was positively electric.
Twilight was already spinning to face her companion. "Rainbow Dash! Go long!"
"On it!" She saluted, opened a window, and rocketed skyward.
The room filled with an eerie silence as the two scientists waited for the blue pegasus to return.
"How far should it have gone?" Twilight nervously asked.
Dr. Whooves gulped, his body visibly shaking in anticipation. "At least four hundred feet. I was afraid to aim for anything longer. I just wasn't sure how much energy output this device could manage."
"Sometimes the smallest steps are the safest steps, Doctor. I applaud you for planning with caution."
"Ohhhh..." He squirmed nervously where he stood, his eyes locked on the open window. "All the world's planning will mean nothing if it doesn't work. And I would hate to think of what horrible fate I may have dealt your charming art piece if worse came to worst."
"Charming art piece?" Twilight blinked at him, then giggled. "My dear Doctor. If it would somehow aid science to feed that gaudy thing to a radioactive hydra, I'd do it in a heartbeat."
"Heh. Of that I have no doubt. It's almost as if--" He stopped as his eyes suddenly lit up. "Good gracious! Back already?"
Twilight spun to look. "Rainbow Dash?" She gulped. "Well?"
She entered through the window, her forelimbs crossed. She paused for dramatic effect, then smirked deliciously as she unfolded her upper limbs to display the wooden unicorn carving in her grasp, completely intact. "Ta-daaaa!"
"Yes! It worked!" Twilight reared her hooves before nudging the Doctor with a bright grin. "Doctor Whooves! I am so, so very happy for you!"
He merely stood there, his face plastered with euphoric shock and disbelief. "Four hundred feet..." He gulped and grinned slowly, his eyes glossy. "Nearly half a town's length of spatial displacement straight up into the air, and yet there's not a chip missing from the test subject!"
"Yeah, and get this!" Rainbow Dash grinned and held the carving up high like a trophy from where she hovered. "It was still on its way skyward when I caught up with it! I think you just built yourself some crazy awesome magical teleporter cannon thingy!"
"Errrm..." The Doctor made a face.
Twilight rolled her eyes and smiled at him. "Don't mind her. I'm sure we'll be putting your words of discovery into the history books, Doctor."
"Hey!" Rainbow Dash frowned. "Don't I get my name carved into some science statue somewhere too?! Why should just the three of you get all the credit--?" She paused in mid-sentence, doing a double-take. Swiftly, she pulled her goggles up to her brow and squinted down at me. "Uhm... Just who in the heck are you?"
"Me?" I smiled wide from where I sat on a reading bench, applauding. "I'm incredibly impressed!"
"Gah!" Twilight Sparkle gasped and spun around. Doctor Whooves was no less startled as the two of them jumped in place. "Who... What...?!" Twilight stammered, gazing at me in shock. "How did you get in here?"
I allowed my face to become awash with "shock" and "confusion." "Uhm... I just trotted in? I apologize. Was the library off limits today?"
"Can't you see that we're conducting a science experiment?" Twilight exclaimed, beside herself. "The library's closed to act as a temporary laboratory! I had my assistant Spike put up signs and notes all over town!"
"Uhm..." I felt my ears drooping as I smiled innocently. "Does that include the side door?" I pointed at my saddlebag. "It was wide open when I came here to return my checkouts."
Twilight blinked. She then turned to frown at Rainbow Dash. "Rainbow... Did you leave the side door open again?"
"What?" She blinked and juggled the carving in her grasp. "No! Of course not! Erm..." She bit her lip and gazed around the ceiling, her voice cracking. "At least, I don't think so." A gulp. "Eheh... Though I guess it's possible I could have..."
"Unnngh..." Twilight ran a hoof over her face. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she looked my way with an exhausted expression. "But you weren't supposed to be here. Who knows what danger a random pony like you could have gotten--?"
"Did you see how successful we were?!" Doctor Whooves' grinning expression was suddenly blocking my view of Twilight. The scientist's ecstasy was overwhelming. "We teleported an inert object safely and successfully at a distance of over four hundred feet! Can you imagine what ponies could do if we somehow found a way to harness this sort of technology into common practicality?!"
"Uhm... Doctor?" Twilight leaned over him, nervously smiling. "I know you're excited, but I don't think this is a time to--"
"I think it's absolutely fantastic!" I spoke up. "If I'm to understand correctly..." I pointed at the crystals surrounding the cube. "The gemstones magnify a light spell cast by a practiced unicorn, which is then channeled into the machine. The cube then uses a complex layering of artificially drawn runes that mimic the natural compositions of leylines, so that the mana streams expound upon themselves and produce a core of ubridled magic that can be focused into a single, modulated spell?"
All three ponies gazed at me blankly, that is until Rainbow Dash shook her head and rubbed it achingly. "Okay. Who invited the encyclopedia in a hoodie?"
"That is... quite a remarkable observation," Doctor Whooves said with a smile plastered across his face.
"Are you a fan of the Doctor's?" Twilight leaned in and asked. "I've met every unicorn in Ponyville, and--if I may be so bold--very few of them tout a career in advanced science."
I smiled gently at my foalhood friend. "Let's say I've... been tutored over time by the best."
"Well, despite the circumstances," Dr. Whooves extended a hoof. "It's a pleasure to share this moment of discovery with a unicorn so avidly schooled, Miss..."
"Lyra," I replied with a smile and shook his hoof. "Lyra Heartstrings." I stared at the group. "And I hardly intend to subtract from this marvelous occasion."
"Not at all, Miss Heartstrings." Dr. Whooves grinned at his two associates. "If our subsequent experiments over the next few days prove to be just as successful, then in a matter of years we may have teleporting equipment like this available in every household! Why, the sheer possibilities for non magical equines to make full use of this gifted technology is mind boggling!"
"Yeah, well..." Rainbow Dash unceremoniously planted the carving down onto Twilight's backside. "This pegasus has to teleport her bladder really quick, if you catch my drift." She yawned and flitted away. "Try not to blow anything up while I'm not here to witness it."
"Erm... by all means, Miss Dash," the Doctor remarked with a nervous expression.
Twilight rolled her eyes and trotted off. "I need to run some tests on the structural integrity of this... um... piece of art, to make sure it's in as much one piece as it looks. If you'll excuse me, Doctor... erm... and Miss Heartstrings."
As Twilight strolled away, I turned to look at the Doctor. "It sounds like your goal with this device is to make teleportation accessible to non-magical ponies, and yet I notice that you require the enchantment spell of a unicorn such as Twilight Sparkle to power the machine..."
Doctor Whooves blushed slightly. "Yes, well, this is merely a prototype. No matter what design I concoct, a teleporter such as this will inevitably rely on unicorns to provide power. However, once I have a self-sustaining mana battery implemented, I imagine a device such as this could perform hundreds of long-distance spatial displacement charges on one single magical charge alone."
"So, it's more of a means of magical conveyance than it is a self-sustaining generator."
"But of course. We've yet to discover magic that comes from nowhere." Doctor Whooves chuckled pleasantly. "Some things that exist in science fiction must stay in science fiction."
I giggled as well and admired the machine from afar. "I can't help but notice that the cylindrical platform atop the cube is made of arcanium."
"Absolutely."
"Arcanium is often used as a magical suppressant. Does the platform have a dual function?"
"As a matter of fact it does, Miss Heartstrings. To focus the teleportation spell, the machine needs a singular point of discharge, a place where all of the artificial leylines converge. Such an exit point for the machine's mana streams is located just beneath the platform."
"So, if you hadn't put a layer of arcanium there..."
"The spell would emit from the device in a solid stream of unbridled energy." Dr. Whooves chewed on his lip as he gave the machine a nervous glance. "That platform serves more than a tiny teleporter pad, you see."
"Oh, so there could have been lasers involved." I smirked. "Even explosions."
"Not if we can help it!" Dr. Whooves said with a grin. "Thankfully, Miss Sparkle has not only been helpful in disaster-proofing the device, but in providing a safe interior within which to conduct this experiment."
"She's very selfless," I murmured, gazing towards the far end of the treehouse library. "In a lot of ways." I took a deep breath. Twilight and Rainbow Dash would both be back soon, and undoubtedly the distance would have rekindled their forgetfulness, along with their ire. If I wanted to avoid an awkward situation, I had to take leave of Dr. Whooves, but not without asking a question that had been hammering the walls of my mind. "I can't help but notice that the arcanium plate affords very little space for test subjects."
"Yes. We hope to perform more tests by sunset. With Miss Sparkle's permission, I would like to work on larger and more dense objects. You're welcome to witness if you like, Miss Heartstrings."
I smiled pleasantly at him. "As much as I would enjoy that, I can't help but ask." I took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. "What if your next prototype could afford a larger teleporter pad?"
"I don't understand. Why would we need a larger platform?"
I stared directly at him. "For teleporting living subjects."
Dr. Whooves blinked at me. I could detect the wince in his expression before he bore it. Nevertheless, I listened as he paced and said, "That... is quite difficult, Miss Heartstrings. I dare not experiment with that sort of a situation, not now and perhaps not ever."
I raised an eyebrow. "Dare I ask why?"
"Far be it from me to establish limitations so early, but it does not seem remotely safe."
"How so?"
"Unicorns--such as yourself, Miss Heartstrings--are more than capable of surviving teleportation performed by yourself or other unicorns. However..." He gestured towards the cube in the center of the eight crystals. "Though a device of this nature is empowered by a unicorn's light enchantment, the magical burst that comes out the other end of the layered runes is anything but natural. When a unicorn teleports herself from place to place, what emerges through the process is the same creature. This is because she has merely traveled the streams of the same magical leylines that her essence is empowered by. This goes for any other pony--unicorn or not--that she teleports with her. Her essence--her soul self, as it were--preserves the nature of her being and those who share the transient leylines through which she propels her corporeal self."
"But..." I thought aloud, my eyes locked onto the suddenly sinister device in our midst. "...when the machine teleports a living thing, what comes out the other end has been... disconnected from the leylines, hasn't it?"
"Or so theory would say," Doctor Whooves said with a nod. "The experience of teleportation would not kill the living subject." He then gulped and added with a nervous smile. "Not at first."
"How do you mean...?"
"Well, the subject would emerge from the teleportation in relative control of her or his faculties. However, the disconnection with the leylines would cause a unavoidable sever between the pony's physical body and incorporeal essence."
"It's like ripping the ghost from the flesh."
"In a manner of speaking." He nodded gravely. "You see, Miss Heartstrings, it was never my goal to transport ponies with this device, but simply to allow non-magical ponies a means to deliver material objects to each other from a distance. It would be a long time--perhaps beyond my years--before a device like this could teleport living creatures by purely artificial means."
I felt my tail flick at the sound of that. I gazed up at him. "So... you mean that it is possible?"
He chuckled, running a hoof through his mane as he gazed aside. "If only there was a way to compensate for a test subject's incorporeal disconnect. The only solid solution I can think of is for another unicorn, one gifted with at least an intermediary knowledge of expert sorcery, to approach the test subject immediately following the teleportation and manually reacquaint her with her natural leylines. But I wouldn't even begin to imagine the type of concentration and mana that would take. The very prospect--at least as we currently perceive it--is far too dangerous to be practical."
Far too dangerous, but still incredibly enticing...
Doctor Whooves' words were all I could think about. I sat on the front patio of my cabin the next afternoon, engulfed in thought. My lyre was resting beside me; it remained unplayed. I should have been practicing the Eighth Elegy, but I couldn't stop pondering about the magical box and the wooden carving it had propelled invisibly skyward beyond the rooftop branches of Twilight's library.
All this time, I've been obsessing over the lunar elegies. Why shouldn't I have been? They seemed obviously made for me to focus on. It was as though they had been inserted in my brain for a reason. Since the first day I woke up in this world of chills and ghosts, the symphony of Princess Luna had been my task to uncover.
But what if I didn't have to finish that task? What if there was another way out, even if it was cheating?
I'm stuck in Ponyville. I know that. I live that. But what if I could forcibly remove myself from this place? And to what end? My heart soars with the implications. I could see my parents again. I could reach the ancient magical libraries of Canterlot. In a miraculous blink, I could even show up on the doorstep to the royal sisters' palace and rob their attention just long enough to listen to my pleas and save me from this blasted curse.
But, even if I could do all of that, what would I have to look forward to? Doctor Whooves had made it perfectly clear: something alive like me could not survive the teleportation process, at least not for long. I would emerge on the other end of the procedure as some pathetic golem that thought it was me. My only hope, then, would be for a unicorn like Twilight or an alicorn like Princess Luna to somehow... "reattach" my soul to my body before I could even pretend to ask for help from the outside in curing my curse. And even if I traversed all of those wicked boundaries, how much time would I have to accomplish all that I needed to do before I would be consumed by utter cold and forgetfulness, so far away from my new warm "home?"
I sighed and tucked my hooves under my hoodie's sleeves before hugging myself.
Just when I think that this whole situation couldn't be any more exhausting, I witness something as tantalizing as this scientific experiment taking place under my very nose, and it simply eats at me. There is something so dreadfully frightening about performing the elegies, and no matter how deeply I explore those unearthly compositions, I find myself growing even further and further from my goal. The idea of teleporting myself to someplace where answers may lie is extremely tantalizing, but is it any less of a frightening venture? Just because it's different doesn't mean it's safer, and no matter how I spin it, it still demands the same bottomless well of courage from me as the alternative.
As a matter of fact, I've never been much of a courageous pony. I don't know how the likes of Rainbow Dash or Applejack or Twilight Sparkle manage to summon such bravery from the depths of their souls. To attempt being strong in a cursed world is like starting a fire with sticks of ice. There are times when I don't even know how I can walk out of this cabin in the morning. On countless occasions, I've felt lonely in this place, but it doesn't compare to how often I feel utterly and bitterly afraid.
There was no point in entertaining the notion of the teleporter machine. With the life I live, it's easy to grab onto bizarre things after confusing them with symbols of hope. All I am, and all I'll ever be, is a musician. It's best to leave heroism to the heroes--
I gasped suddenly upon hearing a shrieking cry, coupled with the cacophonous sound of tumbling limbs. I glanced over from the front of my cabin to see a tiny pony having collapsed in the center of the dirt road. Several wheels spun from an overturned scooter, and I felt my heart skipping a beat.
In an instant, I was up on my hooves and galloping over to the scene. The dust had just begun settling as I stumbled upon her. My ears pricked to hear her squealing breath desperately stifling a pained moan.
"Uhm... Hey there, kiddo?" I leaned down towards her with a concerned expression. "Are you okay?"
"Nnnngh..." Scootaloo's eyes were clenched shut. She hissed through gnashing teeth. "I'm fine!"
"That's quite the tumble you just took." I glanced behind her, spotting a sharp rock jutting in the center of the path. Deep wheel marks spelled where the scooter had crashed after hitting the obstruction. "Better watch out when you come around the bend. This path was built long ago, and I suspect not many ponies have looked after it since." My eyes caught her forelimbs clutching a spot on her rear left leg. I reached towards it. "Here, lemme see--"
"I said I'm fine!" she hissed and practically batted my limb away. "I'm a tough pony! I've taken worse tumbles befo--Ow! Owwwww..." I could see the smallest hint of moisture clinging to her eyelashes as she hissed through chapped lips.
With a gentle smile, I reached forward again. This time, she was too weak to protest, and I parted her forelimbs in time to see a nasty red gash having been burned through the orange coat of her rear leg. It was hardly anything to go to the emergency room for, but Celestia it looked like it stung.
"Whew! That's one heck of a case of road rash!" I said. I attempted a chuckle, as if it would alleviate her pain. It didn't. So I distracted her nerves with a pair of hooves gently caressing her chin. "Here. Follow me. I think I have just the thing for that."
"I... don't need... any help..." She grunted, still fighting the pain like a pony would bang her head against a brick wall.
"I'm not sure your leg agrees with you." I stood up straight and a bright green glow filled the air from my horn. "Don't worry. I promise it won't take but a second."
Scootaloo mumbled something. With her face hung in a mixture of embarrassment and frustration, she hoisted herself up to a standing position. Gently, a haze of glittering telekinesis wafted over her injured leg. She allowed me to support her weight with magic as I escorted the filly--limping--to the front of my cabin.
I swiftly ducked in through the door to my home. In less than a minute, I had emerged with a first-aid kit full of materials that I had assembled after a year of wandering through Ponyville. I learned long ago that if I was ever to be seriously injured, the only pony I could safely rely on to fix me up was myself. It was a pleasure, then, to help another soul for once in a blue moon.
"Just sit still, and I'll get you patched up."
I cleaned the edges of her wound. Next, I applied a medicinal ointment to a bandage before softly wrapping it around her scraped leg. All the while, Scootaloo remained remarkably dormant. She barely winced as I worked through my ministrations. Every now and then, the faintest hiss would spill from her lips. I soon realized that she was being brave--a little too brave. Her entire upper body began shivering, like a leather balloon that was waiting to burst.
Calmly, I prepared a second bandage while uttering, "I apologize in advance for the smell."
Scootaloo stirred. Her voice came out as a tense grunt. "Sm-smell? I don't smell anything..."
"Well, that's just the thing..." I smiled softly as I stood behind her. "It's a very rare ointment. I promise that it'll keep your scratch from getting infected, but at the same time it has a different effect on everypony. Some ponies smell something horrible. Others--well--they don't smell anything, but it still affects them."
She gulped. Her head and neck were quivering at the breaking point. "Affect them how...?"
"They have a mild reaction," I murmured. "Their nose gets a little runny and their eyes start to water."
"You... Y-you mean it's normal?" She asked, and I detected the slightest sniffle.
I smiled and gently nodded. "Yes, sweetie. It's normal."
Her sniffles doubled, then quadrupled, and finally Scootaloo's body became still as she relaxed. I didn't bother looking at her tear-stained face as I squatted down. "Now lift the leg one more time. I'm almost done here."
She did so obediently. I applied the last bandage and pulled it tight. As I stood up, I got a close look at the filly's wings. I couldn't help but squint. I noticed something for the first time: Scootaloo's longest feather stems appeared abnormally short, as if they ended abruptly at half the normal length for a pony her age. I cleared my throat and marched around so that I sat on the patio's edge beside her.
"So... are you going to tell me why?"
Scootaloo sniffled one last time and dried her face with a forelimb. "Why, what?"
"Why you felt like speeding around the dirt road on that scooter like a bat out of Tartarus?"
She frowned and faced off towards the afternoon horizon with her forelimbs folded. "Hmmph... I'm practicing."
"For what?" I chuckled. "The Demolition Olympics?"
"Pffft! No!" She glared briefly at me. "Look, lady, thanks for making my leg feel better, but don't poke fun at me!"
"Hey... I meant no offense!" I exclaimed with a soft smile. "I just think fillies your age have better things to be doing than attempting suicide."
"It's not suicide," she said with a sigh, then ran a hoof through her pink mane. "It's a pegasus thing. I can't expect you to understand..."
I shrugged. "When I was your age, I accidentally 'rearranged' my bedroom quite a few times trying to discover my magical gift. Heh. You see, even young unicorns have been known to make a mess out of themselves on occasion."
"But I shouldn't be making messes! I shouldn't even be on the stinkin' ground anymore!" Scootaloo sighed long and hard. She hugged herself and stared forlornly into the sky. "I practice on my scooter all the time, if only to feel what it's like."
"What what's like?"
"Speed. Wind. Soaring."
I raised an eyebrow. "Flight?"
Her nostrils flared. She looked defeatedly into the soil beyond the patio and muttered, "I'll never know how she makes it look so easy..."
Ah. But of course.
"And just who is 'she', if I may be so bold to ask?"
"Ugh. Look..." Scootaloo stood up and began limping away. "Whoever you are, thank you. I mean it. But... I really didn't mean to bug your or nothin'. I... I have places to be. I should be doing homework or some other boring junk right about now anyway."
As she trotted off, I fiddled with my hoodie's sleeves and murmured to the wind, "You know, we haven't had a terrible thunderstorm in nearly eight months."
"I know," Scootaloo's voice sounded practically defensive as she trotted towards the distance. "Ponyville's Weather Flier is the only pegasus in Equestria with a perfect record."
"Do you really think she got so perfect without getting scorched by lightning a few times?"
Scootaloo stopped in her tracks. She glanced back at me.
I looked into those violet eyes from afar as I said, "It's much more than courage that makes a pony, kid." I pointed towards her fresh bandage. "Sometimes, what looks perfect is really just something sculpted out of a life of countless bumps and bruises."
Her face was remarkably deadpan when she gave her swift response. "I've been given enough bumps and bruises in life already, lady." Her face briefly grimaced, as if that was something too sacred to admit until then. There was a distant look in the child's gaze as she picked the scooter up, all the while her stubby wings twitched. "I... I just want to be cool already. She's earned it. Why can't I?" She gave one last sniffle; there was no more need to hide it. Nevertheless, everything disappeared into a brazen frown as she jumped on the scooter and blurred down the road and out of my life once more.
I sat alone with my lyre and my beating heart. Slowly, I closed the first-aid kit and sighed. I knew that I could only depend on myself in this life; perhaps it was high time I stopped pretending I could look after others as well. Some of us could only dream of being heroes. Others have earned the title with no hope of receiving it. I will forever be stuck as a bard to such ponies' legacy.
"Alright..." Doctor Whooves stepped back from the cube after having placed down a black cylinder atop the machine's arcanium platform. "Fifty kilograms of ram-crafted iron alloy. This will be our heaviest test subject yet."
"What's the distance we're going for this time, Doc?" Rainbow Dash asked.
Doctor Whooves glanced at Twilight Sparkle, gulped bravely, and said with a grin. "Nine hundred feet. I fear, Miss Dash, that by the time you catch up with it, it'll have achieved a great deal of velocity."
"Sounds dangerous," Rainbow Dash said. Her ruby eyes lit up. "Ready when you are!"
"Have... uhm... Have you been able to catch something of this mass before?"
Rainbow snickered and glanced aside. "Hey Twi! Remember that one time Big Mac's outhouse was placed a little too close to the edge of a hill and I happened to be doing a cloud run overhead just as he was--?!"
"Ahem." Twilight Sparkle smiled nervously at the stallion. "She can handle it, Doctor. Are we ready to begin?"
"We're using twelve crystals this time. It should be more than enough to channel the required energy into the runic matrix."
"Okay then." Twilight carefully approached the nearest stone on a pedestal and tilted her horn forward. "I'll need a few moments to concentrate, then I'll give you the signal."
Doctor Whooves sat on his haunches while gripping the wired switch. "I await with anticipation."
Rainbow Dash watched from where she hovered above. The center of the library shimmered with a deep purple light as Twilight focused a light spell through the structure of her horn. Her mane billowed in a magical wind as bulbs of sweat ran down her face. "Almost... Almost..." She briefly gnashed her teeth, took a deep breath, and finally exclaimed, "Casting now!"
A bright flash illuminated the room. In the next blink, all twelve crystals were being joined by a thick web of criss-crossing violet lasers. Twilight Sparkle briefly stumbled, only to be supported by the weight of Doctor Whooves leaning into her.
"Are you alright, dear?"
"Never mind me!" Twilight found herself having to shout. The room was echoing with a loud hum as the crystals flickered all around the metal cube. "Do we have the energy contained?"
"Just about!" The Doctor yelled back, grazing the switch in his grasp with a tense pair of hooves. "I adjusted the intake of the machine so that the artificial leylines will absorb the mana stream with thirty-five percent resistance!"
"You think it's enough to compensate for the increased charge?"
"If not, the device should harmlessly expel the mana stream into the lateral absorption banks!"
"Well, that sounds anticlimactic!"
"Not on my watch!" Doctor Whooves smiled wide as the room swirled with an ethereal haze. "Are you ready, Miss Dash?"
"Hit it, Doc!"
"Consider it hit! Nine hundred feet or bust!" He pulled the switch.
The lasers from the twelve crystals shot immediately into the cube. What wasn't so immediate, however, was the rate of glowing light from the heart of the box. Instead of instantly dematerializing the black object on top of the machine's platform, a low whining noise began emanating from the center of the cube.
"Uhh..." Rainbow Dash made a face, her fluttering wings drooping slightly in midair. "That doesn't sound good." She gulped. "Am I the only pony who thinks that doesn't sound good?"
Twilight Sparkle flashed a worried glance. "Doctor?"
"I..." Doctor Whooves' mouth was agape as he glanced at the delayed teleportation. "I don't understand! We should have witnessed the discharge by now!"
"Maybe it's taking longer cuz the metal weight is heavier?" Rainbow Dash blindly speculated.
"No, it should have nothing to do with the test subject's variable weight," Twilight exclaimed. "It's as if all of the mana has disappeared. But that can't be possible! The box--"
"Good heavens," the Doctor gasped.
The two mares looked fearfully his way.
He flashed them no less a worried look. "Of course the mana charge hasn't disappeared. The reason we're not seeing it is probably because the enchantment immediately pierced the outer layers of artificial leylines."
"You mean the beam was strong enough to pierce to the center of the apparatus?" Twilight Sparkle breathily exclaimed.
"Uhm..." Rainbow Dash fluttered lower. "Is that bad?"
"The core of the cube's runic chambers isn't built to handle that much magical stress!" Twilight Sparkle shrieked as the room started resonating with an alien cacophony. "It could very well be overloading as we speak--"
"I'm aborting!" Doctor Whooves shouted. It was becoming difficult to hear his own voice. "I'm shutting it all down!" He fiddled with the device. He pounded on it, seething.
"Nnnngh!" Rainbow Dash was gripping her aching ears at this point. Lanterns and light fixtures wobbled overhead. The windows along the edges of the library began to crack. "Ughhh--D-Doc?!"
"The failsafe!" He bellowed. It came across as a whisper against a gigantic earthquake. "The lateral banks have burnt out!"
"Then that means--!" Twilight began.
Rainbow Dash was already swooping down. As the cube flashed a bright purple, its metal shell buckling, she swiftly yanked Twilight and the Doctor away with two hooked forelimbs. "Get down--!"
The cube ruptured. The black cylinder was spat out, landing two feet deep into a wooden wall as the twelve crystals shattered. Tremors bred tremors, and soon the shuddering stopped, giving way to a low bass hum as dust settled across the room. Shadows danced across the interiors of the hollow treehouse. Books and tattered pages spun magical cyclones, beneath which a groaning Doctor Whooves stirred to life.
"Nnnngh... Great Starswirl... My head..." He winced visibly, his ears and nostrils streaming thin trickles of blood. He glanced up and gasped at what he saw.
A huge gash had been torn in the body of the cube, exposing its glowing purple core to the room. Despite the disastrous explosion, the teleportation machine was remarkably intact, except for one key detail. The arcanium platform had been blown clean off. What was more, the cube had fallen and was currently lying on its side. The onion layers of artificial leylines were exposed to the air so that the one opening of the device was currently being aimed at--
"Miss Dash!" Doctor Whooves sputtered.
"Ughhh..." Rainbow Dash barely stirred, lying paralyzed on her side. She was overcome by waves of pure magical energy billowing over her figure. The torn mouth of the cube was facing directly towards her, and the pegasus had very little strength to wake up, much less crawl away from the threatening contraption.
Doctor Whooves tried crawling towards her. He instantly winced, then glanced down at his rear limbs. A cloud of glass shrapnel from one of the mana crystals had embedded viciously into his knee, spilling a small pool of blood across the floor. Panicking, he flashed Rainbow Dash another glance, then looked to where Twilight Sparkle was lying just a few feet away from the pegasus.
"Miss Sparkle! Hckk..." He winced past a wave of pain and again struggled in vain to crawl towards the two mares. "Can you move?"
"Can... hardly... breathe..." Twilight whimpered. She was glued to the floor, but for a completely different reason than the other two. As waves of mana billowed out from the lopsided teleporter, her horn resonated with a weak, pulsating light. "Too... much energy. Feel my nerves... going numb..."
"Miss Dash is going to be in a worse situation if we don't--" Doctor Whooves began, but was suddenly overcome by a loud groaning sound. He glanced up with wide eyes as he saw a heavy bookcase stuffed with thick tomes teetering from the recent burst of energy. "Oh dear..." He curled inward and covered his head with two hooves. The hulking wooden structure fell over him.
A loud crash filled the room, but Doctor Whooves was untouched. He found himself being dragged away from the collapsing bookcase at the last second. Twitching, he glanced up at me.
"Who in Celestia's name are you?!"
"You're welcome," I grunted, sweating. I finished pulling the Doctor to a safe distance from the disaster and looked over at Twilight's and Rainbow's situation. I too was deeply affected by the overloading cube. Even from over a dozen feet away, I found it hard to stand upright. If it wasn't for the fact that I was watching the experiment from an adjacent hallway when everything hit the fan, I would have been in as bad a shape as the others. "Never mind introductions, Doctor!" I struggled to speak past the waves of raw magic pouring from the ruptured device. "Is there any way to turn this thing off?"
"I... I..." Doctor Whooves shook off the confusion of my presence and forlornly glanced at the situation at hoof. "Nopony but one of the royal alicorns themselves could shut it off at this point! There's nothing we can do but wait for the pent-up energy to exit the machine on its own!"
"Just how long are we talking about?!" I exclaimed above the deep bass roar. I shaded my squinting eyes with a hoof as I looked at Twilight and Rainbow alternatively. It was hard to hear anything above my beating heart, much less the mana-spilling cube. "A couple of hours?"
"More like minutes, ma'am!" the Doctor exclaimed. "There's too much mana inside the thing to stay contained for much longer! I fear the first burst was but a precursor!"
"What do you mean by that?!"
"Even shattered in pieces, the teleporter is going to do what it's designed to do!" The Doctor pointed as I helped him into a sitting position. "And that's emit a solid beam of energy in the form of a spatial displacement spell! And right now, the unguarded mouth of the machine is aimed at--"
"Rainbow Dash..." I murmured. "I'll move her--"
He held me in place with a strong hoof. "No! If you get any closer to the core, you'll be as worse off as them!"
"But we have to move them! Both of them!" I felt my teeth chattering. It wasn't the cold this time. I looked all over the rumbling, billowing scene. "Any ideas?"
He looked up at me as if for the first time. "You're a unicorn! Praise Luna!" He pointed at a splintered plank of wood severed from a collapsed bookcase. "Perhaps you can give one of them a boost--!"
"I read you!" I exclaimed. Trying to steady my breaths, I planted all four hooves tightly against the floor and concentrated hard through my horn. With the most intensely focused burst of mana I've ever summoned in my life, I levitated the wooden plank upwards and pierced it through the sphere of swirling energy. "Nnnngh..." I strained and sweated as I attempted shoving the thing towards the dormant, moaning figure of Rainbow Dash. It felt like carving a plastic butter knife through wet cement. "I... I-I don't think I can reach her!"
"Then don't!" Doctor Whooves shouted. The bass hum of the machine was intensifying once more. We both felt the advent of another mana-burst coming from the sundered teleporter. "Miss Sparkle's closer! Try and pull her out first!" He pointed. "Then the two of you might be able to work together and get Rainbow Dash out!"
"Twilight!" I shouted as I pivoted the plank her way. "Did you hear the Doctor? Grab ahold!"
"I... I..." Twilight blindly lifted a hoof and miraculously found her end of the wooden object. "Who... Who is that...?"
"Let's play guessing games later!" I shouted. The windows started rattling again. Glass that had fractured before was outright shattering as I tugged telekinetically at my end of the plank. "Just hold on tight! I need your help in saving--"
"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight cried. She stared in horror at Rainbow's limp body while she was being tugged towards me. "Just hang in there!" She cast one look at the ruptured cube that was aimed at the pegasus and almost sobbed. "Oh please Celestia, no..."
"Nnngh... Tw-Twilight..." Rainbow Dash barely stirred. Her feathers were practically molting from the machine's proximity.
"Do you hear me?!" Twilight stammered as I finally pulled her over to me and the Doctor. She collapsed into my forelegs and tried to regain her bearings. "Just... Just breathe easily, and we'll have you out of there--"
The machine began pulsing. A wave of pure magic knocked all three of us onto our backsides. I stumbled accidentally over Doctor Whooves' bleeding leg, causing him to shriek in pain. By the time I got up to my hooves once more, I was assaulted by a sudden beam of pure sunlight. It took several seconds of wincing to realize that the front door to the library had been flung open.
"What in hay's name is going on in here?! Is everypony alright--?" A high-pitched voice began, then gasped, then practically shrieked. "Rainbow Dash!"
I next heard Twilight breathily murmuring, "Oh no... Stop! Go back outside! Don't come anywhere near her!"
I looked up at the library's front entrance. The first things I saw were the four spinning wheels of an overturned scooter. My heart sank, and my wavering sight danced over to see her little orange body practically swimming against the waves of nauseous mana.
"Listen to me, Scootaloo!" Twilight shrieked. I numbly helped her to her hooves as she shouted above the noise and bedlam. "Go back! Don't try to touch her! That machine's about to blow--"
"She's... She's h-hurt!" Scootaloo squeaked into the billowing streams of energy. Her gnashing teeth reflected streams of murderous violet light as she inched herself painfully towards Rainbow Dash. Whether or not she heard Twilight's words of warning no longer mattered. We watched helplessly from our end of the library in utter horror. "We... I... I-I gotta get Rainbow out of here!"
"Mmmf... Wh-what...?" As if sparked to life by the sound of her own name, Rainbow Dash's eyes fluttered open. She saw Scootaloo. She saw the pain in her face. Then, she saw the cosmic glow of the teleporter on the verge of erupting. With one gasp, she snarled Scootaloo's way and poured all her strength in raising a numb forelimb. "Kid! Back off! I mean it--"
For a brief moment, Scootaloo collapsed on four knees. She winced from the contact her bandaged leg made with the library floor. That must have sparked a fire from deep within. Her eyes blazed as she summoned an animalistic growl, fluttered her tiny wings, and propelled herself like a comet into Rainbow Dash's side.
"No! Don't--" Doctor Whooves was shrieking.
But it was too late. The machine exploded for a second and last time. A stream of purple energy popped out the box's torn mouth and billowed across the wooden floor. Rainbow Dash gasped, until her tumbling body was replaced by Scootaloo, who was then replaced with nothing. In a bright burst, the filly was gone, and only a dim purple haze remained.
Once the noise and mayhem of the disaster had dissipated, Rainbow Dash's yelling voice was immediately filling the void.
"Dang it! Dang it dang it dang it dang it!" Her dizziness replaced with shock and anger, she tried bounding up to her limbs. She only managed to bump into several bookcases and shattered bits of laboratory equipment. "Nnnnngh--Raaaugh!" She bucked her hooves repeatedly into a wooden table, viciously knocking it over and spitting into the air. "Idiot! What in the hay did she think she was doing?! That... nnngh... stupid... stupid..."
The cube lay dead and quiet. No longer encumbered by waves of mana, I numbly stumbled over towards her and helped her up onto all fours. "She... She..." I mumbled in a dry voice, gulped, and gazed at the charred ring of soot that marked where Scootaloo was standing last. "She... was teleported away. She had to have been! Miss Dash, if we could just--"
"Hmmmph!" She seethed and shoved me to the floor before marching across the library. "Twi! Tell me! Where is she?! Where'd that dumb machine send her?!"
Twilight Sparkle was gazing at the empty space of the library with her jaw agape. Her eyes were moist, on the verge of tears.
"Twilight!" Rainbow Dash grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Look at me!"
Twilight gulped and looked at Rainbow Dash. Her lips quivered. "I... I don't know, Rainbow. If I had any idea that this could have happened..."
"But it has happened!" Rainbow Dash growled. "That stupid thing teleports crud to places, right? So where's the kid? Did it send her nine hundred feet across town or what?"
"There's no way to tell," Doctor Whooves suddenly muttered.
Rainbow Dash spun to face him. "Bad answer!" She frowned. "I'm having a look!" She stretched her wings to fly out--
"No! Stop!" The Doctor winced past his bleeding pain and gestured for her to remain in place. "I mean it! The machine's energy output magnified Miss Sparkle's enchantment by ten-fold! Furthermore, the damage dealt to the machine can't guarantee that the child was sent anywhere predictable!"
"Just tell me where to go searching for her, Doc!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed. She steeled herself with a frown to avoid imminent hyperventilation. "I don't think that teleportation thingy is very foal-friendly!"
"What I think the Doctor is trying to say is that the machine did in fact send Scootaloo somewhere, but there's no telling where exactly!" Twilight Sparkle teetered, still attempting to regain her balance. "It... It could have been in any direction."
"That isn't helping, Twi!"
"Just give me a second..." Twililight limped across the room. We watched anxiously as she picked up a collapsed blackboard, levitated a piece of chalk, and began flurrying through an array of high-level math equations at dazzling speed. Her forehead was furrowed in deep thought. Her lips murmured unintelligibly.
"With that rate of discharge," Doctor Whooves spoke between painful breaths, "A body that small would have been sent at least five times the distance we had estimated teleporting the last test subject."
"Yeah? So what?" Rainbow Dash fluttered desperately between the two scientists. "What does that mean? What do I have to work with?"
"Just let me concentrate!" Twilight snapped, gritting her teeth as she struggled through a few lasting equations. She clenched her eyes shut, murmured breathily, then struck a final figure. Spinning around, she gazed up at a wide-eyed Rainbow Dash and practically whimpered, "She could be anywhere in a thirteen mile circular area."
"With this place--the location of the teleporter--as the center," the Doctor added in a forlorn breath.
Rainbow Dash gazed left and right between the two. She flung her forelimbs above her tattered mane. "What does that tell me?"
"She could could be two miles north of us, two miles south of us, southwest, southeast--There's no real way to tell!" Twilight Sparkle said and gulped nervously.
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath, her ruby eyes hardening. "Well, what are we waiting for?" She made for the nearest shattered window. "Twilight, you tell the mayor that I'm fetching every able-bodied pegasus in Ponyville. We're combing the area! We'll search all day and night and all week if we have to!"
"It's not a matter of if you find her, Miss Dash!" The Doctor exclaimed. "It's a matter of how soon."
"Why?" Rainbow Dash flashed him a frown. "What now?"
He bit his lip, exchanged a worried glance with Twilight, then looked once more Rainbow's way. "No living thing has ever been teleported by a machine like this before." He winced and sat up straight while clutching his wounded leg. "All hypotheses suggest that a living pony may survive spatial displacement, but not for long."
"What do you mean 'not for long'?" Rainbow Dash's voice cracked in horror.
"What he means, Rainbow, is that Scootaloo--wherever she is--will soon lose her faculties, followed by swift paralysis, on account of her body being separated from her incorporeal self." Twilight tried to calmly explain the horror of the situation. "The machine has essentially disconnected her from the leylines that keep her consciousness and physical self in perfect sync. In a matter of time, her body will cease to function, like a sort of magically-induced suffocation."
"Then... Then..." Rainbow Dash fidgeted in mid-air, bit her lip, then barked, "Then we must fetch her and bring her to a smart, magicky unicorn like you so you can... c-can put back together her leylines and crud, right?"
"I..." Twilight Sparkle squirmed where she stood. "I've never tried something like that before--"
"But is it possible?"
"Well, sure! But--"
"Then it's enough to go on!" Rainbow Dash pointed. "Get the Doc to a hospital! I've got a rescue team to round up!"
"Miss Sparkle... Miss Dash..." Doctor Whooves winced as Twilight propped him up against her. "I must apologize for this series of disastorous events--"
"Apologies can wait, Doc! Scoots needs us!"
"But... Everypony just wait!" My voice sounded across the room as I jumped into the center of the library, waving my hooves. "We can't go about this blindly! There's gotta be--I dunno--a way to know for sure just where the kid is!"
All three jumped in place, glancing at me.
"Uhm... Who...?"
"Where'd you come from?" Twilight Sparkle blinked.
My eyes twitched. I was amazed at how quickly even I had forgotten a case of misfortune within misfortune. "Erm... I was... just..."
"Were you here the whole time?"
I snarled and stomped my hooves. "Look, who cares?! Seriously?" I frowned in Doctor Whooves' face. "It takes a light-based enchantment spell to activate the machine, right?"
"How..." He squinted nervously at me. "How did you know--?"
"Yes or no? Answer me?"
"Yes." Twilight answered for him, staring at me warily. "I channeled a light-intensive spell into the crystals that were then absorbed into the machine. The runes built into the device do all the rest, transforming the spark into an artificial teleportation spell."
"Then, if it's light-based..." I rubbed my chin in thought, then gasped wide. "Perhaps an illumination spell can trace where the machine sent her!"
"I..." Twilight glanced at the twitching Rainbow Dash and wounded Doctor. I could tell she was beyond her wit's end. "I haven't performed a light spell in ages. Even if I could..."
As Twilight was speaking aloud, my mind was flying circles to make even Rainbow Dash proud. I thought of the glow of a lantern above my head in a dark cellar while I performed the elegies. I imagined the subterranean world undulating around me as I threw myself down a gauntlet of forbidden songs. Shades of light had danced before me, just as a spark of inspiration was twinkling before me then. "Don't worry!" I grinned suddenly and galloped towards the hallway at a pace to match my heartbeat. I found my saddlebag right where I had left it upon arriving at the library earlier to watch the experiment. "I think I have it covered!" I reached deep into one of the pouches and produced my lyre. "I know a song that has a side effect of disseminating faint light from shadow and--"
The hairs of my coat stood on end as a deep chill entranced me. Shuddering, I stumbled in place.
"Uhm... Guys?"
I turned around. My heart sank.
Twilight Sparkle and Doctor Whooves had hobbled away. Outside the shattered windows, I could hear the yelling voice of Rainbow Dash as she rounded up every pegasus within earshot.
I took a deep breath. One way or another, I always end up alone. But Scootaloo? I suddenly wanted to find her more than anything. It's not everyday I find out that I'm not the only pony who's incapable of flying out of this place.
I looked at my lyre. The golden body and taut cords felt cold to the touch, just like what I was about to do. I felt naked and awkward in the middle of a rubble-strewn library. It amazed me how acquainted I had become with the dark, pristine interior of my subterranean cellar. Nevertheless, I trotted over towards the wrecked cube, stood above it with my instrument, and took a deep breath.
Perhaps...
Just perhaps... these elegies were given to me for a reason. What's a pain to me could be blissful deliverance to others. I've long discovered my music to have an edge that my words fail to deliver. Luna's compositions have transcended the obscuring layers of time, delving into a realm of pure forgetfulness only to emerge with new and enchanting tonality in my hooves. I've taken it upon myself to become the steward of these forgotten songs. Did I have another thankless job to attend? Was I to be the nameless steward of souls as well?
I may not be a courageous pony, but I like to think of myself as an intelligent one. Princess Luna's songs had once served her some mysterious purpose in ages gone by. Though the function of the tunes are forgotten, it doesn't mean I can't invent new applications for them. If I'm not here to be creative and resourceful, then why else would a phantom like me exist? I was never born to be a hero, but I'd hate myself forever if I failed to be a good bard.
Once I had collected my nerves in the center of that wrecked room, I put my telekinesis to use, and began strumming the first of the lunar elegies. The dissonant strings of the "Prelude to Shadows" slowly filled the lengths of the library. Ironically, the first portion of the symphony was all that I required. I had no intention to play any of the tunes that followed.
Less than a minute into the performance, and the side effects of the elegy began assaulting me without mercy. I started trembling all over as a deep paranoia overwhelmed my body and mind. I wasn't used to playing this song in the daylight, and I felt like everything that was lying still around me was suddenly squirming to life. Despite my desperate need to clench my eyes shut, I kept them wide open, taking in every horrid hallucination that dared to flicker and jump before me until a ray of truth made itself known.
Through the dancing shadows and squirming shades of the song's eerie tones, I finally found what I was looking for. Beams of light separated before me, so that I saw with a mystic sight-within-sight, discovering a spectrum unknown to most mortals. The bands of brightness separated, and soon one ray in particular was arching away from the heart of the dead teleporter. It was a fresh beam of luminescence, as infant as it was artificial. I stopped playing my lyre and drifted forward, breathing it in. It tasted like vanilla and bone. The dreadful succulence led me--limping--straight out of the library, until I nearly collapsed from the waves of cold that resulted from my having aborted the magical elegy in mid-performance.
My heart pumped, wracked with darting fears. I fought the flowers and grass squirming around me like a sea of snakes. Tilting my head up, I was enraptured to see the beam leading straight northwest, past the edge of town, past Sweet Apple Acres, and towards the base of a misty mountain range that--sure enough--was no more than three miles' distance.
I now knew where Scootaloo was.
My breath came out of me in a happy whimper. I was so hammered with cold and frayed nerves, I would gladly have collapsed right there. But I couldn't. The afternoon air above Ponyville was buzzing with more and more swarming pegasi. The streets thundered with scampering hooves and murmuring voices. The entire city had come alive in panic. One of the town's precious foals had gone missing by the most bizarre of circumstances, and she had to be found.
Wincing, I pulled myself up on all fours. "Nnngh... Twi... Tw-Twilight..." I murmured. I shuffled forward, teetering sickly. The Prelude's toll on me was almost worse than the exploding teleporter's. Like a zombie, I limped through town. I put two and two together in my head and guessed where Twilight had taken the Doctor. I was elated beyond measure when I stumbled upon the front entrance to the Ponyville Hospital and--indeed--I had found her.
She wasn't alone. While Nurse Redheart and several other ponies were tending to Doctor Whooves, Twilight was speaking a mile-a-minute with a distressed mayor. Among the other ponies surrounding the frantic scene, I spotted a familiar soul...
"Please! You must find her!" Milky White sobbed. Carrot Top and Colgate were standing on either side of the sobbing mare, holding her up and nuzzling her. "That poor filly's been through so much! I brought her here to Ponyville to start a new life and forget about where she had been! This is the last thing I could have ever imagined would happen!"
"I promise you, Miss White," Twilight Sparkle planted her hooves on the mare's shoulder. Her fragile desperation was hidden from everypony me, her foalhood friend. "We will find Scootaloo! Rainbow Dash is already on it! I need you to stay calm and let us all conduct a search--"
"She's northwest!" I grunted, coughed, and all but collapsed into the group. I heard Caramel's murmuring breath as I was helped back into a standing position. "Scootaloo's northwest of here! Don't waste your time searching anywhere else..."
Twilight and the others squinted hard at me. "How... How could you possibly know that?"
"The teleporter was enchanted by a light spell, right?"
"Uhm... Yes." Twilight gave me a strange look. "What's your point? Just who are you? We kind of have a situation here--"
"Yes--Right--And I'm trying to tell you where Scootaloo is!" I snarled as the confused looks around me doubled, tripled. "I cast a spell that revealed to me a light trail leading to where the teleporter sent Scootaloo! You need to send everpony about two and a half miles northwest--!"
"Twilight!" Rainbow Dash floated down, flanked by the hovering figures of Cloudkicker and Raindrops. "I've got a team of fifty already! I sent Candy Mane and Blossomforth to fetch more! How should we go about doing this?"
Twilight immediately spun and replied. "We shouldn't waste precious pegasi on nearby areas. You should fly over the furthest parts of the teleporter's range while earth ponies and unicorns cover the town."
"Yes!" the mayor spoke up. "Everypony, listen! Gather in groups of three and cover a separate district of the village! Carrot Top! Go fetch Applejack and Big Macintosh and work out a plan with the other farm families to cover the nearby woods--"
"Hey!" I barked as a wave of chills racked me in the middle of the scrambling villagers. "Didn't you hear me?! I just said I know where she is--"
"Nnngh..." Twilight rubbed her forehead. She gazed at me with mixed disgust and nausea. "Huh? What are--Who's yelling? We need to--"
"Pay attention!!" I leaned forward, panting. "Scootaloo's northwest of here!" I glanced frantically at everypony, feeling the situation swiftly slipping away from my hooves. "Just calm down, stay next to me, and listen! I promise, I can help you find her--"
"What are we standing around for?!" Rainbow Dash shouted. She was twenty feet above us. She might as well have been four galaxies away from me. "We need to find her and bring her back here so that Twilight can--I dunno--mind delve her or something!"
"Better hurry, Miss Dash!" Doctor Whooves exclaimed, wincing as Nurse Redheart treated him. "Every moment wasted risks losing Scootaloo forever!"
"What... What does he mean?" Milky White sobbed.
"Just calm down! Please!" I shouted. "I know where she is--"
"Now's not the time for practical jokes," Carrot Top said, frowning at me. "Unless you're able to help--"
"I just told you seconds ago that I conducted a spell that can help us--"
"I better get prepared for her return," Twilight Sparkle said, rubbing her head again as she stumbled towards Doctor Whooves. "If I'm not meditating by the time she gets here, I may not be able to reattach her to the leylines."
"Everypony fan out!" Rainbow Dash said, darting off as her fellow pegasi spread in opposite directions. "Counter-clockwise formations!"
"I'll get the Apple Family!" Carrot Top galloped away.
"No--No wait! Please!" I reached out, but stumbled to my haunches, panting. Everypony was running everywhere but towards me. The desperation and panic in their bodies was pulling them away from my body like unraveled yarn. If this was any other day, any other occasion, then perhaps I could very easily have plucked a receptive soul out from Ponyville's bitter-cold sea of amnesia. But this...
I shivered, hugging myself, watching as the fruitless search began under a slowly setting sun... what could very well have been a foal's last day on earth.
Numbly, I stumbled into my cabin. I plopped my saddlebag atop my cot. I let my body slump down on the floor before the fireplace.
I did not light it.
I stared into the dry, unlit lumber lying before me. There were so many ashes, so many dead and lifeless flakes of brittle wood, and still I was no warmer that day than I was the first morning I was introduced to my curse.
My ears pricked. The veteran musician inside me couldn't help but hear the faintest of shouting voices beyond the windows to my house. The search was going on across Ponyville. Dozens upon dozens of ponies were desperately combing miles of acreage, and they were all blind.
I knew where Scootaloo was. I knew she was suffering, dying even. I also knew that wherever she was--she'd be better off than me.
Two miles--maybe three--from the center of Ponyville: I had never even remotely gotten that far from the birthplace of my curse, not even that one time Twilight had personally teleported me. The furthest I ever dared to tread was to Zecora's place in the middle of the Everfree Forest, and even that was a paltry mile-and-a-half distance at best. Every time I came back home from buying those precious soundstones, it took the better part of a day to warm my body back to being able to feel once again.
I heard more shouts of pegasus voices outside. Wincing, I clenched my eyes shut and ran a pair of hooves through my mane.
I was born to a rich family in the streets of Canterlot. The first and only time I hurt myself was one day, when I was a foal and I had spranged my ankle chasing the family cat down the stairs. I only wore a cast for half a month, and still I thought it was the most excruciating pain a pony could ever go through. Afterwards, I grew up, and I lived my life day by day, book after book, music sheet after music sheet, in the luxury of college life, in the glow of an alicorn princess who guarded and watched over us all. What did I know of agony? What did I know of struggle? Even this curse--for all its frigid horrors--is painted with the rosy colors of friendly faces who would gladly help a stranger, would talk to her, would even hug her.
I am not hero material. If anything, my soul is empowered with patience, not courage. I don't have a single versatile inch of muscle or intestinal fortitude to boast of.
That day, shivering before a fireplace that I was too guilty to light for myself, I knew that all I had was knowledge, a memory. I knew where Scootaloo was. I could remember it, where everypony else couldn't. If one soul was to die that day, I knew another that would not be able to live with herself.
If this is what Nightmare Moon had meant for me, then I respect her as much as I hate her.
I threw myself to my hooves before my brain had a chance to protest. The first thing I threw over my hoodie was Rarity's gorgeous sweater. Next came a second coat--one that I had barely used and still smelled like the dumpster I grabbed it from nine months ago. I added the scarf, socks, and stockings next. The woolen cap and cloak covered the entire ensemble. As if all of this didn't weigh enough, I brought along my saddlebag and stuffed it full of blankets. I hadn't realized it at first, but I was sobbing by the time I marched out the cabin's front door. No single pony faces the reaper with dry eyes. Bundled like a woolen tank, I enjoyed the last few drops of sweat I was allowed, and galloped northwest under the shadows of misguided pegasi in the decaying afternoon.
This wasn't the Everfree Forest, but I wished it was. No less than ten minutes into marching through the woods, I realized how terribly hilly it was. Every other step sent me stumbling over a sharp rock or exposed bit of stone. Pulling myself back up was a difficult feat. My bundled clothing stiffened my limbs, so that I felt like I was wading through a sea of bed blankets. No matter how much I wanted to free my legs, I couldn't afford to shed a single scrap. I may have been shivering then, but I knew that in less than an hour I'd be traversing a veritable arctic circle.
Twenty minutes in. I couldn't feel my lower legs. At first, I thought it was because the cold had already hit me. I soon realized that it was because I was getting worn out by clopping my hooves over so much stone and pebbles. I was foolish to think that the mountainside would start abruptly far north of my destination. As a matter of fact, the mountain was gradually giving birth to itself beneath me with each step I took. I've gone on several jogs in my life, but each occasion had been on even ground, and never scaling uphill.
It didn't help that the sun was setting. The light was already being obscured by the thick sea of trees surrounding me. To my utter dismay, the forest only grew denser and denser the further north I marched. I was so desperate to get to Scootaloo's location, it hadn't dawned on me just how easily I could get lost from my goal. If I had to readjust my bearings, it was now or never... before I lost any of my senses to the frigid wall I was just about to pierce.
Pausing, I sat on my haunches and pulled my lyre out from my saddlebag. It took a long time to focus my telekinetic talents. It took even longer to gear myself for playing the "Prelude to Shadows" out in the middle of such a foreboding location. My entire body tensed as I heard the enchanting elegy drip forth from my trembling instrumentation. Soon enough, I relocated the beam of light tracing Scootaloo's teleported path. It swam over me like a frozen lightning bolt, leading me further towards the neck of the mountainside. It was with small relief that I found the Prelude's normal waves of paranoia failing to engulf me. Then, I realized, I had become so tense and frightened with my present task that the elegy's side effects had simply become unnoticeable.
Without wasting any time, I pocketed the lyre away and marched after the streak of light. It shone above me like a burning plume of platinum fire. I saw my breaths forming against the dense woods before me. The magical beam grew brighter and brighter, and that was how I knew night was coming. If there were pegasi swarming overhead, I could no longer see them. I could only focus on each hoofstep I made as I scaled hill after hill, because soon I couldn't concentrate on anything else.
The first wave of cold hit. I imagined that I was a mile out. Every time I opened my mouth, I felt as if my very own saliva would freeze, and yet it was all I could do to stop from suffocating. Bundled as I was, I felt like I was carrying a small house up the side of a mountain. I knew that if even so much as my scarf fell off, I might freeze to death right there, and yet to stop and think twice meant robbing another second of life from Scootaloo. It's hard to convince oneself of another pony's plight when all one feels is the stabs of icy pins and needles with each trot. I pulled my body forward, attempting to convince myself that I had been in worse spots, then trying to make myself believe that the previous attempt wasn't such a blatant lie.
The second wave of cold hit, and it felt more like a wall of invisible snow than an actual wave. I no longer felt like I was walking; I was burrowing. My hooves were carving their way through powdery mounds of frost. I felt as though my eyes were being stabbed, and I realized it was because my tears were freezing. There was a pathetic whimpering sound in my ears. I gasped, thinking I had stumbled upon Scootaloo, but then realized that those tiny whimpers belonged to me. I almost wondered if I was the one who had been zapped with the teleporter instead, for my soul felt as if it had been disconnected with the puppet legs flagrantly tossing it forward.
And that is how I discovered pain. I mean true pain, the sort of pain that a body is not meant to endure, only to dream of, toying with nightmares that fuel us into avoiding stupid, self-destructive actions during the waking day. It's the sort of pain that exists as a last ditch spark to startle a ghost and fling it back--screaming--straight into the body where it belongs, as a final means of avoiding death. And there I was marching straight into the gaping maw of that very same oblivion, and for what? Even if I was lucky enough to get to Scootaloo in time, what chance did I have to bring her to Twilight swiftly enough for my old friend to maybe or maybe not save the foal's life?
The fact of the matter was--dead or not--I would never earn myself a gravestone. But Scootaloo...
There were tears in this world that belonged to her, and all of them incalculably warmer than mine. I snarled at the mountain. I screamed at it, clawed at it, and pulled myself up it. It felt pretty intense at the time, but I'm sure all of my utterances came out as kitten mews against a great pale planetoid. Trees surrounded me like gray mane hairs, and I was a starving flea hopping away from the throbbing arteries. I glided through a land of stale blue ice, painted with horrors that I had only ever read about, poetically fantasized about, until it all slammed down around me with the sudden shriek of twinkling stars, and that's how I realized something had woken me from my frozen stupor, three shivering hours into the suicidal climb.
"Nnngh--Gah!" My eyes flew open and I shot up, bundled like a funeral shroud. Instead of a coffin, I found myself surrounded by granite and wood. It was the very crest of the mountainside. The sun was bleeding over the blurry edges of Ponyville lying to the southeast. I thought I heard a vulture shrieking above me, until those shrieks turned into fitful sobs. I looked up, and I saw her.
Scootaloo was dangling, upside-down and paralyzed, with her tail-hairs caught in the angry spokes of a dead tree. I was sobbing. I knew I was. The world blurred and unblurred as I stood up and reached towards her.
And then I fell down.
I gasped. I couldn't feel my body. I was a shell, deader than the rock around me. I was afraid to look at my hooves in the scant twilight afforded me, for fear that I might see blue lifeless skin peering through my mint green coat. I tried to stand up, the best I could do was roll over. I felt sudden, sharp bites of pain from where my body stumbled over rough pebbles. The fact that any of my nerves still answered to torment was a very queer thrill at the time. I embraced the jolt running through me and sat up, reaching two alien hooves overhead in a desperate bid to reach her.
There was no denying it. Scootaloo was less than two feet away. Still, I couldn't so much as touch her. If I was rescuing an adult, I would have cursed up a storm. Instead, I focused, imagined a tune from my childhood--anything to center myself--and propelled that energy through my horn. There was a brief green spark as I surged a burst of telekinesis towards the stars. Thankfully, the branch holding Scootaloo happened to be in the way, and it snapped. Scootaloo plunged towards me like an orange comet. I caught the foal with whatever part of my body was least painful to her.
"Ooof!" I shrieked, rediscovering the mists of my breath as I tumbled under her weight. The severed branch that had once held her bounced ineffectually away into the shadows of the night. I briefly wondered if I too might have snapped.
"Nnngh... Where...?" Scootaloo flailed, twitched. She was like a newborn, adrift in a wave of confusing shadows and nausea. Her eyes never once stopped rolling back in her head. "Who... Wh-Who...?"
"Y-Your t-t-ticket out of h-h-here," some voice replied, horrifying me with its frigid stutters.
"I... I can't..." Scootaloo sobbed. Scootaloo retched. Scootaloo stammered, "I-I can't... can't feel..."
"You and m-m-me b-both, k-kiddo." Something was putting her on my back as the world spun one hundred and eighty degrees. I was beside myself with horror. My eyes were playing a simulation of me stumbling down the mountainside, and suddenly that simulation became real. "J-J-Just hang on t-t-tight. Whatever y-you d-d-do, don't let g-go. I'm g-g-going to get you h-home."
"My wings..." She trembled all over. Something colder than a glacier was stabbing my back in several places. Scootaloo's teardrops were like a sea of knives. "I... I can't feel my wings..."
If I was a stronger pony, I wouldn't have replied to that. "I kn-know you c-c-can't, Scootaloo."
"But... But I--"
"I'm g-gonna get you home. That's all I can do--" No sooner were those words uttered, I saw the dark earth plunging towards my face. "Unngh!" I had slipped on a boulder and was sliding blindly down a hill of pebbles. The night sky blurred, and I no longer felt the icy pain in my back. "Sc-Scootaloo!"
I gasped, tumbled, and reached my hooves out as soon as I saw a shade of orange. I wrapped her in my forelimbs before she could get nearly as banged up as I. That was all that mattered, and next came the breath of air being flung out of my body as I fell the last five feet to the bed of leaves and branches looming below.
"Nnnngh!" I weathered the wave of pain surging through my frame. After several freezing moments, I unfolded my arms and found her shivering identically in my grasp. "S-Say something."
She gulped and clutched tighter to me. "Owie..."
"Good enough." I picked her up again. I picked myself up again. I considered donating her one of the many blankets in my saddlebag, until I realised just how sweaty she was. The night was so chaotic and excruciating, I easily forgot I was the only blisteringly cold soul in Equestria. I navigated the hillside like a drop of molasses, serenaded by Scootaloo's frightened sobs. "Gotta... find... Gotta get somewhere..." I gulped and teetered left and right. I could have sworn I was going in the right direction, but the Sun had disappeared and I no longer knew east from west. If I still had the energy left to play the Prelude, I would much rather have started a forest fire to grab some pegasus' attention. "Gotta get one of the ponies to see us... so they can fetch Twilight and... and..."
"So... So tired..." I heard Scootaloo say. Each word was a gunshot to my startled ears. "Just... want it all to be quiet--"
"No! No!" I shouted. I snarled. Through the nightmarish cold, I felt her broken wings fluttering against my shivering flesh. We were both prisoners of a shadowy world, and only one of was deserved to go free. "Stay awake, Scootaloo! Stay with me!"
"Can't... Just... Just want to--"
"Talk about something! Tell me about your fami--" My tongue limped half as badly as my legs did. I gulped dryly and spoke to the invisible blizzard slicing across my face. "Tell me who you want to be like, more than anypony in the world!" I inched my way forward. With each successive trot, my limbs grew weaker and weaker. I could have sworn I discovered absolute zero. My heartbeats were miles apart. "Better yet, tell me why!"
"She... She isn't afraid of anything..." Scootaloo's voice came as a gentle drip between hiccups. It was the last piece of warmth I had to go by. All of the bundled clothing felt like a thin paper napkin between me and her burning presence. "She does everything by herself, and yet she's loyal to everypony..."
I was stumbling at this point, lurching, crumbling. I pulled myself on scuffed knees, my quivering eyes locked onto a patch of gray haze ahead of us: a clearing. If I could get there, and maybe start a fire...
"Y-yeah?" My voice danced on ectoplasmic strings, entreating her as I wormed myself pathetically in the dirt, slowly entombing myself in the saturated earth. "What else?"
"Sh-She's brave." Scootaloo clung to the last feeling bits of me. Her voice was soaring away at the speed of light. I drunkenly envisioned it as the foal's maiden flight. "She's... She's like me." A sob, a gasp, then a whimper: "And I hate being alone..."
"You're not..." I panted, yanking my head forward, but my legs weren't obeying me. The ice had crept up to my spine. The clearing was a continent away, and the only thing not failing me was my voice, the last semblance of my soul. "You're not alone..." I scraped the surface of oblivion in fitful desperation, trying to leave an etch that could be remembered. "You're n-never alone..." My mouth stopped talking as soon as my chin collapsed into the wet soil.
When the light left my eyes, I did not think about my parents. I did not think about Twilight Sparkle or Moondancer. I did not think about the fireplace, Applejack's neighborly drawl, or Rarity's fabulous sweater. I did not think about Luna's undiscovered elegies or unwritten compositions. I did not even think about Morning Dew's voice and what it did to my heartbeat.
All I thought about was Scootaloo, about her wings, and how there'd be nopony to remember those words of hers, because she passed away in my forelimbs and not theirs.
No, I was not dying a hero, but I knew who was. It was a noble thought, warm enough on its own. I held it gently to myself as I embraced the endless night.
It was the emptiness in my forelegs, and not the flames, that woke me.
My eyes flew open. A campfire was being lit right beside me. It was so close, I could stick my tongue out and taste the flickering sparks. I did just that, and it burnt my tongue, making me realize that I was indeed alive.
I jerked--violently at first. When I next tried sitting up, I realized that I was still freezing cold, and shivered madly like a reanimated corpse. Squinting, I looked up to see a pale pegasus squatting over the tiny blaze, applying the finishing touches with a cluster of flint and steel in her hooves.
"Come on... Come on... There we go. That should just about do it--"
"Cloudkicker!" a familiar, raspy voice barked from several feet away. "The heck are you doing over there?! This is no time to roast marshmallows!"
"But... Rainbow Dash!" the pegasus pointed right at me. "This unicorn here is freezing--"
"The heck are you talking about?! What unicorn?! We got what we came out here for!"
"I... But... Don't you see her?"
"The only unicorn we should care about right now is Twilight! And she's waiting for us! Now stop horsing around and let's move!"
Cloudkicker blinked. A pale sheen glinted across her eyes. The moon had risen, and she reeled briefly in a dazed manner. "Huh... Y-You're right. What... What was I thinking?" I watched as her shadowed figure marched blindly over me, then took to the sky with a flurry of feathers.
As she left, I saw two figures huddled a few yards from me. Rainbow Dash was squatting, cuddling the shivering figure of Scootaloo in her grasp.
"Shhhh... It's okay, kiddo. Can you hear me?"
"R-Rainbow Dash?!" Scootaloo gasped. "Oh Rainbow Dash! You found me! I knew you'd come and save me!"
"Just relax, pipsqueak. We're not out of the woods yet. I'm going to get you to Twilight. She has a trick that'll get you as good as new."
"Rainbow Dash..." the foal's voice sobbed. "I-I was so scared..."
"Yeah, well, lucky for everypony, that stupid machine landed you in the middle of this clearing. Now hold on tight!" Rainbow Dash scooped Scootaloo up in her forelimbs, flapped her sapphire wings, and bolted into the moonlight. She soared straight towards Ponyville, leaving me with my shivers and the campfire.
I took several panting breaths. I turned over and--using my teeth--yanked my saddlebag open. I finally made use of the many blankets there, praising Celestia for the fire that Cloudkicker had made before the curse sapped her and Rainbow Dash of reason. As I huddled there besides the blessing warmth, I finally discovered the strength to sit up. As I did so, I found my breath leaving me.
Indeed, I was in the middle of the clearing. The ground around me was solid, exposed granite. With the moonlight shining down overhead, Scootaloo and I must have appeared like two inky dots against an alabaster sheet. Any pegasus with an elementary skill in aerial sight would have spotted us in a blink.
But... how in Celestia's name...?
I had collapsed in the middle of the woods.
Then... just how did we end up out here...?
Fatefully, I turned around. I scanned the edge of the hilly forest. It was then that I saw it: a trail of leaves and scattered soil leading a solid swath from the treeline to where I sat, huddled with the campfire.
I raised a hoof to my face. The barest hint of feeling was returning to my nerves, just as I was becoming awash in joyful disbelief.
She...
She had dragged me.
Scootaloo...
I murmured something. My lips were chapped, but I delighted in the pain it took to smile. I bundled the blankets around me. This was not my cabin. This was not my fireplace. This was a mile away from town at best, with every inch of me still shivering from the cold.
I had never felt more comfortable in my entire life.
"It was the arcanium plate," Doctor Whooves explained, hobbling as he strolled alongside Twilight Sparkle across the center of Ponyville several afternoons later. "I installed it to act as a buffer between the heart of the teleporter and the object being teleported. What I hadn't taken into account was that the material simultaneously acted as a mirror, and was reflecting waves of mana back into the center of the cube."
"That must have been what wore away the outermost layers of artificial leylines," Twilight thought aloud, nodding. She kept her pace slow so as to not exhaust the mending stallion's pained gait. "With each subsequent test we ran, the machine passed our visual examinations on the outside, but we didn't realize to what extent the machine was being deteriorated from the inside out because of the constant waves of reflected magic."
"This village almost lost something precious because of my mistakes." He sighed, his head hanging. "Maybe now's not the right time to leap upon artificial teleportation. Assuming the Science Committee doesn't revoke my official laboratory privileges, I'm halfway tempted to put this whole experiment on the shelf for another decade."
"Hey, it's a mistake we both made, Doctor." She smiled and gently nudged him. "You did everything in your power to help us track down Scootaloo. I seriously doubt that the Committee will strip you of anything, and it would be a crime to see you quit such a promising endeavor after you've come so far."
He smiled bashfully. "I see why Princess Celestia chose you to be her star pupil. You are a boundless well of hope, Miss Sparkle."
"Heehee... Null hypotheses aside, even scientists can afford hope, Doctor."
Their voices grew distant, and in their place came Rainbow Dash's and Pinkie Pie's.
"And so Cloudkicker and I were skimming the mountainside, and that's when I said, 'Let's give it one more pass!'" Rainbow Dash, already hovering, performed a dramatic dive in mid-air. "So I was like--SWOOSH--and then, out of the corner of my hawk-like vision, I totally saw her! The little scamp was shivering cold, and she could barely open her eyes. I knew I had to be extra careful while holding her. There was no telling if any little jolt or dip in flight might--like--knock her spirit loose from her body or whatever it was that Twilight said the machine did to her."
"Wowie, Dashie!" Pinkie Pie bounced gaily, her eyes bright as she took in the dramatic lengths of Rainbow's tale. "I knew you could be super-gonzo-heroic! But it's nice to know you can be super-gonzo-gentle too!"
"Yup! I cradled her like a baby! And I've--like--cradled babies only twice in my life. Well, maybe three times, if you count that one day I took Apple Bloom for a ride over Sweet Apple Acres."
"Apple Bloom's a baby?"
"Well, she sure barfed like one!"
"Heeheehee! Well I'm just glad you and Twilight were able to stop Scootaloo from barfing!" Pinkie Pie bounced. "Oh, and dying!"
"Heh... Yeah. That was certainly a close one." Rainbow Dash flapped her wings while taking a deep breath. "Y'know, Pinkie, I'm saving ponies everyday. But Twilight? It's not everyday she's on the 'superhero pony list.'"
"Yeah! We should totally get her a trophy or something!"
"Heh! Good idea. Let's talk to Rarity about makin' one for her. Cuz if there's anything I hate, it's when something truly awesome goes unpraised."
As they drifted by, I finished strumming the ten chords of the Eighth Elegy, repeated in variance so as to make a semblance of a melody. I took a deep breath and shook my left hoof in front of my face. Half a week had gone by; I was still barely getting the feeling back in my limbs. Praise Celestia for telekinesis. If I couldn't make music anytime I wanted to, I'd go as insane as this curse wants me to.
Because that's all a curse is made to do, right? It afflicts a pony's sanity, makes her wish for the sweet release of death. Surely it doesn't give her magical opportunities to save the day. Or does it?
I have long dreaded unraveling the eighth elegy, but suddenly it wasn't half as foreboding a prospect as I first imagined it to be. Along with the instrumental there would come a whole wave of frightening circumstance. But what helpful side effects could Luna's forgotten tune also bring? I could only expect the magic of the song to be beneficial to anypony but me. That's what kept it a curse, and what maintained my task of re-discovering it so daring... or perhaps even brave.
I sighed again, and then caught something orange in my peripheral vision. My heart skipped a beat, for it was the first time I had seen her in hours. I glanced over, and soon wasn't wasting anytime. Zipping my lyre away in my saddlebag, I trotted over. She wasn't looking at me. Her gaze was halfway skyward. I didn't need a compass to know it was pointed towards Rainbow Dash.
"Ahem."
Scootaloo blinked. She looked up at me. "Oh... Uhm... Hello there." She pointed at my saddlebag. "Nice music, by the way."
I raised an eyebrow. "You were listening to me just now?"
"Yeah," she said, her body deflating with a tranquil exhale. "This city's full of sounds. I don't notice it half the time, cuz I'm rarely sitting in one place, I guess."
Upon hearing that, I squinted curiously at her. "Where's your scooter, anyways?"
The foal rolled her eyes and angrily blew a lock of pink hair from over her brow. "Milky White's taken it away from me this week."
"Wuh oh. Did somepony get in trouble?"
"Nah. Not this time." She squirmed her rear hooves against the earth. "Heh. She said something about 'Me needing to get my bearings back.' Pfft! I feel just fine! Ever since Twilight zapped me with her magic horn, I haven't felt the slightest bit dizzy!" As soon as Scootaloo said that, she teetered ever so slightly with googly eyes, then blushed. "Well, almost."
I smiled. "If you ask me, I'd say Milky White was just trying to look out for you."
"Heh. She's fussed over me a lot more than all the mares before her." Scootaloo took a deep breath and squatted low to the floor, folding her limbs underneath her as she gazed lonesomely across the village. "I guess that means I'm stuck with her."
"That's a good thing, right?"
Scootaloo bit her lip. "Hmmm... It could be worse." Her stubby wings twitched uselessly. "A lot worse."
I said nothing to that.
When she noticed I wasn't leaving her side, she rolled her eyes and groaned: "Alright. Just get it over with.."
"I beg your pardon? What is it you want me to get over?"
The little foal cast me a wry smirk befitting a filly twice her age. "You're about to gush over how amazing it is that I survived such a horrible accident and shower me with gifts. Please--as much as I like attention, I've been dragged to Sugarcube Corner three times already. My stomach hurts enough as it is."
"I would never think of such a thing." I said with a chuckle. "After all, you strike me as... as a lot 'older' than most foals your age."
She briefly went cross-eyed before snickering at me. "That's about the silliest thing I've ever heard."
"Is it really?"
"Yeah, really." She sighed and stared once again across the village with sad eyes. "Cuz I certainly don't feel cool enough to be older. When I grow up, I wanna be just like Rainbow Dash! I wanna do awesome things, and I wanna do them alone so that nopony else gets to steal my thunder!"
I glanced at the ground and stirred where I sat. "Yeah, well, some ponies hate being alone."
Scootaloo glanced up at me. Her tiny feathers fluttered as she gulped and said, "I was alone once. But then Rainbow Dash swooped down and saved me. She took me away from the mountainside when I was freezing to death from that crazy machine that zapped me." What came next was a triumphant smile, but something jaded hung on the edges of it. "If it wasn't for her... I'd just be a stupid corpse in the middle of nowhere."
I sighed, but then smiled. "Scootaloo..."
She blinked awkwardly. "You... Uhm... You know my name?"
I squatted down in front of her. I looked her square in the eyes, making contact where our gazes previously couldn't in a frantic night full of horror and shadows. "For all I know--or anypony for that matter--Rainbow Dash is the greatest hero Equestria has ever known."
"Heck yeah, she is!" Scootaloo beamed. "She's terrific--"
"But I don't need to convince you that the sort of feats that Rainbow Dash accomplishes, she could do in her sleep." I pointed at her chest. "The bravest pony on that night was you."
She frowned. "Me?"
"Yes." I nodded. "Because you went through scary things that you weren't prepared for. You endured stuff that nopony your age--or any age--should ever have to endure. It's facing the unknowable and making the impossible happen that determines true courage. You, Scootaloo--You are a courageous pony. I... I can only hope and pray that--as you grow older, someday exceeding even Rainbow Dash's age--that you remember that it was you that got you through that night, that it was your strength that got you to where you are now." I took a deep breath and smiled lovingly at her. "Because once you recognize that strength inside of you, there's no telling how much you can... bless other ponies around you too, becoming an absolute hero yourself, something worthy of song and smiles."
Scootaloo blinked at me. There was no telling when or where the accursed glint of moonlight would finally fall upon those bright, violet eyes. But as she stared at me, and her grin brightened, and her tiny wings fluttered as if catching wind for the first time, I no longer cared about the grim curtains of life, but rather took the time to cherish something precious as it bloomed right there before me.
"Hey! Scoots!"
"Scoot-Scoot-Scootalooooo!"
We both looked aside. A pair of young foals were waving at her from afar.
"Heh... Right... I almost forgot..." Scootaloo giggled, struck with the honey-sweet burst of a returning memory. "I have some 'crusading' to do tonight. Uhm..." She leaned in and whispered mischievously. "Promise not to tell Milky White if you run into her?"
I giggled and stood up. "Go and be with your friends." I ushered her with a wave of the hoof. "You have many years left to be courageous..."
She scampered away on cue, leaving me under a cadence of giggles too holy for song. I watched her and her two friends run towards the edge of town under the melting afternoon. From where I stood, I couldn't tell where their pastel coats ended and the sunset began.
It's a brave thing to be alone. As long as I make song of it, I'm saving something.
After all, it's never too late to be a hero.
Background Pony
VI - "Heroes and Bards"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: theworstwriter, Props, TheBrianJ, and Daredevil
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | VII - Bridge | Dear Journal,
When do we know that we've lost something? Is it after we've spent all of our days trying to earn our keep, only to have all that's special to us taken away before our eyes? Or is it after we've claimed something, only to have somepony else steal it from us? Does a life of pride and hard work equate to pure agony when all of that effort is laid to ruin?
Or, perhaps, we stand to lose something that is essential to us, something that makes us who and what we are. Then, someday, that part of us crumbles away, and what choice do we have but to stand back and reevaluate ourselves, wondering if we were ever made up of the substance we used to value so heavily?
I thought I had lost everything when this curse happened. And, perhaps, I indeed had. But there's something worse than loss, and I've come to believe that it's the actual knowledge of loss.
Everything dies. Of this, I am convinced. Of this, I have no doubt. But, until now, nothing had ever made that palpable to me. Nothing had ever marched in on my life--cursed or uncursed--and showed me with the pale emotionless light of truth what it means to be part of something, and then to witness that something crumbling away.
After all, the best things in life could very well be those that have been collapsing for as long as we've been alive. Can a simple song restore the gaps of us that will forever remain empty? Or can some of us--some of us who are blessed--be capable of filling those gaps with new and promising things that even death itself will tarry to drown?
"Well, I'm certainly glad you came to me for practice, Miss Heartstrings," Twilight Sparkle said. I heard her voice slowly orbiting me. It was difficult paying attention to both her and the field of energy I was summoning above myself, but I did the best that I could to multitask. "Though this mostly takes careful concentration to master, it's not something that a unicorn can so easily learn on her lonesome."
"I'm beginning... to understand... just how difficult... this is..." I struggled to utter.
Her voice giggled. It should have been distracting, but it only made my heart jump. "You're straining too hard," she said. "This isn't a telekinetic spell. Protection buffs are all about summoning magic fields to do the hard stuff for you. You don't need to put all of your strength into it. The key is to relax."
"Relax?" I stammered, feeling all four knees wobbling beneath me. "Relax how?"
"Well, for one, you don't have to keep your eyes shut like that."
I took a deep breath. Carefully, I opened my lids. A foggy library came into focus, in the center of which was Twilight's smiling face.
"There. Isn't that better?" My foalhood friend said with a pleasant tone as she stood before me. "There's no need for you to be inflicting so much stress on yourself. You've already opened the necessary channels to your leylines. Take slow breaths and allow your horn to do all the rest."
I gulped and nodded shakily. "Okay, Miss Sparkle."
"Heehee... Call me Twilight."
"Okay, Twilight..." I managed a weak smile. My eyes twitched under the mint-green glow emanating directly out of my forehead. I couldn't help but feel nervous. My special talent was in music. Sheer magical strength just wasn't my forte, and yet here I was in the middle of Twilight's domain, attempting to cast a low grade protection spell.
As a matter of fact, much of my life since the curse began has consisted of me forcing myself to exercise magical feats that I would never have considered attempting before. Until I came to Ponyville, the most I ever used my horn for was floating small objects around the house or strumming my lyre. With each progressive month spent in that town, I've found myself lifting logs to build a cabin, casting light beams to illuminate the world at night, sparking flame to light a fireplace, and--of course--performing enchanted symphonies that flung my entire world upside down.
To say that I needed a magical tutor was an understatement. It's funny how I never once thought of asking for Twilight's help for more than just identifying the lunar elegies. I suppose I've always felt like I'd be troubling her unnecessarily, regardless of whether or not I was a stranger to the young mare. I soon realized, however, that I was treating my foalhood friend with kid's horseshoes. She was no longer the little filly that I used to hang out with in the streets of Canterlot. She was an adult--and much more than that, she was the most gifted magical unicorn in the entire town of Ponyville. Of course she'd be more than capable of helping a stranger such as myself learn new things, regardless of the impromptu nature of such imposing requests. I felt bad for underestimating her--not just for her gifts--but for her capacity for kindness and generosity.
"I can't tell if I'm doing it or not," I murmured, still sweating a bit. "Can you tell if it's working?"
She smiled and merely pointed a hoof over my horn. "See for yourself."
Gulping, I glanced upward. My eyes blinked upon registering a thin sheet of emerald energy stretched above me like a glowing tarp. It was as if a dome of pure light had been erected just above my figure. Every time my heart beat, I could see rivulets of magic surging through the luminescent structure.
"Huh..." I managed. "Well, if that isn't cute."
"It's remarkably well maintained!" Twilight exclaimed, gazing at the translucent dome as she paced around me. "Especially now that you've decided to relax just like I told you." She paused and gave me a sly glance. "Are you sure you haven't practiced this before, Miss Heartstrings?"
I smiled back at her, still trembling slightly with the concentrated effort. "Trust me, Twilight. If I knew I could learn so much from you in one go, I would have visited this library sooner."
Truth is, I had visited her three times already, all in the same week. I had learned fifteen more chords to the Eighth Elegy, and it dawned upon me that I'd never be able to play it if the "Threnody of Night" would just knock me unconscious and teleport me somewhere at random. If I had any hope--any hope whatsoever--of performing all of Princess Luna's forgotten instrumentals, then I would have to master the art of magical buffs in order to protect myself from the many mysterious side effects that the symphony might afflict me with.
"I almost wish you would visit me more often."
Twilight's comment there startled me. I almost broke concentration as I flashed her a surprised glance. "What...?"
"Well, what I mean is..." She rolled her eyes at herself and clarified, "I wish that unicorns in general would visit me more often so I could help them with their magical abilities. I used to be a tutor back in Canterlot, assisting younger students in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. The look on so many ponies' faces when they gain control of their talents is absolutely priceless. Working here in Ponyville, I've been busy doing historical research and science experiments. I've not really had the chance to assist others with magic like I used to."
"Well, I am... glad to have... given you an opportunity," I managed to say, my knees shaking as I felt a sharp pain pulsing against the tip of my horn. "Nnnngh!"
"Shhh--Stay calm..." She rushed over and stood a breath's distance from me. "Breathe in and breathe out. You're encountering mana feedback along your leylines. It'll pass. Just focus on the protection spell, and soon it'll maintain itself."
I gulped, fought a few more waves of pain, and came through the brief storm with a relaxed breath. "Whew... It really is like stretching muscles, huh?" I gulped and produced a weak smile. "Invisible muscles...?"
"The more you practice it, the better you'll get, I promise." She said. "You're already doing a lot better than most novice practitioners of magic. If I didn't know better, I'd say you have an untapped gift in navigating your horn's leylines."
My eyes darted towards the sea of books lining the cases around us. I imagined the earthen walls of my cellar instead. My ears twitched with the twenty-five chords of the Eighth Elegy. I felt a wave of chills, but bravely fought them away as I spoke, "Well, the way I see it, it's never too late to learn things that just come to you naturally..." I gulped. "Or supernaturally."
"Long ago, Princess Celestia taught me that there's an essential balance between the visible world and the invisible," Twilight said. "The realm of magic is like a mirror to the realm of physicality. They both reflect the same image. The light of the universe shines on each realm evenly. After all, sorcery is all about equivalent exchange. The fact that we're here--in the flesh--means that we are just as capable of expressing ourselves through mana and energy. It's not a matter of whether or not unicorns can find their ethereal talents, but a matter of when."
"When did you find that connection, Twilight?" I asked, though I felt I already knew the answer. "Was that how you got your cutie mark?"
She smiled gently, her eyes caught in a distant thought. "Long ago, my horn produced a spark, and I discovered my talents. But--no--I do not believe that is when I made the connection. Years later, when I came to Ponyville, I discovered a spark of a different kind, and that has mattered more to me than all my years of exercise and research combined. You see, Miss Heartstrings, being connected to the realm of magic means nothing when you're blind to the connections you can make in the plane that you're currently residing in. Such attachments are far more challenging to make or maintain, but they're a great deal more rewarding, I've come to believe."
I took several deep breaths. I was just then starting to relax, or at least in the manner she had so desperately coached me to. "No wonder everything comes naturally to you, Twilight. You seem to really have it together."
"Heehehee... Well, I try. But I'd much rather see you and other unicorns achieve that same harmony, which is why I'm starting this new project for Cheerilee's school."
"Oh? Like what kind of a project?"
Before she could answer, a familiar purple figure waddled into the room. "Nnngh... Okay, I got the bucket of water, Twilight," Spike grumbled, using all his might to maintain the weight of the wooden container in his scaled arms. "Would you care to remind me just why I fetched this from the well out back to begin with?"
"Spike? Didn't I explain it to you ten minutes ago?!" Twilight frowned and pointed towards a ladder leaning against the far wall of the library. "We need that water for Miss Heartstrings' protection spell lesson!"
"Miss who?" Spike made a face, glancing at the bucket in his grasp as if it was a sea mine.
"Hey there, handsome," I said, struggling to add a wink.
"Oh! Uhm, hello. Dig the swell hoodie!"
"Ugh..." Twilight rolled her violet eyes. With a flick of telekinesis, she dragged the ladder over so that it stood beside me. "I swear, Spike, it must be something I feed you. Your ears are getting clogged up."
"I've been staying away from the fatty diamonds! I swear!"
"Don't worry about it, Spike. Just climb up the ladder and wait for my signal."
He awkwardly ascended the wooden rungs, balancing the bucket on one aching wrist. "I don't get it. What are we doing? Don't we need Rainbow Dash around to pull a prank on somepony?"
"Spike, we used to do this in Canterlot, remember? It's how I learned to master the protection spell myself."
"Yeah, but at least the Princess was around to levitate the stupid bucket."
"We can afford to live without Her Majesty's magical luxuries, don't you think?"
"Easy for you to say, Miss Horn-head."
"What was that?"
"Erm... N-nothing!" He stood above me with the bucket of water. "Ready to pour!"
"Uhm..." I bit my lip and glanced--sweating--at Twilight. "Is this part of the plan? I swore I came here to do a magic lesson, not participate in a wet mane contest."
"Just relax and focus on your spell, Miss Heartstrings." As Twilight spoke, she smiled and effortlessly erected a lavender wall of energy in a circle around me, like the bottom to a telekinetic, cylindrical bathtub. The ease with which she shot her beams of magic filled me with instant awe... and envy. "Though this is just a low level buff, it should be more than enough to... well... keep you dry."
"But what if I-I fail to maintain the energy field?"
She chuckled briefly. "Ohhhhh I seriously doubt you'll want to do that." She cleared her voice and glanced up at her assistant. "Spike?"
"Yeah, okay. Here goes." He tilted the bucket directly over my head.
I resisted the urge to wince. My eyes squinted instinctively, but to my delight the water did not splash into my face. Instead--as soon as the liquid made contact with the emerald dome--it went in all directions except down. A ceiling of levitating liquid collected in a magical pool above me. The protection spell was working. The energy from my horn resisted the trickling currents of well water. I couldn't help but exhale in wonder. This was a great deal easier than trying to push water away with telekinesis. All I had to do was maintain the shape of the dome, and the energy field did the rest of the work. I never once dreamed before coming to Twilight that I'd be anywhere near capable of performing a feat such as this. I immediately started wondering just what other elements this spell could ward off, and just how severe...
"You're doing it, Miss Heartstrings!" Twilight exclaimed in delight. She paced about as she watched the water trickling around me like rainwater cascading down the edges of a transparent umbrella. Her lavender telekinesis collected the water at my hooves and kept it from spreading to the valuable contents of the surrounding library. "I must say, your speed of mastery is amazing! Keep this up, and you can learn a mid-level protection spell in no time! You could go trotting along the bottom of a lake and not even get wet!"
I managed a breathy chuckle of my own, gazing in happy shock at the water sloshing just inches from my nose. "You don't say?" I gulped and uttered impulsively, "And what about a blizzard? Could I survive a plunge into a frozen lake?"
It was Spike, of course, who retorted at such absurdity. "Uhm... Lady? It's the middle of August. Why are you so concerned about a blizzard?"
I winced. Before I could manage a witty reply, there was a sharp knock on the door.
Twilight shouted over her shoulder, "Library's open! Come in!"
Bright light flooded the room as the front entrance flew open. A pale figure glided in, carried by the sheer melody of her joyous voice, "Well, batten down the hatches! Cuz things are about to get loud and crazy in here, girl!"
That voice...
Every artery in my body pulsed with one single leap of my heart. My eyes twitched. The world blurred. And my protection field...
I could no longer feel it. As a matter of fact, I could no longer feel my horn. I could feel nothing but water. I was doused from mane to tail, soaked all the way through to the bone as my concentration shattered like an ice sculpture. The shock of the severance from my leylines and the force of my breath being shot out my freezing lungs were nothing compared to the waves of amazement surging through my mind. I collapsed in the middle of Twilight's telekinetic field, blinded by a mat of gray mane hair falling like a bathroom curtain over my eyes.
"Oh dear! Miss Heartstrings!" Twilight's voice exclaimed, though the breath had a trace of shameless amusement to it. "I'm so... so sorry..."
"Holy guacamole!" Spike exclaimed from somewhere above me.
"Oh shoot! I had no idea you were tutoring magicians, Twilight!" The familiar voice came closer. I smelled the scent of vanilla perfume. I saw the bright streets of Canterlot against my shivering eyelids. "I thought those days were long behind you!"
"Well, just because I'm not a teacher like you doesn't mean I can't lend my talents from time to time."
"Seriously, Twilight, if you lent any unicorn your raw, unfiltered abilities, her head would explode. We're lucky this mare got doused with water and not her own brain fluids."
"Oh please..." Twilight giggled awkwardly.
"Heehee... Hey there, uhm... I'm really sorry for that." She was right in front of me. I reached a blind hoof out, and she caught it in a warm forelimb. Before I knew it, she was parting my mane hair with pale telekinesis. Through a wet world, the first thing I saw was her violet eyes, framing an alabaster smile. Every detail made my heart beat faster: her white coat, her violet-streaked red mane, her crescent moon cutie mark be-speckled with tiny stars. "I should know better than to walk in on Twilight Sparkle here without warning. This one time, she nearly set her parents' drapes on fire. Hey, Twi, you remember that? That was the week before you were taken to Celestia's palace, wasn't it?"
"H-hey! Stop it! I try my best to forget that!"
But I couldn't have forgotten that. I couldn't forget anything. And her face...
"Moondancer...?" I stammered.
She gave me a double glance, and then a smile. Her smile.
"I... I..." I wanted to hug her. I wanted to collapse. I wanted to faint and wake up all at once. Then came a shiver, and I remembered something that was far more real than this precious moment. "I... uhm..." I gulped. "I sat behind you in Canterlot Preparatory School, Fifth Grade." It was the truth, for one of us, at least. "You went on to... to major in education and sociology."
"Huh... Small Equestria, huh?" Moondancer smirked. There was an immortal glint of mischief and curiosity in her eyes. I felt like a foal once again and I wanted to melt in her smile. "I can't say your face rings a bell, Miss..."
"Lyra," I breathed. I realized that it must have sounded like a whimper. So I gulped and forced my soaked lips into a smile. "Call me Lyra, Moondancer."
"Well, Lyra, I apologize for not recognizing you." She rolled her violet eyes. "But even Twilight here can tell you that I was never really all that much there in my school years. If it weren't for my extra-curricular points, I swear, I don't know how I would have made it to tenth grade without trotting off a sheer cliff!"
"I recall things pretty well, Moondancer." Twilight smiled as she gathered the spilled water and levitated the liquid globe back into Spike's bucket. "Funny that you decided to become a teacher, huh?"
"Grrrr!" Moondancer spun and galloped straight towards her. "C'mere, you!"
"Eeep! Heeheehee!" Twilight flinched, only to be engulfed in a hug instead of a tackle. She and Moondancer happily nuzzled each other before sharing a friendly gaze. "It's so nice to see you again, Moondancer. I'm frankly surprised you responded to my letter as quickly as you did."
"And just why is that? Huh?" Moondancer stuck her tongue out. "For Luna's sake, Twi! I'm a teacher now! I know the value of getting to papers on time! I treat letters all the same!"
"Yeah, well," Twilight said with a chuckle. "You still surprised me" She briefly hardened her gaze. "And don't use Princess Luna's name in vain like that. Nightmare Moon has been driven out of her spirit now. She deserves more respect."
"Heh. Less than two minutes in, and I'm already getting grilled." Moondancer winked playfully. "Oh Twilight... You're still the same adorable little historian I loved hanging out with."
"Yeah, well, I'm trying to loosen up these days."
"Try harder! Heck, I'll help ya, girl! Where does a couple of old filly-friends go to party around here?"
"Hahaha--Moondancer!" Twilight protested, all the while giving me an embarrassed side-glance. "That wasn't why I asked you to come to Ponyville!"
"Yeah, yeah. We can get to the project later. I just arrived, Twi!" Moondancer groaned and slumped her saddlebags off her back, tossing them like a sack of bones in the middle of the floor. "My hooves are positively aching!"
"I thought you took the train here."
"And then I had to trot clear across Ponyvania!"
"Ponyville!" Twilight smirked. "And if you so much as plan to spend one week here, much less three, then the first thing you're gonna have to lose is the Canterlot affinity for little exercise. Trust me. I've been here a year and a half and still I'm struggling to flex my muscles."
"Hey, if there's anything I do best on my vacations off, it's stretch muscles that haven't been stretched in a while." Moondancer trotted over to a bench and slumped down. Her eyebrows wagged as she said, "If Ponyville is anything like Las Pegasus, I should have no problem whatsoever, catch my drift?"
"Heeheehee... I don't know if I want to," Twilight replied with a wink. She turned around. "Spike? Would you mind grabbing Moondancer's bags?"
"Yeah yeah, this is sure bringing back memories," the dragon muttered as he placed the water bucket down and marched over towards the discarded saddlebag. "I thought my bellhop days were over."
"And what a cute little waddle you have when you play butler, green-spines."
"Ugh! Moondancer, don't call me that!"
"Heehee... C'mere, Spike. Give Auntie Moonie a hug. That's what you used to call me when you were an infant. Remember?"
"Ew! I did not!"
Twilight giggled. "Yes you did, Spike. I was there..."
"Whatever. Enough of this mush. Let's just get this hug over with so that I can get back to my chores."
"Awwww, Spike..." Moondancer nuzzled him as they joined briefly in a close embrace. "Is Twi still working your scales off?"
"No more than usual. At least there are more gems to chew on around here than in Canterlot. I swear, Ponyville was built on top of a diamond mine."
"Then I guess you won't be wanting any of the mountain sapphires I brought with me."
"C-Canterlot Mountain S-Sapphires?!" Spike exclaimed, wide-eyed. He regarded the bags in his grasp with sudden excitement. "The ones with quartz sprinkles?! Did you really bring some?!"
Lavender energy encased the saddlebag and lifted it from his suddenly greedy grasp. Twilight cleared her throat and produced something halfway between a smile and a frown. "Dessert can wait, Spike. Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Uhm... What?"
Twilight opened a nearby cabinet and floated a white towel out. She hoofed it to him and motioned towards me with a smirk.
Spike bit his lip. "Oh, right." He marched towards me, making a face. "How come I'm suddenly the one who's 'forgetting' about our guest?"
"Moondancer's here. At least I have an excuse."
"Whoahhhh-Girl!" Moondancer giggled and nuzzled Twilight again. "Maybe you have changed after all."
"Heh... I'm just really glad to see you, Moondancer." Twilight nuzzled her back, smiling warmly. "It feels like an eternity."
"And how! Yeesh... Twilight Sparkle: vanquisher of Endless Night and Dragon Slayer! Just how do you manage?"
"I haven't slayed any dragons! That one that I wrote you about, the dragon who was perched up above Ponyville: he was talked into leaving, and that was all my friend Fluttershy's work."
"You friend, huh? I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but you should tell me all about these friends of yours, Twi. I swear, this is like visiting a distant cousin only to discover she's got the pony pox."
"Moondancer!"
"Haha--What? I think it's really spectacular, girl! Next thing I know, you'll have sprouted wings and begun moving mountains! I always suspected you were secretly an alicorn beneath that gorgeous lavender coat. It would certainly explain a lot, wouldn't it?"
"Yeesh, Moondancer. Do you ever switch off your insanity?"
"Only when I'm failing my students' papers."
"Heheheh--Ohhhh I forgot what it felt like to have you around."
"If you ask me, you could do with a few more doses. But let's talk about something else. I think we're scaring your guest mute. Heeheehee--Ahem. Sorry to just drop in like this Miss... Lyra, was it?"
I was beside myself. I felt like a numb shell of a pony. This whole time, I didn't care how soaked I was. I could have stood and listened to this scene forever. When Spike came to me with the towel, it was like a ghost was handing me a shroud from beyond a bizarre dream. I took the article and eagerly dried my face. It was more than bucket water that I had to contend with. Several seconds passed since I last heard Moondancer's voice. I sniffled once, twice, and made sure my face was good and dry before gazing at her with the bravest of smiles.
"Please. Don't... uhm... Don't mind me." I bit my lip and fought to keep my voice from cracking. "By all means, you two should catch up."
"And I know just the place to do it too!" Moondancer beamed, glancing at Twilight. "The mare next to me on the train spoke of this delightful little place called Sugarcut Quarter."
"Sugarcube Corner," Twilight corrected. "And I'd be more than happy to take you there."
"Oh, please!" Spike chuckled. "I have to wait on eating delicious sapphires, and you two get to go gorge yourselves at the local cupcake repository?!"
"Give us a break, Spike!" Moondancer chuckled. "Us girls have a lot of work cut out for us over the next three weeks!"
Twilight added, "You can enjoy Moondancer's gift whenever. She and I, though, will be racking our brains on this project until it's finished. So, it's Sugarcube Corner or bust!"
Moondancer once again interjected, "Plus, sexy fillies can never run out of sugar and spice!"
Twilight face-hoofed and groaned. "I swear, I don't know how I'm gonna survive you for more than five days."
"Heehee! It only hurts cuz you miss me, girl!" Moondancer jumped back up to her hooves. "So, are we going or--?"
"We have to stop by the Ponyville bank first."
"Ew. Boring. What for?"
"Because!" Twilight gestured wildly. "I thought you wouldn't get here until tomorrow morning! I just bought a gift for my friend Applejack yesterday." She gnawed on her lip in embarrassment. "I'm currently empty-saddlebag'd!"
"Hah! Why do I get the feeling that I'm going to have to hoof out bits for you... again?"
"What do you mean 'again?'"
"You remember all of those trips to Doughnut Joe's as a kid..."
"Hey! You volunteered them!"
"Only because you looked so adorably famished in those days! All the books you were reading--I'm surprised you got time to stuff anything edible down your throat!"
"You make it sound worse than it ever was..."
"Do I? When was the last time you ate today?"
"Uhm..."
"Yesterday?"
"Uhhhhhh..."
"Egads, Twilight! I'll be forcing you to munch on stuff all week, aren't I? Haha--If I had known ahead of time, I would have brought a queen's fortune!"
"Moondancer, for goodness' sake--"
"My treat."
Both mares looked at me, blinking. "Huh?"
My lips quivered. I swallowed a dry lump down my throat and smiled. My muscles shook inside my suddenly frail frame. "I'll treat you. Both of you," I said in a warm little voice. "Let's... Let's go to Sugarcube Corner together. We can talk about... about..." I gritted my teeth, struggled, then produced, "About this project that you two are working on. I'm... uhm... I-I'm really, really intrigued. I wanna hear all about it."
"Miss Heartstrings, I feel so terribly rude as it is," Twilight said, blushing slightly as she glanced between her friend and a phantom stranger. "I was just so excited that you came to me asking for a magic lesson, I didn't even think to consider that my friend might be arriving a day early. I can't possibly ask you to do something like that, especially after... eheh... our little experiment got all wet..."
"Pssst..." Moondancer pretended to whisper aside at me. "Do it, filly! She needs more cinnamon sticks in her belly!"
"Will you cut it out?!"
"Heeheehee!"
"No... Really..." I trotted towards them, afraid I would collapse on the razor edge of their bright gazes. "I mean it. I'd like to treat you. Who cares if I got a little wet behind the ears or not?" I smiled brightly. The image of the two fogged briefly, then returned to clarity in a blink. "Trust me. This... This has been the highlight of my day." I gulped. I wanted to say "week," "month," "year," even "life." But I couldn't do anything drastic. This bubble of a moment was a million times more fragile than a protection sphere, and I was terribly afraid of bursting it. "Let's go eat and chat somewhere... like fr-friends do." I winced slightly at the last utterance, for it sounded to me like a mewling kitten's. I was horrified that they wouldn't look past it.
They did..
Twenty minutes later, we walked into Sugarcube Corner together. I felt like I was gliding on a cloud. Moondancer didn't stop talking. Twilight didn't stop nodding. I had both a headache and a heartache all at once.
I didn't want it to end. Ever.
"Whew, look at this decor!" Moondancer rolled her eyes over every bright, pastel shape of the eatery's interior. "It looks like Sapphire Shores turned diabetic and vomited all over an architect's drawing table."
"Shhh!" Twilight hissed, blushing furiously. "Mrs. and Mr. Cake are just over there! They might hear you!"
"Mrs. and Mr. 'Cake?' Seriously? Is the post office managed by a pony named 'Stamp Licker?'"
Twilight started growling. I found myself interjecting almost naturally. "You haven't been around many earth ponies, have you, Ms. Moondancer?" I smiled.
She sighed as we found a table in the front to sit at. "I've met my fair share in Fillydelphia. But don't get me started on the rural names there. They'd make a sailor blush... heheh..."
"You'll find that most earth ponies around here have simple titles, but their hearts and minds are as complex as any Canterlot soul's," I said proudly.
"Why, Miss Heartstrings, that intrigues me," Twilight remarked. "Today's the first time I saw you. Do you mean to say you're a resident of Ponyville?"
"Uhm..."
"I gotta say, I love the name 'Heartstrings,'" Moondancer said with a grin. "Tell me, girl, do you play music or do you teach?"
"Heh. I could never learn enough to feel comfortable as an instructor," I replied to her. I gulped and then gazed at Twilight. "Nor have I mastered my talents enough to be anything famous, which is probably why you've never heard of me." I sat directly in the middle of the two. It felt as natural as natural could be. This miraculous moment was threatening to slip away, gathering speed with each concrete-shattering heartbeat. All the scents of foalhood wafted up to me at once. I wanted to savor it as best as I could. "But let's not talk about me. You two obviously haven't seen each other in a while. Feel free to chat as much as you like."
"Oh, girl, don't tempt me!" Moondancer grinned wide while Twilight giggled. "If I get started about Fillydelphia and my students and all the crazy city morons I have to deal with, you'll yawn that golden cutie mark of yours clean off!"
"Heehee..." Twilight Sparkle caught her breath and said, "Is it true that you foiled the fourth attempt in a row by your class to pull a practical joke on you?"
"Students pulling pranks on a teacher?!" I made a face. "That sounds horrible."
"For them, maybe!" Moondancer winked. "Just a few days ago, before I boarded the train, they plastered transparent paste over my chalkboard. Well, I always come into class early, and I saw their attempt to trap me the first moment I wrote on the board. So I got some adhesive of my own and I applied it to their seats before roll call."
Twilight snorted, covering her face with a hoof as her eyes went wide. "Good grief!" her voice came out muffled. "What became of that?"
"Hmmm... Let's just say that it took more than a slip of paper to keep them sitting in class for detention."
Twilight giggled. "I don't know how you can stand such delinquents! I'd lose my temper in a day!"
"I don't see it as a matter of disrespect," Moondancer said with a devilish grin. "If anything, I'm helping them be creative. They're always inventing new and crazier tactics. It's quite amazing, really. I always out-smart them, of course. I think they just do it to see how I'll best them next."
"But does it ever go too far?"
"You gotta ask them. Last I checked, three of the colts had to wear trunks."
"In the middle of urban Fillydelphia? What for?"
"Cuz they got stripped of all coat hairs on their rumps! Why else?! The wrath of Moondancer knows no boundaries!"
Our laughter was a delightful chorus, an encore to years that I thought would forever be lost to me. When Mrs. Cake shuffled over, I was so light-hearted I felt I would faint before making my order.
"Well, if this isn't a merry bunch!" Mrs. Cake beamed. "Good afternoon, Miss Sparkle! Are we having ourselves a little reunion here?"
"You can say that again!" I heard myself speaking up. But before I could add anything else--
"This is my good friend from my foalhood, Moondancer," Twilight remarked. "She's come to visit and help me with the curriculum I have planned for Mrs. Cheerilee's after-school program."
"Oh?"
"Yessirree!" Moondancer wrapped her forward limb around Twilight and Twilight alone. "It's the two mistresses of mana, galloping together again! Hey Twi-girl, you remember those days we used to pretend to be Celestia and Luna going on adventures?"
Twilight rolled her eyes. "How could I forget. You kept pretending that the moon could swallow the sun."
"Hah! And wasn't that fun?"
"It was also scientifically inaccurate! I spent an entire week trying to convince you that eclipses become visible as a matter of light projection and depth perception--"
"Needless to say, she needs me here to get her to loosen up a bit," Moondancer said. "But so far all we've managed to do is tease Spike and get Lyra's mane wet here."
"Seriously, it's all... in the past," I said in a soft breath, feeling like the lone satellite that I was. Clearing my throat, I summoned a smile once again and looked Mrs. Cake's way. "I'd like to order me and these delightful mares some of your finest sundaes."
"Oh, that is more than doable, hun!" Mrs. Cake sat on her haunches and used her front hooves and teeth to sketch on a notepad. "Mmmff--Ahem. And what flavors would they be?"
"Chocolate," Twilight said.
"Vanilla!" Moondancer chirped like the foal she once was.
I glanced at them, took a warm breath, and gazed at Mrs. Cake again. "A little bit of both."
"Done, done and... done! You three just sit and relax and I'll be back with your orders. Nice as always to see you, Miss Twilight!"
"Same with you, Mrs. Cake. How's Mr. Cake doing by the way?"
"He finally got out of bed this morning. He's no longer dizzy. So, that's a good sign, at least. I'm sure his head will stop aching soon. Anywho, I'll be back shortly!" She trotted off.
Moondancer blinked at Twilight. "What's wrong with her husband?"
"Oh, uhm. He slipped and fell a few weeks back. Turns out Pinkie Pie accidentally left a mess of spilled cake frosting on the kitchen floor while trying to make Applejack a birthday treat."
"Pinkie who?"
"Oh jeez, I can't even imagine the two of you meeting!" Twilight practically gasped. "I'm not sure the world could contain that much energy in one place at once!"
"Hey, I'll accept that as a challenge!" Moondancer's eyes grew thin and mischievous. "'Pinkie Pie', huh? I bet she's never almost burned her family's apartment down by baking fireworks, thinking they were candy canes."
"Oh my heavens, I forgot all about that!" Twilight snickered. "I could hear the explosion from my house two blocks away!"
"My father almost rung my neck!" Moondancer exclaimed.
"Yeah!" I giggled helplessly. "He made you repair the damage at age ten. Heeheehee! But you made a game out of it by pretending the holes in the wall were secretly a tunnel being dug to Foal Knox!"
Moondancer and Twilight both blinked at me. Their smiles faded under a suspicious squint.
"How in the heck would you know about that?"
I gnawed on my lip. I fidgeted with my hoodie's sleeves, gulped, and pointed over my shoulder with a shivering hoof. "Twilight's... uhm... Twilight's dragon assistant! On the way out, he... uh... he mentioned it. You girls must not have heard him..."
"I thought you said you were gonna do something about his penchant for gossip," Moondancer smiled at Twilight.
"He's still a baby dragon, Moondancer. You can't expect him to learn everything overnight."
"But you can expect to teach him everything, huh? Which is why you hauled his purple scaly butt all the way to Ponyville."
"Who else does he have to hang out with in Canterlot?"
"The same could be said about you, girl. Just how did you go about your metamorphosis?"
"Huh?"
"Five new friends in a year! You're suddenly Miss Socialite! You kind of have me jealous!"
"I wrote you all about it over the last few months!. Why's it such a big surprise?"
"On top of all the letters you write to Celestia, I'm surprised your hoof doesn't fall off."
"Moondancer..."
"What? I'm happy for you, girl!" She grinned. "Doesn't my face just drip with joy?"
"It's dripping with something, alright."
"Oh hush." She stuck her tongue out. "It's enough that I have to force myself to forget that we'll be muzzle-deep in boring planning and outlining this time tomorrow."
"Your help will be priceless, Moondancer. I can't thank you enough..."
"Then don't. You'll make my ears bleed."
"Just what is this project you're both working on?" I asked, happy to be out of firing range from their inquisitive stares. "I keep hearing about it..."
"Well, Miss Heartstrings, we have a one-room school on the edge of town, managed by a very kind and giving teacher named Cheerilee," Twilight explained. "There aren't that many children in Ponyville. Still, that doesn't make her job here any easier. She's having to juggle several different ages and intelligence levels all at once, while still giving the same curriculum."
"No easy feat, lemme tell you." Moondancer rolled her eyes. "I had to teach a one-room school for two years outside the city limits of Oatslando. That was not fun. If the students there played practical jokes--heck--it'd involve alligators and a crapload of pine cones."
"Ahem," Twilight regained control of the conversation. "Well, ever since Nightmare Moon was defeated, there's been a renaissance of sorts in the quest for magical knowledge across Equestria. Many unicorns such as myself have moved from the major cities to the outlying villages to perform studies and experiments. As a result, there're twice as many unicorn children in Ponyville this year than there were last year. Magical ponies aren't as scarce a minority around here anymore, and it seems a shame to me that there isn't a special class of magical instruction catering to their gifts."
"I hear this 'Cheerilee' is an earth pony," Moondancer said. "As horrible as it sounds, when it comes to teaching magic, she could use a little bit of a helping hoof from those with horns that do more than honking."
"I imagine she's tried her hardest to teach unicorns on her own," I remarked. I had, in fact, met Cheerilee on several occasions. I couldn't fault Moondancer for not knowing how intelligent and resourceful the local teacher was up close. Still, Cheerilee was only one pony, and she had no horn to perform magical experiments with. "Where exactly do you two come in?"
Moondancer smiled. "It was Twi's bright idea here to set up a study course of our own, but one that could be as equally informative to earth ponies and pegasi as it is involving with unicorns. There's no reason ponies of all trots of life can't learn about magic. Most of all, we can make it fun for the little scamps!"
"Well, yes," Twilight murmured, "But most of all we have to find a way to be as informative in as few lessons as possible, while at the same time not confusing the young minds--"
"So we make it fun." Moondancer leaned over the table and spoke above her friend. "That way it'll stick in the foals' minds and they can take the knowledge with them to schools of magical arts, if they so choose. Every institution should promise opportunity, no matter how small or surrounded by ponies named after dessert trays."
"Ungh..." Twilight rolled her eyes and chuckled.
I cleared my throat, drawing their gazes to me. "Well, I think it's a great idea, and I'm proud of the two of you tackling it together. I'm guessing you'll be using the library nonstop over the next few days."
"Erm... As a matter of fact, yes." Twilight Sparkle fidgeted somewhat guiltily, avoiding my gaze. "I fear that it's only safe to say that our lessons in casting protection spells will have to wait for a while, Miss Heartstrings--"
"Nonsense, Twi!" Moondancer leaned back and rested a hoof atop the table. "If Lyra here wants to continue her magical lessons of avoiding bucket water with you, then who am I to trample all over that? The more the merrier! That's my philosophy!"
"Moondancer, we can't afford to allow too many distractions," Twilight began, but was suddenly distracted by something glittering beneath the three of us. She glanced down at Moondancer's limb and gasped. "Oh, Moondancer! That's beautiful!"
"Hmm? What is? My philosophy? You must be getting me mixed up with Aristrotle."
"No, that hooflet! Are those real ingots of silver?"
Moondancer blinked, glanced down at the shiny band around her hoof, then rolled her eyes above a pair of rosy cheeks. "Mmmmmm-yeah. Spared no expense. Pretty stuff, huh?"
"Wherever did you get that?"
"A more pertinent question would be whoever gave it to me."
Twilight did a double take, then grinned slyly. "Moondancerrrr..."
"Heeheehee--What?"
"What's his name? Is it Starflare? The astronomy professor from your same building?"
"Hmmmmm... Maaaaaaaaybe..."
"How long have you two been going out?"
"Long enough to start going in."
Twilight Sparkle almost choked on her own tongue.
"Heeheehee..." Moondancer hugged herself, losing oxygen from laughter. She leaned over and patted a blushing Twilight on the shoulder. "How I always forget that you're attached to the hip of a princess..."
"I... I had no idea, Moondancer..."
"Now you've got a pretty good idea. Perhaps it makes sense where I get the wherewithal to deal with so many delinquents in my class. I'm in a pretty happy place these days, Twi. Silver hooflets aren't enough to convey what a daily romantic stroll by the campus lake feels like."
"I'm very happy for you, Moondancer. If Starflare is as handsome as he is intelligent in the letters you've written back to me..."
"You know what they say about stallions with big brains."
"No?" Twilight blinked.
Moondancer blinked for a few spaces in time, then groaned. She decided to smile and lean across the table. "Soooooo, what about you? Has the radiant and aloof apprentice to the Princess met her very special somepony yet?"
Twilight's cheeks went red as she ran a hoof through her bangs. "Moondancer, how many times have I told you to knock that off?"
"Whaaaat?" Her eyes fluttered. "You've made a bunch of friends to write home about."
"Yes, but--"
"I hoped you'd have met a stallion to write a novel about!" She winked. "A steamy one at that!"
"Moondancer! We're..." Twilight clenched her teeth, ducked her head low to the table, and hissed. "This isn't the time nor the place!"
"You still don't get out enough, Twi! Otherwise you'd know it is always the time and the place!" She smirked my way. "Let this be a lesson to you, Miss Heartstrings. Never let magic be your mate, or else you'll always be having dinner alone."
I chuckled. "To each their own, Ms. Moondancer."
"Pfft. Did I drop in on Sugarcube Convent?! It's still summer, in my book! Love's in the air! Take a good whiff, girls!"
"I'm just not ready for that kind of a life, Moondancer," Twilight said. "I've got research to do, books to translate, spells to harness..."
"And why do them all alone, Twi-girl?"
Twilight sighed. She smiled happily into the shadows of the place. "Still, the thought is certainly... appealing." She gulped. "I doubt I'll ever meet a 'Mister Perfect'. But a 'Mister Polite' sounds manageable."
"Who would do the managing, I wonder?" Moondancer remarked, and merely giggled when Twilight blushed again. She looked my way. "How about you? Got a knight in shining armor with a thing for mares getting doused with buckets of water?"
I couldn't contain my laughter, though it was a dry, breathless thing. Here I was, sitting with two shades from my childhood. They were right in front of me, and yet so far away. My heart leaped to tell them of so many impossible things, things that I had let go to waste in the years that I could afford to bridge the distances between us. And then there were new things, some glorious, some horrifying, and how I wished so terribly that they would be there to hold me, to listen to me, to become one with my sobbing, laughing, screaming, giggling spirit. I thought of the elegies, I thought of the cabin, I thought of my music, I thought of Morning Dew...
"I've not been here in Ponyville long enough to... to make anything of it," I finally said in a wavering tone. I cleared my throat and uttered more strongly, "But if I could live here, I'd make as many friends and family as I could." I gazed lovingly at them. "And I'd never let them go."
"Awwww..." Twilight Sparkle hugged herself as she stared back at me. "Why don't you consider doing that, Miss Heartstrings? You'd be a lovely addition to this town."
My first impulse was to shoot that comment down--as I had trained myself over a year of cursed conversations to dismiss such personal remarks. What came out of my lips, however, was empowered by the foal who used to play the role of Starswirl the Bearded with these two fillies.
"You really think so...?"
"If anything, you could give the farm air around here something nice to dance to," Moondancer said. "Tell me, do you actually play any instruments or do you just write compositions?
"Oh! I play!" I said with a bright expression. "I'm not exactly a prodigy, but I like to think I carry a tune pretty well."
"Well, if there's anything I respect, it's a mare who holds her own." Moondancer smiled, her dazzling teeth showing. "You got a sample for us?"
"Heehee..." I felt bubbly inside, to say the least. "I never thought you'd ask, Moondancer! As a matter of fact..." My horn glowed as I pivoted my head to gaze down at my saddlebag. I opened the pouch and lifted the golden lyre out. "I have this tune that I've been working on lately. I was actually hoping to share it with Miss Sparkle, but since the two of you are both here for this little 'reunion,' I don't see why I can't..." My voice came to a stop. My eyes twitched, as if navigating a fog. But it was only a series of cold vapors billowing out from my lips. "I... I... uhh..."
"Oh, hey! Look at this, Twi-girl!" Moondancer giggled and pointed across the table. "Dessert and a performance! I take everything I said back! Supercute Court is a lot cooler than I thought!"
"Sugarcube Corner," Twilight corrected, rubbing her head as if coming out of a stormy migraine. "Nnngh..." She gave me one glance, and tiredly smiled. "Well, hello there. Is Mrs. Cake hiring minstrels now?"
"Uhm..." I gazed at her, at the dullness in her eyes, and the trace amounts of joy that was spilling out, only to be absorbed by the pale pony next to her. I looked at Moondancer, who was as bright and enthusiastic as when she first arrived. Her face was still a snapshot from my childhood, a photograph I could no longer afford to share space in. "I was just about to... to..."
Twilight and Moondancer smiled. They could just as well have been looking straight down a deep, dark well. With each blink, I felt like they were shrinking away a mile per second. I was afraid the next twitch of the eye would cast them into blackness forever.
So I turned away. "I was just leaving. I... I-I didn't mean to take this seat. I thought it was unoccupied."
"It's alright," Twilight said softly. "It's not like it's reserved or anything--"
"Well, actually, we kind of have some catching up to do and stuff," Moondancer interjected. "Still, that's a wicked-awesome instrument you got there, girl. You should let us hear it sometime!"
"Maybe... Maybe someday you can--erm... will hear it..." I shuddered, bagged the lyre away, and sniffled. "Uhm... If you'll b-both excuse me." I made sure that my exit wasn't a gallop, but that's the least I could say about my grace. I nearly bumped into Mrs. Cake along the way. She carried three sundaes atop a tray positioned on her spine.
"Here we go, girls!" She placed the tray down, then paused with a nervous double-take. "Oh dear. There are only two of you. How'd I mess that up...?"
"Hey, who's complaining?! I can live on one and a half sundaes! What about you, Twi?"
"Heh, sure, Moondancer. But..."
"But what?"
"Funny. I... uh, I don't know how to say this but--I don't have any bits on me."
"Ughhh--Should have known, girl! Heehee... If your head wasn't attached to your neck--"
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hehehehe--No matter. Mrs Cake, was it?"
"Mmmhmm." The old mare nodded.
"Right." Moondancer smiled and slapped the golden coins atop the table. "Here you go, all my bits. I hope it makes up for Twilight's stinginess as well."
"Grrrr..." Twilight steamed.
"Egads, you're so cute when you're steaming."
"What am I going to do with you?" Twilight's expression was halfway between a glare and a smile.
"Tell me all about your plans for the Grand Galloping Gala."
"Oh yes! But... Uhm... Didn't I write you about that? No? Ahem. Well, as you know the Gala is in four weeks. But it so happens that over a year ago, right after arriving in Ponyville, I received an advanced ticket. But I wasn't the only one. It's actually kind of an interesting story. You see, I was originally given two tickets, and I happened to be harvesting fruit with Applejack on the afternoon when I physically got Celestia's invitation..."
When I stumbled into the cabin an hour later, I remembered what my home was. I remembered the lonesome shadows of countless musical instruments dangling off the walls above me. I remembered the layers of dust collecting on my journal and music sheets. I remembered the ashes of the fireplace and how they would sing to me.
I dropped my saddlebag unceremoniously to the floor, took two hoofsteps, and utterly collapsed into my cot. There, I buried my face into the sheets. My eyes were clenched shut. I didn't want to be awake. I didn't want to see any light, for fear that my mind would form the shapes of Moondancer's grinning teeth or Twilight's blushing face. I could still hear their voices--their giggles and their teasing tones--haunting me between the shuddering breaths that echoed against the claustrophobic wooden walls.
I think that every ghost that haunts a place is too busy frightening her own self, for what is more horrifying than the vacant spaces of her past? What she's lost only reminds her that there are so many more things to lose grip of, until she loses grip of herself.
Seeing Moondancer and Twilight Sparkle in one room, hearing their combined giggles and voices...
I didn't think there were any parts of me left to be destroyed. The very moment my curse kicked in at Sugarcube Corner, it was an act of deliverance. If I had stayed in that library any longer, serenaded by their melodic cheers, there would have soon been no single thread left of me.
Then why was it that--as hard as I tried--I couldn't cry?
I took a deep breath and turned over in my bed, my dry eyes following the wooden crossbeams of the cabin ceiling. I was smiling. I had to have been insane. What pony in my position, who's gone through what she's gone through, comes out of a meeting like that with only a grin?
I've been through a great deal of trials and tribulation, yes. But to think that not one but two of my best friends from foalhood would be in the same room as me, if even for a single day...
Blessed Celestia....
I just couldn't imagine how lucky I was. In the midst of so much loneliness and bleak desperation, an estranged soul from the past had bridged an impossible gap and blessed my life. I had forgotten how much I adored Moondancer, how much I cherished her lively demeanor, how much I enjoyed being challenged by her brazen speech and unorthodox sensibilities. Where Twilight Sparkle was a rock of emotional and intellectual support, Moondancer was a living spark, a burst of energy that reminded me of the joys of existence in such a cold, cold world. And to have both of them once again in the same place...
Finally, the tears came, and they were some of the warmest I've had the pleasure of being scalded with in months. I reached over and hugged my pillow to my chest and hummed into a delicious cloud that had engulfed me.
I had been blessed.
Yes, in the middle of such misery, I had been blessed to re-experience a piece of my past, a piece of myself. It felt as if parts of me were coming together again. I didn't care if they wouldn't remember me; I remembered them.
I loved them. They were both alive and well. So long as I had a chance to witness their happiness--even as a complete stranger--I knew that all was right in the world, a world that belonged to them though it was mine no longer.
Perhaps I had been looking at Nightmare Moon's curse and Princess Luna's elegies in the wrong light. What if there was indeed a purpose to my being there? What if I was the one soul in all of history meant to perform some sort of sacred journey? It was as if the cosmos had appointed me a lonesome monk, destined to uncover some holy orchestra. I had been so faithful for so long--was I finally being rewarded? I had paid my respects to Caramel. I had even used one of the elegies to save Scootaloo from certain death. Was Moondancer's visit payment for being a good servant to forces unseen?
It hardly made sense, but I hardly cared. And what was more, Moondancer was going to be there for three weeks. Three weeks. I had every opportunity to repeat the events of that day, no matter how bleak. There was bliss to be had.
A giggle escaped my lips, like an immortal club of three foals I had once been proud to partake in. I hugged the pillow to my chest as I clutched those memories, buffered by the delightful events of the day.
I was happy.
"'And so I, Princess Celestia, hereby decree,'" Twilight says, her high-pitched voice echoing across the lengths of a colorful blanket tent lit up with rose-colored flashlights, "'That the building of thinking machines shall be expressively forbidden in Equestria, or else they might grow smart enough to mimic pony ambition and try to take over the world!'"
"'How wise of you, fair princess!'" I exclaim while performing a heroic bow with my stubby legs. "'As Sorceror Supreme of the Bearded Guild, I shall uphold your wise and holy law!'"
"Can't we at least have one robot around?" Moondancer suddenly speaks out of place, poking her head in from outside the tent. Bright violet eyes reflect the flashlight as she smiles and chirps, "That way we'd have somepony around to polish our tiaras! Somepony made of metal!"
"Moondancerrrr--" Twilight protests in a whining voice.
"Shhhhhh! I'm Luna, remember?"
"Ahem. 'Princess Luna! It is daytime! Shouldn't you, dearest sister, be in hibernation until it's time to raise the moon?'"
"Hey, it's my royal palace too!" Moondancer frowns and folds her forelimbs in a pout. As she does so, the star-lit lengths of my bedroom stretch behind her, illuminated in remote places by nightlights shaped like musical notes. "How come Starswirl gets to be in all the meetings with you!"
"Becaussssse..." Twilight makes a face as she explains the obvious, "He's a mortal unicorn, and unicorns do everything in the daytime just like earth ponies and pegasi!"
"Well no wonder I rebelled against you!"
"Shhhhhh! We haven't gotten to that part yet!"
"Why don't I get ponies to serve me in the nighttime?"
"You get your royal guard! That's fun, right?"
"Ew! But they got icky bat-wings!" Moondancer's eyes light up. "Why can't I have some robots!"
"You can't have robots! Didn't you just hear us?"
"Uhhh... I'm 'asleep,' remember?"
"Nnngh--I'm outlawing thinking machines!"
"Why?"
"Because they're dangerous!"
"Why?"
"Because ponies should be wise enough to rely on their own magic and strength--"
"Boooooorinnnnng!" Moondancer rolls her eyes, then hops in place, shaking the whole tent. "I know! I'll make an army of robots and we'll build a bridge to the moon so ponies can go there and serve me whenever I like cuz there's no day or night on the moon!"
"You can't do that!" Twilight gasps as if a mortal sin has just been committed. "That isn't historically accurate!"
"So what?"
"So what?!" Twilight rummages through a pile of stuffed animals to display a book checked out from the Canterlot Library this very evening. "It's written right here in the Chronicles of the Neo-Classical Era that robots were lawfully forbidden immediately following the tragic events of the Coltlerian Jihad--"
"I want my robots to come with mana-lasers!" Moondancer trots gaily around us in a military march. "'Onward, our mechanical friends! Princess Luna doth commandeth thee to pew-pew in the moon's name! For we hath given thee license to maketh things explode for our glory!'"
"There will be no explosions! Come on, Moondanc--"
"Lunaaaaaa."
"You're supposed to be a princess!"
"And it's my duty as princess to protect this land with our robot army! 'Come with us, sister! Our minions shalt help us fight back the evil Smooze!'"
"There's no such thing as Smooze!"
"Yuh huh!"
"Nuh uh! You just made that up!"
"Heehee! And so what? We're playing pretend, remember?"
"But we're supposed to be the princesses! The royal sisters would never blow stuff up at random!"
"They would if they were fighting off horrible, soul-eating Smooze!"
"Nuh uh!" Twilight glares at Moondancer.
"Uh huh!" Moondancer smirks back at Twilight.
"Nuh uh!" Twilight snarls.
"Uh huh!" Moondancer growls.
"Nuh--"
"'Your royal highnesses!'" I jump between them, fighting to keep my fake, furry beard hanging around my neck as I plant a hoof into each of their chests. "'This is most unbecoming of you! You're royal sisters! You're all that remains of the Cosmic Matriarch's glorious legacy! Tell me, is this how she would have her daughters govern Equestria in her absence?'"
"Hmmmph..." Moondancer folds her limbs and blows air out of the corner of her muzzle. "No..."
"She'd want us to get along," Twilight mutters.
"'Then let me declare today a holiday!'" I say with a smile. "'As leader of the Bearded Guild, I've been granted authority to rename days of the year. I shall call this day 'Happy Sisters Day'. And from this day forth, it will be the day that sisters remember how much they love each other and decide to get along!'"
Moondancer and Twilight shift awkwardly.
"That sounds stupid," Moondancer says.
"Besides, September is the month for family appreciation, not July," Twilight explains. "Everypony knows that."
"'Then we'll change it when next year comes around!'" I say with a smirk. I look towards Twilight. "'Your Highness, if I may be so bold as to suggest, could a robot be made of steam? Surely a machine of such simple build would be capable of menial tasks without becoming smart enough to turn on its owners.'"
"Hmmm..." Twilight leans back with a scholarly smirk and eventually nods. "'Yes, I do believe that would be acceptable,'" she says in an authoritarian voice.
I glance Moondancer's way. "'And Princess Luna, could fighting the Smooze wait until after your robots help Princess Celestia finish building Canterlot Castle?'"
She gasps with a bright grin. "Could they use their lasers to carve the moat?!"
"Heeheehee..." Twilight leans forward excitedly. "I'll even show them where to aim the mana-crystals!"
"Yaaaay! Let's blow up some dirt!"
"Ahem." Twilight points a sparkling baton in my direction. "'Starswirl the Bearded, for your infinite wisdom and calmness of mind, I appoint thee head of the robot committee.'"
"Yeah, Starswirl," Moondancer winks. "Way to use your whiskers. 'Our moon shineth on thou'... erm... and stuff."
I smile proudly while bowing low. "'It is my honor, your highnesses, to serve you until the end of my days.'"
"Yeah, whatever." Moondancer rubs her hooves toether "Let's build us a robot castle!"
"I'll show you where the moat goes!" Twilight hops about.
"Hey, what about torches? It'd look really cool if we lit the place up at night."
"We'd need to fetch some coal first."
"Coal? How?"
"'Use your horn, little sister, it's what the Cosmic Matriarch gave you to sculpt the moon with.'"
"Ah yes, but of course. 'We thanketh thee, wise and beloved Celestia.'"
I sit in my corner of the tent as they scramble around my bedroom, "grabbing supplies." Outside, the stars are a galaxy away, but I swear the cosmos are glittering right in front of me. I smile, for I do not want this sleepover to end.
Two days had passed. I could barely keep myself in my cabin. I had to know more about Moondancer's and Twilight's project. I had to see them again. I had to hear them again.
I woke up each morning with my mind clear. I couldn't even hear the elegies in my head if I tried. The world was no longer cold; I almost considered stripping clean of my hoodie. Instead, I decided to express my cheer in a different way. I donned Rarity's fantastic red sweater and made my way into town. Ponies smiled and waved at this exuberant, brightly dressed stranger as she trotted energetically through the streets. I smiled back at them. I hummed a tune. I smiled as I heard Morning Dew's voice.
Finally, I made it to the front door of Twilight's library. I had already formulated a plan in my head. I would pretend that I had been sent there on the promise of a scheduled appointment with Twilight for practicing magic. Then, in her usual pensiveness and self-doubt, Twilight would opt to help me regardless of having never met me before. In a way, it felt like a dirty trick on my part, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to see her. I needed to see her. And, if Celestia was my witness, I would make sure she only became happier from the meeting.
I knocked on the door. There was a muffled sound from within. For better or for worse, I assumed it was an invitation, and I opened the door. "Excuse me?" I leaned in with a smile. "Sorry to bother you, but is Miss Twilight Sparkle around? It's approaching one o'clock, and I do believe the Canterlot Magic Commission has sent a note about my--"
"How many times do I have to say it, Moondancer?!" Twilight Sparkle was barking, her mane tussled and frayed at the edges. She sat across a table strewn with a disheveled sea of papers and notes and reference sheets. "You can't assign four field trips! Two is pushing it enough!"
"Pfft!" Moondancer rolled her eyes from where she was lying, reclined lackadaisically, on a bench across from Twilight. "I was about to say that four is too few."
"You've got to be pulling my tail..."
"I'm only saying that we should promote first-hoof experience with magic!" Moondancer smiled tiredly at her quivering companion. "That's why we send the little scamps on exciting trips! A tour of Whinniepeg's Museum of Lunar Incantation is the best way I can think of opening their eyes to the field of sorcery!"
"Moondancer! Honestly!" Twilight tossed her hooves. "We're setting up a study course here! Not a vacation! Never mind the fact that we couldn't even fund so many field trips! Just how is one pony like Cheerilee even remotely capable of managing that many trips with all the lesson plans she already has on her plate?"
"You're not thinking outside of the box, Twilight. Pfft... as usual!" Moondancer sat up and smiled foalishly at her friend. "Cheerilee's biggest problem is that she's stuck in one place: Ponyville. Have you taken a single look outside this library of yours, girl? Things ain't exactly magical."
"I don't see your point--"
"The point is, the little foals of this place aren't gonna learn crap about magic so long as they're imprisoned in a one-room school here!" Moondancer stood up and paced about the library. "They need to stretch their legs, explore, get to see the exciting sights of the world, feel what it means to be alive! Trust me! There's no better way to learn!"
"Am I the only one who sees the problem here, Moondancer?" Twilight's face paled with worry, her eyes soft and pleading. "I can't see how any of these young unicorns' parents could--for one single second--consider signing their kids up for so many trips--"
"Heeheehee... Use your rich noggin', Twi!" Moondancer grinned aside at her. "I'm not suggesting we send the kids off to war or some crud! I'm just thinking that they should get plenty of opportunities to leave the confining walls of a school building and see up close and personal what magical things there are in Equestria!"
"It's too ambitious and too expensive, Moondancer," Twilight said with a frown. "The sheer days spent in the backs of wagons, trudging from town to town, would be much better spent in the newest printed textbooks on magical enchantment and conjuration."
"Unnnngh... Give me a break, Twilight!" Moondancer ran a hoof over her face and spun to gawk at her friend. "You think that's gonna change anything?! They're already stuffing their eyeballs with mountains of text! We're trying to get them to learn, not fall asleep!"
"We mustn't lose focus of the goal of this program! Don't you think?" Twilight exclaimed. "We're trying to provide much-needed information to young fillies--unicorns or otherwise--who've been deprived of magical education for years!"
"And a billion books aren't gonna solve all of that, Twi!" Moondancer paced towards her. "Well, sure, mountains of books worked for you. But you've got a deep mind that's always been a major receptacle for that sort of sheer data-clunkage! I mean--heck--that's why Princess Celestia appointed you as her apprentice and stuff! But these kids? Heh, no offense or anything, Twi, but many of them would rather lay an egg than wear one in place of their head!"
"Well, forgive me for trying to be considerate of their futures!" Twilight said with a frown. "Out there in the competitive world, the demand for magical knowledge is increasing by tenfold every year! These kids are going to grow up as strangers in a world that's far too advanced for them--"
"Okay, now you're just being dramatic--"
"AND--" Twilight continued, pointing firmly with her hoof. "They're not going to be anywhere near competent after spending all of their study time prancing around old historical landmarks! Moondancer, I appreciate your value in history and exposing these foals to it. But let's be reasonable, okay? Look, I'll concede: one field trip is fine. One! We can assign them to Whinniepeg! But I really think we should stick to the outline I made yesterday of three reading assignments per week framed around twenty-question homework exercises and graded by a regular series of pop quizzes--"
"Ugh!" Moondancer tossed her mane with a groan. "Twilight, stop thinking like a machine and try to get down to the kids' level!" She smiled and leaned in with an emphatic grin. "The biggest thing I learned after my first five years of being a teacher is that trying to shove a textbook's worth of information into a kid's head is like shoving a round peg into a square hole. And I mean that in the least sexy way possible."
"Moondancer..." Twilight sighed.
Moondancer's voice rose, "You gotta amaze the kids! You gotta show them how magic is alive and real in this world, and you can't do all of that from a chalkboard! That's why I think--no--that's why I know that we should turn this program into an opportunity to give the kids a time in their lives that they'll never forget! Learning can't be forced, but it sure as heck can be encouraged! What are we doing with each day of our lives if not living and learning at the same time, Twi?"
"I still think you're going off the deep-end with this, Moondancer. Just be rational! That's all I ask!" Twilight slapped her hoof over a pile of notes. "We've been entrusted with creating a program that is well-structured and easily repeatable for several generations of students to follow! This is no excuse for you to be exercising some radical educational theory! We need something practical--"
"Radical educational theory?!" Moondancer giggled helplessly. "Boy, you have been tutored by a princess! It's cute what words you come up with to describe things you just simply don't agree with."
"Moondancer..."
"Twilight, I've been teaching for over five years." Moondancer's violet eyes briefly hardened. Her usual smile was nowhere to be seen in her features. "'Radical' or not, what I'm giving you is the crux of my wisdom and experience. Colorful as it may seem, it's what I know has helped kids in Fillydelphia, and it would certainly help kids here in Ponyville."
"Does this look like Fillydelphia?" Twilight retorted. "The same rules don't apply here, Moondancer. And if you asked me, I'd say that you weren't taking this program very seriously."
"Heheheheheh..." Moondancer shook her head and smirked towards the floor.
Twilight frowned. "What is it now?"
"You've really been in this town too long." Moondancer straightened her mane and gave Twilight a flippant stare. "I think the boring walls of this place have jaded you."
For a brief moment, Twilight's teeth shone. She slowly rose from her seat. "Now just a minute--"
I cleared my throat.
Both mares turned to look my way. The heat instantly left their faces as they blinked in confusion.
"Er... yes?"
"Can we help you, ma'am?"
I shifted nervously in the doorway. I wished I hadn't brought Rarity's sweater, for suddenly I was feeling like I was being cooked alive. "Uhm..." I smiled under a tiny trickle of sweat. "I'm sorry. I was looking for somepony named Twilight Sparkle to help me with a research project. Did I come at a bad time?"
"Uhm... Yes," Twilight stammered. "I'm afraid so."
"Nah, come on in!" Moondancer waved.
Twilight flashed her a look of shock. "Moondancer!" she loudly whispered.
"What?!" Moondancer shrugged.
"Uhhh--We're kind of busy with this project, are we not?"
"And lemme guess, you stopped believing in breaks since you kicked Nightmare Moon's flank? It's already past noon, Twi-girl, we could use a distraction." She once again motioned towards me. "Seriously. Come on in and introduce yourself--"
"Excuse me? Hello? Is this your library now?"
"No, as a matter of fact..." Moondancer glared at Twilight. "It's the town's library. If I'm not mistaken, you're assigned here to--jee, I dunno--be its librarian? Surely you can afford to help a random pony who needs to check something out."
Twilight tossed her hooves. A book slapped ineffectually before her pouting figure. "Fine. You're right." Her voice was curt, unmelodious. "This is a library. Let's treat it as such."
"Don't take that tone with me, Twilight." Moondancer's brow furrowed. "Just because I'm the one pony here trying to be nice."
"You just can't focus on a single thing for any longer than an hour." Twilight chuckled airily while shaking her head. "There's a reason why I have Spike around. He can take care of the library duties while we work on this program. You're only here for so long--"
"Is that always your solution? Make Spike do all the hard work? I swear--ever since you became an apprentice to Her Majesty, he's been doing overtime!"
"I don't ask him to do anything that he doesn't want to do--"
"And just how can he say 'no' to you? Heck, Twilight, I remember the day you first got him. I never thought he'd become a servant. As a matter of fact, I always thought he was kind of your adopted s--"
"Okay, enough of bringing Spike into this!" Twilight suddenly snapped, her face red.
"And just what is 'this', huh?" Moondancer growled back. "And for your information, I didn't bring Spike into the conversation. You did."
"I only said that he'd be in charge of library duties so that you and I could maybe--just maybe--focus on this assignment that I invited you over here to begin with--"
"I uhm..." I bit my lip. My whole body was shaking at this point.
Moondancer cleared her voice and expertly tossed a practiced grin at me. "Seriously. I apologize. This library's always opened to the public, even if its librarian has a closed mind. Come on in, ma'am. I'm sure I can look up something for you in this place's catalogue. I mean, that doesn't take too much brainpower, does it?"
Twilight's stool rattled to the floor as she jumped to her hooves and stormed off towards the far end of the treehouse.
Moondancer blinked after her. "And just where are you going?"
"You're right," Twilight grunted. "We need a break."
"For crying out loud, I was only--"
"Just be quiet for a little while. Please, Moondancer. I mean it."
"Twi-girl! Come onnnn..." Moondancer glanced at her, at me, at her... then ultimately decided to scamper after her friend. "What's going on here?! Just loosen up--"
"Oh, you've loosened me up enough as it is. Moondancer--seriously--I just need to... I dunno... do some reading or something."
"Reading? About what?"
"I don't know! Just reading! It's what I'm good at, remember?"
"Twilight, please, you're making a mountain out of a mole-hill..."
"Am I? This is important to Cheerilee! This is important to the mayor! It may even be important to the Princess--"
"What would Celestia care?! How the heck do you even start connecting those dots?!"
"There's a reason I take things so seriously, Moondancer."
"Oh really? Tell me! Cuz I'd love to know!"
"Because, if we don't educate these young unicorns, then they stand to risk--"
My friends' words were lost to me, because by then I had stealthily shut the door to the library. I rested against the outside frame, my heart beating. I felt like a worthless scrap of flesh, wrapped in a ridiculously ornate sweater, bathed in sweat and sunlight. Each little vibration that shook through the doorframe only made my heart drop deeper and deeper. If I stayed there any longer, I knew I would just die.
So, trembling, I trotted off, my head hanging by the sheer weight of a lump in the back of my throat.
What was happening to my friends? Was some horrible spell cast on them? Did they start experimenting in some mind-altering enchantment only to have it backfire? No.
No, I was the only one cursed in Ponyville. At least, that was the one truth I had full assurance of.
But, seriously, what was that just then? I felt as though it all started at some horrible moment, but tragically I hadn't been around to witness the beginning of such a collapse. I felt so utterly clueless. How could I even begin to salvage it?
My only hope--or so I told myself--was to collect my nerves, trot straight around, and find ways to eavesdrop on them. After all, my two friends had reunited for a reason. Why would all three of us be together once again if it weren't for my being able to fatefully save them?
Only, as I would discover, such salvation would not come easily. Day after day, I shadowed them. At the library, pretending to be studying books, I witnessed their haphazard attempt to draft a study plan. In the center of Ponyville, strumming half-heartedly on my lyre, I overheard their voices viciously breaking the tranquil air. On the edges of town hall, when my figure was obscured by a crimson sunset, I saw their faces burning even hotter.
It was a vicious loop; there was no better way to describe it. Moondancer would say something brash. Twilight would attack her for it. Moondancer would go on the defensive while slapping Twilight's good nature with a snide comment. Then Twilight would cross yet another boundary, growing more and more frustrated until she saturated Moondancer with her ire.
To say that this sort of bickering was unbecoming these two would be a lie. But somehow, this was different. This was a place far away from our bedrooms, from our foalhood's side streets, from the courtyards and patios of Canterlot. This was Ponyville, and these two mares were adults. When they got angry, they didn't whine or squeal, they filled the air with a frightening tempest.
"An eighteen page research project?!" Moondancer barked as she stared incredulously at the notes she was flipping through her hooves. Her violet eyes twitched. "You... You..." She almost retched before giving Twilight a terrified look. "Twilight, you can't be serious!"
"I am," Twilight said without looking back. She flipped through a book of outlines as she sat beside Moondancer on a park bench just twenty feet away from where I was plucking my lyre. "Just as serious as I was when I drafted the plan last night."
"You wrote all of these notes overnight?!" Moondancer rummaged incredulously through the mountain of sheets. "You mean--like--after our dinner with Rarity in downtown?"
"Yes."
"Twilight, that was ten o'clock at night! Did you get any sleep?!"
"Enough." Twilight hummed, squinting at her notes as if Moondancer was only half there. "It doesn't matter. I got done what needed to be done."
"Twilight, I thought we were going to work on this stuff together!"
"Were we?" Twilight's jaw tightened slightly, but still she didn't look Moondancer's way. "It's already three o'clock in the afternoon and we're just now meeting."
"What's your point?" Moondancer asked, then shook her head and growled, "Twilight, I thought the idea was for us to work on these assignments together. Y'know? You and me? As a team? How else am I to stop you from going off the deep end!"
"I think I made a very competent research plan."
"Twilight..." Moondancer waved the infernal sheets of paper for emphasis. "You're asking eight-year-olds to write an eighteen page draft! You... nngh... you gotta think simpler than that."
"I think I compressed the assignment pretty well, considering..." Twilight's voice trailed off as coldly as her tone.
Moondancer glared. "Considering what? That you were alone all night? Twilight, don't even pretend to guilt trip me over stuff you set upon doing on your own."
"What choice did I have?"
"If you wanted to work so badly after dinner with Rarity, then you should have just told me--"
"Moondancer, I did tell you!" Twilight finally gave her a look, and it wasn't a happy one. "I told you five times in one day! 'Moondancer, we need to sit down and come up with an adequate research assignment.'"
"Five times, huh? So are we keeping score now?"
"I wish I didn't have to!" Twilight growled. "I wish that when I asked my friend over to work on preparing an important educational program, she wouldn't have disrupted the flow of our concentration by making us have dinner with every pony she sees!"
"Twilight, correct me if I'm wrong, but Rarity is your friend! She made you dresses for this Gala you're hopping off to in a few weeks! She sounded to me like a very fabulous pony! And if there was one thing I wanted to do when I came here, it was getting acquainted with Rarity and the rest of your new companions!"
"And that's why I set a schedule for that!" Twilight exclaimed. "I told you over a dozen times that I was more than willing to have dinner with Rarity and Fluttershy this Friday! But look at our progress now! It's not even Thursday and already we're insanely behind because you just can't be patient enough! Now we only have two and a half weeks before you have to go back to Fillydelphia!"
"Two and a half weeks--Snkkt--Twi, girl, aren't you jumping the gun just a tad bit?"
"Do you forget who you're talking to?!" Twilight made a face. "I was Princess Celestia's personal scheduler of events two years in a row for a reason!"
"Heheheheh..." Moondancer giggled bitterly.
Twilight frowned. "Now what's so funny?"
"I find it interesting that you want me to rely so much on your experience as a royal scheduler..." She frowned. "When you hardly give a flying feather about my experience as a teacher."
"Unnngh..." Twilight face-hoofed. "Moondancer..."
"No, really!" Moondancer slapped her hoof across the bundle of notes. "This is gonna be like sending the little foals to the gallows! Maybe if they were in secondary school, sure! But last time I checked, the thickest assignment Cheerilee's ever given them was was a two-page essay for Family Appreciation Day!"
"We're attempting to broaden their minds, Moondancer! If they wish to learn about proper magic, they'll need to learn to work harder!"
"Are we trying to educate them or bludgeon their brains to death?!" Moondancer exclaimed. "I say we make the final project a five-page essay."
"Five pages?!"
"Do I hear an echo?"
"That's hardly what I call research!"
"And this is what just kills me!" Moondancer barked as she flaunted the papers in disgust. "You think research is going to teach them proper magic! Magic is about creativity and exploring the ethereal nature of our world--"
"It is not!"
"Lemme guess..." Moondancer groaned as her eyes rolled back in their sockets. "Because you're the expert on magic."
"I am!" Twilight frowned. "Magic is all about careful study, planning, and--most of all--research! If we make children think--if even for a second--that magic is about unchecked exercise of ethereal leylines, then we don't promote proper mana-practice, we're instead planting the dangerous seeds of ambitious sorcery!"
"Oh come off it..."
"I'm serious, Moondancer!" Twilight's eyes were bright and earnest. "We can't afford to be so flippant about magical arts! Especially with such young and impressionable minds!"
"Heh, when you were their ages, nothing stopped you from experimenting."
"I learned to properly control my magic after reading extensively on the subject! You think a fifteen page essay is asking a lot? I was writing fifty-page reports at age eight! I didn't discover my talents for magic by cutting corners and being careless!"
"Oh please, Twi-girl, come off your high... your high... you know what! Heh! You've zapped your parents into potted plants at least once or twice--"
"How is that even remotely making a point?" Twilight barked back. "And just what were you doing at that exact same time, Moondancer? If you had researched magic even half as often as I did at that time, you'd be--"
"I'd be what?" Moondancer flashed her a pathetic smirk. "A close-minded, book-hungry, uptight, workaholic insomniac like you? I don't know what kind of future Ponyville has, but I'm not here to turn these kids into marching doppelgangers of you. I've been a teacher long enough to know it's really, really stupid to extend one's ego into the curriculum."
"How... H-how..." Twilight's jaw dropped in shock. "How could you even possibly think that that's what I'm...?" She blinked and turned her head to follow Moondancer's moving body. "And just where are you going?"
"Anywhere. I do my best thinking while walking," Moondancer grumbled. "Maybe I'll come up with my own final project idea. Why not? You did so wonderfully by your lonesome."
Twilight sighed long and hard. "Moondancer, please. I'm sorry. Really. Let's... Let's just talk about this..."
But she was already gone. Twilight groaned and hung her face in her hooves. Several yards behind her, I did my futile best to keep a steady melody going.
The next day, in Sugarcube Corner, Moondancer was sitting at a table by herself. With a gentle glow of telekinesis, she was scribbling careful calligraphy onto a sheet of paper. Her eyes were thin, bored, and devoid of excitement. She yawned once or twice, then rubbed the back of her head while her ears tried flicking loose the noise of so many patrons seated all around her.
The place was quiet, save for a gentle murmur of calm, happy conversations. All of this shattered in an instant, though, as soon as the front doors to the place flew open and a noticeably angry Twilight Sparkle stomped directly to the table, slapping down a notepad in front of her foalhood friend.
"Moondancer, what in the hay is this?!" Twilight demanded, pointing offensively at the notepad.
Moondancer sighed. Then, with monumental strength, she tossed a grin up at Twilight. It cut the air with razor-sharp sarcasm, as did her voice, "This is a table for one, but I'm guessing that just rocks your boat all the same."
"Don't be coy. I meant this!" Twilight shoved her hoof towards the notepad. "A plan to hire three assistant teachers from Trottingham--are you joking?"
"If I was joking," Moondancer muttered, "I would have thrown in more references to flanks and hoof-tacks." She blinked. She then lethargically chuckled for what it was worth.
That only enraged Twilight all the more. "Moondancer, there's no way Cheerilee could afford to hire that much outside help!"
"It's a heck of a lot more affordable than the field trips, and everypony knows how much you hated those."
"Moondancer, are you even trying anymore?!" Twilight Sparkle breathlessly exclaimed. "How many times do I have to tell you that we've got to get the lesson plan finalized before we can even talk about additions to the faculty--" She stopped in mid-speech, her eyes fixated suddenly on the letter half-written in front of her friend. "What's this?"
"Uhm, it's nothing. I was just--"
"I mean it! Who're you writing to?" Twilight forcibly yanked the letter across the table with telekinesis.
"Hey!" Moondancer gawked, frowning. "Miss Grabby Hooves! What gives?"
"This..." Twilight's eyes squinted over the paper. "This is addressed to the Whinniepeg Community Organizer..." The more she read, the more her jaw dropped in shock. "'...I humbly request an audience with the director of the Whinniepeg Education Commission in regards to scheduling a function at the Museum for Lunar Incantation...'" Her eyes slowly tilted back up and her brow furrowed. "You... You're trying to set up the field trip..."
"Nnngh..." Moondancer rolled her eyes. "Look, Twilight..."
Twilight frowned. "You were about to go over my head!"
"I was simply trying to open communication..." Moondancer blushed and glanced around the room. "You know... mmmm... in the event that you might end up considering my proposal--"
"We're supposed to be working on this--deciding on this--as a team!" Twilight's voice cracked as it grew louder, gathering the nervous attention of many seated patrons around the eatery. "How could you possibly think that we'd both be in agreement over this!"
"I'd had hoped you would keep an open mind!"
"About you going over my head?!" Twilight tossed the letter onto the table in front of her. "Moondancer, how could you?"
Something twitched in Moondancer's eyes. She slowly crumpled the paper up. Tossing it aside, she rose her voice like a growling cat's. "No, I wasn't going over your head, Twilight." Fuming, she icily stood up and glared at her friend from across the table. There might as well have been an ocean between them. "You know why? Because there's no friggin' way anypony in the history of Equestria could possibly fathom scaling a head as big and full as yours!"
"Please!" Twilight rolled her eyes. "Spare me--"
"Spare yourself!" Moondancer snarled. "You need to hear this!" Her eyes narrowed as she pointed an accusatory hoof. "Ever since I came here, you've been nothing but an overbearing pain in the butt! Which shouldn't come as a surprise, since you've always had something of a pathetic chip on your shoulder."
"Oh great," Twilight laughed bitterly. "I'm being preached to by the class jester."
"At least when I went to school, I was living it up!" Moondancer grinned just as plastically. "Sure, I wasn't earning perfect grades all the time like you! But I wasn't chaining my brain to some goddess-forsaken books twenty-four-seven either! You know why?"
"Educate me."
"Oh, I will!" Moondancer gnashed her teeth and pointed at herself, "Because I knew that there was more in life than reading and studying! Growing older doesn't mean you gotta stop having fun! I earned my cutie mark because I realized that teaching means dazzling your kids just as much as it means informing them!"
"Is that why you're stuck teaching general history and intermediary economics at a low tier campus in central Fillydelphia?"
"Hey! At least I'm earning my teacher's desk! With each passing year, I'm climbing higher!"
"You could have had it so much better, Moondancer! If only you were more serious and studious from the get go!"
"Oh, that's some rich advice right there!" Moondancer cackled. "Coming from the one mare in all of Equestria who's had everything hoofed to her from royalty!"
Twilight's eyes flared. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
By this time, Mrs. Cake had quietly strolled across the tense room of blinking faces. "Ahem... uhm..." She paused, gnawing on her lip to nervously entreat Twilight in a whispering voice. "Miss Sparkle? If... uhm... if you and your friend wouldn't mind taking this conversation outside of m-my establishment..."
That seemed to calm Twilight somewhat. With a sigh, she nodded towards her. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Cake," she said in a low voice. "You're right. We shouldn't be--"
"No! Please!" Moondancer grinned devilishly. The tips of her pale ears were burning red as she pointed a shaking hoof at her friend before folding her forelimbs. "She likes berating my teaching career in public! Let's let her finish it, shall we? Go on and tell all your lovely neighbors of Ponyville just what you think of me, Twi!"
Twilight fumed, struggling to keep everything behind an icy glare. "I apologize, Moodancer. I shouldn't have made a scene. Let's just go back to the library and--"
"And what? Guilt trip me over and over again with your pathetic attempts at moral pretense?"
"Ladies, please," Mrs. Cake nervously interjected. "If you could just--"
Moondancer spoke louder, glaring steadily at Twilight. "So what if I was going over your head?! I would have gotten a heck of a lot more done on this project on my lonesome without having to be roadblocked by all of your redundant little needs to double-check and overanalyze everything!"
"You just never grew up, did you, Moondancer?" Twilight gave her a look of pity. "Even when we were little foals, you could never wait for a single second without doing something impulsively and deciding later to call it a 'wise choice.' Just how high do your students score in their aptitude tests these days, Moondancer? Don't bother answering. I've checked."
"Oh did you now--?"
"And if you think that is the kind of result you're proud of achieving, then I feel almost as sorry for them as I do for you--"
I wasn't entirely sure what Moondancer's response to that was. The growling tone in her voice made the words difficult to discern, as did the rattling of the wooden table she bumped into while literally jumping towards her accuser. Soon, the two mares were practically hissing in each other's muzzles. Mrs. Cake found herself awkwardly sandwiched in the middle of them. The entire room was awash in blank faces, wide eyes, and even a few trembling foals. And I...
I had stopped playing my lyre five minutes ago. My hooves were pressed so tight to the surface of the table, I was certain cracks would form. My shoulders quivered. My knees shook. I tried my hardest to stay there, to remain a pointless piece of the background's detritus, but I couldn't. I knew my role. I knew my place, and it certainly wasn't sitting there, facing away from my friends.
The world spun around my numb body. I realized I was getting up and trotting towards them. With more courage than a Canterlot guard, I planted myself firmly between the two enraged ponies.
"Look--Look!" I raised my voice, surprised at how silent the room became as soon as my echoes danced off the walls. I gulped, glanced at the two mares, and uttered, "You two obviously have a lot of rough edges that are bumping into each other. But, if I may be so bold, I imagine you two have a lot of history. Is your mutual past so frivolous that you can ignore it by turning into utter brutes in front of everypony?"
"Ma'am, you don't need to get yourself involved with this--" Twilight quietly began.
"Mind your own beeswax, lady!" Moondancer was Moondancer.
Twilight frowned over my shoulder at her. "Hey! Just because you're angry with me doesn't mean you have to be rude to her--"
"This is Ponyville, huh?!" Moondancer laughed coldly over my other side. "Odds are that she's on your side--"
"I'm not on anypony's side, Moondancer!" I snapped at her.
She blinked and gave me a double-take. "How do you know my--?"
I spun and frowned at Twilight. "And you, Miss Sparkle: haven't you learned enough lessons in your fourteen-plus months of living here to know the value of patience and compromise?"
"I... it..." Twilight's face was more scrunched in confusion than in anger. "How could you possibly know what I've learned or haven't learned? Just who are you?"
"A know-it-all who makes assumptions of what's right or wrong?" Moondancer chuckled. "Hahaha--If I didn't know better, Twilight, I'd say she takes after you!"
"All I know is this!" I flashed Moondancer a furious look. "Somepony should grow up!" I gave Twilight an equally sharp glance. "And another pony should loosen up!" I raised my forelimbs harmlessly between us. "It's that easy! Isn't it?"
"Dear Luna, I've marched right into a stage-play..." Moondancer groaned.
"Isn't it?!" I growled.
"What have I said about saying Princess Luna's name in vain!" Twilight snapped past me.
"Will you ever stop being my mother for just once?!" Moondancer returned just as venomously.
"I remember your mother very well! She practically spoiled you!"
"And yours smothered you!"
"I was taught what it means to become a disciplined scholar!"
"I was shown what it means to embrace life!"
"Girls... please..." I gulped. I shivered, and yet this heated debacle was slipping faster and faster from my trembling hooves... from my breaking heart. "Just... Just calm down. We are.... You are such good friends..."
"Ma'am..." Mrs. Cake leaned in and hushedly whispered to me. "I really don't think you're helping this any..."
I sweated. I convulsed. I glanced out the corner of my eyes. Everypony in the room was looking past me, through me, their eyes locked on the only two souls that mattered, the souls that were just about ready to tear each other to bits.
And it was then that I realized, like a cold blanket of ice being draped over my insides, far more chilling than any curse could have afflicted me...
I realized that Twilight, Moondancer, and I were the best of friends in our foalhood. We had our ups and our downs, but somehow our bond kept going strong. Twilight's seriousness was an opposite balance to Moondancer's carefree spirit. But that balance had a fulcrum. Whenever fillies dressed as Celestia or Luna would come to odds, Starswirl the Bearded was always magically there with his well-placed wisdom to talk some sense back into the royal sisters.
But this was different. This was Ponyville. These friends of mine were mere shadows of a brilliant childhood, cast by a glowing innocence that was now as mysterious and incorporeal as the forgotten night-lights that had once lined my bedroom in another lifetime, in another world, in another universe.
This was Ponyville. And I was not there.
I was not there....
Oh dear Celestia...
"Pl-please..." I stammered, my lips fighting to remain as steady as my lungs. "Twilight... Moondancer... listen to me..."
They didn't. How could they? Who was I?
"You never grew up!" Twilight shouted. "You're just the same silly foal who always wanted her way! I don't know how I ever tolerated your craziness when I was little, but I sure as hay don't need it now!"
"And you're still the stuck-up smarty-pants who always got her way!" Moondancer howled back. Sugarcube Corner shook as with a million earthquakes, and I was the only one who felt like collapsing. "Quite frankly, I pity you! All those years you could have enjoyed yourself, and instead you enslaved yourself to books and ancient magic tricks and all the dusty tomes of ponies long dead!"
"At least I was making something of myself! What were you doing in your time?"
"I was doing what you should have done long ago!" Moondancer exclaimed. "I was going outside! I was making friends!"
"Hey! I have friends too! It may have taken me longer, but I learned how to open up!"
"At least I found my friends the hard way!" Moondancer said, her face briefly quivering as if from a labor pain. "I went out into the world! I took risks! I made mistakes, sure, but I'm a better pony because of it! Can you say the same?"
"I... well..."
"Can you?!" Moondancer glared. "You're so big on learning! So tell me how come you can get wonderful things so easily and then pretend to tell yourself you're smarter from it!"
"What are you even going on about?" Twilight exclaimed breathlessly.
"Oh please, not all of us make friends cuz of some magical connection to the Elements of Heaven!"
"Harmony."
"Whatever! If I were you, Twilight, I wouldn't even begin to judge others on friendship after receiving my companions as a consolation prize from the fates!"
There was a thunderous sound. Twilight's nostrils flared as she slapped both hooves atop the table, rattling Moondancer's letters to the floor. "That's it! Leave!"
"Excuse me?" Moondancer chuckled incredulously.
"You heard me! G-get out of here!" Twilight was shaking all over. Her voice was cracking as moisture collected in the corners of her eyes. "I don't want you anywhere near my friends!"
"Oh ho hoooo!" Moondancer paced coldly around the table, dramatically tossing her mane. "How dare I trounce upon Twilight's holy stomping grounds, the sacred soil of Ponyville! Did you earn this place as easily as you earned your friends! If so, then no wonder this town needs a study course in sorcery so badly! Who would have thought that the Element of Magic had such a hollow spark to it?!"
"Just... just..." Twilight was hyperventilating, her face pale as she stared blankly through the table. "Pl-please leave..."
"Come on, Twilight!" Moondancer growled. Her eyes were aflame. "You're smarter than this! Look at the big picture!" She gestured wildly towards the surroundings. "Over a year spent practicing the same old magic and the same old incantations in the center of some stuffy library in Ponyville?!" Her face briefly retched before she hissed, "You haven't learned didley squat about friendship! The only reason Princess Celestia accepts all of the inane letters you send to her is because she coddles you! She always has! Equestria's most gifted magician, my flank! You silly... misguided... child!"
Bright lavender light flared in the center of the eatery. Ponies gasped and flinched. Twilight was glaring at Moondancer, and her eyes were glowing hotly as she jerked towards her.
Moondancer likewise dashed forward--
"Stop!" I bellowed, suddenly in between them, planting a hoof against the napes of both mares' necks. "I mean it!" I glared daggers before deflating with a sad sigh. "Just... stop it, both of you." I gulped, entreating whatever was left of my friends. "Stop."
Twilight slowly panted. Her eyes stopped glowing, revealing twin rivers of tears rolling down her cheeks.
I turned to look at Moondancer. All the anger was gone in her eyes. She looked suddenly as if she had taken a bullet to the chest, but couldn't determine if the projectile had entered or exited.
Maybe it had done both. Twilight slumped to a stool, staring at the floor. Moondancer shuffled about, before running a hoof through her mane, turning around, and trotting defeatedly out the exit of Sugarcube Corner. Everypony was quiet. You could hear the heartbeats like crickets in the distance, becoming one with every wall that was gradually shrinking away from me and where I stood.
I wondered if this is how the end of every battle feels, when the violence is over and every side realizes that nothing could ever have been won, because their can never be victory in collapse: only heartache. I tried to ignore the ghostly sounds of Moondancer's shuffling hooves as she left. I even did my best to ignore the choking gasps of Twilight's quiet sobs as she hung her face in a pair of hooves.
The only thing that shook me out of my stupor was the sound of Mrs. Cake's hooftrots, as the noble mare walked silently away from the eye of the dissipated storm, reminding me just how lonely and ineffectual I was...
And how I would forever be.
Then, the shivers returned.
The cold chills dragged me out of Ponyville, down dirt paths through the woods, and into the rattling shell of my wooden cabin. As soon as the door shut behind me, I couldn't stop moving. I couldn't stop pacing. I couldn't stop panting.
I spun circles in the room. I felt like my beating heart was going to leap out of my eyes. I gnashed my teeth and paused before the hearth, leaning my horn against the brick-laid fireplace. The whole world shook, wobbled, and then bowled.
Somepony was screaming. I watched in a lurched gasp as my saddlebag was tossed against the wall. Musical instruments fell in a rain of noise and chaotic crescendo. A flute shattered in half and a violin splashed in a spray of wooden splinters. I trounced through it, I kicked the pieces everywhere, the pieces of me, the parts that could still make noise--and all of it yelling.
The air tasted of blood, sweat, and phlegm. There is no scent sweet enough to mask the decay of childhood. I hurled myself into the bloodless wound of some forsaken corpse, and I found my cot waiting for me beneath it all. I curled up on it, hugging my limbs to my chest so that I would stop destroying everything left in the cabin that was still beautiful. A shower of dust and music sheets was raining down on me, sprinkled with the flavorless notes of ice-cold elegies, the only things that bothered to be my companions anymore.
I didn't realize the truth until the tenth heavy blink of my eyes. Yet again, the tears would not come when I wanted them to. There was nothing left to warm me. That's how I knew that I was as cursed as I always imagined myself to be. It wasn't until then that Luna's dagger truly started digging into my back.
It was enough to see a strange town like Ponyville live and die around me. What I didn't need, what I had never asked for, was for Moondancer to arrive and show me just how much of my legacy had died, just how so much of it would stay dead, and just how much everything I had once treasured would never be so pristine again, and all because of one pathetic, missing factor.
And that missing factor was me.
I ran my hooves over my head. The cold was once more unbearable. As always, I wished it would take every waking nerve from me. And yet again, my wish remained unfulfilled.
No single pony is insignificant. Every life is a cornerstone to some unimaginably epic monument. When a pony dies, the entire foundation collapses with her. There are beautiful tragedies happening everyday, gigantic masterpieces of love and beauty that collapse between every waking blink. Very few ponies are cursed to bear witness to such holocausts.
I was one of the few, in fact, the only one. I had been hopeless for so long. But now--and only now--I had become friendless.
I shuddered and buried my face into my sheets as I tried to remember what their laughter sounded like.
No. This was not a blessing.
"It's a good thing you came to me for practice, Miss Heartstrings," Twilight Sparkle said, her voice droning. She paced slowly around me in a silent shuffle. "A protection spell takes careful concentration to master. It's not something that a unicorn can so easily learn... on her lonesome."
I had no problem concentrating. I stood in the center of the library, easily erecting the green dome of translucent energy above me. As I performed the buffer, I preoccupied myself with another problem entirely, the true reason for my coming there.
"You look like a pony who's learned many things on her own, Miss Sparkle," I very carefully murmured from where I meditated.
"Hmmm..." Her nostrils flared slightly. Her face was cold, deadpan, and heavy. Her eyes swam across the floor as she trotted towards a convergence of soft shadows. "I suppose I've always had... a singular gift for sorcery." She gulped and continued, "But I've always believed that one's connection to the realm of magic means nothing if one doesn't maintain attachments in this plane..." She came to a stop, her hooves scratching against the wood as she blinked into space. "Such attachments are a worthy challenge." She gnawed on her lip.
I almost ignored my protection field entirely as I stared across the dim library at her. She appeared as one with the streams of dust dancing in the afternoon light from the nearby windows.
"If I may be so bold, Miss Sparkle." I tried to smile. I swore I looked sadder than her. "I know I'm just a student here and now, but you appear as though you've had enough challenges as of late."
Twilight blinked. Slowly, she glanced aside at me. "One doesn't master magic without struggle, Miss Heartstrings."
"Yes," I said with a nod. "But is magic everything?"
She opened her mouth to respond. She lingered, fidgeting. Finally, she blurted, "It's easier. Magic, that is. I used to think it was everything." She stifled a weak sound coming from her throat. "There was... something blissful, and simple about those days that I spent alone, studying, pouring my way through tome after tome of enchantment theory. I don't know if you can understand, but, lonesomeness isn't all that bad if lonesomeness is all you know."
I couldn't help it. My protection field dissolved right then and there. I no longer feared the eighth elegy. "Oh Twilight..." I began with a pained murmur. But before this "stranger" could so much as trot towards her...
There was a knock on the door.
Without thinking about it, Twilight spoke to the air, "Come in."
When she came into the library, I was just as shocked as Twilight was. It had been two days since the incident at Sugarcube Corner, and yet there Moondancer was in the flesh. She didn't give Twilight the opportunity to utter any protest.
"I couldn't leave. Not yet. I... I just needed to..." She stopped, blinked, then gazed my way. There wasn't a single hint of a smirk on Moondancer's lips. I was finally looking into the face of a perfect stranger. "Oh. Uhm... Excuse me."
"No... I... uhm..." I jolted. I had learned by now the true value of being more invisible than a shadow. This whole visit felt like a mistake waiting to happen. I think I needed to be around Twilight more than she needed to be around me. But now? With Moondancer here? "I'm the one who needs to be excused."
Twilight turned to squint at me. "Miss Heartstrings...?"
"I should have mentioned it earlier!" I said with a hollow chuckle while sliding my body through my saddlebag. "But I have a music lesson scheduled in two hours. Miss Hooves' kid. Uhm...whatshername, 'Disney?'"
"Dinky?"
"Yes, her. Child prodigy, that foal. But I gotta teach her the fine art of... uhm... solo flute blowing. Thank you for your time, Miss Sparkle." I was already sliding myself away, but I was well out of range of Twilight's or Moondancer's view. Their gazes were locked on each other. I was as confused as I was relieved to see their eyes devoid of malice, instead full of something grand, mysterious, and vacant. I knew that something amazing or horrible or both was about to unfold all at once. So--as stealthily as I could--I cracked the side window to the library open with my telekinesis before slipping out through the front entrance.
Once outside, I flattened myself against the exterior of the treehouse building. Making sure no Ponyvilleans were watching from the street, I slid along the building until I squatted--perfectly hidden--behind a patch of bushes beneath the window that I had just left open.
From there, I could very easily hear every word being murmured between the two. I listened with quiet, lonely shivers.
"Moondancer, I thought... uhm..."
"That I'd be gone by now?"
"Erm... yeah..."
"So did I. I got a train taking me to Fillydelphia in the next hour. But, like I was trying to say, I needed to stop by before I left. After all, it's only the polite thing to do..."
"You wanted to tell me, face to face, that you're no longer on board for designing the study program."
"Wowsers, you really do know everything, don't you, Twilight?"
"Moondancer..."
"I know! And I'm sorry! I... I just..."
There was a deathly pause.
Finally, Moondancer started over, "No. I'm not sorry. That's just the thing, Twilight. I'm not sorry. I can't even pretend to be. I look at you, I listen to you, and all I hear is a know-it-all. And you know what's the sad thing? I've always felt that way. I know I've always felt that way. Because as far back as I can remember, even as far back as my foalhood, there's always been your higher-than-thou attitude, your incessant need to correct my mistakes, your moralistic obligation to point out how wrong I am about everything I choose to say or do, and--"
"And you can't imagine why, for the life of you, you tolerate such a filly? You don't know why you put up with her, why you hung out with her, why you would play games or go to school with her?"
"I... I guess you just saved me from spilling a lot of hot air."
"Would you like to do me the same favor, Moondancer?"
"Heh... Like how? By repeating everything you've ever said to my face? Berating me publicly when we're supposed to be having a good time? About how you can't stand how childish I am. About how you think I'm a big baby? About how you think I'm too lazy and goofy and carefree and--"
"Do you even know the way you come across at times, Moondancer? Do you realize how much the things you say can hurt a pony?"
"Do you realize how much you set yourself up to be hurt, Twilight?"
Again, there was silence. After a while, I heard the minute scratching of their hooves. Judging from the echoes, I could tell they were a universe's length from each other.
"Coming to Ponyville was a mistake, Twi. I only have myself to blame. It's yet another lesson I have to learn from doing stupid things, over and over again, and I know you would only agree with me."
"Moondancer, stop saying--"
"And don't you flippin' try to placate me! Just what are you going to do? Are you going to try to talk some sense into me? Try and save something that's too much of a pain for us to even bother dealing with? Twilight, when we're in the same room together, it's like I'm walking on eggshells, and every little cracking noise bleeds my ears out. I feel like throwing up just thinking about how what I say may or may not flip you off your rocker."
"Do I really come across as that controlling? Moondancer, if half the ponies I knew around town could somehow get away with being as wild and unpredictable as you--"
"But at least you can hang out with half the ponies around town, Twilight!" Moondancer's voice cracked. "So how come you can't stand to be in the s-same place as m-me?"
The next air of silence was bitter, like salt in the wound.
Moondancer sniffled, and finally bled forth in a wavering voice, "I can't lie, Twilight. You've made me want to snap my horn off in frustration more times than I can count, but at least I have the guts to... to admit when something needs to be b-buried! Something that was so unbelievably cr-crazy to begin with..."
Her voice sniffled a bit more, cast alone in the great void of white noise, until Twilight's breath limped forth for her:
"It's... It's always been this way, hasn't it?" I could almost imagine the gulping motion of her sore throat. "Even as foals, we couldn't stand each other. How did we manage, Moondancer? How did we make it alive into grade school?"
I heard Moondancer chuckle. It was a wet thing, like an arrow wound. "Well, Twilight... I guess children just bounce back to their hooves a lot more easily, huh?" She sniffed one last time and said in a firm voice, "But I can't bounce up from this. Not anymore. It's just... it's just stupid. I know it's stupid. You know it's stupid."
"But--"
"We can't stand each other. We never could. I don't know... I don't even want to know what made us think that we could."
Twilight took a long breath. Her hooves shuffled, and I realized she was sliding away from the other mare. "So, this is it, then?"
"Yeah, Twi. Pretty much."
"I... We could... That is..." Twilight's voice fumbled like her face must have been. "I'll send letters, Moondancer. I'll send letters and... and we can keep track. We can at least know where our lives take us--"
"And what makes you think that I'll want to read them any more than you'll want to write them, Twilight?"
Moondancer's next breath took as long to come out as she took to open the exit to the library. She stopped in the middle of the frame, and I heard her voice from both outside and inside. It had a ghostly quality, so that I almost understood what was slipping from Twilight's life forever.
"I'm glad, Twilight, that you're not alone here. I'm glad that you have friends in Ponyville who can tolerate you, at least with a lot more strength and conviction than I ever bothered to. You deserve that much. I mean it. I just hope you make the best of it."
"And I just hope you don't make the worst of it."
Moondancer jolted. For a moment there, she sounded ready to say something else, until she realized--as I did--that words would forever be useless to a chorus that had long lost its song. She left Twilight in a blink, positively scampering across town. When the door to the library closed behind her, I imagined Twilight's voice shuddering. But I wouldn't know for sure, for I had broken across Ponyville in a brisk trot after Moondancer.
Twenty minutes, I found her, sitting on a bench at the central train station. A saddlebag was resting beside Moondancer's folded legs. She gazed forlornly towards the east, where the inbound train was soon to arrive and take her to a home away from home.
I wasn't sure how I was going to go about doing this, only that I had to. Life is full of last chances, and none of them deserve to be ruined. As always, I worked my mind on the go, so that by the time I arrived at her side, I was uttering, "So you're headed to Fillydelphia?"
She blinked. She gazed up, and the smile that graced her face was familiar, but hollow. "Yup. City of Brotherly Lope, as in 'Oh brother am I tired of loping around this town.'" She sighed heavily and ran her hooves over her face. "Eh, do forgive me, I usually have much better material than this."
"Not like anypony's throwing bits at you." I shrugged, then squatted down on the bench at a liberal distance from her. "I'm headed to... uhm... Manehattan, myself. I always wanted to find out if the Big Apple was edible."
"I've been there myself. That city's full of something, alright," Moondancer muttered, staring off towards the eastern horizon. "But I assure you it's not applesauce."
I ran a hoof through my mane as I stared in the same direction as her. My heart pulsed painfully, fearful that her train would show up at any moment. "I envy you. I've got several hours to wait. Good thing the Fillydelphia-bound train is almost here."
"Oh yeah? Why?"
"You look as though you could collapse any second. I had no idea Ponyville was that exhausting."
"Heh... I should have predicted that myself..." She looked as if she was going to say more, but her lips lingered on a painful thought.
I gazed softly at her, at her white coat, at her lavender eyes and scarlet mane. I remembered braiding her gorgeous hair to the music of Marezart while Twilight read us old mare's tales from a family tome that had been passed down the Sparkle family line for generations.
"I came to Ponyville to meet a friend," I said. Moondancer was always herself. I decided, for my last time with her, to be myself as well. "I got something more than I had bargained for."
"Heh..." She cast me a chilling smile. "You too, huh? Well, it's a small world, Miss..."
"Please..." I murmured. My grin was as painful as the breath I was forcing to say, "Call me Lyra."
"I came here to see a friend too, Lyra. A foalhood friend," Moondancer said to me. Her eyes were as distant as the east, to which she faced, to which she murmured, "Her name is Twilight Sparkle. She's a very famous filly around town. You've probably heard of her."
"What one hears is what one hears from the pony speaking to her."
"Heh... You almost sound like her..." Moondancer took a deep breath. "Only you don't sound quite so haughty."
"Haughty?"
"Nnngh... It's not even that..." She ran a hoof over her face and groaned. "I came here to help her with something, after it had been so many, many years since we last met. What I discovered was that those years meant something. They erased the memories I had..."
"What memories, pray tell?"
She gulped hard. "Memories of annoyance. Memories of frustration. Memories of constant head-butting and agony between fillies who'd do much better fighting a war than trying to have a sleepover."
I squirmed where I sat, murmuring, "Don't all children... have problems clicking, from time to time?"
"Yes, but that fades with the years that go by. At least, normally it should. But with Twilight and I..." She paused, bit her lip, then looked at me. "I think it's that she grew up too fast. There's nothing wrong with that, really. She just became uber smart and uber studious at a really young age. And I..." She gazed past me, towards the horizon once more, as her violet eyes locked onto a terrible truth, and it moistened them. "She's right."
"Hmm?"
"Twilight's right..." Moondancer's voice shuddered. She remained her composure with remarkable maturity right there before me. "I am like a child nowadays. But..." Her voice grew as firm as her eyes as she sniffled a painful breath away and frowned into the dying afternoon. "What she doesn't know is that--at one time--I had no choice but to grow up. She never went out into the world like I did, or as early as I did. Where she stayed under a royal tutor's wing and learned about the secrets of magic from books, I explored Equestria and caught glimpses of real life up close and personal. I had to do things the hard way, and it made me grow up way faster than I ever wanted to at the time. So now..." She chuckled breathily and looked down at her hooves fiddling with one another. "So now, I can't help it. I like to be a big kid. I like to have fun and be goofy and live life from under a loose saddle. It's because I understand... I know how quickly life can blur by if we don't stop to treasure it."
She gulped and fought away a wince. She looked at me.
"That's why I became a teacher, I think," Moondancer said. "I wanted to surround myself with youth. I wanted to witness life blossoming around me each and everyday. Do you think that's a shallow reason for making such a career choice?"
I slowly shook my head and said, "No. Not at all."
"And now Twilight..." Moondancer stared towards the distant haze of Ponyville beyond the wooden structure of the train station. Slowly, her lips quivered and her eyes watered. "N-now Twilight's in such a good place, surrounded by so many amazing things, and does she even know it? I mean does she really, really know it?" She gulped as her voice cracked, "I don't think she does. I don't think she realizes that she's grown so old in so little time that she has no chance of stepping back and recapturing that joy... that bliss of what it means to relax, to be alive. She won't take her nose out of a book--she won't pull her mind out of her high seat long enough to realize that this... all of this... is not worth sweating so much over. And it's just so painful to watch..."
"Perhaps..." I bravely said "...somepony could help her find that joy?"
Moondancer clenched her eyes shut. "I can't."
I didn't bother asking why.
She answered me anyways. "Because..." She sniffled and glanced painfully at me. "I've been there before. And though it was only a short time, I don't ever want to be there again. I've grown old and I know it. So much as staying in the same room as Twilight: I'm brought back there, and I feel all that much closer to death, and she's hung around an immortal royal alicorn for so long that... that I don't think she'll ever know it when it hits her, and by then it will be too late for her and those that she's close to." She shuddered and ran a hoof over her eyes, drying them. "Sometimes, I think, it's best to lose things when they're less painful to be ripped away, especially when we have the strength to do away with it."
I heard a whistle. I looked towards the distance, and it was my time to fight the urge to cry. I saw her train looming over the horizon. She was already standing. I wanted to memorialize this thing with a dirge, but my mouth was too numb.
"Well, I know what I stand to lose, and what I can't." Moondancer hoisted her saddlebag over her spine and smiled with steely courage. "I have a bunch of students waiting for me. I have a career." She briefly chuckled. "Heck, I even have one adorable hunk of a stallion to go on long walks with." Her head hung briefly. "Those are things I can afford. More importantly, they're things that I wish to afford."
By now, I was struggling not to sob. I cleared my throat, trying my best to avoid the sight of the hissing train rolling to a stop. I never imagined a moment like this would be so loud and obnoxious. Steam billowed between us like cold vapors as I shouted above the settling engines.
"I'm sure you'll have a great life ahead of you. And so will this Twilight."
"The past is the past, Lyra. I choose to live in the future. I always have. Only now, I've got no reason to second-guess that."
"I hope it's everything you've worked for, Miss..." I entreated, my eyesight blurring. I knew her name. I cherished her name. I only wanted with every fibre of my being to hear it one last time. To hear her say it.
And she did. With her wink and her smile and her everything. "Moondancer. And if someday you read in the papers about the whole of Fillydelpia crumbling to ashes, that will just have been the result of me giving a darn about something."
Evening had fallen, pulling a dark shroud over Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle was sitting at a table in Sugarcube Corner. It was later than when she usually sat there, but she didn't seem to mind. Nor did any of the other ponies pay her any notice, in spite of a rather dramatic event that had transpired there two days before.
One pony, however, eventually trotted up to her table. I lingered before her for a few minutes, bothering myself over pretense, until I remembered the tone in the voice of a friend I had just lost and decided that pretense was absurd.
"Ahem. Uhm... Miss Sparkle?"
She slowly gazed up from a sheet of notes that she had been carefully reading. "Hmm?" She blinked, as if coming out of a stale dream. "Oh, I'm sorry. Can I help you, Miss...?"
"Heartstrings. I was wondering... erm..." I pretended to wince. "Oh, yeesh. You're off duty, aren't you? I really shouldn't be asking you any library-related questions..."
"No, please..." She smiled as softly as she could manage. "The way I see it, I'm always ready and willing to help Ponyville and its citizens with research. What do you need?"
"It's not so much an issue. I was just wondering if you... if you gave personal lessons in practicing magic."
"Oh. Oh that... Eheh..." Twilight sighed long and hard. Her eyes fluttered limply to the tabletop before her. "I... I'm not all that qualified as a tutor."
My heart sank. That was new. "What... uhm... What makes you say that, Miss Sparkle? Everypony in town says that you're the Element of Magic and--"
"I'm just... What I mean to say is, if you really want to learn about magic, I guess I could do my best to... g-give you a lesson..." She shuddered painfully through uttering that.
I swallowed slowly. I saw a train slowly rolling away in the back of my blinking eyelids. I murmured without looking at my friend. "Is this a bad time? You... you seem down."
"I've had better days, I guess," Twilight murmured. "But, you needn't worry about any of it..."
That was it. I smiled at her. I gave her a soft expression, entreating. "Who said I was worrying, Miss Sparkle?"
She gazed up at me. Her eyes twinkled with a foalish need, and then returned once more to an adult glaze. Nevertheless, something soft and genuine slipped through. "I just finished saying goodbye to the one best friend I had as a foal. I had asked her to come visit me and assist in putting together a local study program, and... and for the past few days, we spent every waking moment blowing up at one another. I was never so..." She shook her head as her pained eyes danced over the floor. "I don't remember ever rubbing her the wrong way so much... or anypony for that matter. It's as if all of those times we got along together as foals never happened."
I slowly sat down across from her and folded my forelimbs atop the table. "Perhaps... Perhaps time changes us for the worst?"
Twilight gulped and shook her head. "I don't believe that for one second. I think that we are always essentially who we are, from start to finish, even if we have varying degrees of expressing it. This friend--or this mare that I thought was my friend--she must have always been my foil. I simply didn't realize it until now." She gulped and hung her head with a sigh. "I just feel so foolish..."
I gave her a sympathetic look. "Bad breakups happen. I wish you wouldn't feel bad about it--"
"That's just it. I don't."
"Don't what?"
She looked up at me. "I don't feel bad about it." She gulped and her eyes darted aside. "That is, I don't feel bad about... about her being gone from my life, as much as I feel bad for having lost something so easily. It's as if..." She gnawed on her lip.
I stared at her. "What, Miss Sparkle?"
She murmured limply. "It's as if something is missing from my life. There's... there's a great hole, Miss Heartstrings. There's always been a great hole. And Moondancer--this mare--she and I somehow danced around it, somehow ignored how utterly and completely incompatible we were as best friends forever. And all these memories I have... all these happy memories: suddenly they mean absolutely nothing to me." She choked briefly and her eyes twitched. "And I don't understand. In spite of all of my years of learning, in spite of all my practice in logic, I just... don't understand what went wrong..."
I fumbled with my hooves, tracing lazy circles beneath the cold lamplight in Sugarcube Corner's evening hours. The stars outside started to twinkle, just like they once did outside a bedroom when princesses and sorcerers once roamed the earth.
"I... I had these two friends once," I said.
Twilight quietly looked at me.
"They were the best companions a little filly could ever ask for." I smiled, my eyes becoming entranced in the memories afforded me by the swirling wood varnish of the table. "Neither of them were alike. One was creative, but bossy. The other was bubbly, but impulsive. If you put the two of them in a giant jar and rattled it, I'd have no doubt they'd come out with both of their heads bitten off. Heheh..." I gulped and ran a hoof over the back of my neck as I went on. "But I loved them all the same. I loved the way their voices sang in the air as we trotted through town. I loved how bizarre and dramatic our games of pretend would be because neither one of them would ever think of the same thing. Every day I spent with them was a moment to remember, to cherish, to carry with me into the minefields of adulthood."
I took a deep breath and sat back in my seat, clutching my hoodie sleeves as I eyed the dusty ceiling beams of the eatery.
"And then..." I swallowed. "And then we grew up. And we spread apart. We each studied our own schools of unicorn arts, ultimately choosing separate careers. And one day--a long time after we were young enough to get away with putting on toy tiaras or braiding our manes while singing nursery rhymes--we attempted a reunion. Hmmmm... It was the worse thing we could have ever thought of doing. Too many years had gone by, and we had grown so old and so serious that whatever glued us together in the past was gone. My companions were as bright and remarkable and intelligent and witty and beautiful as ever. They were the same essential creatures of happiness that they were birthed into this world to be. But, sadly, our friendship just couldn't last. And do you know why, Miss Sparkle?"
"Why?" She leaned forward, her mouth agape. "Why couldn't it last?"
"Because friendship is like a song," I said quietly. "Its disparate melodies and chorus can be the most enchanting things to ever light the air." I slowly tilted my head down. I gazed into her eyes solemnly. "But even the most spectacular song means nothing without its bridge. It falls apart. It loses cohesion. It's anything but harmonic. Beautiful things will always be beautiful things, but they're not always destined to remain so together."
Twilight's jaw tensed. She avoided my gaze. For a moment there, I felt she was drawing away faster than the train that had carried Moondancer.
I knew what needed to be said next. I leaned forward and rested my hoof on one of hers. "Look at me, Miss Sparkle."
She did. Weakly so.
"Everything dies," I said. "Everything. We have it within ourselves to delay it, at least, and to do so gracefully, if only we can take the things that are most precious to us and bridge the gaps between us before they grow any deeper. You're more than a smart pony, Miss Sparkle." I smiled gently. "You are a blessed one. Don't let the end of something that has been collapsing all your life deter you from the joys and opportunities you have around you. Don't give into despair, or else something blessed will become something cursed."
She looked at me, her face frail and vulnerable "All the time I've been in Ponyville, I've made it my task to write letters to Princess Celestia, teaching her what I've learned about friendship." She paused as her lip quivered and a tear rolled down her face. "I never thought I'd be writing her about the end of one..." She wanted to say more, but couldn't. Her face cracked, scrunched up, and fell towards the table-top as the tears began flowing.
I enclosed her hoof with both of mine and squeezed it. "Listen to me, Miss Sparkle. Learn from this, feel from it, but don't dwell on it. You have friends now... here and now... in Ponyville. And you haven't lost them."
"I... I don't w-want to lose them t-too..." She sniffled.
"Then seize the moment. Think of the future." My eyes were dry, unlike hers, but I no longer felt angry over it. I smiled with the devilish charm of a teacher who would find wisdom in pranking students and fattening infant dragons. "Be alive while you can, with the friends you have to share it with, and maybe you won't have to worry over writing about the end of anything anymore--" My speech was interrupted by a breath of vapors. I gasped, leaning back and covering my mouth. With wide eyes, I looked out the window.
The moon was shining high in the fallen shroud of night.
My teeth chattered as I hugged myself. "No. Please, no. Not now..."
I heard a ringing sound behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Rarity was marching into Sugarcube Corner. Her mane was frayed from a long day's worth of sewing unknowable lengths of fabric. She yawned, at least in as ladylike a manner as she could afford to, before telekinetically stringing a blue scarf around a coat wrack.
"Oh, good heavens! What a strenuous day! Ohhhhhh Mrs. Caaaaake! Please do tell me it's not too terribly late to order a mint souffle..."
I winced through layers of cold. I gnashed my teeth, shook my head, and desperately whimpered in Twilight's direction. "Miss Sparkle. Please, hear me out. Don't forget about--" I looked up. She was gone. "Tw-Twlight?" I stammered. I looked every which way. I sensed a shadow blindly gliding past me. I spun around once again. My heart skipped a beat.
Twilight was walking across Sugarcube Corner... and she was trotting directly towards a friend. "Uhm... G-good evening, Rarity."
"Twilight! Oh, just the mare I wanted to see!" Rarity stifled a giggle as she leaned against the cake counter, fluttering her eyelashes. "You'll never believe this dress I was ordered to make for Sapphire Shores today! I mean, she's usually a pony of remarkable fashion, but lately she's developed something of a terribly garish taste and..." She stopped in mid speech. Her face paled twice over as she glanced with wide blue eyes at her companion. "Why... Twilight! You look positively awful! What ever is the matter?"
Twilight glanced up, trying to smile. Her cheeks were moist with fresh tears. "I was just... wondering... if... if you..."
"Twilight, darling..." Rarity rested a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "Speak to me! Is everything alright?"
At that, Twilight caved. Twilight melted. Her legs buckled as she nearly sunk to the floor. "No. Everything's not alright." She hiccuped on a sob and covered her face with a shaking hoof. "I-I really need a friend to t-talk to right now..."
Before Twilight could fall, Rarity was there to catch her, to hold her. The two huddled together in the front of Sugarcube Corner. Rarity nuzzled her friend, absorbing every shake and whimper with a gentle hug and sweet smile. "Shhh... There there, darling. Let it out. Then you can tell me all about it..."
From across the room, I swiveled in my seat and clutched my forelimbs to my shivering chest. I felt happy and nauseous all at once. There's no simple way to describe what it means to give up something you've cherished all your life, but some things are best to tear away sooner than later. My smile was merely a practical thing. It carried me past Twilight's blissful release, out of Sugarcube Corner, and into the loyal embrace of night.
"My, my, Starswirl!" Twilight utters from where she sits on the edge of a patio chair. The sun-glinting rooftops of boundless Canterlot apartments loom in the distance. "What an amazing instrumental you have performed in our honor! I almost think of calling it Equestria's National Anthem!"
"Eh, it could have used more drums," Moondancer manages to say before making a juvenile raspberry with her tongue.
"Luna!" Twilight gasps. "How unbecoming of a princess!"
"I thought we were gonna go hunting after dragons!"
"We will once we rid Equestria of the changeling plot!"
"Changelings are stupid! Let's go smack some dragons around!"
"Not until after Starswirl's done with our song--"
"Actually, girls," I stop playing the xylephone briefly.
"Don't you mean 'your highnesses'?" Moondancer does a mock curtsey and rolls her eyes at Twilight.
"Lyraaaaa! You're supposed to stay in character!"
I clear my throat and twirl the xylephone sticks in between my hooves. "No, really. I kind of sort of made this song for the both of you."
Moondancer blinks. "Really? You mean this isn't pretend?"
Twilight jumps down from her high seat. "A song? For us? Really?"
I giggle. "Why not? I feel like singing every time you're both around."
"Heehee! You hear that, Twi? I make her want to sing!"
"Nuh uh! She says we make her want to sing!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Hey!" I squeal briefly, sitting up between them. "This isn't singing! Do you wanna hear the song or not?"
Moondancer fiddles with her hooves. "Did you... really make something this pretty just for us?"
I smile at her. "Yes." I look at Twilight. "And yes. Cuz you're both fun and cool and stuff."
Twilight's face scrunches in perplexion. "But you're always Starswirl the Bearded."
"And you're always having to bark at us like a dog," Moondancer says. At that, Twilight giggles, and she does too.
"Maybe I don't hate it?" I shrug. "Maybe I like being Starswirl the Bearded all the time."
Both girls stare at me. Then at each other. Joined as one, they chirp, "You're weird!" They poke their hooves into me and lean against each other, laughing.
I giggle. I revel in the attention. I revel in them. "So, how about it? Wanna learn the words I wrote?"
"Sure, Lyra!"
"How does it start!"
"Well, like this..." I start plunking the xylophone keys, one after another, in charming awkwardness. "Best. Friends. Sing. Together. Forever--"
"BestFriendsSingTogetherForeverrrrr--" They both let loose in an purposeful, uncoordinated caterwaul.
"Guysss!" I pout. "You're not supposed to shout it!"
"Heeheehee!"
"Hehehehe!"
"Heheh..." I blush and smile. "But were are supposed to do it together."
"Okay."
"Sure thing, Lyra."
"Ahem. Ready?"
"Best. Friends. Sing. Together. Foreverrrrrr..."
We practice. We sing. We hit some notes. We miss some others. The day wears on from gold to red to purple, and no matter how many mistakes we make, we are harmonious.
We are together.
Under the stars, with the hushed breath of the forest as my cadence, I sat on the patio of my cabin. I had my lyre in my hooves. Without looking, I telekinetically toyed with the strings. The aged skin on my brow furrowed under a dim green glow as I sought the notes to a song a little filly had once composed so many years ago, when warmth was something that could be tasted.
As I performed the ancient tune, my melody reached into the future in a desperate bid to bridge the darkness around me, something that was engulfing my life thicker and thicker with each passing day.
I was performing the song alone. It occurred to me that, perhaps, I had always been from the beginning.
Twilight...
Moondancer...
As long as I am alive, I shall do the remembering for all of us. Our friendship will never die.
Background Pony
VII - "Bridge"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: TheBrianJ, Props, Warden, VivaceCapriccioso, and Ben...wherever you may be
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | VIII - Everypony Is Made To Be Loved | Dear Journal,
What does every pony want in life? I mean really want? Do our existences end happily, peacefully, only if we've accomplished all of the things we've ever dreamt of doing? Do all of our achievements and medals and trophies really mean so much to us when the final curtain falls? Are the lengths of our contributions to this world enough to serenade us gently into the cold embrace of death?
For no matter what we do, no matter what we set our minds to, no matter how many factors we struggle with in life--when that life comes to an end, we make our final bows alone. We are solitary in our death, which is a fascinating piece of irony, for we are hardly that solitary in our conception. History has a funny way of starting things with multiplicitous factors, only for them to end in singular, trailing tributaries.
I have a lonely journey ahead of me. I always have. There hasn't been a day when I wasn't meditating on the elegies, on the tempestuous act of unraveling them, on the unknowable future that such an endeavor promises me. In a way, I've been supremely courageous in my musical tasks, dealing with them with as much gusto as any heroine that I've long admired in literature.
But now, as I prepare to scale the most frightening mountain of my trek, as I gear myself for tackling Elegy #8, I do so with great hesitance, because I can't get over just how lonely a task it is. This didn't used to bother me so much. It didn't always make me feel so intensely alone.
Not until just recently. Not until him...
A crown of golden tulips framed a rosy candle burning dimly in the middle of a wooden eating table. I stared at the glistening yellow flower petals. I should have been pouring my eyes over the half-completed music sheet before me instead, but I wasn't. It had been several long weeks in the making, but the eighth elegy was finally finished in my head. The piece could just as easily have been finished on paper, but the only thing in the way of that was me, my hesitance, my fear, and--worst of all--my heart, along with the sickening depths to which it had recently sunk.
When Rarity walked into Sugarcube Corner, I was only residually aware of it. Her hoofsteps were ghostly percussions to a wandering mind. After several minutes, those beats drew closer, as did her sighing voice.
"My stars, what a day! Looks like I'm not the only one exhausted. Ahem. Do excuse me. Is this seat taken?"
There were twenty tulips in all. Twenty budding flowers. Twenty mornings spent trotting into town, only to be greeted by a smile, a voice, and an earthen scent that sent my heart a'flutter, until now. I had preserved them so well. Now I wondered how long it would be until they too withered away. Why are the sweetest things in life so fragile? I can still feel his gentle warm breaths against my muzzle...
"I'm so terribly sorry. Am I breaking your concentration? If so, I'll move along to another seat..."
"Hmm?" I glanced up at Rarity. She stood before me with a steaming cup of coffee floating beside her. Her glittering eyes entreated me and the empty stool on the other side of my table. I glanced down at my music sheets, then at the other tables around us. Every other spot in Sugarcube Corner was densely occupied by clusters of chatting, dining, murmuring ponies. "Oh... Uhm..." I gently smiled up at her, though I doubted my eyes were half as lively. "By all means. Have a seat, Rarity."
She instantly brightened at the sound of her name. "Oh, well if this isn't a treat!" Rarity smiled and sat daintily across from me. After one sip of the coffee mug, she adjusted the scarf around her neck and remarked, "I spend an entire weekend in Canterlot, attending the Gala, surrounded by elite ponies, not a single one of them giving me so much as a second glance. I return to Ponyville, and the first stranger I speak to knows me by name!" She suppressed a giggle and smiled. "We all do well to be reminded where are home truly is. It's a pleasure to be of acquaintance, Miss...?"
"Heartstrings," I murmured. "Lyra Heartstrings."
"My my... I dare say," she stifled an unladylike chuckle. "Your coat has seen better days. Dare I ask what happened, dear?"
I was briefly confused. My limbs flexed, and I again felt the stretch of tiny bandages covering random spots on my body: my leg, a hoof, and a stretch of skin below my left ear.
"Oh. Nothing to be concerned about," I said gently. "Ponyville's been... no more dramatic than usual while you were gone." I didn't bother sugarcoating the edges of that lie.
"Very well," she remarked, swirling the coffee in her magic grasp. I often take for granted how truly intuitive Rarity is capable of being. "If you insist, I won't inquire further."
"Much appreciated," I replied in a low tone. I levitated a pen across the sheet and sketched two more notes of the elegy. The scratching of the quill across the parchment sent my nerves on fire. I could just as easily been chiseling words onto a gravestone. I feared that this scene might become even colder. "You... uh... You were just in Canterlot, hmmm?" It didn't take a genius to detect the lack of enthusiasm in my voice. It took even less of one to notice how little I cared. "Some pretty exciting things were happening there, if I'm not mistaken."
"Exciting? More like 'magical!' 'Marvelous!' 'Supremely fabulous!'" With each utterance, Rarity swooned more and more. She teetered back dramatically in her seat, catching herself with a bright gasp. "Oh, the celebrities! The glamour! The magnificence! It was everything I ever dreamed of!" She sighed long and hard, her drunken smile melting into a mere smirk of contentment as she leaned forward and took another sip of her coffee. "Oh, how I am so terribly glad it is over with."
I blinked. I finally looked her in the face. "You are?"
"Mmmmph!" She nodded, gulped her sip down, and remarked, "Exceedingly so! As delightful an evening as it was, I've never before in my life been witness to so much pompous extravagance, boorish half-attempts at chivalry, and self-inflated pretentiousness on behalf of affluent, civilized ponies! All of those ridiculous details seem amusing from the opposite side of the Equestrian tabloids, but up close and personal--heh--it felt like sewing silk to corduroy with one's teeth!"
"Hmmm..." I grinned slightly. "That's a colorful way to put it."
"Miss Heartstrings, darling, the world gives us colors to dye the truth with, and too much of them are tragically garish." Rarity casually leaned back and swirled the coffee in her telekinetic grasp. "Do forgive me for prattling on like a school-filly, but my calamitous weekend spent in Canterlot has my nerves scattered all helter-skelter. The only silver lining to the whole event has been my friends' company, but since I came home to Ponyville early, I haven't had any close mares to gab with. You know how it is."
"You came home early?"
"Mmmmhmm... I realized that I had a terribly long list of dresses to manufacture, and far too many of them had been put off as I prepared for what I had foolishly expected to be the single greatest occasion of my life." Rarity laughed lightly, rolled her eyes, and clasped the mug gently between two hooves. "Well, now I know the truth. I am most relaxed when I am working. I don't know if you can relate..."
I blinked at her. I tilted my head down and glanced at the music sheets. My ears twitched, as if being stabbed deep in the cartilage with frozen needles. The eighth elegy was a tidal wave of ice rising above the next aching breath. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
"I relax when being talked to," I blurted.
"Well..." Rarity chuckled with relief. "That's good to know."
"Tell me, did you ever meet him?" I asked without thinking, my gaze lingering on the golden crown of tulips between us. "The stallion of your dreams?"
Rarity paused before the next sip. She looked at me, squinted at me, and then leaned towards me. "Have... Have we had this conversation before?"
I felt my heart beating. My teeth chewed pensively on my bottom lip. I reminded myself that sometimes the only cure to an awkward moment is a blind dose of truth.
"We... uhm... we spoke last week, just before you left for Canterlot with your friends, Rarity," I said. I looked calmly at her. "You made a gorgeous yet simple dress for me. The cream-colored one with the gold floral pattern?"
"Did I, now?" Rarity's face was scrunched with thick confusion. She leaned back and ran a hoof through her mane as her eyes traveled the ceiling. "Indeed. Sounds like an ensemble I'm capable of making. Why can't I just...?" Her lips moved through a minefield of unintelligible words. She ultimately gulped and produced a sheepish smile. "Good heavens, my mind really has been in another place entirely these past few weeks, hasn't it? My supreme apologies, Miss Heartstrings. I can only ask, did such a dress serve its marvelous purpose?"
My eyes briefly fell to the floor. "It's a spectacular gown, and I couldn't have asked for anything lovelier. So, thank you."
"Well, you're more than welcome! From the bottom of my heart, though I wish I could say the same about my mind!" She produced a flippant laugh. "Oh, if only all dresses met a gorgeous fate equal to the genius I put into them. I had the most fantastic gown made for the Gala, and I'm afraid it has become horribly acquainted with applesauce and cake frosting."
I glanced at her in horror. "That... That sounds terrible..."
"Mmm... He was," she said, briefly glaring daggers into the walls.
"Huh?"
"Oh... Uhm... Yes, that..." Rarity rolled her eyes. "Alas, I should have spent the entirety of that night with my friends and not in the company of a regal oaf whose manners extended as far as the silver spoon stuck in his mouth." She tossed me a tranquil smile. "Miss Heartstrings, I hope you learn this lesson with far less drama than I did, but true love is hardly anything you ever stumble upon. What fate delivers, it does so without announcement, and we are fools to think that we can predict it like a pegasus molds the weather clouds."
"Why do you say that, Rarity?" I asked her calmly. "You strike me as a romantic."
"Oh, and I have most exceedingly been such the majority of my life! But life is short, and it's never too late to reassess things."
"Like what kind of things?"
"Silly things. Embarrassing things. Enchanted notions of a whimsical filly. They're all charming to conceive, but a lot more difficult to live out. I had only wished the spotlight of Canterlot wasn't on me when I came to terms with how utterly disastrous a single stallion's rudeness would be to my childish dreams."
"Whatever may have happened to you at the Gala, Rarity, I'm sure it was only a setback." I scratched three more musical notes into existence. I stared into the abyss of Luna's compositions, murmuring. "Your dreams can still come true."
"Hmmm... methinks I am not the only romantic at this table," Rarity said. She leaned forward with a warm smile. "At least, I may not be the most zealous one. Tell me, Miss Heartstrings, if I may be so bold as to inquire: have you ever survived an impossible infatuation?"
I stopped once more in the midst of signing my life away to endless night. My eyes swam over the golden tulips. Slowly, I looked up at her.
I smiled.
"Good morning to you, angel," he said. He smiled. He hoofed me something golden... like the silken texture of his coat.
I mirrored his expression, albeit with an ounce of bashfulness. Nevertheless, I telekinetically plucked the offering from his grasp. It was a tulip: fragrant, delicate, and glistening in the breath of dawn. I stood at the north entrance to Ponyville three weeks before my Sugarcube Corner conversation with Rarity. As always, I had my saddlebag and lyre with me. As always, the town was coming to life with hustling and bustling ponies. And, as always, he was there in the middle of it all, gazing and smiling at nopony, nopony but me.
"Why thank you," I returned. My cheeks would have been burning red by that point if only the darling moment hadn't become something of a ritualistic dance for me. And yet my heart frolicked with each beat that accompanied his amnesiac offering of smiles, breaths, and petals. "Well, if you aren't a charmer," I said. I already knew his reaction. I didn't care; I wanted to hear it again. I wanted to hear it forever and ever.
"I am only charmed," he said. He bowed his head low, a sapphiric fountain of mane hair falling loosely about his lithe neck. "Welcome to Ponyville," he produced, and then was gone like a dream, shuffling towards a cluster of rose bushes that he was presently trimming as soon as I had arrived.
Halfway through trotting past him, I paused. I stared at the tulip that I was levitating before me. The object was simply a bright part of a plant. I could very easily have plucked a thousand of those things from the earth and made a wreathe with them.
After all, the world is full of flowers. It's sentiment that's a sparse thing, something that fills us and makes us grow in a desert world made dry with fear and isolation. I had several elegies to unravel, several deathly tunes to trek fearfully through, and yet a single tulip was enough to remind me that in a strange world of cold, there was something warm worth striving for.
Another dawn had arrived, and I had my oasis. I happily lifted the tulip and stuck its stem behind my ear. I gazed back, produced a deep breath, and reluctantly trotted on to my destination. With that, the ritual was complete. I counted the hours until the next sunrise.
His name is Morning Dew. He's an earth pony, a gardener, an artist. He paints his canvas all over town, digging up soil and planting beautiful bouquets. He spreads color like a song expands a melody. Every bright shade of yellow, deep hue of red, and tranquil splash of blue owes its expert arrangement to him.
To the best of my knowledge, he is the one and only flower-planter in Ponyville. Sure, there are famous vendors in downtown such as Daisy and Roseluck. But they only sell flowers. They don't live them, not like Morning Dew does.
He's awake at the crack of dawn everyday. The rising sun shines on him and the earth in equal lustre. He spots every weed and casts it away before the golden glow rising over the horizon can highlight such a blemish.
Ponyville is a beautiful town, but it didn't get that way on its own. The village is perfect because his work is perfect, as he is perfect: perfectly concentrated, perfectly poised, and perfectly balanced. He trudges his hooves joint-deep in dirt and mud, and yet he comes out of it looking like a ballet dancer. No amount of grime or sediment can dirty his complexion, for he is always glowing, as if happy to be alive, for somewhere and somehow he has discovered a secret in a simple existence that we all envy for the very fact that we can't remotely be as graceful as him.
And every day--every single day--I cross the path of such a genius earth pony, such a saint of diligence and humility, and every single time--without fail--he stops what he's doing. He quits in the dead-middle of his masterpiece. He stops perfecting the all-too-important world to look at me, to smile at me, to give me a flower... and then to give me something more.
"Good morning to you, angel."
I took the flower from him yet again and tried not to collapse. The world never spins. Morning Dew just looks at me and I become dizzy. "Well, if you aren't the charmer," I said. I almost wished I had sung it that time.
"I am only charmed," he sang back. Yet again, he bowed, then disappeared back into his muddied stage, struggling to eke color and beauty from a stubborn pit of compacted moss in front of the post office. The air about him was stained with labor and sweat, but I was not disgusted. Somewhere from deep within the moment a fragrance was entrancing my senses, so that I struggled to keep the tulip levitating in front of me. I pretended that only the simple things in this world were capable of making my heart beat so, and then I pretended that they could just as easily be ignored.
I failed. Tucking the new flower behind my ear, I trotted forcibly away while I still had strength in my legs to do so.
I'm not the only pony that Morning Dew talks to, that Morning Dew greets. He talks to friends and strangers all the same. He smiles at passing ponies and chats it up with them for as long as he can afford to be distracted from his expert gardening.
However, with all of these ponies whom he converses with, whom he meets and greets, he calls none of them "angel," none of them but me. I know this. I've seen him, watched him. Gorgeous fillies--mares that could make the cover of Equestrian Fashion magazines--he merely calls "ma'am" or "miss" at best. Even when ponies as beautiful as Rarity or Fluttershy walk by, he goes only so far as to call them "madame" with utmost gentility.
It is only with me that he steeps to poetics, that a certain spark twinkles in his blue eyes, that the flecks of dirt on his coat melt away as his expression brightens at my immediate appearance. Whatever that spark is, it motivates him to pluck the exact same flower--a golden tulip--from his gardening wagon and hoof it my away, along with those five priceless words:
"Good morning to you, angel."
This time, I had to stifle a giggle. It was a dismal morning. Both of us were drenched. The pegasi were giving the landscape an early shower so as to clear the skies for a picnic later that afternoon. The streets of Ponyville were practically flooded. Half the restaurants and shops weren't even open yet. The morning sun was nothing more than a gray splash of refracted light beams. I didn't even know what I was doing there, plodding through the mud, letting my hoodie get soaked to the sleeves, until he said those words, and I realized that even all of the misery in the world couldn't stop him from repeating what would be--at best--a tragically forgotten piece of history.
"I don't suppose this thing folds out to become a yellow umbrella?" I said with a dripping smile.
"If it did, it'd make my job a lot easier," he dripped back, stifling a laugh of his own. We were two souls swimming in an absurd puddle called "life," and it was nothing worth sighing at. He returned to his muddy toil. I returned to my rainy walk. Neither of us returned to sanity.
That afternoon, I couldn't stop sneezing, even as the clouds dissipated. It was all right, though. I felt the flower behind my earlobe in between the violent attacks, and my smile never went away.
What does it mean? What triggers this response in him? What is it that motivates Morning Dew--upon first sight of me--to say those same words, to perform the same gesture, to reach into the same flower pot and deplete its golden treasures one stem at a time, one day at a time, one smile at a time, as the two of us spin our isolated circles into the future?
Sure, I can accept it as simple flattery. Only... I don't want to accept it as "simple flattery." The idea has no meaning to it, no heart, no motivation beyond a generic response to a persistent stimulus. It'd be the same as Spike complimenting me on my hoodie, Rarity insisting she make me a new jacket, or Rainbow Dash questioning why she just rammed into my cabin out of nowhere.
I've come to accept the citizens of Ponyville over the past year as friends, acquaintances, and even family. At the same time, I have to step back and reexamine these "neighbors" of mine, realizing that they'll only ever be hollow imitations of friends, at least as far as I'm concerned. Every conversation I have with them is a first conversation. Every meeting I have is a first impression. Whenever I want to broach a subject that I've discussed with them before, I have to spill forth a series of sentences that guide our dialogue down a pre-programmed stratum, so that touching base with another soul has as much delicacy as punching buttons in some unfeeling machine.
But with Morning Dew, I don't have to punch any buttons. I don't have to make any effort to dredge a response. I only have to exist, to be visible, to walk past his blue-eyed gaze--when he's all too terribly busy with his priceless tasks of floral art--and suddenly I'm the target of something so sweet, so sincere, so... deliciously sappy that it pains me to think of any single piece of it being hollow.
So why is it that I summon such a response from him? Why do I light up his day, when he's as handsome and majestic as the sunrise himself? Why does he donate me his smile, a smile that would make any self-respecting filly crumble to her knees, and then top that off with a flower and a greeting and a regal bow?
Why am I Morning Dew's angel?
I think about this constantly. I ponder about it. I obsess over it. And sooner than I realize, discovering the eighth elegy is no longer the forefront of my mind. Something else is. Somepony else is, and in spite of all my years of scholarly research, musical compositions, and adult studies, I cannot help but feel like I am once again a whimsical schoolfilly.
"Well, if you ask me, Miss Heartstrings, there's nothing at all wrong with it," Twilight Sparkle said with a smile.
I stood in the center of the library, summoning a protection field over my glowing horn. I meditated carefully, but all of the strain was gone. It was no longer a difficult task. The only thing that took an awful lot of effort was convincing Twilight that this mint-green stranger needed a lesson at all to begin with.
"What do you mean there's nothing wrong with it?" I groaned, eyeing the green dome forming above my crown. "Somepony my age should know better than to humor a schoolyard crush."
"A schoolyard what, now?"
I glanced at her with a sour expression. "You heard me. What else am I going to call it?"
Twilight giggled and paced around me. "It's only natural to feel attracted to another pony, regardless of the severity of that fixation." As she spoke, she carefully judged the progress of my protection field. "Why, I've read in several psychological studies that a distinct lack of infatuations in early adulthood is suggestive of acute depression..."
"I came to you because I've heard a great deal about your innate wisdom, Miss Sparkle," I muttered. I briefly clenched my jaw as I extended the emerald dome into a translucent parasol above me. "Do you have any advice to give that you haven't gotten from reading books?"
"You're talking to the wrong pony," she said, almost chuckling. "My experience with courtship is about as detailed as my experience with--oh, I dunno--street hockey. Hehehe." She blushed slightly, her violet eyes adorably searching the floor for an exit from this topic. "Besides, my head isn't exactly in the right place at the moment. Just before you came, I was preparing a speech to give to Princess Celestia when I meet with her at the Gala two weeks from now."
"Oh. I'm sorry." The dome above me began to dissipate and wobble. "I obviously came at a bad time--"
"N-no! It's fine!" She gestured in front of me, smiling to placate my worries. "I'm happy to tutor somepony in magic once in a while. Besides..." She rolled her eyes at herself. "Princess Celestia's always telling me in letters that I need to take breaks every once in a while. And if there's anything I want to prove to her when we meet again, it's that I've learned a lot of things over the past year."
"I have no doubt that you'll have a lot to show for yourself," I said to her with a smile. "Along with all your friends."
"Heehee... Perhaps so." She cleared her throat and paced around me again as I reformed the dome. "Does he only give flowers to you?"
"Huh?"
"This stallion you were talking about," Twilight remarked with a wink. "You said he gives you a tulip every morning. I may not exactly be an expert on romance, but that's showing some persistence, don't you think? Heehee... When most guys commit to a single act, it's a sign."
"A sign of what?"
"You obviously mean a great deal to him for the stallion to be performing the same gesture on a regular basis, unless of course he's just as forgetful as a gold fish--Oh, wait..." Twilight's face scrunched up cutely. "That myth's been debunked... or has it?"
"I... Uhm..." I smiled nervously. "I wouldn't put too much stock in it."
"What, goldfish?"
"No, I mean... erm..." I sighed. "Never mind."
"Anyways, I think it's perfectly fine to still be infatuated at our ages," Twilight said, smiling gently at me. "It's especially fine when you have the target of such a fixation mutually interested in you."
"You... Y-you really think that's the case?" I stammered.
She rambled on, "In fact, many mares would consider you lucky in our day and age. After all, following the Great Changeling Incursion of the Early Classical Era, the gene pool's never exactly recovered. There's still one male born to every five females in Equestria. If you're actively looking for a very special somepony, and someone compatible is right there in front of you, then it's almost a crime to not pursue a relationship! Erm... metaphorically speaking, of course."
"But..." I bit my lip. I was already dreading the number of minutes until this conversation, like so many thousands of others before it, would evaporate into oblivion, and I would once again be alone with my thoughts and shadows. "What if I'm not in... not in a place to be looking for a special somepony?" I gulped, and the emerald shield above me wavered slightly. "What if I just can't afford it?"
"Shhh... Concentrate..." Twilight stood before me and gently touched my shoulders.
I sighed. I took a deep breath. I gazed into the face of my foalhood friend.
She gazed back, my anchor, and smiled. "It's a sad day when we convince ourselves that we can't afford the things that will only make us happy."
Her innocence was heartwarming, though I expected a surge of regret to trail the end of it. I spoke before I could think that far. "What if it's just a paper moon? How would I know it's something worth affording?"
"Well, if I were in your place, and I wanted to pursue something... well... anything..." Twilight sat back and tapped her chin while thinking aloud. "I'd go about it scientifically."
I made a face. "Scientifically?"
"I'd make tons of observations."
I want to tell Twilight that I have. I want to tell her that my life as of late has been nothing but observations. But how could I do that without coming across as a total sap, a pathetic dreamer, or a silly filly with sparkles in her eyes?
Besides, how would the learned mare relate? There's no way I can instill in her the same burst of excitement, the same flutter of the heart each time I hear his voice. Every morning, I expect him to ignore me. And every morning, to my immeasurable joy, I'm disappointed. I may be invisible to the history books, but I am as real to him as oxygen. He breathes me in, and then he breathes the immortal words out.
"'Good morning to you, angel.'"
"Seriously?" Applejack exclaimed, raising an eyebrow beneath the shade of her hat. "He calls you 'angel?'"
"Uhm... Y-yes," I nervously confirmed, all the while planting seeds in front of my cabin. "And then he gives me a flower."
"What, like a rose?"
"A tulip, actually."
"A tulip?"
"Erm... Y-yes?" I fidgeted with my task. She reached in and guided my hooves so that I planted the seeds expertly apart in the plowed soil. I thanked her with a nod and continued on. "Is... is that a bad thing?"
"Well, it's a might bit peculiar." She brushed a few golden bangs beneath the rim of her hat and leaned against a parked wagon full of apple baskets. "Most times, stallions fancy offerin' roses with them pick-up lines."
"Is that what you think it is?" I briefly frowned. "A pick-up line?"
"You wantin' to hear my advice, ain'tcha?" She smirked. "He's baitin' ya, missy. Oldest trick in the book."
"A book you've read through and through, I imagine."
"If ya mean to question my experience, then them's some fields you don't wanna be harvestin'."
"Why not, Miss Applejack?"
She groaned and adjusted her hat. "Because..." Her nostrils flared at the recollection. "The frist time I ever caught the fancy of a stallion, I.... mmfmmffmmgh..."
I paused and squinted up at her. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Nnngh... I..." Her words once again melted into indistinguishable mumbles.
"Applejack, I know you just met me, but I'm a musician. I can't be expected to make a tune for something without lyrics."
"I said, I knocked him onto his keister!"
I did a double-take. "You bucked him to the ground?"
"It was a knee-jerk reaction!" Applejack exclaimed, waving her front limbs with emphasis. "He marched right onto my family farm while we were plantin' our fresh seeds and he had the gall to put his leg around me and whisper in my ear! He's plum lucky it was me who gave him a face full of dirt! If Big Mac got to him, he would have ended up with no behind, much less one he couldn't sit on for a week!"
"Hehehehehe..."
She briefly frowned at me. "T'ain't funny! The stallion was a heavy breathin' varmint with no respect for mares or personal space for that matter!"
"And this has to do with my situation how?" I smiled up at her from where I continued planting the seeds one at a time. "The pony I described is a perfect gentlecolt. His worst sin is flattering me and returning back to his work like nothing happened."
"Hmmph..." Applejack sighed, dusting her hat off absent-mindedly while speaking, "Yer right, I suppose. Reckon not every stallion in the world deserves to have his fifth leg cut off..."
"Now there's the spirit."
"But they do stand to sit on it once in a while," she grumbled.
"Awww... Miss Applejack..."
She sighed, then softly trotted towards me with a smile. "Look, Miss Heartstrings, darlin'." She sat beside me and took the seeds, planting them so I could watch up close. "I don't mean to be sendin' you the wrong impression. Each and every pony swings to a different tune. I reckon you know all about that. Me?" She paused briefly. "I'm sure there will come a day when I exchange the pullin' of the plow for the rockin' of a cradle, but that time just hasn't come yet. In all honesty, I'm so plum busy workin' on my farm, that I hardly even give it a second thought. Why, heck, I've been up to my ears this week in gettin' enough apples ready to make a samplin' table for the Gala twelve days from now."
"I'm sorry," I said. "And here I am interrupting you--"
"Don't you sweat it none!" She said in a sharp voice, though she smiled. "I wouldn't be the pony this village depends on if I didn't lend a hoof--or an ear--to strangers." She cleared her voice and said, "But when it comes to meetin' that special somepony, I'm just not qualified to lend advice, considerin' I don't plan on settlin' down until I've got all of my apples in a row... heh... to put it lightly."
"But if you knew that a pony had a crush on you..." I winced. "If you thought that a pony might be infatuated with you, wouldn't you feel flattered?"
"Well..."
"Wouldn't you want to learn more about him, if even to entertain the very notion?"
"Perhaps." Applejack shrugged. "Really, it depends on what a stallion is lookin' for. Tis a cryin' shame that so many of them only want one thing... heh... and t'ain't apple buckin'."
I fidgeted, my eyes falling to the dirt road in front of my cabin. "Just... Just how do I figure it out?"
"Miss Heartstrings, if you've asked any pony in town about me, they'll tell you a thing or two about my brutal honesty." She smiled, as if with glowing pride. "If y'all are really so torn about a handsome colt lookin' ya over, you just gotta be straightforward."
"How do you mean?"
"You gotta trot up and ask him straight to his face just what he means by it!"
I trotted straight into town early one day to do just that, and Morning Dew didn't greet me. I couldn't decide whether to feel devastated or relieved. However, I didn't have to ponder about the topic long. Soon, I heard his voice, and those of many others on the northern fringes of town.
Curious, I trotted past the corner of a general store and gazed into a clearing. In the background, several construction ponies in orange garb were hammering and chiseling away at an abandoned hotel building in disarray. Before this noisy scene, in the spotlight of the morning sun, was a group of young ponies. In the center of which were two familiar souls with familiar voices, nuzzling each other under the gaze of their mutual companions.
"Well, let's see it!" Exclaimed Thunderlane. Blossomforth and two other pegasi were craning their necks beside him to get a better view. "Give us a look at what sealed the deal!"
Caramel looked at Wind Whistler. Wind Whistler blushed. She hid her smile into Caramel's mane while blindly raising her left hoof. A kaleidoscopic shine of glittering reflections anointed the small crowd of friends. A diamond-studded band was adorning Wind Whistler's limb.
"Awwwwww!" Blossomforth cooed. "It's fantastic!"
"Yeah!" Flitter nodded, her eyes bright. "It's the most dazzling hooflet I've ever seen!"
"A very good find, Caramel," Morning Dew said with a smile.
Thunderlane squinted. "How could you afford it, dude?"
"Thunder!" Blossomforth hissed and thwapped him with her wing.
"I'm serious!"
"Eheh..." Caramel's ears drooped as he rubbed one of his hooves with another. "I... uhm... I dug them up myself."
"Did you now?" Morning Dew inquired.
"Only had to fight five diamond dogs in the process."
"Really, dude?" Thunderlane smirked.
Caramel bit his lip. "Okay, maybe three dogs."
Wind Whistler cleared her voice and leaned her smiling face in. "Well, if you ask me, it's the most romantic thing anypony's ever done in this village."
Cloudchaser giggled. "So is that what made you say 'yes?'"
Wind Whistler and Caramel looked at each other. After a deep gaze, they nuzzled and it was Wind Whistler who spoke again, "Actually, we had planned for this over the last few months."
"Ever since we became Souls of Solstice last Summer Sun Celebration."
"And we decided to start a business of our own," Wind Whistler explained. "A delivery business."
"Really?" Morning Dew's eyes lit up. "That sounds like a fantastic idea!"
"What's this I hear about the business of marryin'?" Uttered a mare's voice. The group looked over to see one of the construction workers trotting over from the noisy site before the hotel building. With a shrug, the pony removed her hard hat and shook loose a lengthy fountain of snow-white mane hair. There now stood a remarkably pretty mare in the midst of them, clad in orange garb and brown tool belts. Her green eyes reflected the sparkling hooflet on Wind Whistler's limb as she smirked wryly. "Well, whaddya know. Caramel and Windy's gettin' hitched? About dang time!"
"It isn't really much of a surprise, is it, Ambrosia?" Wind Whistler exclaimed, blushing.
"Girl," Ambrosia said, chuckling. "I see everythang from where I work all over town. I haven't seen ya usin' them wings of yours in half a year, on account of ya bein' tied to Caramel's hide and all!"
"They've been the most adorable couple in Ponyville!" Flitter said, her wing-tips living up to her name.
"You would think that!" Cloudchaser teased her.
"Hey, just because you haven't had a coltfriend in a year--"
"Ohhh, you're gonna get it now!"
"Girls, it's such a beautiful day." Morning Dew chided the sisters. "Save killing each other for when you're home alone. After all, this is..." Suddenly, Morning Dew teetered. I watched curiously from afar as his blue eyes shut halfway, and he leaned limply to his side.
"Wuh oh." Ambrosia craned her neck. Her face momentarily paled with concern, then all too quickly melted into a wry smirk. "It's happenin' again."
"Hey, Morning." Thunderlane nudged Morning Dew with one wing. "Stay with us, buddy."
Morning Dew snapped out of it. His eyes blinked until they were fully open again. "Ahem. Eheheheh... do forgive me. I'm just happy to hear the good news."
"We can tell," Ambrosia said, winking. She looked over to the nuzzling couple. "I think it's fantastic. Any chance us ponies can witness yer nuptials?"
"The wedding's going to be in a month and a half from now," Caramel said. "It's not really anything too fancy. We'll be renting town hall's meeting room for a day."
"The whole town's invited!"
"Hehehe... Yes..." Caramel took a deep breath. "I can hardly believe that this is all happening. Months ago, I was almost completely convinced I would have to leave Ponyville to start a new life."
"Funny how fate is more often than not swayed by love," Morning Dew remarked.
"Ugh... Lay it on thick, why don't ya?" Ambrosia's stammering voice cracked slightly.
"I mean it, Amber!" Morning Dew gestured with his hoof. "Witness for yourself! Have you seen a happier couple?"
"As a matter of fact, I have!" She grinned rosily at him. "My folks weren't just doin' their taxes when they made me and my two young brothers, Morning."
"Ugh, dear Celestia." Thunderlane rolled his eyes while Blossomforth giggled. I noticed for the first time that a tiny little colt was standing beside Thunderlane's side. He blinked with quizzical innocence while all of the adults conversed and laughed around the scene.
"Well, we're headed to Sugarcube Corner to celebrate," Wind Whistler said. "Everypony's invited to come, of course."
"We'll talk more about the wedding and this delivery business we've got planned!" Caramel exclaimed, his sapphire eyes alive with excitement.
"I may join you fine ponies later," Morning Dew said. "I can't rightly abandon the work I have to do."
"Same here, y'all," Ambrosia added. "Besides, I've been around sawdust and sweating workponies all day. I'd just stink up a pretty place like the Corner."
"Heh, somehow I doubt it, Amber," Blossomforth said. She looked at the others. "Well, what are we waiting for?"
Wind Whistler giggled. "Come on, everypony!" She and Caramel were the first to trot away, side by side. Cloudchaser and Flitter followed. Thunderlane and Blossomforth soon marched up the rear. Only one equine figure lingered.
It was the colt, a tiny pegasus at that. I suddenly recognized him as Thunderlane's little brother. What was his name again? Tremor? Quake? Boomer? His face was blank, until it grew longer. I noticed that his lonesome gaze was being cast in a direction that no other pony was looking towards the entire time. With the careful precision of a well-practiced observer, I trailed his eyesight across the lengths of Ponyville.
Where it landed was on a patch of grass where three young ponies were having a picnic. They were all the colt's age and just as bright and innocent. The trio was hardly a rare sight for the likes of downtown Ponyville. Scootaloo, of course, I recognized immediately. The other two fillies I had seen before. It took me a few seconds to process the information, but I soon determined that they were the sisters to Applejack and Rarity respectfully.
The three crusaders were scribbling various things onto a sheet of paper, undoubtedly a brazen to-do list of experimental talent-hunting. Scootaloo said something, and Applejack's sister giggled. Rarity's young sibling reacted differently, breaking into a brief song to tease Scootaloo before the orange pegasus suddenly swept her in a giggling tackle.
Thunderlane's brother blinked from afar. A sigh escaped his lips, something that was remarkably somber and lonesome for a colt his age, or so I thought. I saw his tiny wings drooping on either side of him, so that when I glanced once more between him and the fillies in the distance, I made a sudden connection, and I didn't know whether to feel humored or sympathetic. Perhaps both.
"Rumble? Didn't you hear?!" Thunderlane's voice boomed from the distance. "We're headed to Sugarcube Corner!"
"But... But I was just--" Rumble's tiny voice squeaked.
"Come on, pipsqueak! Don't let me catch you dragging your hooves! Dad says I'm to look out for you!"
Rumble's head hung towards the ground. His wings twitched one last time, and he trotted firmly--but slowly--away from what he had been gazing at, eventually joining his brother and his brother's friends in their trek across town.
Morning Dew's voice, as always, broke me from my silent watch. "Well, that is certainly good news. For the longest time, I was frankly worried about Caramel." He turned and smiled at Ambrosia. "It's remarkable how his and Wind Whistler's life turned for the best."
"Stranger things have happened in this town." Ambrosia nodded. She slapped the hard hat back onto her head. "But you don't see me complainin'." She turned and smiled at the stallion. "Why, Morning, yer not jealous, are ya?"
"Hmm? What are you going on about now, Amber?" He smirked.
She giggled, betraying the rough exterior produced by her working gear. "You always have struck me as a bit of a romantic, what with all yer flower pluckin' and all." She winked. "The way you gush over Caramel and Windy." Her jaw tensed slightly. "I figured you wanna be hitched yerself someday."
"Heh..." Morning dug his hoof briefly into the ground. "I doubt that's gonna be happening anytime soon."
"Why are the nicest ponies always married to their work?"
"It's not that, Amber." Morning Dew sighed. He turned around, his face sweeping the village in a brief but immaculate deadpan. "I guess I've yet to meet that very special somepony..."
His gaze met me, only it didn't. As soon as I my ears heard those words, I vanished, hiding like an escaped criminal against the obstructing wall of a buildingside beyond his vision. I felt my breath coming out in pathetic little pants. My throat had knotted up, and my chest heaved like a zeppelin on the breaking point. I fiddled with my hoodie's sleeves. If I could have somehow hidden my entire body into that sweaterjacket, I would have.
What is wrong with me? Why is it that every little thing he says mean so much? Why am I excited, entranced, horrified, and mesmerized by every tiny movement of his eyes? I'm a better pony than this. I'm a self-respecting adult, a musician, an artist and a scholar.
And yet, I was giggling. Shivers were attacking my limbs. The deathly tendrils of Nightmare Moon's curse were surging through my system, and yet I was smiling. I was electrified, floating like a crazed pony in the center of Ponyville, set afire by a name, a voice, and idea after idea... all of them half as rosy as my burning cheeks must have looked.
In life, we are all looking for something. I was looking for an answer to the elegies, or so I had long thought. It occurred to me that I was secretly searching for something more, something that I had been pursuing since I was born, long before any curse stranded me there in Ponyville. To think that maybe--just maybe--a stallion like Morning Dew was looking for the same thing to... or the same one...
No. I can't afford to think of anything so silly or fanciful. I have a situation to deal with. I have a magical imprisonment to break myself free of. That is all that matters. That should be all that matters. I should stop entertaining this... this... this deliriously happy stupidity. What life can I expect to win for myself if I don't simply move forward?
I felt exhausted, breathless, dizzy. I realized just how tired I was of running in place, encouraged by the hopeful yet fallacious notion of "moving forward." Everything stopped making sense when my heart raced like it did, fueled by the trace fumes of Morning Dew's voice. I had to regain my senses. I had to distract myself. I had to throw myself into the presence of somepony who was a million times more prone to delirium than myself, just so I could wake up to my senses.
"And everypony will see my dresses--will be amazed by my craftponyship and finesse--and we will be the talk of all of Canterlot!" Rarity was already swooning halfway through her dramatic utterance. She sat on a stool across from me, a half-altered cloak draped across her lap, as her voice rang across the fabulous lengths of the Carousel Boutique. "We will be the belles of the ball, all six of us! And even Princess Celestia herself, an immortal who knows no boundaries to time, will forever remember the night that we came to bring shine and beauty to her annual Gala!"
I smiled as I listened to her, my chin propped up on a pair of hooves. My ears twitched happily as I absorbed her enchanted musings. In truth, bringing the cloak for her to alter was just an excuse for... for this. I very much needed this, a distraction, a dream within a dream, even if it was her dream. It was a welcome respite from mine.
"Pinkie Pie's bright gown will infect ponies around her with her unique bounciness and foalish enthusiasm! Applejack's ensemble evokes class, so surely it will help her sell countless apples from her bounty! Rainbow Dash's gown will dazzle the Wonderbolts! Twilight's dress will instill her mentor with pride! And--dear heaven--don't get me started on my masterpiece, Fluttershy's dress!"
A warm breath escaped my lips as I listened to her gush about every dress she had made for the upcoming Gala.. I was staring at Rarity, and yet--suddenly--I wasn't. I saw Wind Whistler standing in the center of Town Hall, an hour after a young couple's vows had been exchanged. She was clad in a snow-white gown of pure satin, and Caramel was awash in her beauty. Together, the newly-weds danced and nuzzled each other as all the surrounding guests watched, applauded, and ultimately joined in the gentle swing of hooves themselves. I was among them, standing alone in the shadows. The minutes were measured in my sighs, until I heard a gentle series of hoofsteps coming to a stop beside me. I looked up, and a breath instantly escaped my lungs. Morning Dew was there. The light of the wedding reception bathed him in a soft amber, highlighting the silken gloss of his immaculate gold coat. He smiled and lifted a hoof my way. Did he actually want to dance with me? I was a perfect stranger; I would forever be. I should have refused, but some cosmic force pulled my hoof towards his, accepting his gesture, set afire by the possibility that we could be dancing together, side by side, ear to ear, and I would finally get a chance to hear him call me "angel" again, only this time so close to me... and so close to my beating heart...
"And then, when the night is alive with stars and music, I will finally get a chance to meet... him!" Rarity's voice broke through my dreamy cloud.
I snapped out of it, my eyes wide. Some stallion's warm smile flashed in a panicked blink. "What about him?! I... erm..." I gulped and smiled nervously. "Who?"
Rarity squinted awkwardly at me. It felt as though the two of us had been mutually woken up from some fitful enchantment. "Is... is something the matter, dear?"
"Erm... No." I cleared my throat and shifted nervously on the stool. "What makes you think that somepony's the morning, dew? Uhmm... I m-mean..." I seethed, shook my blushing cranium, and took a deep breath. "You... erm... you were going on about the night being 'alive with stars and music?'"
"Mmmmmm... Yes." Rarity's eyes sparkled with more than the noonday light filtering in through the windows. Her pale features melted under a deep rosiness blossoming to her cheeks. "I can see it all now. I'll be trotting into the polished chambers of the royal palace, a stranger to everypony's eyes, and yet a glorious sight to behold in my stunning dress. Everypony will wonder just how a simple mare from Ponyville could be dressed in such a way as to be the envy of the most elite and regal of equines. And then he will see me, and his heart will be set aflame with curiosity and awe. He will have to know just who this special pony is. He will abandon his entire royal entourage, just so he could march across the palace on his lonesome and raise my hoof to his lips for a kiss, then ask me to dance just so that I could bless him with my presence--"
"You..." I narrowed my gaze on her. "You have your hopes set on capturing the attention of an Equestrian prince?"
"Well, I most certainly don't intend to make the palace groundskeeper swoon, darling." She let loose a flippant lap.
There are times in life when it's perfectly righteous to giggle like a pony having just visited the dentist.
In response, Rarity merely rolled her eyes. "Hmmph! Is it really such a shameful fantasy for a mare my age to cling to?"
"Ahem." I finally recovered from my tittering outburst. "Well, it certainly is... fantastical..."
"If you ask me, Miss... Miss..."
"Heartstrings."
"I pity ponies who completely grow up," she said. "Really, I do." She telekinetically threaded a needle through my cloak, patching up the tiny holes left in the fabric. "We are the sum of our dreams. Some of us--those who are artists--are even defined by them. What is life if not a canvas worth coloring as much as we would dare to?"
I smiled. "You have the most magical night in your life just around the corner, Miss Rarity," I said. "It's hardly shameful to indulge in a dream that suddenly has the chance of being realized."
"Darling, it should never be shameful to indulge," she said with a wink. "So long as we can afford to tease fantasy with the bits of reality we merit. Only fate knows who I will or won't meet at the Gala, but I surely won't--for even a second--lose sight of that which I've anticipated since I was a tiny little foal."
"And that tiny little foal wanted to become a princess through courtship?" I asked.
Rarity gave an airy laugh. "Miss Heartstrings, surely you too had fanciful dreams when you were just a filly!"
I shrugged. "Being first chair in the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra comes to mind."
"Do not attempt to fool me any more than you fool yourself, darling." Rarity leaned forward and implored the gentler parts of my soul with her eyes. "Certainly somewhere in that learned mind of yours is a romantic dream still unrealized."
"A... romantic dream?"
"Mmmmhmmm. Yes. A notion, a fantasy, an aspiration that is larger and sweeter than life as you currently pretend to know it."
He smiles at me. He gives me the flower. I'm his precious angel, and he reminds me of it. I have the urge to tell him that if I'm an angel, then I had lost my wings ages ago. No sweet seraphim should ever be stuck on this earth, countless leagues from home. It isn't until he looks at me with a sad expression that I realize that I've been rambling. I apologize and try to leave. He anchors me in place. He insists that I explain what I mean. He's curious. He cares about me and what's plaguing my spirit.
So I tell him. We go for a walk through the woods as the conversation blooms. I pretend to be interested in the weather, in the sunlight, in the life glimmering all around us, in anything but what I'm actually staring at. His blue eyes entreat me with as much magnificence as his smile, and soon I am telling him everything. I tell him about it all, about the curse, about the cold shivers that assault me on a regular basis, about the days that I spend alone in a sea of happy souls that drown me as much as they inspire me.
And he understands. I am utterly shocked. How could he understand? Is he pretending just to make me feel better? But no, he understands. And he explains it. Gently grasping my hooves in his, he looks into my eyes and shares it. An angel clipped of her wings looks for other ways to fly. It's no wonder that I'm always trying to make song; I'm trying to catch a wind that is forever lost to me. If he could, he would be that wind, and he would carry me to brighter, warmer, happier places. Looking into his eyes, windows to a soul that wishes it could absorb my sorrows, I suddenly have no energy left to doubt him. If the curse's cold finally ends me there in the middle of the forest, I would feel no qualms about dying in his embrace. For I know that he would bury me with as much respect and care that only a dutiful gardener could commit, the same respect and acknowledgement I've struggled for so many months in this freezing prison to summon from the disparate ghosts around me.
And so I tell him what to put on such a grave. I tell him my name, like I've never told any pony before. I offer it to him. I pour it into his ears, with my breath as the vessel and my pent-up tears as the solvent, and he catches every single drop, adding it to the same reservoir from which he draws the water to christen the most beautiful and colorful things this village has ever known.
Before I know it, evening has fallen. I don't know how long we have left before the moon shatters the beauty of this moment. I don't know how many steps we'd have to take for me to escort him back to Ponyville and bid him a bitter goodbye. All I know is that my cabin is around the bend, and I don't want to face the cold, dark gaze of night alone. Not again. I would rather die.
So I make an excuse: something about showing him a musical composition I've been working on in the confines of my cabin. To my shock, he's actually interested. It's frightening, really. I should be frightened. My hoofsteps quicken, but instead of fleeing from him, I'm leading him home, to my home. Once inside, he instantly marvels at the plethora of musical instruments hanging from the walls. His smile of admiration lights up in an amber glow, like an artificial sunrise. It's almost magical how swiftly I've already lit the fireplace. It's not like I'm actually cold. I'm sweating through to my hoodie. I should take the stupid thing off. I realize that if I asked him to, the gentlecolt would likely oblige me. And I sweat even more.
He notices. Of course he notices. He sees everything. How else could he plant and grow beauty in all of the world's most hidden niches? He walks across the cabin towards me. Our hooves don't touch. We are both on the crest of something so beautifully dangerous, and yet he knows that some things must remain sacred until I choose to build that bridge first. I stand there, shivering, mere inches from his concerned expression. I realize that the best bridges in history have been built by the architects simply collapsing, so as to show where the ravines are in the first place.
It's a bitter ensemble that brews these tears suddenly cascading between us. So many sullen symphonies have been performed in this cabin, alone, when the lights go out and the only fire that remains is the pain in my crumbling heart. There is no number to measure the nights I have spent curled up in this very place, serenaded to slumber by the sound of my own sobs. I wake up in the morning purposefully forgetting them. I hardly even write about them in my journal. What is the point? Everypony is sad. Everypony is alone. I just never thought--not even in a million years--that I would be all of these pathetic things, and the only creature capable of dealing with them would be myself. Brave soldiers and warriors of ages have died in utmost agony. At least they had the songs of their comrades to herald their courage for centuries to follow. When I die, the resulting dirge will fizzle out along with me, and all that will be left of my melody will be an empty space cast heartlessly between the breaths of strangers.
It isn't until I've brushed the tears from my eyes with my sleeve that I see his face moving closer to mine. It's now that I realize that every single thought that's run through my head has been spoken aloud. I want to scream in frustration, but he silences me with a whisper. He's nuzzling me. For the first time ever, I can finally feel the soft, silken texture of his golden coat. He treats me as if I'm a hundred times more priceless than he will ever be. He gives no words, no grandiose speeches, no hollow attempts at placating me. All he says is my name, over and over again, like a gentle hoof planting seeds of life into inert soil, and that's when I finally crumble.
He catches me. He holds me. I try to tell him that this is all I want: to be held, to be caressed, to have my existence and preciousness acknowledged through an endless embrace. However, I'm crying too much for my words to come out legibly. But, as it turns out, words are as pointless to him as they are to me. After all, he already knows. He understands. As the minutes bleed into hours, we lie before the fireplace together, and he is simply holding me, chasing the accursed cold of the night away with his warmth and whispers. And I release--so many months of anguish and ennui--I release, knowing that he will catch them all. His heart's a basin built for the two of us since the dawn of time. I know that he realizes this, for no matter how much I cry or sob, his smile never fades away. I want to write songs about him forever. I want his ears to be filled with as much beauty as what he's gifting me with right here and now.
And then, I gaze up, and I gasp. I see the sunrise through the window. The night has gone by, its cold moon having shattered like a bad dream. I feel my heart racing, about to burst from my chest. He asks me what's wrong, but that's not all. When he asks, he says my name.
He says my name. Bless Celestia, he says my name. He hasn't forgotten me. I still mean something to him. I still exist. I am more than just a shivering body in his embrace. He knows my name, and I know that I am no longer cursed, for I am his, and he is mine.
That's when the tears end, and I cuddle up against him. I maybe even laugh. He does too, stroking my mane like a porcelain doll in his forelimbs. The morning sun pours in through the window. It's a new future, a new life. I wonder what the first thing is that I love about it. I decide that it's his fragrance, and I laugh again, if only to smell him more, to know that this is real.
And it is.
I took a deep breath. I looked across the boutique at Rarity.
"Romantic dreams are just that," I ultimately murmured. "Dreams." My smile was placid, the necessary dam to inane floodbanks that nopony ever needed to be burdened with. "There are many things in life that stand to be achieved. Quite a few of them, I'm convinced, can be accomplished alone."
"Hmmmph..." Rarity gave me a knowing glance. "What a tragedy."
I blinked, then looked at her cockeyed. "How do you mean?"
She ignored that, instead gazing down at her gentle needlework. "Flights of fancy aside, there's a truth I've long believed in, Miss Heartstrings."
"Oh yes? And what's that?"
"It's a large world that we live in. A world that is all too often beset with trepidation, pestilence, and all sorts of horrid monstrosities. If you think about it really hard, we Equestrians are truly blessed to have such a radiant alicorn watching over our lives on a daily basis." She looked up at me with a serious gaze. "If this was another life, another circumstance, where we weren't so avidly protected, just how swiftly would we lose all the fragile things in existence that we cherish so much?"
"That's... rather deep," I said, chuckling helplessly.
"Is it, now?" Rarity smirked wryly. "Have ponies around town given you the impression that I'm incapable of such intense thought?"
"Erm..."
She went on. "We live such short, bleak lives. And yet..." She grinned delicately. "We have the power to exhibit such boundless beauty and grace. True, there are many other creatures who shine with dazzling qualities of their own. Griffons possess an unmatched stature. And dragons--for all of their brutish exteriors--display great, noble antiquity. But think about it, Miss Heartstrings, are there creatures in this world who are truly more precious, more delicate, or more exquisite than ponies?"
"Well..." I ran a hoof over my neck as I shrugged. "I suppose there are times when I've believed in that, though I've felt a little shallow for doing so--"
"Don't," she said bluntly. "For there is no shame in it. Ponies are diamonds in the rough of this world, Miss Heartstrings. For all of our historical mistakes and occasional sins, we've only ever been stewards of nature, and I'm convinced that we've left a blessing on this landscape instead of a blemish. There's a reason for all of this, and it's something that I've believed in all my life." She smiled as she let a warm breath escape her lips. "And it's that everypony is made for one thing, and that's to be loved. How can a gentle soul built for such a singular, darling purpose be anything but benevolent?"
I couldn't help but smile. My heart danced at such a notion. "It's a charming thought, to say the least."
"And I intend to be completely and utterly charmed at the Gala the weekend after next," Rarity said with a dreamy exhale. "Whether I win myself a prince or a pauper--heeheehee--I guess it doesn't truly matter, so long as I win him, and he treats me lovingly, like a lady, and I get to understand first-hoof just how true my most cherished belief is." Her face suddenly drooped in a cold frown. "Only..."
I blinked curiously. "Only what?"
"Nnnngh..." She groaned and ran a hoof dramatically over her teetering forehead. "I do not know the Cosmic Waltz!"
"The Cosmic... Waltz?"
"Only the most traditional dance performed orchestrally at every Galloping Gala from the Early Classical Period to modern day!" Rarity put on a pouting face as she continued sewing my cloak to perfection. "If I can't engage in a single ballroom dance, I would just die!"
"That's what you're afraid of?" I couldn't help but gawk at her. "You have every intention to win the heart of a royal prince--to the point that he'll utterly ignore your common stature--and the only thing you're afraid of is screwing up a classic dance?"
"Hmmph!" She tilted her nose up in the air. "I said that I desired to live out my most cherished belief! I didn't say I wanted to do so in a bumbling manner!"
I blinked. I snorted. I giggled. It wasn't until she laughed as well that I stopped feeling guilty for it.
Everypony is made to be loved.
It certainly is a thought that's hard to get out of one's head, even if it came from a mind as fanciful as Rarity's. I went to her with hopes of distracting myself from... my distractions. It only had the opposite effect, to the extent that I wondered if a certain, conniving part of my soul had orchestrated the whimsical meeting from the get-go.
I wanted to believe in what she believed. I wanted to be the sort of friendly pony who supported her ideals no matter how ridiculous. But I've always been--for the lack of a better description--a practical filly. A part of me will forever giggle at Rarity, and yet that part of me will simultaneously nod in agreement with the likes of Applejack.
There's another thing that I couldn't stop thinking about. Applejack is more than just a smart, resourceful, hard-working pony. She is a gorgeous mare, far more resplendent than I think she's ever had the grace of perceiving herself. In all the years that she's spent living as the backbone to Ponyville's integrity and development, it astonishes me that she hasn't won herself dozens of suitors knocking at her farmhouse door on a daily basis.
Anecdotes of whalloping rude stallions aside, the only thing I can imagine keeping Applejack from having settled down with a special somepony by now is that she--like myself--has long grasped a truth just as immortal as Rarity's, though far more palpable.
It's not so much that a pony is made to be love; she or he is made to be respected.
"Good morning to you, angel."
I took the tulip from him. I rotated it around in my levitating aura, smiling. My nostrils flared, and once again I detected the fragrance that I only sensed when I was around him. Something stumbled deep inside of me, like a filly trying to break out of the strange mint-green cage that had grown up around her. For the moment, I lulled her to sleep, if only to build the courage for what I was about to do next. The bright glow of dawn glittered over the treetops on the north edge of Ponyville as I spoke above the noise of distant construction workers.
"Why?"
His handsome smile was briefly overcome by a blank expression. I wondered if any other stallion in the history of Equestria had ever been so intensely struck with a more random inquisition.
"I'm sorry?" Morning Dew stammered. It was cute to the point of distraction.
I cleared my throat and gazed at him steadily, steering my words with sheer intellectual power. "Why am I an angel? Hmm?" I took deep breaths. It was all I could do to keep myself from collapsing or--more appropriately--galloping towards the nearest building and slamming my stupid head against it. What was I doing? Why was I shattering something so terribly precious? My name's always been "Lyra," not "Applejack." Nevertheless, I continued. "Why would you call a random mare--a total stranger--something so flattering?"
"It... well..." Morning Dew chuckled, running a nervous hoof through his blue mane. A few flakes of garden dirt got caught in his hair from the bashful gesture. I wondered if he noticed all the small things that made him so amazing, that even the tiniest of blemishes couldn't ruin it. "Because... uhm..." He ultimately gulped and limply let forth, "You reminded me..." His breath lingered as he bit his lip.
"Of who?" I asked, squinting at him. "Of another pony?"
"No, not a pony," he said firmly, which convinced me that it was honest. My heart jolted with each fresh new word from his lips, words that I had never heard from this stallion before, and yet were flavored with the same gentleness as the ones he had always repeated to me previously. "It's more like a feeling, a memory... heh..." His chuckle was the most delicious thing to come from his lungs. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I... I shouldn't have put you on the spot like that--"
"No! No, don't--!" I almost bit my tongue. Swallowing, I lowered the desperate tone in my voice, accompanying my next few words with a gentle smile. "Don't be sorry. I'm... I'm just curious, is all. This is a very gorgeous flower, after all."
"It matches your eyes." The directness of that statement stabbed me. I hadn't expected that, nor the sudden firmness in his next gaze. "A very proud color: gold. Few things in nature can imitate it."
I blinked instinctively at that. I gazed at the tulip in my magical grasp. It was at the last second that I chose to giggle instead of sob. "Heeheehee... That's... Wow. Uhm, yeah, okay." I smiled goofily at him. "I'll buy that."
"As for what I said, ma'am..." His politeness was painful, like a gap had been formed between us. But, of course, the gap had always been there. He shifted on his hooves as he spoke, "Well, it's a long story."
"I have long ears."
"Heheh. Ahem. Well, you must be a stranger around these parts and all, but I'm the city gardener for Ponyville..."
"You don't say?"
"But I didn't always want to be planting flowers for a living."
I glanced at his cutie mark without having to. I had memorized the three brown seedlings long ago. "Why not? Certainly it's your special talent."
"Oh, there's no denying that," he said calmly. "But my parents were both active members of the royal military."
"Truly?"
"Yes. And as long as I could remember, I wanted to follow in their hoofsteps. I wanted to join the Canterlot Royal Guard," Morning Dew explained.
"That's... rather interesting," I said with a nod. "Because it's what your parents did, huh?"
"Well..." To that he fidgeted with a bashful smile. "Not entirely."
I leaned forward. "I'm listening."
"I was sick a lot as a foal," he said. "Even to this day, I have to deal with these constant, terrible dizzy spells. But, in my childhood, there was always one thing that got me through such episodes."
"Oh?"
He nodded. He suddenly had a hard time looking at me straight. "I had... well... I had a vision. On one of my sickest nights, I could have sworn that a pony came to me, and she chased the illness away. I got up out of bed, all of my dizziness gone, and I felt like a new being. I looked to her, to try and thank her. I saw a pair of golden eyes--bright as the moment of Creation--and it was around that time that I came out of my spell. I realized that I was looking out the window of my room at the time, and the sun was rising. Later, when my parents came home from their overnight shift, they gasped in surprise. It turns out that I had earned my cutie mark overnight."
"Awwwww..." I couldn't help but grin at that. "That's such a sweet cutie mark story..."
"Isn't everypony's?" Morning Dew exclaimed. "My parents and everypony I speak to still think that I earned my cutie mark because gardening is in my blood. And they may be right. Still, I think it's something else entirely. That morning when the vision came to me, and I saw those golden eyes--so full of warmth and sincerity--I realized that there was nothing more I wanted to do but ensure that same security for ponies everywhere. After all, I had just been delivered to well-being by a guardian angel."
"Why didn't you become a guard?"
"Heh... One does not simply 'become a guard,' ma'am," he said.
I winced. "Sorry. I guess I should have realized that."
"Don't be sorry," he said with a shrug. "I still hope that someday I will make the grade."
"In the meantime..." I gazed at his gardening wagon full of tools.
He looked at it as well. "In the meantime, I've simply done what's come naturally to me. I figure that if I can't protect ponies from a guardpost, I can give them security in another way. What's more wholesome and secure than an environment that pleases the eye and the heart at the same time?"
"Heeheehee..." I ran a hoof through my mane as I gazed aside. "'Flower Security.' I think Princess Celestia should open a new military division."
"Heheheh. Yes. I imagine my ramblings must sound terribly silly."
"Oh! No! N-not at all," I exclaimed, then gulped. "Still, I wish I could say that it explains why you--"
"Your eyes make me think of that waking moment of clarity I once had, long ago," he finally said. "And... heh..." He gazed at the earth as he thought aloud. "It reminded me of that glorious feeling of self-discovery, when I no longer felt afraid or lonesome anymore. I wish all ponies could feel so secure, to have met their guardian angel and come out of the experience with a conscious memory of it."
I stared at him. A lump had formed in my throat. I glanced down at the soft earth between us. Even in a moment as sanctified as this, I couldn't stop the freezing globe from spinning out of my grasp. I felt a brief wave of shivers. "I also wish all ponies could remember something so wonderful..." I smiled painfully. "I often wonder if we would be better creatures, if only such beautiful things weren't always lost to us." I heard a soft thud. I glanced over.
Morning Dew was lying on the ground.
It took a mountain of effort not to shriek. I didn't realize I was hyperventilating until I found myself having slid on my knees, crouching over him. I gazed with twitching, wide eyes at his limp figure.
He had collapsed... fallen over like a heavy log into the earth. Blades of grass and loose flower petals were still fluttering back to the world around him as I reached two shivering hooves up to his neck and felt for a pulse.
I ignored the silken texture of his coat in my examination. His heart was beating, but nothing responded to my touch. Not a single muscle spasmed. Not a single stretch of skin showed a sign of life. In my panic, I could barely see if his nostrils were flaring or not from breath. I heard a loud noise, and suddenly realized I was yelling.
"Somepony, help!" I didn't know enough first-aid to figure out how to assist him, to save him--to save him from what? He just collapsed! "Anypony! Call a doctor! Fetch Nurse Redheart! For Celestia's sake, this stallion's just collapsed!"
"Hey!" A voice barked. "Quit yer fussin'!"
Gasping, I glanced over.
Ambrosia was calmly trotting up from the half-dismantled hotel a few yards away. She smiled at me in spite of my horror. "New to these parts, ma'am?"
"Pl-please!" I whimpered. "You've got to go get help! Something's wrong with him! He was just talking to me a few seconds ago, and now he's--"
"Puttin' on a show, is what," she briefly grumbled, taking her hard hat off. "I swear, the dumb sap should grow a brain and wear a sign around his neck or something." She squatted down beside me, placing a hoof on Morning Dew's brow. "Yup. Just as I thought. I'm surprised he's lasted this long today."
"What... What...?" I breathlessly stammered. I didn't care how desperately fearful I looked.
"He's just havin' himself another one of his cataplexic episodes."
"Cat... Cata... pl-plexic...?"
"Heh. Glad I'm not the only pony who struggles with that mouthful. Ahem. It's very rare, Miss," Ambrosia lethargically explained. "The poor pony's a narcoleptic, you see. Only, he's got it real bad. He's dealt with it all his life. It's courageous, in some really sissy way."
"But..." I gulped. "It almost looks as if he's dead."
"He only wishes that he was. Nah, he's just dozed off. Morning Dew's lucky he doesn't swallow half the flowers he plants around town with how much he falls flat on his muzzle." She smiled. "All it takes is a little pick-me-up, s'long as it's timed right. Here, I'll show you." Ambrosia cleared her throat, leaned over, and practically shrieked into the stallion's ear. "Hey! Earth to Morning! Pick yer flanks up, lazy bones!"
"Snkkkt--Gahh!" Morning Dew's blue eyes flew wide open, twitched, then clenched shut as he weathered what appeared to be a terribly dizzy headache. "Nnnnngh... Mmmf..." His eyes opened again, this time squinting. "Awwwww hayseeds. I did it again?"
"Yup." Ambrosia smiled as she helped him back up to four hooves. "Don't fret it much, Morning. It was only--like--two minutes this time. Maybe three."
"Ugh..." He groaned and sat on his haunches while rubbing his forehead. "What is this--Four times this week?"
"Five," she said with a chuckle. "Looks like the boys owe me lunch again."
He rolled his eyes and smiled tiredly at her. "Seriously? Are you still making bets over me? Don't you have better things to do, like razing a hotel building to the ground?"
"Like you're one to complain!" She stuck her tongue out. "It certainly makes up for all the bits you owe me for waking your sleepy butt day after day!"
"Heh... Yeah..." He sighed and gave her a thankful glance. "What would I do without you, Amber?"
"Mmmm..." Her green eyes danced warmly through the clouds. "I shudder to think." She victoriously plopped her hard hat atop her alabaster mane. "If only I was as good a counselor as I am an alarm clock. You just about scared the tail off of Miss Doey-Eyes here."
"Who?"
"Don't be rude, Morning!" Ambrosia gestured towards me. "Didn't you know you had company?"
"Hmm?" He turned my way. He smiled sleepily. "Well, good morning to you, angel."
"I..." I gulped. I gazed down at the ground. I saw the tulip lying in the grass where I had dropped it in fright. "Yes. It's... It's a good morning." I tossed him an awkward smile. "But I should be on my way. I've... got a great deal of business to attend to," I lied.
"Very well," Morning Dew performed his ritualistic bow, reeling with brief dizziness. "Enjoy your stay in Ponyville."
"Yeah, 'angel,'" Ambrosia threw in. She gave Morning Dew a sharp glance, rolled her eyes, and was gone.
I too had made my hasty departure, but not without snatching a certain golden flower from the earth as I scampered away.
When I made it to my cabin, I slammed the wooden door behind me as if holding back a tidal wave of chaos at my tail. I slumped down to my haunches, still exhausted from the incessant beating of my heart.
With telekinesis, I plucked the tulip from the pocket in my saddlebag where I had hastily stowed it away. I twirled the golden petals before my gaze. I thought of how quickly a beautiful moment can turn into something horrifying... and then precious once again.
I didn't want to feel so much pity for Morning Dew, but it was hard not to. I wasn't all too familiar with narcolepsy, especially its chronic cases. Still, it didn't take too terrible a stretch of the imagination to see how crazy an ordeal the stallion had to endure on a regular basis. It was no wonder that his dreams of being a guardpony were hardly realized. What self-respecting division of the royal guard would enlist ponies who were bound to collapse on the job?
And yet, he still clung to the dream, something that was spawned from a singular moment of epiphany and beauty. He had the fulcrum of his life encapsulated in a foalish vision, something that was illustrated with golden bands of dreamy wonder.
To think... he had the poetic grace to affix such a sensational detail to me, from only a single gaze on a random morning, a morning that he didn't have the gift to realize was repeated endlessly for me, so that an infinitesimal moment became a boundless fountain of blessings for a filly who only knew curses.
A sigh escaped my lips as I nuzzled the flower. It felt silky to the touch, and I suddenly remembered that I had briefly grazed Morning Dew's immaculate coat in the desperate act of checking his pulse. When he collapsed, I was lucid, I was sane. It didn't matter how frightened I was; it pleased me to think that I could still act perfectly rational around the stallion when push came to shove.
But who was I kidding? No matter how much I would actually come to know this stallion, no matter what degree to which I entertained the notion of us being something special, I knew the reality of the situation. It enclosed around me far colder than the wooden walls of my home just then.
Sighing, I stood up. I marched over to a table in the corner of the place. There was a crystal vase full of water, but that wasn't all. I dropped the tulip into the container, where it joined several more--about twenty buds, to be exact. I had started collecting them about two weeks prior, when my good sensibilities gave into more fantastical whims.
Lethargically, I swiveled and gazed at my cot. Several music sheets were left exactly where I had abandoned them in the middle of the night. The writing of the eighth elegy lingered perpetually, growing more and more sluggish with each passing day. There was no excuse for my delay. The tune had at last become solid in my head. I had the four sound stones enchanted. I had been taught how to properly cast a protection spell around me, even competently so. All that was left to do was scribble the entire tune onto parchment, so that I might have a way to share it with Twilight, get a title for it, do some final research, and finally take the plunge into the next leg of the accursed symphony.
And yet, there was no denying--in the gentle glow of the blissful noonday sun--that the number of flowers in my home dwarfed the few, flimsy sheets of musical discovery. And for the moment, I couldn't help but wonder if it was such a crime to fill my cabin with so much color, where before there was nothing but dread.
After all, what joy truly is there to paint the courageous lengths of my quest? How am I to know just how many elegies there are left for me discover? There could be fifteen, or there could be fifteen thousand. Princess Luna had an immortal reign during which she composed her secret symphony. What hope does one mortal equine have against the emotionless lengths of time to even remotely emulate that legacy? I could very well be spending the entirety of my life unravelling these damnable tunes. Assuming I ever do achieve my goal, and this curse is lifted, how old and jaded will I have become? What will there be left of me to cherish, as I would so desire to be cherished, as Rarity had so poetically reminded me?
I'm a pony, and there are things I need in life that are far too blissful and transient to be defined by a single curse being lifted. I know that it's a simple concept, too fantastical to believe, but too powerful to ignore. How long have I been working to finish something noble for nobility's sake? Am I really doing all this research for myself? Or am I doing it all for the idea of "myself?" What defines me when all I desire exists forever on some unobtainable horizon?
There is one thing I do whenever my thoughts become too terribly jumbled, when I start to second-guess the task I am working on everyday, stuck in this beautiful but accursed home of mine.
The air danced with musical notes as I sat on a bench beside Ponyville's central park, plucking the lyre with every energetic burst my telekinetic soul launched into the strings. I didn't care what the tune was, so long as it was something musical, something rhythmic, something that made my heart sway at a beat that wasn't determined by him, his eyes, his gentle voice and even gentler backstory.
My face tensed. I clenched my eyes shut and attempted drowning myself in my melody. I failed.
Why would he tell me so much about himself at the drop of a hat? Was there something about me that made him trust me? Was it really all about my eyes? I've never held too much stock in my looks--well--no more than the average mare, I suppose. Living in Canterlot demands a certain elegance that is hard to shake loose. Even Twilight Sparkle--who is basically a shy intellectual--carries with her an ethereal beauty that is hard to come by elsewhere. If all librarians in Equestria looked as striking as her without even trying, then there'd be a lot more stallions involved in reading and less in... in... well, whatever it is that guys like to do in their spare time. Wrestling?
But no. My narcissism goes as far as my performance of music. I've never tried to appear "gorgeous." Heck, I've never cared to. Not until now...
He sees my eyes--golden eyes that match fresh tulips--and he thinks of a guardian angel. He thinks of an angel? Has anypony ever said anything so nice and sincere about me before?
No. It's flattery. That's all it is. After all, Morning Dew doesn't know me. He sees my eyes, and in every amnesiac circumstance, all that happens is a series of neurons firing off in his brain, daring him to speak out loud the knee-jerk comparison he's made in his head. I am simply an idea to him, as he is an idea to me. Two shallow infatuations hardly come together to form something wholesome. This entire thing is simply a foolish flight of fancy, both for him as well as for me. I should just forget about it. I should just forget about it...
And yet in trying to forget about it, I did the exact opposite, to the point that it frustrated me, flustered me, and I was hardly cognitive of the music that I was performing... or of the sudden, melodic voice singing along with my strings.
My eyes flashed open. I didn't stop strumming, if only to hear the voice continuing to hum along with my tune. I tried to recognize the voice, and suddenly I was seeing three tiny shapes in my eyes, bounding across the center of Ponyville, and one of the blank figures was colored a great deal like Rarity.
I gazed over at the filly. Apparently, seeing my horned cranium move was enough to startle her out of her dreamy vocals. "Eeep!" she hopped back, standing guiltily across the park's path from me. "I'm... I'm sorry. I broke your concentration, didn't I? My big sister's always getting on my flank about that."
I smiled gently, still strumming the lyre. "It's perfectly fine. If anything, you only added to the harmony."
"I did?" Her voice cracked adorably, matching the excited gleam shining across her face. Beneath her lavender and pink mane, a bergundy cloak was tied, glistening underneath with a golden trim. I caught the unmistakable image of a prancing foal patched to the hem. "I just heard you playing something so beautiful, I couldn't help but hum along to it."
"Well, you've got a natural talent for singing," I said.
"R-really?" she almost burst at the compliment. "You think?"
I blinked at such an exclamation. I glanced towards her blank haunches, realizing just how sincerely the filly must have taken a statement like that. Still, I didn't mean it any less. "Absolutely!" I smiled. "I'm tempted to play the song again, just to hear you sing some more!"
"Oh... uhm..." She blushed with a foalish bashfulness, digging a pale hoof into the grass beside the beaten path. "I couldn't ask you to do that, ma'am."
I shrugged. "Have either of us anything better to do?" I just needed a distraction like this.
"Well, I was waiting for my two friends to show up," she said. "Normally, I'd be having lunch with my sister, Rarity." She suddenly pouted. "Only she's too busy running around the Boutique, trying to get ready for some stupid dance."
"Funny thing about the Grand Galloping Gala," I uttered. "It brings out the little filly in most adults. I'm sure your older sister's no exception." I smiled and winked. "If you chose to talk to her about it, I bet you'd find that the two of you have a lot in common."
"Heh. No thank you. I don't like it when Rarity rambles."
"Why not?"
"Well, it's like Scootaloo says. 'She starts sounding like a vampire!'"
I chuckled. "Well, she's certainly pale enough."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
I cleared my throat. "Never mind." I strummed all of my lyre's strings in succession. "So, you got a tune in mind?"
Her green eyes blinked at me in surprise. "You mean you can really play any tune?"
"It helps to keep a wide library in my repertoire."
"Do you know 'The Laughing Zebra and His Dog?'"
"Depends. Do you know the lyrics to it?"
"And how!" her voice cracked again. Not all things I instinctively feel like cuddling are because of their handsomeness. When she sang, her voice was solid, pristine, immaculate. The filly hit every note with perfect tonality. I struggled to strike my chords with equal mastery, all the while marveling at this prodigy's vocal range. The song was short, silly, and childish. She made it sound like an opera number. When the melody was done, and the leaves of the trees above us finished their rustling applause, I followed up with a gentle clap of my own.
"Bravo! Bravo!" I grinned down at her. "You have a gift. I mean it! Why, if you shared that voice of yours in a place like Sugarcube Corner, you'd have ponies tossing bits at you in no time!"
"Ow..." She winced. "That sounds painful."
I chuckled. Okay. Adorable, but nopony upstairs. I suppose we've all been there. "Great gifts are meant to be shared. If we keep what's best about ourselves secret, how will we ever grow?"
"I always thought that gifts were meant to be found by searching for them."
"There's truth to that," I said with a nod. "A good life is one spent searching. But you gotta make sure you don't forget to search within yourself."
"This one time, I stuck my hoof inside my mouth, and I threw up all over the floor!"
"Errrr... yeah..."
"Apple Bloom says it was because I was nervous. I swallowed a bug the day before and I was trying to search for it--"
Just then, two familiar voices chirped over the grassy hilltops surrounding the park. The filly spun and waved towards her two petite friends grinning at her from afar.
"Speak of the devil! I gotta go!" She flashed me a glance that was both happy and apologetic at once. "It's been really nice chatting and singing with you, Miss..."
"Heartstrings," I said. "And your name, sweetie?"
"Heehee. Belle."
"Belle?"
"Sweetie Belle," she admitted with a slight blush.
"Heh." I leaned back and strummed my lyre with finality. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me one bit."
She galloped away, her petite body in a fast-forward waddle. "So long, Miss Heartstrings! I'll remember what you said about my talent!"
I waved at her. I smiled. But as her last few words echoed in my ear, I felt that smile fading. I lowered my hoof and sat limply in the bench.
There was a sigh alighting the air. I was only mildly surprised to realize it wasn't mine.
"She sounds so pretty..." A colt's voice murmured from the shade of the tree beside my bench.
I turned around from where I was squatting. Through my peripheral vision, I instantly recognized the tiny pegasus' pale coat and slick black mane. I smiled gently as I spoke to the afternoon breeze, "Does your brother Thunderlane know you're spying on fillies, Rumble?"
The tiny pony jumped in place, gasping. I could even see his chest thumping from a beating heart. "I... I w-wasn't spying! Honest! Oh please, don't tell anypony!"
"Relax. It's a beautiful day," I murmured, playing a few more notes on my lyre as he shuffled into the light. "Why ruin it by punishing ponies for enjoying beautiful things?"
"I mean it. I was just..." Rumble stood in place, fidgeting. His lonely eyes fluttered over the hill, where three young crusaders--and one filly in particular--were galloping onwards to glorious adventure. He exhaled once more, slumping down so that he squatted on the joints of his limbs. "I'm such a weirdo."
I raised an eyebrow. I glanced down at him. "Now who on earth gave you that idea?"
Surprisingly, I was right on the money. "My friends at school," he muttered. "Snips and Snails: they say that I'm a weirdo because I don't hang out with them like I used to."
"That's rather mean of them," I remarked. "Just because you have your own things you're doing--"
"They say that I've been boring ever since I started thinking about her," he added, playing lethargically with a few specks of dirt in the path beneath him. "That I'm no fun anymore."
Oh. So that's what it is. Why's it always a pegasus that grows up first?
I smiled and glanced his way. "Kid, I think the only reason they treat you that way is that they're jealous."
He blinked curiously at me. "Of me?"
"Mmmhmm."
"What for?"
"Cuz these 'Snips and Snails' can tell that you're growing up," I said, strumming my lyre. "I'm willing to bet that you're a lot more mature than they are, and they just aren't equipped to deal with it."
"But why am I so much better than them?" He asked, making a face.
"Notice--I didn't say 'better.' I said 'more mature.'"
"Whatever. Why is that?" Rumble frowned and punched at the dirt with frustration. "Just because there's this filly that I can't stop thinking about? Why can't they understand?"
"Do you understand?"
He bit his lip.
I left him alone with his thoughts, feeding the air with a tranquil melody, as if lulling a frightened infant out of hiding.
Eventually, his voice murmured, "She's so pretty, and she has this singing voice that makes me happy. I dont' know why, but I want to know more about her. I wonder what... what she would think of me. I don't want to be a boring weirdo to her either."
"Sounds like this has been on your mind a lot."
"Well..." He almost chuckled, instead tilting his head up to give me a confused expression. "My brother's hanging out with fillies his age all the time. He seems so happy with the likes of Flitter, Cloudchaser, and Blossomforth. Especially Blossomforth."
"Heh. You're pretty observant, kid."
"I... I kind of think it would be cool to be happy like that too..."
"Hmmm..." I smirked at him. "And does happiness equate to having a lot of fillies wanting to hang around with you?"
"Well... I dunno..."
"Now there's an honest statement if I've ever heard one."
"I... guess happiness isn't happiness if they're not happy too," Rumble said, shrugging. "The fillies, that is."
I couldn't help but giggle. I paused in my melody. "You don't give yourself enough credit, kiddo. Something tells me there's a Casanova inside of you that will see the light of day several years from now."
"A casa-what?"
"Eh, never mind. Ask your brother--preferably when only Blossomforth's around." I cleared my throat. "By the way, it's 'Sweetie Belle.'"
"Huh?" He blinked at me.
"The filly you like." I winked. "That's her name."
"R-really?" His face brightened. I saw his tiny wings fluttering, giving his petite body modest lift. "That's... that's such a pretty name."
"It's rather fitting, if I may say so."
"Do you know anything else about her?"
I giggled. "Who am I now, the village match-mare?"
"Uhhh..."
"If you're so curious, kid," I gestured towards where the crusaders had run off, "You could go up to her and ask her the questions yourself."
He immediately winced, as if receiving several flu shots all at once. "Oh no. I... I-I couldn't do that..."
"Does this have something to do with what Snips and Snails said?"
"No, it's just that..." His body slumped in yet another sigh. "Who am I? A silly blank flank with a popular big brother... that's who. I'd only be boring to her." His tired eyes remained locked on the ground below. "Besides, she's never even noticed me once. It's like I don't even exist."
I felt a cold breeze blowing through my mane. With a deep breath, I murmured, "Trust me, kid. I know the feeling."
"Just..." He rested his sad face atop a pair of crossed forelimbs. "What is it that gets a girl's attention anyways? What is it that fillies want?"
"A question as old as time, undoubtedly."
"Mmmph. This is hopeless..."
I cleared my throat. "Still... uhm... it's really simple, if you think about it," I said to him. "Fillies want sincerity, attention, commitment. They want to know your feelings, especially if you're willing to share them." My eyes traced the sky, mesmerized by the bright blueness. Pleasantly, I pierced the sapphiric texture, until I saw a certain stallion's gaze in my mind, setting my heart afire. "A filly is most happy when you are honest with her, and when you show that--no matter what ambitions your life may pressure you with--you are willing to sacrifice a piece of it, the most warm and vulnerable piece, if only it means that the two of you get to share something wholesome and unique that's made to replace it. And if you show that she'll forever be a part of your heart, something that you spend the time and energy to cherish as much as you poetically promise to, then... heeheehee..." My cheeks turn rosy as I run a hoof through my mane. "She'll swoon for you instantly, for she knows she's found a pony with whom she can feel happy, safe, secure, and--" I gazed down at him. My words trailed off.
Rumble was looking up at me. His expression was blank. His eyes were full of confusion.
I fidgeted atop the bench. "Uhm... Y'know what?" I smiled crookedly. "Flowers. Fillies love flowers. You should go get her some."
"Flowers?" Rumble's mouth dropped at the thought. "You mean it's that simple?"
"Oh, believe me." I winked. "It goes a long way."
"Flowers..." Finally, a smile returned to his precious little face. He waddled off, his wings flexing as if pushing him through an invisible, warm cloud. "Flowers... Flowers... Flowers..." He gave me a blind wave. "Thanks, lady!"
"Don't mention it, kid!" I chuckled and waved back at him. "Remember, the happiest things in life..." I knew he was within earshot. It didn't matter; I was no longer speaking to him. "... are the things you seize with no questions asked." My murmurs ended, and I bit my lip at the end of the exclamation.
I glanced down at my lyre, a lone vessel for exploring the cold depths of my curse. It no longer invited any awe or promise for me, for it was something I had always carried alone, and forever would.
The determination I felt then was positively scathing. I hopped out of the bench. I stood tall and resolute in the sunlight. With a bold breath, I marched straight for the north edge of town.
"Good morning to you, angel."
There was a tulip being offered. In a blink, I plucked the golden thing from his grasp and leaned forward.
"What's your favorite color?"
Morning Dew did a double-take. His golden body wobbled on the precipice of curiosity. "Uhm..."
I blushed slightly. "Besides gold." Not once did I sever my gaze from his. "What's your second favorite color?"
"Oh... uhm..." He smiled bashfully. "Silver, I do suppose--"
"Silver! Wonderful!" I trotted off, waving. "Have a good day!"
He waved limply back, confused.
"Good morning to you, angel."
"What's your favorite smell?"
"Uhhh... Huh?" Morning Dew blinked.
"Your favorite fragrance." Tilted towards him, staring in earnest. "Name it."
"Oh... uhm... eheheh..." He blushed slightly, running a hoof through his blue mane. "I work around so many plants. That's a difficult one..."
"Surely one scent has to be your most preferred."
"I... uh... I guess I've always had a deep appreciation for jasmine," he said. "Such an exquisite flower."
"Perfect!" I grinned wide, took the tulip, and galloped away. "Thankies!"
"Huh..."
"Good morning to you, angel."
"Favorite musical composition?"
"I beg your pardon?"
I smiled, stifling a deep giggle. "If you could, right now, listen to any single musical number that you had the ability to choose, which one would it be?"
"Are... Are you a musician, ma'am?" He asked, glancing towards my cutie mark.
I blocked his gaze with a gentle smile. "Humor me."
"Oh... uhm..." He scratched his chin, his eyes slicing figure-eights in the bright morning sky above us. He eventually smiled and said, "When I was a colt, I had a deep appreciation for Mareece Ravel's Royal Symphony. They used to play that number at military parades a lot."
"Perfect! I can play Mareece Ravel in my sleep!"
"Oh really? Well that's... uhm... certainly interesting..." He then blinked. "Ma'am?"
I was gone, galloping to my cabin to scribble the musical notes already blossoming in my head.
"Good morning to you--"
"What's your favorite place in Ponyville?"
"Huh?"
Ambrosia and several other working ponies glanced curiously from the half-demolished hotel across the way. They watched as Morning Dew was caught in the gaze of a hysterically cheerful mare.
"If you had a vacation from planting flowers," I said. "If you could spend an entire afternoon doing nothing but lying back and enjoying the beautiful weather, where would you go in Ponyville to do it?"
"I... I..." Morning Dew stammered. He teetered with brief dizziness, recovered, and awkwardly dripped forth, "Aside from the greenhouse, I'd go to the lake on the east side of town, I guess."
"The lake?"
"Yes. Staring into the waters makes me feel calm, meditative. Sometimes I go there to sit, relax, and simply reflect on life."
"Sounds wonderful. Ta-ta!" I bounded away.
Morning Dew's lips hung open with an unpronounceable word. He gestured dumbly with a hoof, glanced over his shoulder, and shrugged at Ambrosia and the other ponies... who simply shrugged back.
In my cabin, I finished scribbling a rough composition from memory. I held the sheet before me and went over it with studious eyes, quietly humming the notes with a pair of numb lips. Blindly, I got up and trotted across the cabin. I stepped over the discarded sheets of the lunar elegy. I passed by my lyre until I stood in front of a wooden cabinet.
Pausing, I turned and gazed thoughtfully across the tiny abode. Golden flowers rested where I had placed them on an end table in the corner of my home. At the sight of the near-dozen tulips gathered in a vase, I smiled. Then my face tensed in thought.
"Hmmmm..."
I turned to the cabinet. With telekinesis, I opened the panels and rummaged through several drawers. I finally found what I was looking for: a silken length of silver thread. Raising it before my eyes, I turned and glanced once more at the tulips. In a strong breath, I marched over and started plucking each glistening bud one after another from the jar.
The bell above the door to the Carousel Boutique rang loudly. Rarity was too busy galloping left and right across the interior to take notice.
"Oh dear, where did I put all the ribbon? I absolutely must bring some with me! Heaven forbid Fluttershy's dress might fall apart and I wouldn't have a single thing to mend it with! Ungh! I almost forgot! Twilight's gown! One of those sparkling star patterns is bound to become unstitched!"
"Uhm..." I winced slightly as I marched on nervous legs into her domain. "Miss Rarity? Have... Have I caught you at a bad time?"
"A bad time? Oh, no no no! Nonsense!" Rarity gave a flippant laugh as she stuffed a myriad of awkward things into a ruby-studded chest. "It's only two days until the Grand Galloping Gala and I'm at my wit's end! How could this possibly be a bad time?!" She paused and ran a hoof through a noticeably disheveled mane. "Oh blessed Celestia! Rainbow Dash had better taken my warnings seriously and kept her golden crown away from rain clouds!" The fashionista's eyes briefly burned like red hot coals. "If that thing turns out rusted during the dance, I swear, I will wrap her wind pipe three times around her ears!"
"Ahem." I boldly stood in front of her. "I... uh... I know this is very last second and all, but I was hoping that you might--"
"Negatory!" Rarity waved a hoof in my face. "Cease while you are ahead, darling. I apologize sincerely, but I cannot fashion a dress or perform any alterations for any customers at this current moment! If you desire to have something mended, add your name to the list and I promise you that I shall attend to it as soon as I come back!"
"But..." I bit my lip and stirred anxiously where I stood. "This is... is really important to me--"
"I do hate to be more emphatic than I've already been, ma'am," she said, pacing back and forth between her various tools. "But this is not up for debate! And before you ask, no amount of bits, gems, or even land deeds could possibly sway me to the contrary--"
With a metallic clank, I had slapped my lyre down onto the table in front of her. "The Cosmic Waltz," I uttered.
She froze in her tracks. She stared at me. "I-I beg your pardon?"
"The Cosmic Waltz," I repeated, my eyes firm. "I can teach it to you in under an hour." I gulped and added, "So that way you can dance to it on the spot, in any given situation."
She immediately dropped every piece of fabric or tape that she had been levitating around her. "Sold!" She bounded towards me and snatched a sheet of measurements from my grasp. "Tell me what you need!"
"I swear..." Caramel fidgeted with the bow-tie around his neck. He stood awkwardly in the morning sun beside another stallion on the north edge of Ponyville. Both of them were tied to a silver carriage as they faced the long east road towards Canterlot. "This thing is gonna strangle me. Why did I agree to this again?"
Wind Whistler was suddenly hovering down in front of him. "Because Miss Rarity convinced you to. And Rarity is a close friend to Twilight Sparkle." She smiled lovingly and adjusted the tie so that it fitted him properly. "And Twilight Sparkle is only the most influential Ponyvillean with ties to Canterlot. And if we want our new business to get off the ground, we need to spread the news of how friendly and serviceable we are."
Caramel sighed, rolled his eyes, and smiled tiredly at her. "I thought we were getting in the business of delivering parcels to households, not dressed-up mares to a royal dance."
"One step at a time, Caramel," Thunderlane's voice suddenly spoke up. He trotted up alongside Blossomforth, Cloudchaser, Flitter, and lastly Rumble. "Not all of us have the wings to skip ahead in life."
Caramel groaned. "Well if it isn't the feather gang. Come to snicker at me?"
"Awwwwww, Caramel!" Blossomforth smiled. "Why so glum? We're your friends. We just wanted to give you a proper send-off!"
"Besides, you'll only be gone for the weekend," Cloudchaser added. "Hey... isn't Windy going with you?"
"She says she'll be catching up," Caramel said, motioning towards his fiance.
"Yeah. I've got a few things to do around town." Wind Whistler nodded. "But then I'll be headed to Canterlot to meet up with him."
"That reminds me." Caramel turned towards her. "Where'd you want to rendezvous? I heard about this great doughnut cafe in downtown. First thing tomorrow morning?"
"Mmmm... Make that tomorrow noon," Wind Whistler said. "I need to go buy a dress from the shopping district."
"A dress?" Caramel did a double-take. "But Windy, neither of us have tickets to the Gala! Besides, the dance will be over by then!"
"Who said anything about a dance?" Wind Whistler remarked, smirking.
"Huh?"
She sighed. She hovered lower and whispered in his ears.
Caramel listened. After a few blinks, he blushed furiously.
"Uh oh!" Thunderlane snickered from afar. "Something tells me there'll still be some Grand Galloping to be had!"
"Oh hush!" Wind Whistler stuck her tongue out at their friends and giggled. "You must fly through a lot of smoggy clouds to get a dirty mind like that, Thunderlane!"
"I... uhm... I could do with a clean shower myself," Caramel dazedly said. The reined stallion next to him snickered. "And don't you start!"
There was a shuffling noise. Everypony glanced over to see Ambrosia galloping up. "Whew! Made it just in time!" She lowered her hard hat and gestured Caramel's way. "Best of luck on the journey, kiddo!"
"You ran all the way here just to say that?" Caramel exclaimed.
"Heheh. Yup! Figured you deserved to be paid some respects." Ambrosia's gaze narrowed. "This 'Miss Rarity' ain't even hoofing you one bit for this, is she?"
"Uhhh--"
Wind Whistler planted a hoof over Caramel's mouth and leaned in. "We're gonna meet in Canterlot and make a date out of it."
"Ya don't say..."
"Yeah," Blossomforth added with a nod. "They're gonna work on planning their delivery business... or something."
Thunderlane coughed. "Though somepony may be delivering something else in a year's time."
"Blossom?"
"Yes, Windy?"
"Smack Thunderlane for me."
"Okay, girl." There was a loud thwapping noise.
"Ow!" Thunderlane rubbed his side and frowned at his significant other. "You're just looking for excuses by this point."
The two pegasi sisters beside them cooed in unison.
"Oh stuff it!"
Cloudchaser and Flitter giggled. Ambrosia chuckled. Rumble, as usual, was in another world.
At that point, a tiny purple dragon was running up, huffing and puffing.
"Change of plans, guys!" Spike climbed up the stagecoach in one single motion. Sweating, he adjusted the collar of the suit that was around his petite torso and uttered breathlessly, "We're swinging by Carousel Boutique to pick the girls up there!"
"What?" The stallion beside Caramel balked. "They can't trouble themselves after so much sprucing-up to trot a few blocks and meet us here?"
"Hey!" Spike's breath was briefly flaming. "Lady Rarity tells us to move, so we're moving!"
"Right, I see where this is going." Caramel rolled his eyes, then smiled up at Wind Whistler. "See you tomorrow?"
"I'll see you in my dreams."
"Heheheh... You beat me to it."
She hovered down and the two nuzzled each other closely. After a peck on the muzzle, Wind Whistler took to the air. Caramel signaled to Spike, who then shook the reins.
"Onward to the Gala!"
"Don't you mean the Boutique?"
"Er. Yeah. Eheh. Right."
As the two stallions pulled the silver coach away, Caramel's friends stood behind, waving and shouting good wishes.
Ambrosia lowered her hoof in time to chuckle. "I'll never understand all this fancy schmancy hullabaloo over a silly dance."
"Well, Amber, some ponies could do with a little extravagance from time to time."
Ambrosia did a double-take to her side. "Morning! How long have you been there?"
"Not long enough to get a word in," the stallion said softly. "But, no matter. Caramel knows he has my best wishes. Windy as well." Morning Dew turned and smiled at the others. "I heard there's going to be a little party of sorts in downtown. Is anypony attending?"
"Ugh..." Blossomforth rolled her eyes. "You mean the mayor's genius little 'consolation party for those ponies unlucky enough to have been snubbed an invitation to the one true Gala for the umpteenth time in a row?' Pfft. Yeah, no thanks."
"Besides, we all know how to party, and we do it all the time," Thunderlane said proudly. He glanced down at Rumble. "Ain't that right, little bro?"
Rumble was muttering quietly to himself. "Hmmm... Daisies? Dandelions? Roses?"
"Yo! Earth to Rumble!"
"H-huh?" Rumble jumped nervously in place, glancing up at everypony. "What?"
"What the heck are you rambling about?"
"I dunno..."
"You dunno?"
The little colt gulped. In his squeaky voice, he innocently inquired, "What's the prettiest kind of flower in Ponyville?"
"Why heck..." Ambrosia gestured. "Morning Dew here could tell ya that. Though what for?" Her eyebrows wagged. "Is a certain little scamp fixin' to give a filly some special gift?"
"Huh?" Rumble made a face. "Ew! No! She probably doesn't even like flowers--"
Blossomforth gasped. "Awwww! So there is a filly!"
"There is not!" Rumble's voice cracked, and he blushed at what it sounded like. "I don't even know why I was thinking about flowers--"
"Oh dear, whatever are we going to do?" Cloudchaser playfully ruffled Rumble's slick black mane. "Rumble's turning into a romantic stallion right before our very eyes!"
"At least somepony in his family is," Blossomforth added in a dull tone.
"Heh heh, yeah--Hey!" Thunderlane glared at her.
She giggled.
"Nnngh! You guys are stupid-heads!" Rumble frowned and waddled off in a huff.
"Awww! Don't be like that, 'lil Rumble!" Flitter called after him. "Dang it, sis! Look what you did!"
"I'll go fetch the little booger," Thunderlane groaned. "You girls go elsewhere. I swear, you've been nothing but trouble all week."
Blossomforth and the other two merely giggled and floated off in the opposite direction. Morning Dew watched the group dissipate. With a gentle smile, he turned and gazed at Ambrosia.
"So much excitement in the air. I swear, it's the same thing every year without fail." His eyes narrowed. "What is it about the Gala that electrifies a place as far away as Ponyville?"
"Speak for yourself, flower-plucker," Ambrosia muttered. "I'm too busy with my work to give a darn." She turned and pointed past Morning's garden wagon, gesturing to where her co-workers were stringing up orange wire around the inner framework of the hotel. "That there building is gonna be bitin' the bullet tomorrow. It's just too dag-blamed stubborn to fall on its own."
"I read all the warning memos at the downtown bulletin board," Morning Dew remarked with a nod. "Does it seriously have to come to this?"
"Heh. What, you frettin' there bein' a little bit of thunder in the middle of yer gardenin' tomorrow?" Ambrosia shifted the hard hat on her crown. "It's only gonna last a second. Besides, it's not like anypony's at risk, so long as they keep a safe distance when the charges go off. If anything, I reckon it'll be just the entertainment this village needs. It'll make the sad saps of this place forget all about the Gallstone."
"Gala."
"Whatever."
"Well," Morning Dew said. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Amber. Your job always has a certain grace to it."
"Ehhh, ya lug." She waved a bored hoof before running it sheepishly through her white mane. "One of these days, I swear, your eye for beautiful things is... gonna be... the end of you..." Her words trailed off as her eyes squinted at a bizarre sight just beyond him. Her sweaty brow furrowed.
"Hmm?" Morning Dew blinked at her. Slowly, he turned around. The first thing that donned his face was a smile. "Well, now." He reached his hoof into the wagon and instinctively held forth a tulip. "Good morning to you..." Right then, his smile left him. His face drew a blank, but the gold texture of his coat remained as bright as ever. The next breath was wavering. "...angel."
I took a deep breath, poised gracefully before him. I was staring deep into his eyes--suddenly wide eyes--and in those blue pools there was no mistaking the reflection of what he saw: a mint-green mare clad in a silken silver gown. It was a modestly simple ensemble, with the faintest golden trim embroidered about the cream-colored seams in tiny floral patterns. My lyre hung unassumingly from a golden sash draped across my left side. There was something atop my forehead that glistened in the sunlight, bringing out the highlights in my eyes. It was a crown of tulips, framed broadly around my horn, made up of none other than all the flowers that he had given to me over the past several days, in his past lives, when an amnesiac ghost went out of his way to charm me as I was incidentally charming him right then.
"Well," I said in as brave a voice as I could. I didn't mean for it to come across as so pathetically demure. I only wanted this soft moment to be carried on soft breaths. "If you aren't a charmer..." I added with a nervous smile.
Please say it. Please...
He gulped. He was frozen in place. He was dead-still, but he was still Morning Dew. "I am only charmed," he murmured.
Oh thank goodness...
I gulped. My heart sang. I was afraid Rarity's marvelous gown would melt off of me with each subsequent heartbeat. I cleared my throat and tilted my head aside. "You're too kind to make me such an offering," I pointed at the tulip in his grasp. With a relaxed breath, I finally allowed my blush to peak through my face's skin. "But... heehee... Where exactly would I place it?"
He gazed at the tulip, then at the crown on my forehead. He gulped dryly and stammered, "A very good question. I... erm... Eheh..." He rubbed his neck and smiled awkwardly. Dear Celestia, will he ever stop being so precious? "Ever painted a picture, and then you feel like something should be added to it, but you can't for fear of ruining it?"
"Hmmm..." I coyly gazed at the ground. "Is every citizen of Ponyville so poetic?"
"Uhm... Only the foolish ones." Her cleared his throat. "I... uhm. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--"
"No! Don't be sorry." I took a step towards him. "As a matter of fact, you're just the stallion I've been meaning to speak to."
"I... I am?" He blinked awkwardly at me.
"Yes. You're Morning Dew, the town gardener, correct?"
"Uhm, yes, ma'am. As a matter of fact, I am. Why?" He squinted. "Have other ponies talked about me?"
"I heard you're the local expert on flora." I smiled. "I was hoping to speak with you."
"R-really?" he said, gulping dryly.
I was barely aware of Ambrosia at this point. Her figure shifted in my peripheral vision. She glanced at Morning Dew, at me, and then at him again. Very, very quietly, she backtrotted from the scene until her alabaster figure melted into the background.
I stood boldly in the foreground, gazing at the stunned earth pony in front of me. "You see, my name is Lyra Heartstrings. I doubt you may have heard of me, but I'm a musician from Canterlot." I fidgeted slightly. Even with the buffers of the curse to cushion my words, I can never quite feel good about myself unless my lies have an ounce of truth to them. "And... and I have plans for performing a few shows around town. But I'm not satisfied with coming across like just any other minstrel. There's a reputation I have to live up to, so I need to produce a show that will truly dazzle the locals around here beyond the mere melody my lyre makes. To do that, I have to... uhm... I have to set up a fabulous stage. Yes. And... and I was thinking about having a beautiful floral arrangement erected around me while I do my solo act."
"That's..." He gazed at me, slowly nodding. "So pretty."
I smirked, my eyes darting his way. "You don't say?"
"I mean... erm..." He let loose a nervous laugh. "That sounds like a pretty good idea." He placed the flower back into the gardening wagon. "Well... uhm... y-you came to the right pony! That is--the other villagers have a good reason to suggest you come to me. It's not like I'm the expert on... on... uhm... sofas and quills, cuz I don't know who you talked to, but that's a different pony altogether. Ehm... oh jeez..." He ran a frustrated hoof over his face.
There were many things that I desired from this encounter. Admittedly, the very last thing was making him so flustered. I broke the conversation into another direction by pacing around his wagon and uttering, "You really are the town's one and only gardener?"
"Well, not exactly," he said in a calmer voice. I felt him relaxing with each word coming from his lips. "This is an earth pony town. Unlike Canterlot, there are less ponies talented in the arts and more equines talented in tending to crops and vegetation."
"But florists?" I leaned over and sniffed a pot full of daisies, smiling. My eyes darted his way as I felt the petals of my crown fluttering in the morning breeze. "Just how many Ponyville residents are responsible for planting such beautiful flowers all over this quaint little town?"
"Hmmm..." He ran a hoof through his mane and blushed. "Heh. Okay. Guilty as charged."
"So, perhaps you can understand why I came to you." I sashayed gently back towards him. I took my time, glancing down briefly. Rarity had even fashioned me some shiny, silver-polished slippers for my hooves. I tried not to dirty them as I stood in front of the stallion, smiling gently. "To be the only expert on flowers in town must be something truly special. It means you're a pony who can be depended on, a pony with an eye for beauty. Who else would I possibly go to for help with setting up my performance?"
"Well, I don't know if one could call me special--" Morning Dew began, but paused in mid-speech. His blue eyes twitched, and I saw him tilting his nose up slightly.
I couldn't help it. I gnawed pensively on my lip. Oh please. Oh please don't flip out...
"That... Heh..." His face broke into a chuckling grin. "Remarkable. Is... Is that jasmine?"
I gulped and smiled as gracefully as I could. "Yes. A true musician endeavors to be pleasing... erm.. in every sense." Oh jeez. I'm already laying it on too thick, am I? "It's a perfumed habit I... uhm... picked up from Canterlot. I suppose it's unbecoming of Ponyvillean standards." I winced. Stop talking! This is no time to be a sociologist!
Thankfully, Morning Dew was a less rational pony... or a more rational one. I could hardly tell anymore. I simply heard him talk and my heart jumped. "Oh no, I think... I think it's lovely," he practically cooed. "You're..." He bit his lips on that. An instinct inside of me screamed to kiss them better. Clearing his throat, he said, "You're... looking for any particular type of flower?"
"I imagined I could depend on your good tastes," I said. "Assuming it's wouldn't take too terribly much of your time."
"Oh! No! I..." He shrugged. "I was done with most of my morning rounds."
"Morning rounds?"
"I go from building to building each sunrise, making sure the flowers are still in bloom, keeping weeds from growing in the shopfronts. Those sorts of things. The mayor has always had a very specific vision for this town. There are many places to cover to ensure that dream."
"I can only imagine..."
"I was considering going to the building across the street to pluck it free of wildflowers--"
"You mean the one where those construction workers are clamoring all about?" I asked, pointing to where Ambrosia and her cohorts were still hustling. "Isn't that place about to be razed?"
"Heh. Yes. It's only taken all month."
"And..." I squinted at him. "Wildflowers? Seriously?" I tried my best not to giggle. "Are they really so salvageable?"
Morning Dew chuckled. "Perhaps it appears silly, but I hate to see anything colorful go to waste, even if they're as common as oxygen." He glanced over at the half-demolished hotel. "I know it sounds weird, but even a part of me regrets that in a few days, that old building will no longer be around. Once it's gone, a certain antiquity will be lost forever."
"What one pony sees as antiquity, another may perceive as an eyesore, yes?"
"True. But I hate to think that life is so black and white."
"Really?"
"Mmmmmm..." He exhaled slowly, nodding. "I've found it to be a useful belief to try and see beauty in everything, especially the stuff in life that comes and goes." He gazed over at me, his handsome face calm and contemplative. "After all, why do we have memories if they are not ways for us to cherish things of beauty that we can no longer touch?"
I wanted to respond to that. I wanted even more to just toss myself in his forelimbs and preserve those words with my tears. But I stood in place. I had worked so hard for this moment to be real; I wasn't about to shatter it. Nor did I want to shatter him.
"You strike me as a very thoughtful pony, Morning Dew," I eventually murmured.
"The world is full of thoughts. Only flowers are worth growing," he said. "Speaking of which, I shouldn't be wasting your gracious time. A Canterlot musician surely has a busy schedule to keep. Isn't there a Gala for you to be attending?"
I giggled finally. I waved a hoof. "Oh, that. There are far more charming places for me to be. I wouldn't want to be anywhere but in Ponyville at the moment."
"Well, if you insist." He performed a very timely bow. "I am more than happy to be of help. If you would like to see a sample of the flowers I have to provide, I know of just the place to show you. Would you be so kind as to follow me, Lyra?"
"Certainly! I--" I froze in place. My ears rang. I looked sharply at him, squinting. "Did... Did you just...?"
"I'm sorry. That is your name, right? Lyra? Did I hear you correctly earlier?"
"Yes, but... Snkkkt--Heeheeheehee!" I broke out into hysterical laughter.
He was blushing furiously, and yet he stood dead in place like a soldier caught out of line. "I... I apologize. Is something amiss?"
"No. It's just... Ahem. The way you pronounce my name--"
"Am I saying it wrong?"
"Well, not exactly. I..." My heart was pounding. I hadn't the strength to explain to him that I was a thousand times more amused than I was offended. "I'm not used to ponies saying it like that."
"Truly?"
"It's Lyra. Not 'Lee-ruh.'" I almost snorted, fighting to contain my giggles. "It's so... so silly how you say it."
He smiled bashfully and shrugged. "The other way sounds rude, like I'm almost saying the word 'liar'."
"Well, think about it! It's just like the musical instrument: 'lyre.'"
"Something you're a prodigy at, no doubt."
"Yeah and... Heeheehee..." I waved a hoof in his general direction as I nearly collapsed. "I'm so sorry. It's just that... heehee... All this time, if I knew you'd say it like that..." I wanted to faint. I wanted to fly. Could he possibly be any more adorable? The unpredictability of the moment made me want to hug him all the more. "Goodness. Life is so goofy, isn't it?"
"I... I don't understand," he remarked with a curious chuckle. "When have I had the opportunity to say your name before, Miss Heartstrings?"
I felt a cold sheen of sweat forming at my temples. Whoops. Keep it together, girl. He can only tolerate a basketcase so far. "Well, you're right. Do forgive me. I'm... uhm..." White lie. White lie. White lie. "I'm not used to being up this early in the morning. I guess I'm a tad bit delirious." Good enough.
"It happens to the best of us," he said.
Or only to the luckiest of us. The most handsome of us. The bluest-eyed of us--
"If you would follow me, Lyra," he said correctly. For once, it was just as I had ever dreamed of him uttering it. I floated after him as if on clouds.
We ended up in the center of a fantastic greenhouse on the northeast edge of town. I had strolled past the translucent building on several occasion. Never before had I bothered taking a closer look, probably because the path I took eventually led me past him, and I had far more charming things to look forward to on a daily basis.
Now he stood before me, talking to me, acknowledging me with a glint of joy sparkling in his eyes. Every awkward shiver, every bashful fumble was absent from his limbs. At the time being, he was confident, emboldened by the familiar flora hanging all around us. We were in his element, his world. I felt like a blissful wanderer on the threshold of this gentle stallion's kingdom, and every careful set of words that came from his mouth tickled my ears as I trotted after his pacing, narrating figure.
"Since you're from Canterlot, I can only assume you're used to affording a spotlight at your venues, so it would be a good idea to go with bright flowers that not only complement your appearance but also highlight your position on the stage. You have a lovely, flaxen streak to your mane, Lyra."
"Why thank you."
"Heheh... Ahem. So, I was thinking carnations for if it's an inside show. An arched wreathe with several blossoms could do the trick. If you're performing outside, however, I'm tempted to suggest these lilies here." He brushed his hoof past the plants in question. "But, as you well know, the flower has its own common connotation, and I very seriously doubt you're performing at a funeral. So, to offset that impression..." He trolled a few paces down and gestured towards another row of flowers. "These daisies could be added to the stage, and it would create a balance."
"You really do have a flower for any occasion or circumstance," I remarked, strolling along with him. It was very warm in there. I pretended that it was because of the glass panels surrounding the greenhouse. "That's quite remarkable."
"Ponyville is a tranquil, peaceful little town," Morning Dew said. As we strolled along the sampled flora, he made a great deal of effort in brushing aside jutting leaves and branches so they wouldn't brush against me or my dress. I silently smiled at his subconscious gestures. "We have a lot of time on our hooves, compared to the likes of Fillydelphia or Manehattan or--I dare say--your home town."
"Canterlot isn't as busy and stressful as many ponies here in the country may think," I said. "After all, it is the center for Equestrian arts and sciences. You don't achieve that pinnacle by fighting through morning traffic everyday."
"Heheh. I imagine they must have entire legions of gardeners employed in beautifying the city," he said. "Especially with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna dwelling there. The ponies who landscape the palace have to be none other than Equestria's absolute best."
"Oh, they are good," I said with a nod. "They are royally tested and approved, no doubt. But are they the best?" I came to a stop and pivoted to face him. "The palace groundskeepers do their job because they are bound by it. There's something to be said about such noble duty, but it's the same thing that has been said in countless generations before. Passion, however, is something that is all too often sorely missing, even in the deepest bastion of our country's most sacred alicorns."
"Perhaps, then, that is why so many souls from Canterlot come to visit this town," Morning Dew said aloud. "They've spent all their days surrounded by tradition. But then they come to Ponyville, because they're searching."
I smiled deeply. "Searching for what?" For passion? Please say "passion."
"For completeness. That is what any pony wants in life, or so I've long felt."
A breath escaped my lips as I smiled towards the flowers. Okay. That was even better, in a way. "Funny how so many ponies from all over Equestria are headed to this silly Gala tonight, as if it's the one thing that will ever define their lives. I don't know about you, but I've lived in Canterlot all my life. The Gala is hardly what it's hyped up to be. A pony would do well to pursue whatever he or she wants, and not let something that's popular become the apple of their eye."
"Like becoming an accomplished musician?" he remarked with a smile.
"Heeheehee... Well, that's just me." I gulped and gazed intently at him. "What about you?"
"Oh..." He sighed and marched over towards a pot of daisies that he proceeded to inspect with gentle hooves. "I'm very happy with what I do here in Ponyville. This village needs me, and I'm happy to keep them secure in the knowledge that their streets will never turn ugly."
"But is that all you'll ever do?" I stepped towards him, swallowing a lump down my throat for courage. "I know what I desire to do with my life, and I'm satisfied with it. I think that should be the same for everypony."
"But... heh... if we knew what our lot in life was, that would ruin the suspense, don't you think?"
I merely giggled at that. He looked at me strangely. In response, I cleared my throat and said, "Don't mind me. I think it's a charming excuse."
His face was briefly deadpan as he gazed at the daisies once again. "What you call an excuse, I call the hooves of fate."
I bit my lip at hearing that. I remembered the bashful stallion telling me his life's story the other day beside his gardening wagon. After all this pretense and preparation, could it be possible that I still hadn't pierced the layers that deeply? Maybe I was trying too hard. Maybe I was--
"I personally think the carnations would be a fantastic choice," he spoke up, his charming voice reverberating across the glass panels around us. "I've always found them to be an easy accessory to a public presentation, be it poetic or musical." His lips curved softly as he glanced my way. "It would most especially be complementary if you wore an ensemble like that while performing."
I knew my teeth was showing by the glinting reflection of my smile in his eyes. "So, you like silver?"
"Eheh..." He instantly blushed and gazed towards the hanging greenery beyond. "It's... a very flattering color for a dress."
"Let me ask you something..." I bravely shuffled closer towards him. I breathed lightly, my lungs on fire. The place was smoldering enough as it was. "Carnations, lilies, daisies: they're obviously good choices for a public instrumental. But..." I nibbled on my bottom lip for the space of two seconds and finally rolled forth, "What of a private performance?"
"You... You mean like a serenade?" He asked innocently.
I slowly nodded, gazing up at him.
His grin cracked awkwardly. "Eheh... I fail to see how you would need any assistance there, Lyra."
My heart sank briefly. "No?"
Then I saw his eyes resting specifically on the crown of tulips atop my head. My heart lulled to a calm, then spiked again as soon as his voice rang. "Some things can't be helped, for they're perfect enough as it is."
I exhaled weakly. Would he freak out if I placed a hoof on his shoulder? I felt a pulse that wasn't my own. Glancing down, I realized that I had already made such a contact. The next second that passed by was like shattering concrete. Instead of panicking, I slowly spoke, "If there's anything I've learned in recent months, it's that there'll always be something in life that stands to be perfected. All it takes is the right moment." My smile was equally blissful and painful. "And the right soul to spend it with."
I saw the tiniest of fluctuations in his eyes. I couldn't tell if he was frightened or thrilled. Either way, he didn't bother to shove my hoof off of him as he said, "You're a most remarkable pony, Miss Heartstrings." Then the smile came. "I wonder. When you play music, is it even half as harmonious as your words?"
My breath came out in a gust of relief. He called me "remarkable!" That's... That's good, right? That's at least worth two "magnificents" or half a "resplendent!" "Well, words only convey so much. I tend to ramble when I fixate on them." I turned my head, looking at where my lyre was hanging tactfully from the golden sash on my left side. "But, if you would like, I could give you a demonstration of just how harmonious I can be--"
Something loud echoed across the greenhouse interior. It sounded conspicuously like two pairs of legs tumbling to the stone floor. I stood there, frozen, too afraid to look and confirm my haunting suspicion. Nevertheless, I had to. And when I did, it explained why Morning Dew hadn't said anything for the past few seconds.
Oh dear Celestia, the poor thing! It's happened again. Okay. Don't panic. Don't be a frightened, hysterical filly like the other day. His cat... cata... cataple... his ordeal comes and goes swiftly. Just... wait it out. Wait it out...
I steadied my nerves, stopped squirming, and simply squatted down by his side. He was breathing; I could tell this time. The greenhouse was deathly quiet, so that I could detect the gentle wheeze pouring in and out of his nostrils as he remained lying there on the floor. His forward limbs twitched ever so slightly, and the contours of his face occasionally creased and uncreased. I tried to imagine what a life like that would be like, to be incapable of expecting when or if the lights might go out and plunge oneself into paralysis. I tried not to pity him. I tried to ignore the horrible pit forming in my stomach, but I couldn't.
Gently, I reached a hoof out--brushing it ever so slightly against his blue mane as if it was made of thin ice. I couldn't stop myself; it was all I could do to prevent a whimper from escaping my throat. In my cursed existence, I had been vexxed by ponies collapsing into fugue states all around me on a constant basis. There wasn't a part of me that envied Morning Dew for his condition, for not being able to be in control of oneself. For all the evils of my curse, I at least had a grasp over my faculties, my sole anchor in life.
And it was then that another horrid realization struck me. Morning Dew had collapsed. In the absence of his voice, I felt foolish, silly, and naked. A thin, silver dress was a poor shield against a wave of chills assaulting my being. Not even the sunlight refracting through the greenhouse windows could any longer melt the reality of my situation away.
So by the time he began stirring again, I was hardly relieved. I sighed, and I had to force out a smile as I murmured to his waking figure, "Are you alright there, sir?"
"Nnnngh..." He winced, hissed, and rubbed his aching head. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."
"You took a nasty tumble," I said in a deep monotone. My eyes were wandering the cobblestone design of the floor, mapping out a swift path home in my mind. "You're lucky that somepony was around to check on you... uhm... I-I guess..."
"Why? Did I bump into something?"
"Heh... Nothing that can't heal," I said wryly, almost sounding like a certain construction worker. Swallowing, I glanced towards the exit of the place. "Well, now that I know that you're okay, I suppose I should be on my way."
"Really?" Morning Dew blinked several times, then squinted up at me. "Does this mean that you've changed your mind about picking flowers, Lyra?"
"Thank you, but I just--" I froze. Every part of me froze, every part but my heart. With each heavy pulse, my head rotated limply towards him, bearing a gaping expression. "You..." My voice wavered; I didn't have the strength to hide it. "You r-remember me?"
"Well..." He shrugged. "It would be awfully rude of me if I didn't, don't you think, Miss Heartstrings?"
I was breathless. The image of him was tilting up. I soon realized it was because I was helping him up to his hooves--almost yanking him. My forelimbs brushed against his, and I didn't want to let go. "S-say it one last time..."
"Say what?"
I clenched my eyes shut and looked away from him. "My name. Please. Just... Just say it."
I felt his voice in greater proximity. He must have been looking at me up close to see if I had banged my head. "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings...?"
I choked on something. When I opened my eyes, his handsome face had fogged over. I stared at him--unblinking--until the image cleared, and it was just as crystal clean as from my dreams. "Where would you like to take me?" I murmured.
Morning Dew raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"
I winced. My voice squeaked. "Erm, what I mean is..." I smiled, tilting my head at an angle. I wasn't sure what I wanted him to see less: my burning cheeks or my moistening eyes. "Would... you like to take a walk... together?"
Morning Dew glanced at the flowers. With the business at hoof, he opened his mouth to protest. But after a lingering pause, he gazed down at me and grinned with ease. "Certainly. I... would like that, Lyra."
"Good," I exhaled, nearly bouncing in place as I grasped one of his hooves with both of mine. "I know just the place!"
"Heheh..." Morning Dew shook his head in awe as we strolled along. "I always loved hanging out by the lake."
"Really?" I hummed, smiling to myself as I sauntered alongside him. "How fortunate, cuz I really like it too."
"Very few ponies frequent this area," he remarked, gazing out across the rippling pond water to our right. The afternoon sun bounced off it in rich crimson bands, covering us with a painterly sepia tone as we reveled in warm breeze after warm breeze. All around us, September was alive. I felt as though I would never be cold again. "I think it's a shame. There's so much to see and think about. Still, at the same time, I'm rather thankful for the quiet."
"Do you consider yourself a loner, Morning?"
"On occasion, I suppose." He glanced at me. "Why, do you, Lyra?"
"Welllll..." I murmured in a sing-songy fashion. "Not by habit, I assure you."
"Are you on the road a lot, on account of all your musical venues?"
"Oh, hardly." I cleared my throat. "It's not that. I just haven't had the chance to socialize much as of late."
"Why?" he asked. "You seem a natural conversationalist."
"Y-you really think so?"
"Indeed." He chuckled. "Although..."
"Although what?"
"A tad bit on the philosophical side," he remarked.
"So?" I smirked wryly, side-stepping an overturned log so as not to ruin Rarity's dress. "You mean to suggest that mares shouldn't be allowed to philosophize?"
"Not at all!" he said with a grin. "It's just that philosophy is measured only in its pretense. Stallions are all too easily overwhelmed in the art of cyclical dialogue. Mares--I've long perceived--serve a much better existence by actually living."
"And by 'living,' I'm guessing you mean cooking, cleaning, and giving birth, riiiight?" I winked.
"Hardly." He stopped by a throng of cattails and looked at me. "I only meant that there are many beautiful things in this world, and the majority of them so happen to be exemplified by mares."
"Heh. Easy for you to say."
"Indeed. It is."
I giggled, shaking my head as I paced around him. "You're a little bit backwards, Morning Dew, sir, if I may be so bold to say."
"Trotting backwards is a good way to practice for doing what counts forwards," he replied. "Besides, I can't pretend that all codes of chivalry apply to modern life. It was you who swept me off my sleepy hooves back there in the greenhouse, not the other way around." His gaze fell bashfully from mine. "I thank you most kindly, Lyra."
"It's never too late to be a maid in shining armor."
"Well put," he said, then glanced at my shifting hooves. "Are you tired of walking?" he asked.
I smiled coyly at him. "If I said 'yes', does that mean we can continue this conversation sitting here where it's so nice and peaceful?"
"A gentlecolt is never too forward to assume anything."
"Well, that's too bad. Let's sit our flanks down already."
At the last second, he reached a hoof out. Both curious and amused, I took it, and I found him ushering me to a flatter stretch of grass that only an expert gardener such as him could spot. I took my sweet time smoothing out my dress before sitting down, and he took even more of his own time politely waiting until I was done before squatting himself.
"I didn't always enjoy this kind of peace," he said.
"Oh?" I gazed curiously at him. "Was it by choice?"
"As a matter of fact, no," he remarked, gazing across the rippling waters. "I grew up in a military household. And if there's one thing you should know about 'military households,' it's that they never remain in one single spot for too long. Most colts my age would easily adapt to being constantly on the move. But me... with my rather embarrassing conditions..."
"Like that which made you take an impromptu nap just moments ago?"
He somberly nodded. "Ahem. I didn't exactly fare too well."
"It must be terribly unnerving," I said. "To have grown up without a firm base, and to not even have an anchor to cling to when you felt ill."
"My parents were my anchor," he said. "As were the other ponies they worked with. I have and always will have the deepest respect for equines who selflessly serve the royal alicorns and their land. It's just..." He lingered slightly, his blue eyes blending with the reflections of the shallow pond water. "I wish I could contribute more than just my respect. So many stallions my age have given their part. I hope that someday--before I'm too terribly old--I'll have a chance to give mine."
I gazed at his side, measuring the seconds that dripped by, until I bravely asked, "Is it that you have something to prove?"
"Hmmm..." He smirked calmly my way. "More like something to gain."
"Like what?"
"Clarity," he blurted.
"Clarity?"
Morning Dew nodded slowly. "There was a moment... a very special moment in my young life--as all ponies have their own moment of magical epiphany." He gulped and gestured as he spoke, "But for me, it wasn't just about discovering who I was and what I was meant to be. It was a metamorphosis, where I came out of my sickly youth like a dawn sunrise breaking apart a fog. Ever since then, I understood what I wanted to do with my time on this earth. And yet... while the logic of the matter remains, I've found myself losing touch of... of..."
"Substance?"
He glanced at me.
I smiled gently. "You're not the only pony who loses control of his faculties from time to time, Morning. Be it dizzy spells or afflictions of the spirit, we all serve to be reminded of what it was that made us, and how we stand to be rejoined with that glorious insight once again."
"That's a charming hope to cling to, Lyra. But sometimes I fear..."
"Fear what?"
"That it's too late." He shuddered, his eyes locked onto something pale and gleaming from his past. "I fear that the only way to grasp ahold of what's truly meant for me is to somehow reverse time, to become that young colt once again, to have the world of confusion melt away like it only could that one occasion and that one occasion alone..."
I nodded slowly. "Yes. You and I can analyze the woes of the past to death with enough words to make a novel out of." I smiled brilliantly. "Or..."
"Or...?" He looked at me. He had to squint from a glint of reflected sunlight.
I had pulled my lyre up into my forelimbs. Sitting in front of him, I charged a pulse of telekinetic energy into my instrument's strings. "Or... we can recreate that which is lost with the gifts given to us."
"I... I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Shhh..." I looked deeply into his face. "Just relax, Morning. And listen." I closed my eyes. My mind scanned several scribbled musical notes until I saw the entire orchestration before me. Then, with careful precision, I performed a sweeping number, as bombastic as my strings could hope to suggest, rich and powerful and steady in its cadence. As I navigated each sweeping melody of the tune, I briefly glanced at Morning Dew's expression, and I saw his jaw dropping further and further. The song was barely done by the time I heard his voice breathily kissing the air.
"That..." He stammered. "That was the most... most delightful rendition of Mareece Ravel's Royal Symphony I've ever had the pleasure to hear," he said.
"Please, Morning." I giggled. "You flatter too much. So what if I happened to... have practiced...?" I paused in my words. I had expected him to be pleased by the tune.
However, I hadn't expected the tears forming in the corners of the grown stallion's eyes. "My parents. They used to march to that very tune. I would watch them from the compound fence after school, before we all trotted home together," he murmured. "I tried to imitate their march, their proud stance, their fearless poise. When the years went by, and I suffered through worse and worse episodes, I still did my best to march with their rhythm. They always encouraged me. They always believed in my enthusiasm. When I grew up, and I tried year after year to apply at the Canterlot Military Academy, I remained steadfast in spite of my constant failure. Even today, I try to give myself hope, for I won't be completely satisfied until I am able to accomplish what they had accomplished so well." He gulped hard. "I owe as much to them... to their legacy."
"Their... legacy?" I squinted his way. Suddenly, it dawned on me. The soft demeanor. The incessant need to prove himself. The continuous, almost foalish fixation on a seraphim savior. A part of me broke inside, and it ruptured a soft voice from my lungs, "Oh Morning, what happened?"
His nostrils briefly flared. His eyes had dried up before possibly committing the sin of leaking. "The S.S. Hurricane," he uttered coldly. "They were overseeing a supply drop-off along the Eastern Banks of Dream Valley. An entire military detachment was sent to guard the royal supplies. One night, there was a rupture in the ship's steam tanks."
His tale trailed off, but it didn't need to complete itself. I already had a sore throat by that point. After all, every adult citizen of Equestria knew about the "S.S. Hurricane." "I... I had no idea, Morning. I'm so very sorry to hear that."
"Don't be sorry, Lyra," he said. He smiled, a very genuine thing, as was his next breath as he spoke, "You've blessed me. You really have. Whenever I hear the Royal Symphony, it's always the classical presentation--usually a recording of a full-piece orchestra, complete with the number's usual, dramatic fanfare." He sighed briefly. "It's the exact style of performance that they play at every memorial held for the ponies of the Hurricane since the tragedy. There's no pride or joy in it anymore. Only a deep, immeasurable, and noble sorrow." He swallowed and glanced my way once more. "But the way you play it... the way you revel in it, with your solo strings and your passionate gusto... Well..." He grinned painfully. "It's invigorating, Miss Heartstrings. It reminds me that the dead were once very much alive. I wish there were more performers who felt with their souls as much as with their talents."
I was barely convinced. I stared forlornly at the lyre in my hooves as if it was a terrible weapon. I muttered, "Sometimes... I swear, I feel too much."
He narrowed his eyes curiously. "Why's that?"
I shook my head, stumbling over the thoughts. I should have waited before spilling them out from my lips, but I felt as if so many barriers had fallen already. He had been brutally honest with me so far. What had I done to even come close to paying him equal respect?
"Do you ever feel like you stumble upon a moment--a moment that is so golden and so perfect--that you feel as if you were meant to be there at that place and at that time for a purpose?"
He ran a hoof through his mane and said, "I... I suppose I have, maybe once or twice. Why?"
I gulped and said weakly, "I feel that everyday." I looked up at him. "And on every occasion, the moments become more and more intense, Morning. And yet..." I grimaced slightly. "I feel as if they never come with any reward, no matter how frequently they occur."
"Maybe you just haven't seized the moment," he stated. "I mean truly seized it. Perhaps that's why you feel for the moment more and more each time it keeps happening. You're never rewarded, because each time you come upon the precipice, you never make that leap of faith. I mean, never truly."
"Morning..." I murmured. "Not all of us can be as blessed and... and..." I gulped. "And as magnificent as you. For me, I shall always have infinite moments like this, so gorgeously framed but so bitterly unrealized. But you?" I looked at him lovingly, sadly. "This is it. This is your moment. Your one and only."
He gazed at me as though I was suddenly drifting away from him. "Lyra, I don't understand. Do you mean that--?"
"Shhh..." I reached out to him. I grazed his silken complexion with a hoof. I felt my lips quivering. The whole universe was shaking, and he was sliding downhill into the abysmal world I had refused myself all day to wake to. I should have seen it from a galaxy's distance. "This is your moment. Can't you feel it? Like a sunrise that sings to you, or a golden pair of eyes that is only a precursor to the most secure feeling you'll ever have the good fortune to know. You called me something when we first met, Morning." I swallowed hard, then entreated him. "Do you remember, Morning Dew? Do you remember what I was... or what you thought I was?"
His mouth hung open. The lines in his face stretched apart, pulled by talons of pain that had been raking him all his life, until now. "Angel...?" he murmured, like a colt who had just been reunited with a foalhood friend.
But I was not that protector. I could see that now. There was a phantom reflected in his eyes, a paper-thin mare with a wreathe of silly flowers trying to gussy herself up for a first and last date. I wanted immediate things, transient things, superficial things. I wanted to be held, to be cuddled, to be warmed as I stumbled inevitably into the dead thick of night.
Morning Dew needed more--so much so that he was too humble and powerless to even want it. He was on the verge of self-discovery. He always was. And every Ponyvillane dawn that he saw me, my eyes and my face were only teasing him upon the brink of such enlightenment. Nopony should ever be toyed with on the advent of transcending his demons, and Morning Dew had more ghosts than any amount of flowers could exorcise.
I may or may not have the power to free myself of this curse. But until then, I will never have the ability to free him. All my words would be for nothing. Even a tune carries itself only so far.
I wished I had the courage then and there to accept that. But where my mind worked, my heart didn't, and a last part of me tried to do the impossible anyways.
"Morning Dew," I murmured. "You are your own guardian angel. You always were." I sniffled briefly, then produced a brave smile. I didn't trust too much in what reflected in his eyes, but I continued regardless, "When you suffered through illnesses as a child, when you endured the loss of your parents, when you fought over and over again to achieve your dream of becoming a guardpony, and finally when you settled for your humble life here, it's been you and you alone whom you've had to thank for such tenacity, for such strength." I bit my lip briefly, then finished with, "I only wish you would accept that which has made you strong, that which is here for you in Ponyville. You don't... You don't need to keep searching..."
He gazed at me. His eyes were soft. I knew I was going to break before he even said it. "I didn't know I was searching until I met you, Lyra," he exclaimed breathily. "How could I always have been my own guardian angel, and yet it is only now when somepony like you is here, filling me with such song and wisdom and joy, that I'm starting to feel secure?" He smiled blissfully. "Please. Believe me. I'm not searching. I... I daresay I've found it. I've found you..." His eyes narrowed on the breaking point. "Who are you? Please, tell me. I... I must know more..."
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to weep. I wanted him to know that I was the right pony, the only pony. I was the one soul that needed to be guarded, to be held, to be made happy and safe in his embrace. All his days of wandering, all his days of lonesome trepidation, of fighting against the grindstone of his afflictions: they were all preparing him to meet me, and it would all end in tragedy. For as soon as we found each other, I would live, but he would die. By the throes of Nightmare Moon's taint, this version of him that had become enlightened, that had become blissful, that had become secure in this place in life, would no longer be. And there I would be left alone, once again forced to grow flowers out of the ashes.
"I'll tell you more," I said suddenly in a monotone voice. He couldn't see where I was going. He didn't know the cold darkness hanging over us both like an onyx ceiling. I was the only one who knew, and it was my fault and my fault alone that things had limped this far. "But first, my little florist," I barely managed to speak. My voice was cracking too much. I cleared my throat and forced a smile. "I need you to do something for me."
"Anything," he murmured, entranced. "Name it."
My eyes traveled the landscape behind him. There were several sets of trees at the lakeside. Some were ten feet away. Others were twenty. Finally, there was a row of trees about thirty-five feet's distance. Beneath them, several brightly-colored shapes fluttered in the wind.
"Could you march over there really quick..." I weakly pointed. "...and grab one or two of those marigolds?"
He glanced behind his shoulder at the trees, then back at me. "Marigolds?"
I giggled lightly. My voice was raspy at this point. I avoided his gaze before he could see my long face. "I... I want to explain something, and I need them to make an analogy." I gulped. "Philosopher, remember?"
He blinked. Slowly, he nodded. "Very well then. I'll be right back."
He got up. He left, and so did his shadow with him. As I heard the crunching of grass beneath his hooves, I clenched my eyes shut and ran a hoof over my face. I sucked a huge breath into my lungs, containing the sobs before I could feel a hint of them bursting forth. Several seconds passed, and those seconds became minutes. Finally, I heard his voice from what sounded like miles away.
"Huh... Marigolds. I have plenty of these in my greenhouse," Morning Dew murmured unemotionally. His body pivoted and his face blankly scanned the horizon. "Why... Why am I spending a perfectly good afternoon gathering more of them...?"
The stranger may have looked my way, or he may not have. I had already gotten up and swiftly trotted away from the lake. After all, a murderer never stays at the crime scene.
The cabin greeted me like a tomb. I stood there, the dress hanging limply off of me with the grace of dead skin. With every breath I took, the fragrance of Morning Dew became fainter and fainter, panting that entire afternoon with the transparent shades of a decaying dream.
I lurched forward, my hooves shuffling lifelessly. I saw the abandoned elegies lying in a discarded phalanx. The very sight of them burned into me, searing and convicting the cowardly barriers I had pulled over myself.
When will I ever learn? When will I finally, finally come to terms with the things that I deserve and the things that I can only afford to desire?
With a sigh, I levitated the crown of golden tulips off my head. I held the strung flower buds in two hooves. They were so fragile, so delicate, yet so devoid of life. I could have left them where they belonged, on their stems, being fed the moisture and care they needed to survive as long as possible. But that wasn't what I chose to do. I plucked them from their foundations and threaded them into a silken circle of superficiality, just like everything I had done that day had been cheap and paltry and inexcusably desperate.
I wasn't sure what angered me more, that I thought such an aesthetic presentation could possibly win Morning Dew's affections, or the fact that that the gesture had actually come so close to succeeding.
I winced. I gnashed my teeth. My hooves rubbed together, threatening to grind the golden petals to a pulp. But I didn't let them. After all, enough beautiful things had been destroyed that day. I placed the flowers onto the end-table, pulled my slippers off, and hobbled over to the bed. I collapsed across the cot; I didn't bother peeling the dress off. I was too weak, too encumbered by shivers and shadows. I once again had the dream, the fantasy, the deep warm place where a phantom doppelganger of Morning Dew was there to hold me, to caress me, to remember my name and whisper it to me beyond the iron curtains of the cursed night.
All it ever was--all it ever would be--was a vision, a fancy idea, a happy thought for an unhappy prisoner. I should have known better than to have entertained the notion that I could have transformed any of it into something concrete and real. I should have had more respect for Morning Dew than to have dragged him into my ordeal. He had a soul--just like every other pony in this place. It was high time I came to grips with the fact that the things I do to the spirits around me, though impermanent, are still very much real and potentially devastating. My task in Ponyville was to trail a musical goddess, not to become one. It's one thing to seize a golden opportunity in life. It's another thing altogether to conquer it at the behest of souls too weak to retain meaning from the matter.
I clenched my eyes shut and curled my limbs to my chest. All I had to do was to accept it, to finally embrace it. I was alone. I am alone, and forever will be. It is my duty to unlock the elegies and nothing else. I've only needed to be reacquainted with my resolve. After all, what better task is there for a ghost to accomplish?
"That's the last of them!" A pony in orange work gear shouted. He marched out of the barren brown shell that was left of the abandoned hotel on the north edge of Ponyville the following morning. "I got it wired up and everything! We finally doing this?"
"You can bet Princess Luna's spitshiney tiara, we are!" Ambrosia grumbled, rotating a timer on a silver device. Several sets of wires had been threaded out of the multiple doors and windows of the building. They all converged onto the contraption in Ambrosia's grasp. "This had dang well better work! I wanna go back to buildin' houses and raisin' barns. I'm serious, the mayor doesn't pay us enough for this demolition crud."
"I dunno, Amber," the stallion chuckled, adjusting his hard hat. "I always figured you were a natural for tearing walls down."
"No, that's what your momma does when she pays a visit to the outhouse."
"Hardy har har."
"Enough hijinks. Did the others set up a perimeter?"
"Yup. They just finished combing over the area four times. There's nopony around for a hundred feet."
"Good. Let's get this over with." Ambrosia paused fiddling with the timer to shout over her shoulder. "Okay, everypony! Three minutes! Keep back like you've been told to!" As it turned out, a thin line of random pedestrians were watching from a safe distance. They waved and cheered with meager enthusiasm for the dramatic implosion that was to happen. Ambrosia gave her co-worker one last glance. "Ready?"
"Ready." He nodded.
"And... Set!" She twisted a lever. The silver device began ticking away as the timer counted down the seconds until detonation. The two workponies wasted no time. They galloped briskly away from the site until they were barely within shouting distance of the ill-fated hotel. Catching her breath, Ambrosia came to a stop beside her fellow workers and a small group of excited onlookers. Several orange signs had been planted in a wide circle around the site, repeating the words of warning that the memos in downtown Ponyville had been broadcasting all weekend. "Few. How's this for a Gala?" Ambrosia remarked. Many ponies around her snickered and chuckled.
It was around this point that I had trotted up. It was later in the morning than I was used to arriving. This was no accident; I had hoped to not run into a certain stallion. To my solemn relief, Morning Dew was nowhere to be seen. I hung in the shadows of the line of gazing ponies, feeling my saddlebag weighing me down like a bag of bricks. My sighs were just as heavy as I gazed one last time at the doomed hotel building. This week seemed to be the perfect graveyard for memories. I only wished I wasn't the town's one and only undertaker.
"I feel like something's missin'," Ambrosia said.
"Don't say that, Amber," one of her co-workers grumbled. "That ain't even remotely funny right now."
She chuckled, breaking the tense silence as the ponies awaited the impending implosion. "No, not that. Oh! I know: Morning Dew's a no-show. What's up with that?"
"Why? You were hoping he'd be around to marvel at your hoofwork?" one co-worker said to her.
"Two minutes!" another called out.
Ambrosia responded to the first pony. "Eh, perhaps it's for the best. He's always a sucker for sentiment. Somehow, I just know it: seein' this here building go down will... break... his heart..." Ambrosia's face grew pale. Her mouth hung agape. It was an expression most unnatural for her.
"Huh?" Her co-worker squinted at her. "Amber, what's up?"
"What..." She pointed a hoof, murmuring breathlessly. "Who in Tartarus' name is that...?"
Everypony looked. I too craned my neck to see better. When I did so, my heart sank.
A tiny, pale pegasus had approached the site from a high altitude. Fluttering past the signs and warnings, he landed directly in front of the building. The colt immediately began rummaging through a series of bright stems and buds left in the windowsills of the doomed structure. One by one, he began plucking the most colorful flowers, wildflowers that were only there still because Morning Dew hadn't harvested them... which was entirely because a certain unicorn had chosen to distract the handsome gardener all of yesterday.
Oh dear Celestia, no...
"Kid!" A pony shouted. He and several others dashed forward. "Get away from there--"
"Now just hold on!" Ambrosia shouted, holding them all back with an outstretched pair of hooves. "Don't everypony go gallopin' in at once! That place is about to blow!" She alone took three steps forward and cupped her hooves around her mouth. "Hey! Shrimp! Get your pale little butt outta there! Explosive charges are about to go off!"
There was no way in Equestria that Rumble didn't hear that. As a matter of fact, he gasped--his eyes wide and panicky. His wings fluttered ahead of his hooves, desperately trying to lift him up. Almost immediately, though, he plummeted hard into the ground, wincing. He tried lifting off again... and then again. He couldn't budge. We all watched in heart-throbbing horror, confused as to his predicament, until it suddenly dawned on us...
"Weeds..." A pony murmured. "The little kid's rear leg is caught in some weeds!"
"Help!" Rumble's voice squeaked from a distance. "Please! I-I'm stuck!"
"One minute!" a panicking co-worker stammered.
"Hold on!" Ambrosia motioned for the others to stay while she galloped forward. "I'm comin' for ya, kiddo! Just stay put--"
"I've got him!" a voice shouted, a voice that was far closer to Rumble already.
I wasn't sure if my heart should have leapt at that tone or not. Then I swiveled and saw his abandoned wagon rolling over to its side directly behind a line of kicked-up grass. I covered my mouth with a pair of hooves and turned towards the hotel.
Morning Dew was already there before my eyes could reach him. Skidding to a stop, the brave gardener planted a calming hoof on Rumble's neck, leaned over, and snapped the entangling weeds with one fierce bite of his jaws. Rumble limped free, wincing slightly as he stumbled forward over the many detonation wires worming into the building above them.
"Thirty seconds!" somepony's voice shrieked. I could barely hear them, for as much as I wanted to rejoice, the part of me that understood the cold breath of fate was still sitting on edge.
"Go! Go!" Morning Dew was shouting, panting, dizzy. Oh please. Please no. As Rumble trotted briskly ahead, Morning Dew took up the rear... for a meager two seconds. His breath came out in two lasting wheezes, and suddenly his body deflated.
The noise of his collapse startled Rumble. The little colt spun around. "Oh jeez!" he squeaked. Instead of running the rest of the way to safety, he turned around and desperately tugged at the stallion's mane with his hooves. "Mister, come on! You heard what they said!"
"Celestia help us--Morning!" Ambrosia shouted. Her eyes took in the ticking time bomb that was the hotel one last time before she bravely dashed forward... only to have something else dashing past her. The sheer velocity of the strange movement threw her off balance so that she collapsed to her chest and gazed helplessly up at the scene.
I was galloping fiercely towards the two ponies. I shrugged the saddlebag off my flanks in mid-sprint, kicking up soil and grass as I rocketed on the sheer fuel of my hyperventilating breaths. Cold sweat stained the corners of my hoodie as I slid past Rumble and Morning and dug my hooves solidly into the earth.
"Please, Miss!" A tearful Rumble was whimpering, begging. "You gotta help me move him--"
There's no time.
"Get behind me," I said.
"But--!"
"And stay close!" I was already gritting my teeth, seething, facing angrily at the hotel as it threatened to spill thunder into my skull at any second. A green light pulsed, lighting up the flimsy ten feet between us and the impeding disaster. "Nnnngh..." I hissed as a tiny dome of emerald energy finally solidified above me.
Just as I erected Twilight's protection field, chaos broke loose. The charge went off in the center of the building. The hotel collapsed in a billowing cloud of mortar and sawdust. Then several explosions went off from deep within as the hulking weight forced the foundation to buckle in two dozen places at once. We were greeted with a sea of splinters and shrapnel splashing towards us.
Rumble shrieked and clung to Morning Dew.
Gnashing my teeth, I squatted before us and tilted my head forward. I took the brunt of the debris with my shield. The sheer force of the blasts were shoving me backwards, plowing four tiny ravines in the soil below. My head ached like a million vices were clamping down onto it all at once. Nevertheless, I held the bulk of the destruction away, so that only a few random specks of detritus flew past the translucent umbrella of energy.
There was a cry of horror from the ponies watching from a distance. I struggled to squint my aching eyes open. As the hotel's implosion consumed it, the front face of the building was performing a last act of stubbornness. It teetered forward--thick and heavy. I soon found two full stories of wooden paneling looming over me.
When it came down, a literal crater formed beneath the three of us. A cyclone of green energy fluctuated and danced about me as I poured all of my soul through my leylines in a last ditch attempt to preserve the protection spell. My legs buckled. My muscles quivered. I could hear Rumble's whimpers and Morning Dew's tiny breaths.
Somewhere, in the hazy clouds of time, a sickly young colt was marching out of bed. He graced the sunrise, and a golden pair of eyes beyond the window gazed back, lovingly, longingly, forbidden from embracing him.
"Nnnnngh..." I seethed. My world flashed a bright emerald as I leaned against the edge of my shield. My horn vibrated to the breaking point, but I reached beyond the pain, shoving a pulse of telekinetic energy straight into the protection buff. "Aaaaaaagh!" The green dome flew diagonally like a missile, plowing through the building face so that it split like a parting sea, both halves falling harmlessly to either side of us with a monumentous thud.
The next thing to fall was me--panting--to the sundered earth below. I wouldn't know it until later, but my heroics had lasted the space of five seconds. All I cared for at the time was...
"Mmmm... M... M-Morning..." I dragged myself back onto my hooves and crawled over towards him.
Rumble was shaking him furiously, all the while struggling to contain his sobs. "He's not moving! He's... he's..."
"He's alright, kid," I said, gulping. I slid down and lifted his upper body until I cradled his soft head in my lap. "We're okay," I murmured. My voice came out crookedly, and I realized that I was smiling. "We're all okay," I squeaked.
"But... But..." Rumble glanced up at me. His eyes widened.
I was confused, until I felt a warm trickle of liquid rolling down my neck. I reached a hoof up and dipped it--wincing--into a thin gash below my left ear. I realized that my shield had saved the day, but it wasn't perfect. I was nicked and scratched in several tiny places. Rumble and Morning Dew were similarly grazed in a dozen spots, but I hardly feared the worst.
However, when Ambrosia and several other breathless ponies galloped up, the blood was the first thing they saw. "Good grief! Are y'all okay?"
"That was amazing!"
"Did you see what she just did?"
"Praise Celestia, that was close!"
"He... He's..." I gulped, suddenly aware of how much I was panting. "We're fine. We just... we just need..."
"You stay put!" Ambrosia gestured. I'd never seen her look so frightened. Her green eyes were locked on Morning Dew's unconscious figure alone. "We'll go fetch Nurse Redheart! Let's not take any chances, now!"
"I'm so sorry!" Rumble whimpered, his eyes misty as he sniffled and cried, "I didn't know about the building! I was flying all day and... and... I didn't know! Oh please tell me he'll be all right!"
"Let's worry about what could or couldn't have happened later, kid," Ambrosia said. "You can fly, can't you?"
"Yes!" I flashed a look towards the colt. "You're the fastest one here! Help them fetch a doctor pronto!"
"Okay!" Rumble composed himself, fluttered his wings, and took off.
"Are... Are you...?" Ambrosia looked nervously at me.
"I'm fine. Go get Redheart!" I nodded towards her. "I'll... I'll watch over him."
She nodded fervently. In a blur, she and her co-workers galloped towards the center of town.
I was left alone with Morning Dew in my forelimbs. The hotel site settled quietly around us like the aftermath of a terrible battle. I felt my breaths slowing to tranquil waves as I cradled his warm body and looked him over, carefully spotting the tiny cuts and bruises that blemished his otherwise perfect coat. I saw a tiny cut along his left cheek. Gently, I raised a hoof to his face.
As soon as my hoof touched his silken complexion, everything within me froze. The reality of the moment caught up with me on thundering wheels. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and it was in perfect cadence with his. I had come to understand what I could or couldn't afford in life, but what of the both of us? The elegies may not have a divine purpose for me. But angelic moments such as this?
I brushed his mane hair aside. His golden face hung like a sleeping colt's in the noonday glow. Something so beautiful hardly deserved to be so alone. It was selfish of me to believe. But I didn't care. I no longer thought.
I was leaning over. I held him gently towards me until our foreheads made contact. I never felt like melting so much before. I nuzzled him, I cherished him. My limbs were shaking, buckling, but his presence was my anchor, pulling me closer towards him until I felt his tender breaths against my muzzle.
That was what broke the dam. With gentle sobs, I worshipped him, my tears christening his forehead like a holy river between us. He was so warm, so fragile, so alive. I wished that I could be alive too. Angels visit this earth sparingly for a reason. They need terribly blissful moments like this to remind them what's worth protecting, for it is all too often something incapable of possessing, unlike this moment--a memory that shall stay alive forever in the center of my wilting spirit, that I shall never allow to implode for as long as I'm alive to preserve it.
When Ambrosia, Rumble, and the others returned--and Nurse Redheart in tow--I was gone. Morning Dew awoke to their concerned voices, their careful ministrations and their gentle assertions. As he was bandaged back to health, he reached a hoof out and gently patted Rumble's and Ambrosia's shoulders in turn. He did so in a dazed fashion, his eyes and ears twitching in want of a warmth that was suddenly lacking. He brushed his hoof over his forehead and was only mildly surprised to feel it moist from a secret baptism. He gazed at the evaporating tears on his forelimb and glanced skyward, like a young colt waking to the golden dawn.
I sat on the park bench the following day, my lyre lying by my side. I didn't play it. I hardly breathed. I stared into the warm shades of late summer, my lungs slowly rising and falling. A few random bandages clung to my figure as my body mended from the previous day's debacle. I didn't feel proud. I didn't feel victorious. A guardian angel with no home to fly back to hardly has anything worth heralding.
When his hoofsteps came around the bend, it was like gentle thunder breaking the stillness of the afternoon. I saw Rumble trotting lonesomely along the path in my peripheral vision. He navigated a series of continual sighs, each one deeper and more somber than the one previous. Soon, his solemn gait brought him to the shadow of a tree on the crest of a hill. He slumped down beneath it, gazing at the thick soil beyond his hooves.
Eventually, I looked his way. I cleared the dryness from my throat and uttered, "Is there anything worse than a pegasus who doesn't have his head in the clouds?"
"Huh?" He glanced my way, then winced. "Oh. Hello there."
"Hi."
"You... You're gonna yell at me too?" he grumbled. "Everypony else has."
"What for?"
He toyed limply with the blades of grass around him. "I almost got a pony killed yesterday."
"Really?" I smiled gently. "You don't strike me as a murdering type."
"No. It's not that..." He groaned. "I did something stupid, and a pony nearly died trying to save me. An entire building practically fell on top of us. I still don't know how we both survived."
"Perhaps we're lucky in this life for a reason," I droned. "Perhaps it's fate's way of showing us that we have more to learn in our existence than just from our mistakes."
"Whatever," he blurted. "My older brother's forbidden me from flying around on my own for a while. I guess I don't blame him. It's just that..."
"What?"
"I wanted to find some flowers. It's a lot easier to do from the air--to find the best places where they grow, at least."
"Why flowers?" I obligatorily asked him.
"I..." He bit his lip. "I dunno, really. It just seemed like the right thing to do."
"You like flowers?"
"No," Rumble grunted. "I don't."
"Then why--?"
"It doesn't matter, okay?!" His voice cracked as he shook in frustration, covering his face with a pair of limp hooves. "I don't know. I just don't know." He sighed lengthily. "All I know is that I'm a weirdo, just like my friends call me..."
I stared silently at him, but then my ears pricked. There was a melodic sound coming from the far hillside. A series of giggles lit the air, and one of them far more enchanting than the rest. I glanced to my left in time to spot the three foalish figures galloping through the tall grass. I looked briefly back at Rumble, took a deep breath, then narrowed my eyes in concentration. A dim green aura illuminated the bench upon which I was squatting.
"Heeheehee!" Apple Bloom's voice cackled. "Shucks, Scoots! Yer pullin' mah leg! Did you really?"
"Uh huh," Scootaloo nodded with a devilish grin. She and the other two were garbed in their trademark burgundy cloaks. "Then, as he got back up, I told him 'You better stop insulting blank flanks, or else the next time I hit you, you'll cry every time you go to the outhouse!'"
"Well no wonder he had nothing mean to say this morning!" Sweetie Belle remarked, taking up the rear of the group as the three bounded over the grassy knoll. "You're the last pony anyone would want to mess with, Scootaloo--" Before she could finish this utterance, a burst of green light snapped her cloak off her shoulders. She gasped and spun around, only to see her crusader cape flying away in a magical wind. "Oh jeez! Hold up, guys!"
"Ugh! What, again, Sweetie Belle?" Scootaloo's voice groaned.
"You should fancy tyin' that thang to yer mane!" Apple Bloom added in a snicker.
"Very... funny...!" Sweetie Belle huffed and puffed as she galloped after the runaway scrap of cloth. "I mean it! Wait for me!" It came to a stop beneath a tree beside the park path. Catching up to the thing, she hoisted it up in her hoof and hissed like an angry fashionista. "Nnnnnn! This fabric! I wish there was something I could call it to make it feel bad--!" She stopped in mid-speech, realizing she wasn't alone.
Rumble realized he wasn't alone either. He jumped up with a gasp and backed into the tree as if he was being held at spear-point.
Sweetie Belle merely blinked at him. He stared just as blankly back. As the seconds melted away, she chewed on her bottom lip and took a few steps back.
Rumble fidgeted. Rumble shook. He lurched a two inches forward, anchored to a desperate grin. "H-Hi there."
"Mmmm..." Sweetie Belle hid half her face behind the loose cape. "Hello..."
"You..." He briefly gnashed his teeth. "You're pretty--Uhhh... Uhhh--Your voice, I mean. You have a pretty singing voice." He gulped. "That is, I've... I've heard it. You sing really well, and I think it's cool."
Sweetie Belle's eyes fell to the grass. Her hooves toyed with the soil.
"Are you doing stuff with your friends?" Rumble scratched a hoof behind his slick mane. "Cuz I think it's pretty nifty how you three are always... uhm... going on adventures and--like--doing stuff for the village and all. Some ponies may think that you're annoying, but I think you're really helpful and stuff. I'm totally not one of those ponies who would think that you're annoying. I... nnngh... I don't even know why I said that..."
Sweetie Belle suddenly shook, quivered even.
Rumble squinted at her. "Are... Are you okay--?"
Sweetie Belle wretched, vomiting up a copious amount of fluid onto the grass between them.
"Whoah! Jeez!" Rumble hopped back.
"Mmmf... Urp..." Sweetie Belle fell on her haunches and rubbed a forelimb across her cheek. She grimaced, her face turning a furious shade of red. "Omigosh! I'm... urp... I'm so sorry! That... I-I don't even know why that happened!" She coughed a few times, sputtered, and hugged the fabric to herself. "Please, don't think I'm gross!"
"That..." Rumble's wide eyes blinked. "That..."
Sweetie Belle winced.
"That..." Rumble grinned brightly. "...was totally awesome!" His wings fluttered as he leaned forward. "I've never seen a pony upchuck like that!"
She smiled. "Really? You--urp--mean it?"
"Yeah! I bet even my big brother would be impressed!"
"Apple Bloom says it's because I'm always swallowing flies."
"Really?" Rumble bounced towards her. "Wanna find some bigger bugs?"
"Uhm..." She bit her lip and hid behind the fabric once again. "N-Not really."
"Oh." Rumble instantly wilted. "Eheh... of course you wouldn't..."
"B-But... But the crusaders and I were about to go squirrel caging!" Sweetie Belle said. She appeared to light up as soon as she spotted his blank hind-quarters. "Wanna come with us?!" Her eyes sparkled as she beamed. "Maybe we can find you your super special talent!"
"Hey, yeah!" Rumble exclaimed. "It so happens I'm missing one of those!"
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Sweetie Belle giggled and motioned him along. "Come on--Whoah!" She forgot about the cape in her grasp until she tripped on it.
"Heehee... Ahem. Here. Allow me." Rumble walked over, and with very gentle movements he tied the cape to Sweetie Belle's back.
She stood still, her cheeks flushed. When he finished, she gave him a sweet smile. "Thanks."
"No problem."
"We should get my big sister to make one for you."
"Eh..." He smiled bashfully. "It wouldn't nearly look as good on me as it does on you."
"Whatever. Squirrels are waiting. Let's go!"
"Heehee! Alright!"
The two scampered up the hill to join Apple Bloom and Scootaloo in waiting. I was watching the whole time, quiet as a mouse. I didn't want to disturb the moment, nor did I want to shatter the first warm pulse I felt in my heart since that day began.
"Now, if that ain't sweet as all get out."
I turned to glance at my side.
Ambrosia was trotting down the path. She was out of uniform. Her exposed coat and snow-white mane were a sight to behold. I almost wondered if she hid such beauty and grace on purpose. As soon as she spoke again, I recognized the gruff construction worker instantly.
"The village was a bit too hard on the little scamp for what happened yesterday."
"You'll have to enlighten me," I spoke montonously. "Just what happened yesterday?"
She shuddered at the thought. "Something that was mostly my fault, which is why I talked the kid's older brother from layin' the guilt on too fiercely. Thunderlane's a popular stallion around these parts, but his brain is hardly the first organ he thinks with half the time."
I chuckled. "You strike me as an observant mare."
"Not observant enough, I reckon," Ambrosia groaned. She sat momentarily on her haunches and ran a tired hoof through her mane. "I should have taken more precautions to keep ponies away from that hotel when we demolished it. I should have put up more signs. I should have spread the news to more pegasi. I shouldn't have used timed charges."
"It's easy to pick apart an impossible situation after it's happened than before," I said. "I don't see why you should be so hard on yourself. Everypony came out of it safely, right?"
"Just barely, and t'ain't none of my doin'," she grumbled. "I swear, it's as if I've been too terribly distracted these last few weeks. It's not the kind of professionalism I've been hankerin' to show."
"Lemme guess?" I shrugged. "The Gala got your mind in the clouds?"
"Hah! As if!" She briefly guffawed, then rode the sloping crest of a sad sigh. "I wished life was that dag-blamed simple."
"If it's not the Gala that's been distracting you, then what?" I asked her with a chuckle. Then it dawned on me. My smile left as sharply as the breath coming out of my mouth. "Who?"
She bit her lip as her face grew long. I've seen that look before, reflected in a charming stallion's blue eyes. "T'ain't no matter. I've prattled and rambled like a little foal, and it's just too late to make anything of it. Besides... heh... I was born to be a real brute. What he needs is somethang gentler, some filly with more grace."
I gazed softly at her. I gulped and said, "What a pony needs, a pony often already has. I've learned that the ones who search the hardest are usually the souls who end up alone."
"Hmmm. There are worse fates," Ambrosia mused.
"Yes." I slowly, coldly nodded. "There are."
She fidgeted a final time, sighed the last layers of guilt off her shoulders, then produced a brave smile. "Well, no sense in fussin' the mistakes of yesteryear. I've got me an apartment to start buildin' tomorrow. I'd better go meet with my crew to begin plannin'. Have a good afternoon, ma'am. Here's hopin' you don't run into anymore pathetic mares bent on thinkin' their troubles aloud. Heheh..."
I waved as she trotted off. "It's... hardly a crime..." She was too far away to hear me, and I was too frozen in my place to try and make her.
"Tell me, Miss Heartstrings," Rarity was saying. She sat across from me at the table in Sugarcube Corner as a rosy candle lit up our conversation. "If I may be so bold as to inquire: have you ever survived an impossible infatuation?"
I gazed up at her from my musical notes. I smiled.
"Nopony ever survives an impossible infatuation, Miss Rarity," I said. "Whatever you were before the Gala, that mare's gone now. But, ask yourself, would you want that goofy, enchanted filly to come back and live in your body again?"
She blinked back at me, her face lighting up in the falling shade of evening. "No," she gently breathed, shaking her head with a calm smile. "I imagine that I shan't be that mare ever again, and I am perfectly fine with that."
"Still..." I pointed with the quill pen levitating in my grasp. "Memories."
"Memories, Miss Heartstrings?"
"They're too delicious to give up entirely, so long as we know that they'll only remain what they flimsily are." I gazed at the crown of golden tulip buds haloing the candle between us. "What better a place for a fantasy to exist than in the recesses of our minds? As for our hearts--however--it's up to us to prepare them for when the time comes that they'll be made or broken. No matter how extreme our fantasies are, we can never really anticipate the moment when true love comes, when we're transformed into something less starving... less lonely than the previous shades of us."
Rarity took a deep breath. Her smile was a weathered thing, but it felt truer than any other expression she had graced me with previous. "I feel as though I have been starving for a terribly, terribly long time."
I nodded quietly. "And some of us have even longer years left to remain hungry." After a pause, I brushed a hoof gently over the golden petals and added, "Some of us. But not all."
Quietly, Rarity finished her mug of coffee. She stood up, but before leaving she trotted over to my seat and rested a hoof on my shoulder.
"Just be sure starvation doesn't claim you, Miss Heartstrings. You are far too beautiful to expect nothing from this glorious world."
"I know it, Miss Rarity." I smiled peacefully up at her. "After all, everypony is made to be loved."
Her lips pursed upon hearing that. She gave me a sweet smile, something that was strung halfway between proud and melancholic. On a moist breath, she carried herself out the door of Sugarcube Corner, and into the last waning light of day.
Alone, I sat with my elegies. I glanced at Morning Dew's gift of flowers. I thought about beautiful things, and how all too often they were hidden for fear of the unknown. I was the only cursed soul in Ponyville who had something legitimate to fear. More than that, it was my angelic duty to keep it that way.
Standing up, I blew out the rosy candle, and briskly hoisted the crown of flowers in my hoof.
The next morning, the noise of power saws and jackhammers filled the wooden framework of the skeletal apartment building with chaotic cacophony. On just any other day, Ambrosia would have been in complete control of the situation. Currently, however, she stumbled over equipment and bumped into wooden boards, all the while seething and rubbing her head as if afflicted with a terrible headache.
"No... no... no!" She barked over her shoulder. "I'm tellin' y'all, ya ain't lookin' at the blueprints correctly! The whole dang foundation is off by over twenty degrees! At this rate, I'm gonna get an earful once they try installin' the windows!"
"Well excuse me, Amber!" Another worker shouted back over the bedlam. "I was only following your directions!"
"And how many times have I told you--When I'm comin' across as hare-brained, chew me a new one!"
"If you cared so much about your aching head this morning, then maybe you should be wearing your hard hat like a smart pony!"
"Don't preach to me!" Ambrosia rubbed her scalp again, sighed, and eventually grumbled, "Though reckon he's right. What am I doing, tryin' to kill myself?" Lethargically, she trudged across a stretch of concrete, squinting towards a wooden table. "Now where in tarnation did I put that stupid thang?" She grumbled, looking everywhere for her article in question. "I swear, I put it right there! Did somepony move it--?" She froze in place, her mouth agape.
The hard hat was lying atop a stack of toolboxes. What was more, it was upside down. What was even more, its hollow center was filled to the brim with golden, silken tulips--an entire crown of them.
She plopped her flanks down as she gazed limply at the thing. Her head shook with each pulsing heartbeat. Reaching a hoof over, she gently grazed the soft petals. "Why... Why that sissy little sap..." Her voice had lost its gruff edge, and she was cracking a gentle smile. "He didn't...?" Biting her lip, she gazed beyond the lengths of the construction site.
"Nnngh... Hey! Amber!" A co-worker barked from across the thundering scene. "Could you pass me the measuring tape while you're over there?" Several seconds limped by. He looked up and grumbled again, "Amber?"
Ambrosia was gone. So were the tulips.
Morning Dew finished planting a row of dandelions in the soft bed of a storefront. Standing up, he wiped the sweat from his brow and admired his hoofwork. Slowly, he turned around to grab a tool from his gardening wagon. It so happened that a familiar pony in orange stood in the way.
He jumped back briefly, then let loose an airy chuckle with a hoof planted over his bandaged chest. "For goodness' sake, Amber! Do you want me to collapse on a daily basis?" He shuffled past her and rummaged through the wooden cart full of plants and things. "What brings you here? I thought you were working on the other side of town this month."
She stared after him. After a courageous breath, she muttered, "Are you fixin' to see me wear them? Is that it?"
"Uhhhh..." Morning Dew tilted his head up, blinking towards the horizon. He turned and squinted at her. "Huh? I don't read you..."
She slowly lifted the hard hat in her grasp. She chewed on her lip for the length of time it took for him to gaze down and see the tulips gathered in a circle within.
"Wow. Those are..." He narrowed his expert eyes. "Those are several days' old, but still remarkably fresh!"
"Only a pony like you can grow them flowers to last that long, Morning," she said.
"Well, I guess, but--" He stopped in mid-sentence. Fidgeting, he cast her a look that was too confused to appear guilty.
She read the truth in his expression anyways. "You... You didn't send them, did you?"
He slowly, slowly shook his head. "No, Amber. I... I'm sorry, but I didn't. What...? I mean, how did you think--?"
"Heh..." Her breath squeaked out of her as she smiled painfully down at the hard hat and the treasures therein. "I know. It's silly."
"No! I mean... it... it's not as silly as you think--"
"Of course it is, Morning. It always is."
"Amber?" He gulped and gazed at her worriedly. "I... I don't understand..."
"You do. You just pretend that you don't, like I pretend that I don't." She ran a hoof through her mane and cast a vulnerable gaze towards the remains of the crumbled hotel across the street. A deep breath escaped her lips. "I catch you lookin', Morning."
"L-looking, Amber?"
"At the likes of Caramel and Windy. At Thunderlane and Blossomforth as well. And I think... no... I know..." She choked on a soft breath and gazed back at him. "It's the same way you look at me."
Morning Dew said nothing. He merely hung his head and dug his hoof into a loose piece of soil.
"Yes. Yes!" She chuckled bitterly, sitting down on her haunches finally and all-but-hugging the hard hat to her chest. "I'm always goin' off on you and teasin' and the like. It's stupid. We both know it, and we both know it's just to cover something stupider."
"It's not stupid, Amber--"
"Don't you try to placate me none!" She briefly frowned, but her expression melted into a vulnerable glance as she leaned forward. "How come it feels like you're always searchin', and I'm always waitin', and the days just go by faster and faster and all we end up bein' is alone?"
"We... We're not exactly alone, Amber--"
"We are, Morning. We are and... and..." She winced as her eyes moistened. A sniffle came out of her, then, "I almost lost ya yesterday. I almost lost ya--and I feel mighty horrible. I feel horrible because I feel that way and yet I've never had you to begin with! And I'm so sorry..."
"Please." Morning gazed warmly at her. "Don't be sorry. What happened with the demolition was hardly anypony's fault--"
"Morning, ya knucklehead!" She laughed and sobbed at once, a pitifully delicious sound. "That's not what I'm apologizin' for and you know it!" She reached a hoof over and boldly stroked his cheek. "I'm beginnin' to realize what I should have done a lot sooner, what a sweet stallion such as you was afraid to do himself."
Morning Dew raised his hoof--hesitated--but ultimately grasped her forelimb. He didn't shove it away. He merely held it to his face, sighed, and eventually spoke in a somber voice, "I've been afraid for a reason, Amber. You know what I've always wanted to do in my life." His tone wavered, a coltish quality he could never shake loose. "And you know that at this rate, with what I have to contend with, I'll never be able to do it."
"Morning--"
"You're so much stronger and more confident than me, Amber." He looked at her painfully. "I... I would never be able to make you feel secure. I would never be able to protect you as I'd like to..."
She smiled as a tear rolled down her face. She caressed his cheek just the same. "You can protect me more than you think, ya sap. Trust me." Her lungs heaved and her smile cracked even wider. "You really can..."
That broke something within him. He let loose a heavy breath, as if liberated by something even more golden than his memories. He looked down at the hard hat. Reaching with both hooves, he raised the yellow crown of tulips and looked them over. Without wasting too many seconds, he gently lifted them towards Ambrosia's head.
She tilted forward. Once the crown was in place, she let loose a childish giggle. "Uhm..." She sniffed and squirmed nervously under his gaze. "I... I reckon they don't m-match my eyes none."
"No." He slowly shook his head. He smiled. "But they do match your smile."
She squeaked forth another chuckle, wiping her eyes with a forelimb. "Well... That's a start, hmm?"
Morning Dew shook his head again. "This is," he said. He then leaned in and nuzzled her.
She nuzzled him back, then clung to him desperately, burying her face into his shoulder. He returned the gesture, and together the two blended warmly in the center of Ponyville, becoming one with the colorful canvas around them.
I stood beyond the nearby storefronts, appreciating the art of life. It was something best done at a distance, after all. Shuffling the weight of the lyre in my saddlebag, I turned around and marched towards the colder parts of town. The eighth elegy sprang back to life in my head, along with a burning speculation.
I couldn't stop thinking... that a true guardian angel's merit is not measured in what she holds onto, but in what she gives up.
That thought has occupied me all afternoon, to the point that I had to write about it, which is how I come to here, to this cabin, to this journal. The elegy calls to me. I know when it's best not to refuse a tender embrace, no matter how cold or pale. I must figure out its name, its purpose, it position in the symphony. Beyond that, I know what comes next. After all, what's left to stop me?
I won't be writing in this journal again, not until I've performed the eighth elegy, not until I've thrown myself full-force into the only purpose I have left, a moment that's hanging eternally before me like a great black beacon. If there are no more entries to follow, then that means I will have either frozen to death or been dragged to accursed depths hitherto inconceivable.
My one assurance--my one affirmative thought at this point--is that there is only one soul who will be burdened with mourning me once I am gone, and that same pony is no longer afraid to declare such.
Yours, as true as she is real,
-Lyra Heartstrings
I may or may not find an escape from this horrible curse of mine. Sometimes, more than anything, I just wish that somepony would love me.
Background Pony
VIII - "Everypony Is Made To Be Loved"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: theBrianJ, Props, Spotlight, Samrose, RazgrizS57, and VivaceCapriccioso
Cover pic by Spotlight
SS&E's Ponychan Thread |
Background Pony | IX - The Firmaments | Dear Journal,
What are we afraid of? What fills us with dread each night? What forces our eyes to open wide, against the percussion of our panting breaths, so that we may determine whether we are actually dead or just sleeping?
What gives shadows their sharp edge? What makes a black doorway so foreboding, a dusty corner so full of shapes and whispers? What tugs at the hairs on the back of our necks so harshly?
We've grown accustomed to a world that is safe, warm, and tranquil. When the slightest chaotic event undermines the sanctity of our domain, we become uneasy. We discover the taste of trepidation, a very bitter bile that sits in the back of our throats. We cling to our loved ones and we dream of them being eternal, just as we wish our anxieties to be impermanent. We shudder in our homes, beds, and tears, thinking that we are afraid.
I have seen the land between the firmaments. We are not afraid enough.
My name is Lyra Heartstrings. Two days ago, I became the first mortal pony in a millennium to have performed a damnable symphony, and yet I have come back from the freezing shadows. I am alone with the memories of what I have witnessed. As of this moment I am alive, and I have much to write about.
It started with a song, as all things do. The melody poured into every corner of the room, filling the air with a haunting, mournful frequency. When it ended, its echoes lamenting the final chords of my lyre, I opened my eyes to see Twilight Sparkle standing in the library before me, on the verge of tears. Her mouth hung open, and very numbly my foalhood friend stammered:
"'Twilight's Requiem.'"
And with that, Elegy #8 had a name.
"'Twilight's Requiem?'" I repeated. I lowered the lyre back into my saddlebag and sat on my haunches across from her in the afternoon's glow. "That's a rather interesting choice for a name," I said, though my voice came out in a drone. I had just finished the usual routine with Twilight, telling her all that she needed to know in order to help me come up with this title. "You sure you haven't gotten it mixed up with something else?"
"I... I'm sure," she murmured. Her ears were folded against her head. She sat in a slump, looking like a wilted bouquet of violets. Her eyes searched the shadows of the room as her mind reached solemnly into the past. "There's no way I could forget the name of that instrumental. When Princess Celestia first taught it to me during a history lesson, I remember being instantly intrigued. I was a young filly at the time, and I guess I read a little too much into the word 'Twilight' being an important piece of Canterlot music history."
"And just how important a piece is it really?" I asked her in a pointed manner. "Please, Twilight, anything you have to tell me could be immensely helpful right now."
"Helpful?" Her lips quivered. She looked up at me with sad eyes. "How could anything help you, Lyra? If what you've said is true, then--"
"Please. There isn't much time." I stood up and trotted firmly towards her. "This Requiem... what connections could it have had with Princess Luna?"
"I... I-I studied up on it one summer while Princess Celestia was away on a meeting of diplomacy with the Queen of the dragons," she said. "I listened to the recording and I thought it was one of the saddest instrumentals I had ever heard. Shortly thereafter, I asked some of the royal archivists in the Palace Library about it. I wasn't told much, only that the song had its origin during Shadow's Advent."
"Shadow's Advent?" I remarked, squinting in thought. Every unicorn scholar knows about the poetically labeled era immediately predating the Civil War. Princess Luna, secretly on the verge of becoming Nightmare Moon, had withdrawn into seclusion. Her total and unexpected isolation had a negative effect on all of Equestria. Rumors filled the land that the alicorn goddess had developed some sort of unearthly affliction. Even Princess Celestia herself was consumed with worry. When Luna came out of her self-imposed exile, she wasn't the same. Nightmare Moon had consumed her, and the civil war that followed ravaged much of the countryside. My first thought was a curious one: just how could Luna have found the time to compose a requiem during such a dark chapter in her life? "Did the archivists have any knowledge of who wrote the piece during that era?" I ultimately asked Twilight.
She slowly shook her head. "There's no way to be sure. Luna was known to have composed a lot of music in the century that preceded her banishment. However, the Requiem has no established author."
"But was the knowledge of the Requiem stored in the Celestial Library or the Lunar Archives?"
Twilight fidgeted. She trembled slightly.
"Twilight," I said with a sigh. "This is important--"
"I d-don't know, okay?!" Twilight exclaimed, her voice cracking. "I want to help you, Lyra. I want to help you so much. But... But I don't know. There isn't much in the Lunar Archives that has survived the Great Canterlot Eclipse to tell of what happened during Shadow's Advent. The only records that point to that time period are sporadic pieces of literary antiquity, books that have been preserved in the hooves of common citizens over the last thousand years. Those are difficult to find at best. But..." Her eyes briefly brightened in thought.
"What?" I leaned forward, curious.
She gulped, then said, "I have a unique collection here in the Ponyville Library. It's an extremely old sample of Equestrian literature. Not even I'm capable of reading half of it, seeing that most of the material is written in Moonwhinny and Old Equine. From what I can tell, most of the books are simple almanacs written by pre-Civil War unicorn astronomers. The tomes likely reached Ponyville through refugees who fled from the war-torn fields of Whinniepeg to the north a thousand years ago."
"Where are these books?"
"Spike and I keep them in the basement, along with several books that are even older. With the use of enchanted mana crystals, I cast a protection spell over the archives on a regular basis. There's no telling when a visiting Canterlot scholar might want to peruse the material."
"Well, I think I'd better have a look at them."
"Lyra, I'm telling you..." Twilight stood and looked me in the eyes. "The books have nothing to do with Princess Luna's legacy or music composition or... or..." She shuddered, running a hoof over her face. "What would it mean to you anyways? Don't you have all you need to know about this... this latest elegy of yours?"
"Performing the elegies is never easy," I muttered. I was already eying the wooden door that led down to the library's dark basement. "If I can find any information about them whatsoever, no matter how obscure, then I'll take it."
"Do you have to perform them, Lyra?" Twilight remarked. "You make them sound so dangerous and... foreboding!" She gulped, then smiled hopefully. "I know! Let me perform them with you! I can summon a protection field three times as powerful as any other unicorn in town. I can prepare us for whatever magical consequences your symphony might bring."
"Out of the question, Twilight. The elegies are mine to perform and mine alone. Besides, your memory wouldn't last long enough to let you assist me."
"It's... It's just..." Twilight was shuddering. I've seen this reaction far too many times. It's like an old record being played over and over again to the breaking point. The tonality grows duller and duller, to the point that my ears barely twitch upon each wavering octave of my old friend's frail voice. "It's so unfair."
"I must not let the nature of my curse inhibit me, Twilight," I said. "I've been given one clue, one set of directions, since Nightmare Moon afflicted me, and it's all framed by these songs that haunt my mind. One way or another, I'm performing them. If they destroy me, so be it, for sometimes destruction is the very essence of transformation. Wouldn't you agree?"
"No!" she shouted.
I wondered what was more awkward, how sharply she exclaimed it or how little I had expected such sharpness.
"I don't agree!" She then did something else that was surprising: she gripped my hoof in hers and held it firmly. "You don't need to be alone! You don't need to be a stranger!"
"But..." I gazed at her, my heart beating quickly. I wasn't used to our encounters turning this dramatic. What was so different this time? "But I am alone, Twilight. Until I unravel the mystery of these songs, I have to deal with that."
"But right now, I know, Lyra!" Her eyes were rippling pools of violet. I felt like I was trying to tread water and only failing. "You've told me so much, and I know. To think that you've been here all this time, with nopony aware of your selfless deeds.! To think that we were foalhood friends!"
"Twilight..." I touched her hooves back. It was a blunt gesture, like leaning my forelimb against a plank of wood. "I told you about our forgotten pasts because I needed you to trust me. Could you imagine a strange unicorn walking in here and asking for help in identifying these elegies without any explanation?"
She obviously wasn't in the position to imagine anything. A very concrete moment had blossomed before her, and it threatened to crumble in the next frigid blink. "How can you think that this is the only reason you came to me, Lyra? You poor thing! This situation you're in: how could you afford any friends besides what only memories give you?"
"Please..." I sighed and shook my head. I tugged slightly, my forelimb beginning to slip from her grip. "I can deal with it. I've found the strength to--"
"Friendship is the most powerful thing in the world, Lyra!" She exclaimed, her eyes moistening. "Right now, you and I are friends again! We have to preserve that at all costs! We have to fetch the Princess! With Celestia's help, we'll gather all of the strongest magicians in Equestria and--"
"It won't work, Twilight!" I blurted. It was a lot louder than I had intended. I blanched at the sight of a frowning unicorn reflected in her foalish eyes. "Twilight. I'm sorry. But... I-I've been through all of this. I know you only want the best."
Her lips quivered as a tear ran down her cheek. "I don't want the best. I want to stop losing friends." She blinked once, and her face paled over. Without letting go of my hoof, she turned to look at a familiar picture frame sitting on a table on the far side of the library. Two young mares stood in the photograph, smiling. There was room for a third pony.
That's when I realized it.
Oh dear Celestia. That's what it is. That's what's different.
"You..." She whimpered. She squeezed my hoof tighter. "It was you. It was always you." She turned towards me, and the tears were flowing freely now. "There's so much in my life that has been missing. My foalhood was devoid of music. I came to Ponyville feeling lonely and unloved. And now... M-Moondancer is gone for good." she sniffed. She choked. "But it all m-makes sense now, Lyra. You... you were robbed from me." She bit her lip and almost squeaked forth, "You were robbed, Lyra, and now that I finally have a chance to get to know that part of me that's always been missing, you're only going to go away again? But why?! Why does it have to be this way?! This... this curse! I just don't understand it..."
"Twilight." I fumbled to speak evenly. I saw her tears, but for some reason I couldn't feel them. I tried to smile. It must have appeared like a broken grimace. I realized I hadn't tried smiling that entire afternoon until then. What was worse, I hadn't the capacity to feel guilty over it. "Please, calm down. Seriously. It's... it's okay--"
"No! It's not okay!" Twilight cried. She clutched my hoof tighter. She knew more than any pony in existence that I was about to fly away, like a pile of leaves scattered to the wind and all of them scented with her tears. "I've discovered something pr-precious and sweet... and you're telling me th-that in a matter of minutes, it'll all be gone! How could that possibly be okay?!"
"I... I..." There was everything to say; there was nothing to say. I was no longer thinking about the Requiem. Something else was worth composing an elegy for, but suddenly I realized I hadn't the strength to write it.
So I did the next best thing, something that had once taken me nearly twelve months of these repeated conversations with Twilight before I had the courage to ask for it. Only this time I gave it, gave it to her, folding my forelimbs around her and marveling at how horrifyingly small she felt within the tender embrace.
Day in and day out, I can't stop myself from spreading this curse like a pestilence. Being a pariah should never work this way, but who am I to complain? There is only one thing I can do, one thing I'll ever be capable of doing, one thing that holds any significance to the ghosts that I construct around me by simply touching them.
I apologized. "I'm sorry, Twilight." I apologized... and nothing else. Last words are the most worthless words of all. That's another reason why I love songs over soliloquies. "I'm... I'm so sorry..."
"I... I-I don't want you to g-go..." She sobbed in my grasp. She shook in my grasp. Her voice was that of a hiccuping little foal's. "I d-don't want you to go away, Lyra," she nuzzled my shoulder, her tears staining my hoodie. "First Moondancer, and now you? I d-don't know what's worse: losing friends or losing the memory of why they'll never return..."
I clenched my teeth. There was a reason for it. The wall of cold was bearing down on us like a tidal wave. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was almost grateful for it. I closed my eyes upon the crest of the frozen deluge, wading through it with my foalhood friend's cries. There in the library, I hugged Twilight Sparkle gently as she died in my forelimbs.
I felt it the moment that her body went limp in my grasp. All of her shivers stopped. All of her sobs stopped, and I knew that something immeasurably precious was gone forever.
"Unnngh..." her voice grunted. She swayed in my forelimbs, running a hoof over her forehead as her eyes danced dizzily. "Whew... What... Wh-what happened?"
"You..." My voice was hoarse, breathy. I cleared my throat and held her at a comfortable length, looking plainly into her eyes. "You fell. I... uh... I had to catch you."
"Really?" Twilight blinked. She made an awkward face, then reached a hoof up to her conspicuously moist cheeks. "What...?"
"You don't remember?" I forced a hollow smile. "The encyclopedia from the top shelf fell on your skull. You took a very brave bump there, ma'am."
"Oh jeez." She chuckled and rolled her eyes, wiping her cheek dry. "You think I'd be a grown mare at this point. Heh... Rainbow would never let me hear the end of it if she saw me shedding tears over a little tumble." She bit her lip and looked my way. "This secret is safe between us, Miss...?"
I opened my mouth. I paused, swallowed, then said, "I... I-I was just checking out a book. I'm not here for long."
"Well, my dragon assistant Spike can certainly help you with that!" She said, then trotted away gaily. "I've got a letter to the Princess to finish! Ever since the Grand Galloping Gala three days ago, I've been procrastinating. I don't know what I'd do if I was tardy."
"I'm sure you'll impress her just fine."
"Heehee. Well, I'll try not to let you or the Princess down, miss!" She was almost out of earshot. "Thanks again for catching my clumsy self!"
"Please..." I murmured, gazing into the shadows. "Don't mention it..."
"I gotta admit," Spike said, holding a glowing lantern as he led me down a series of winding steps into the dark, dusty basement of Ponyville's Library. "You're the first pony in ages who's bothered to visit this creepy place." The massive roots of the treehouse stretched down all around us. There, on the bottom floor of the cylindrical cellar, a series of dusty bookcases rested within the glow of enchanted mana crystals. "Hardly anyone asks to see these old, old heaps of junk. Heh... don't tell Twilight Sparkle I called them that. For some reason she thinks these decaying scraps are crazy valuable."
"The easier something is to forget, the easier it is to call it meaningless," I murmured. There was no point in telling him that I had been down here before--at least five times. In every occasion I had no reason to believe that this place was worth paying anything more than a blind search, until now. "Thanks for showing me the way, Spike. But you can go back to what you were doing."
"You sure?" He made a face, hanging the lantern on a rusted hook along the earthen wall of the basement. "I wouldn't be a very good research assistant if I just abandoned you."
"Very well then," I muttered, then pointed towards the bookcases. "Are these arranged by literary periods?"
"Yup. From pre-Classical to mid-Millennial."
"Is there a section for books made during Shadow's Advent?"
"Oh yeah, definitely!" Spike grabbed a rickety wooden hoofstool. Sliding it to the middle of the third bookcase, he hopped atop the platform and brushed a few cobwebs loose from the fourth shelf. "Here we are. According to Twilight's labels--and you can never doubt that unicorn's labels--these six books are all from that time period. Looks like a bunch of boring astronomy almanacs written in dead languages. You sure this is what you're looking for, miss?"
"Yes, Spike," I said plainly. I trotted over and took the stool from him. "Thank you very much. I'll take it from here."
"Well, if you insist." He shrugged and marched towards the stairs. "If you need me, though, just yank the cord along the wall next to the lantern. It's attached to a bell on the first floor of the library. Give it one tug, and I'll come running down to help you out!"
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Sure thing." He paused and pointed at me with a smile. "And by the way--"
"Yes, yes," I droned, tugging on my stone-gray sleeves. "I know it's pretty 'swell.'"
"Heh. Okay. Good luck with your research, ma'am."
His waddling footsteps clawed their way up the stairs. The door creaked open, lingered, then shut with a tiny thud.
As soon as he was gone, I collapsed. I fell with my back to the bookcase and rested my head atop the stool. Burying my face into my forelimbs, I took several deep breaths, shuddering through waves of cold, gray thoughts.
I couldn't shake loose the memory of Twilight's body going limp in my embrace. One moment she was crying up a storm, and the next moment she was as tranquil as pond water. It was alarming to me just how dramatic I had allowed our encounter to get. Surely it wasn't all because of Moondancer's absence. I should have tried harder to solace Twilight, to comfort her, to ease the shock and distress of the knowledge I had bitterly bequeathed her with.
My heavy exhales echoed across the deep basement of the library. As lonesome and somber as the chamber felt, it was a strange relief to be there, to be alone, to be surrounded in shadows.
What's wrong with me? What am I becoming? A month or two ago, I could smile and still mean it. What had changed? Why couldn't I feel Twilight's panic and horror until it was too late to do anything?
I couldn't deny it: I was happy that she forgot who I was. I was actually glad that the curse flew in and silenced her, sticking the needle in and deflating her so that only an amnesiac shell emerged from the ashes.
But I didn't always think that way. After all, I like to believe that in fifteen months I have become a tenacious pony, a caring pony, a unicorn who can face adversity with courage and weather sorrow with grace. If one thing is for certain, I have definitely become strong, only I fear that I've become too strong. Is strength something to be proud of, even if it makes me blind to another pony's feelings while I strive to unlock the secrets of my curse?
I want to blame so many things, things that I have endured, things that I have given up. I want to blame the elegies, the horror of uncertainty that comes with performing them, the ever-troubling possibility that I'm traversing a freezing road that has no end.
But no matter how hard I try to analyze it, I have no excuse. Who do I have to convince that I am becoming a stronger pony, for better or for worse? Who other than myself can judge the crimes or blessings I've committed on this village full of tranquil souls?
Sitting in the library basement, I was more alone than ever. Another day had come and gone. I had once again lost everything, and all I had gained was a title to a song that only meant something to me. I shuddered, hugging my forelimbs to my chest. I once again saw my dear friend's eyes, and they were full of deeper tears than all I ever had to christen this world with, because hers at least deserved the warmth that they carried into oblivion. "Twilight's Requiem" indeed...
I couldn't find the power to cry. Yes, I had changed. What I had changed into, I didn't bother trying to find out. I had a far more ancient mystery to solve, and if there's one thing what was left for me to feel proud of, it was the lengths to which I had learned to do proper research.
So, I stood up, cast a dim light spell with my horn, illuminated the six tomes from Shadow's Advent, and suddenly realized that my skills in proper research meant absolute rubbish. Spike, for all of his juvenile hyperbole, wasn't exaggerating. The cobweb-strewn books held no intrinsic value upon first glance. In the second glance, all I gathered were ancient letters that all of my learned years of linguistic studies hadn't prepared me for. On a third glance, I saw trace phrases of Moonwhinny in syntactical arrangements so bizarre that they sent my brain for a loop. A fourth glance nearly made me vomit in an attempt to speak the backwards samples of Old Equine dancing before my eyes.
An hour into the "research," and I was about ready to call it quits. The migraine I had developed was excruciating. I almost felt that sitting down to perform the elegies would have been a welcome respite from what I was doing there in the library basement. I sighed in the pathetic knowledge of why I was actually there. I was only delaying the inevitable. Twilight, in her innocence and helpfulness, had given me the last puzzle piece I wanted--though I certainly didn't need it. I had established the eighth elegy well enough in my mind. There was no real necessity in naming the piece. I had to come to grips with the fact that the visit to the library was merely an act of cowardice. The next step was actually the previous step. I had to go home, face the night, and then serenade it--as well as myself--into the dark horizon looming perpetually before me.
Just as I steeled myself to leave and do this, I stopped in my tracks. I squinted at the six tomes, for one of them was suddenly standing out to me. The mana-light had caught the binding with a curious glint. All that time, I had been looking for words that might clue me into the books' possible relation to Princess Luna's legacy. It hadn't occurred to me to look for symbols until it showed up before my eyes.
One of the books--the thinnest, to be exact--had the same emblem repeated several times across its spine. It was none other than the Mare in the Moon, etched in dark lines throughout the brown texture. With gentle telekinesis, I raised this book towards my eyes. Turning it over, I found the cover to be just as meaningless to me as when I first glanced at it. The words were in some proto-Moonwhinny gibberish that would have made sense to a pony one thousand years ago. I cursed myself for not having ancestral ties to the unicorns of old Whinniepeg. Then again, most families with a history of prior service to Princess Luna did their best to eradicate all records of such ties. Nightmare Moon and the Equestrian Civil War were subjects that served only to blemish one's familial legacy. If history has proven anything, it's that the deepest of scars stand to be hidden from future eyes.
But just what was this tome hovering before me in my telekinetic grasp? Was it an ancient splinter of an era that held meaning to the Requiem that I was about to perform? I flipped the pages open, and all I could do was sigh. The old brown sheets were covered in the same indecipherable text. On top of that, many of the pages were blank altogether. I began to understand why these tomes rested in the largely unvisited depths of the basement. Only an immortal alicorn who's lived long enough to find the meaning in meaningless could make use of these things.
And yet, I knew my place. I was forever chasing the musical trail left by such a goddess, and I couldn't accomplish any of that by standing still. It was perhaps too late to punish myself for being so apathetic to Twilight's plight. There was still time to exorcise the coward within me. Gently, I balanced the book on my spine, lifted the lantern from the wall, and trotted up the steps leading to the first floor of the library.
Minutes later, I wandered north through the streets of Ponyville. I was taking my time. The sunset was a glorious thing, a crimson bath of bright colors that lit up every tree in a prismatic preview of fall. As the shadows of buildings bent across the ground, I saw a solid stream of red light stretching north beneath me, like a path that painted my way home, and toward a dark destiny.
So, I lingered. Every hoofstep was like dipping a wooden paddle into molasses. I breathed the crisp air of the coming autumn. I looked at the scenery surrounding me, and the living souls communing within.
Ponyville is a tiny village. Its population barely surpasses fifteen hundred equines. In the seventeen months that I've had the pleasure of associating with these souls, I've memorized the names of nearly half of them. It's not so monumental a task when it's the only hobby one has to keep from going insane.
Walking through the town as the sun was setting--quite possibly the last sunset I would ever see--a part of me wondered why I ever bothered with such diligent observation over the past year and a half. Would my situation have been any different if I had been cursed in the center of Manehattan instead? Or Fillydelphia? Or Baltimare? Whether I was surrounded by hundreds of ponies or by thousands, it made little difference.
I am a mare of one. My world begins and ends with me: my breaths, my voice, my song. The only permanent discussions I have to look forward to are the bitter opportunities I take to speak with myself. The one soul destined to read these journals is the same pony whose eyes guide a lonesome pen across these papers.
The sunset was bright and fiery, but as I walked home I could only spot its dying hues. Each pony was casting a somber shadow. Each soul was a vessel for blissful secrets I would never be capable of partaking in, for the frigid veil between us grew more and more solid with each blistering day that went by. If I craned my neck, I could hear their ghostly murmurs. Scootaloo was having some horrible argument with Milky White. Derpy Hooves was apologizing desperately to an angry stallion whom she had bumped into. Rarity was moaning and whining to Fluttershy about some terrible change of style in the fashion industry. Then, in the distance, I heard the playful banter between Ambrosia and...
I took a deep breath. My ears filled with the sound of my own shivering body. Piercing another wave of cold, I marched away from the ponies, from the strangers, and from the colors of Ponyville. I threaded my way into the woods, towards my cabin, towards darkness. I can't exactly put my hoof on the singular moment in time when every shade, shape, and texture of life had become a poison to me. What's intriguing is that I wasn't feeling nauseated about it. Something about the depths to which I fell was natural and calming, like fitting into a perfectly tailored dress saddle.
Whatever guilt I felt about mishandling Twilight's grief had dissipated, for I was glad that she couldn't accompany me. The sensation of her sobbing body melting in my embrace had become a blissful memory. I was relieved that Twilight couldn't follow me this deep, that she couldn't share in what I had come to discover about the dark ironies of life.
I didn't want her to know, as I was starting to know, that many months ago there was a young mare standing on the edge of a tall building in the center of a village. And when that mare heard the words of a brave stallion, and stepped back from the edge, she may very well have made a mistake.
There is, after all, a truth that is hidden beyond the curtains of madness, and it has become my thankless task to write songs about it. I couldn't smile anymore; I couldn't laugh anymore. I trotted directly home and shut the dying day away behind a thick wooden door.
I sat in my cot with the ancient tome opened beneath me. Swarms of meaningless words swam before my eyes like so many faded and outdated constellations lying within. I should have been spending those last few hours meditating. In a way, I was. To stare into senselessness was the essence of the journey I was about to take. A part of me hoped against hope that something from the hidden pages of the Shadow's Advent literature would gear me for that which was to come. As always, I knew better. Nevertheless, I ingested the paragraphs upon paragraphs of Moonwhinny in silence, dreading the moment when I would close the book for good and proceed with the night's solemn orchestration.
I measured the hours in dying bands of sunlight. The windows above me grew dimmer and dimmer. There was something about that afternoon that was already starting to haunt me. It felt quieter than normal. It was as if the woods all around me were sleeping, lying in weight for a crescendo to wake them so that they might unleash insurmountable horrors upon this stupidly brave unicorn. There were three crimson bands of sunlight drifting through the window, then two, then one. Once the darkness had fallen, my skin froze over with invisible steel. Fate rarely announces itself with more than a gentle murmur. I slapped the fragile book shut, got up from my cot, and gathered my things. My lyre, my notes, the sound stones, my lantern: all joined me in a graceful dance as I made my way around the cabin in silence.
All the while, I couldn't stop thinking of Twilight--no matter how hard I tried. I wondered what would happen if this was the last song I had to play, if all of my labors came into fruition, if the curse was finally obliterated. With the onrush of so many memories, would she forgive me for all the times I had dangled her like a marionette over the gaping jaws of oblivion, just so I could get the information from her that I needed? Would she forgive me for letting her die--so many horrible times over--as I lived on, guiltless of my crimes? Would she still wish to be my friend, now that I was blessed to be remembered, and yet finally cursed to be judged?
No matter how complicated my life may get, excuses are excuses. I know that now, and I knew that then. I marched straight out of my cabin like a bullet. The door to my shack flew open in a blink. Closing the chamber behind me, I marched down. The cellar opened up in an amber swirl of dancing shadows before me. I hung the lantern overhead before sliding my stool next to the metal stand. I propped my lyre up just above the written notes of "Twilight's Requiem" in front of me. With great care, I placed all four re-enchanted sound stones in every corner of the platform around my seat.
I then proceeded with a final step that I hadn't taken before. Reaching into the corner of the cellar, I uncoiled a length of rope I had placed there a few days previous. At the end of this cord was a long iron spike. I stabbed it hard into the cellar floor, tugging at the cord to make sure that the anchor was snugly in place. Then, with dexterous telekinesis, I tied the loose end of the cord around my rear left leg, just above my fetlock. I vividly remembered the last performance, when I had woken up sometime after orchestrating the "Threnody of Night." Somehow I had ended up in the middle of the woods, soaked, naked and freezing. It seemed like a flimsy precaution, but I hoped that my improvised leash would help prevent whatever... or whoever it was from transporting me again this time.
Finally, I sat down and stared at the lengths of my written symphony. That was the coldest moment of all, when I realized how long it had taken for me to get to that point and yet how blazingly fast I had marched out of the cabin and thrown myself upon the precipice. It's a very empty world: to think that one pony and one pony alone is tasked with doing what I do on a regular basis, to stab the depths of existence with a song purposefully forgotten by time. I was again about to toy with a tune so malevolent and unpredictable that it had turned a goddess into a demon and flung an entire continent of equines into the bloodiest war Equestria had ever witnessed. If I had known the price for my freedom from the get-go, I wondered if I would ever have plucked my first string of the lyre.
And yet, I did... and did again. The cellar echoed with enchantment as I strummed my way into the "Prelude of Shadows." But that wasn't all that I did. I had become a stronger unicorn, a cleverer pony. I swam my way through the streams of paranoia that were being produced by the song, summoning mana from the timeless melody and using it to buffer my concentration. By the time I had begun "Sunset Bolero," I was already halfway through casting the protection spell above me. Fueled by the energy and excitement bequeathed me by the Bolero, I filtered pure magic through my leylines, until my horn funneled a green dome of shields directly above. By the time the "March of Tides" began, my mind and body were calm. I relaxed with the numbness of the tune, witnessing as the dark emerald glow of the sound stones met with the translucent shield of my protection buffer.
Then all the lights went out. I breathed evenly, weathering my passage through the blinding bars of the "Darkness Sonata." The cellar was cold, but bearable. My protection field felt like a gentle cocoon, a bundle of blankets carrying me over a dead sea. When my vision returned, and the "Waltz of Stars" came into full play, I felt more alive than ever. My heart was pounding, but it heated me up. I was a living torch in an arctic river, melting the frost all around me. My body was feeling incalculably stronger than it did during my last feeble playthrough. For one thing, this filled me with pride. For another, I realized that at this rate I was going to pierce through the final elegies with full power and lucidity. There was no avoiding whatever lay beyond the last barriers of my performance.
It was in this train of thought that I plowed through the "Moon's Elegy." My horn vibrated and my shield fluctuated. I felt like I was charging into battle. I suddenly remembered what Nightmare Moon's eyes looked like. I was standing in the middle of Ponyville, shivering in her shadow. Our gazes met, mortal and immortal. We weren't alone. We weren't alone? Dear Celestia, was I starting to remember things already? What was this cloud lifting around me?
I gazed up, my eyes twitching. I didn't see a cloud. I didn't see the cellar walls anymore, and yet they were there... only in another skin. The soil was gone, and breaking through the grittiness was a layer of melting ice. I heard a great ringing all around me, like a forest of rusted chains forever rattling into the pits of eternity. Just as soon as my ears ached from it, a far stronger, far darker sound roared to life and tore everything asunder. I didn't realize it until the lantern blew out above me: I was playing the "Threnody of Night." What's more, I was alive... so terribly, damnably alive. I looked into the gushing wounds of yesterday. My shield was an emerald tarp dancing between me and the horror. Nightmare Moon's face dissolved in a bass scream, her memory being ripped from my soul like a decaying scrap of flesh. In place of the demoness' helm there was born a pair of lifeless eyes. Her eyes.
I then knew, in a breath of epiphany that emptied my lungs, what it was that had knocked me out last time, or more appropriately who. One by one, the four sound stones around me exploded. My emerald shield ruptured. The walls of the cellar burst with ice water and ash. My body swayed with the lonesome rhythm of clattering chains. As the Threnody collapsed under its final bleak cord, and I felt my eyes rolling back in my head, I summoned whatever strength had been preserved by my shield and committed a final, cognitive act. I reached my hooves up, grabbed my lyre, and clutched the glowing instrument to my chest. I had become an unprotected infant--mindless and fearless--as I fell backwards off the stool.
My body splashed into the waters, and I knew how cold the dead felt. I gasped, and fluid instantly entered my mouth. I gagged. I choked. My jaws flew shut as I spun in a womb of frost. It was too cold to open my eyes, too frigid to keep them closed. The liquid in my mouth was turning into vomitous ice. I yanked my head forward into the currents, and when my vision returned I saw a glowing green haze. In a painful blink, I witnessed in terrifying clarity the sight of my lyre floating way from me. Still encased in my telekinetic energy, the instrument was bobbing towards the dancing surface of a tempestuous river. A whimper broke into my mouth. My teeth throbbed with each pulse of my heart as I swam after the lyre, my lungs at the breaking point. With two numb hooves outstretched, I grabbed the lyre just as it broke the surface.
Then something unexpected happened. I fell upward. I shrieked, spitting out frosted, powdery bile as my body flailed through infinite black space. Everything was thunderous noise. Flecks of snow and sleet pounded me as I plummeted from a great height, flying towards nowhere. I clung to my lyre, my eyes darting every which way. I saw something twirling in the black nether. In the emerald glow of my instrument, I realized it was the iron spike still tied to my rear leg along its ropey length. Before I had a chance to register this, my fall ended... in another lake.
My body shattered through a thin layer of ice, so that I plunged through bone-chilling depths. I was being shoved somewhere, carried along arctic currents so swift that stray hairs of my mane were being ripped from their roots. I clenched my teeth shut, for fear of inhaling more of this ghastly liquid. As I spun and kicked wildly at the currents, I became aware of things surging past me... or things that I was surging past. They were dark shapes, linked together, corpse-black and gargantuan. I saw chains--gigantic, immeasurable lengths of ancient metal--and they were stretching, floating, bouncing all around me. I counted over ten of them spiraling into forever by the time my vision started to fade, and that's when I broke through yet another surface.
I gasped as I flew sideways. Painful specks of snow dotted my gaping mouth and tongue. It tasted like dead ash. The thunder was once again deafening. My quivering eyesight caught bright flashes of lightning blanketing the endless expansion. Between me and forever, a complex silhouette of thousands upon thousands of criss-crossing black chains flickered like the cracked surface of an egg. I was so engrossed in the nightmarish blinks that I wasn't prepared for the coming impact.
The next body of water I landed in was a far more tranquil one. After the initial splash, I kicked my rear legs and bobbed to the surface. There, I gasped, treading water and clutching to my lyre in an impossible feat of survival. My hoodie was soaked to the sleeves; its damp fabric weighed a million pounds. My mane was slicked over my face. I tossed my neck and flung the hairs out from my eyes. The thunder returned. I winced. I felt like my ears were about to explode. There were more bursts of lightning, and I tilted my head up.
It was then that I saw it, or at least a tiny sliver of the deathly enormity that was engulfing me. The world no longer had a sky or a floor. There were no poles, no stars, no hint of shine or purpose beyond the chaotic flashes of unpredictable lightning. Reality had become a series of obsidian shapes, rusted structures of the deepest, blackest metal--and all of them webbed together by unfathomable lengths of rattling chains. I bore paralyzed witness as solid curtains of water billowed magically across these unearthly platforms. Gigantic, dancing, shallow seas swept over the perforated expanse, like sheets of rain turned cohesive by ghastly intent. The floating rivers had no end or beginning, and they fluctuated like silver strands between relentless flurries of bone-white snow.
There was a black shape beyond the watery body to my right. I spun towards it. It was a platform, half the size of Ponyville's town square. There were two billowing rivers between me and the solid structure. In desperation, I grasped the golden body of the lyre in my jaws and kicked at my prison with steady strokes. I lunged earnestly towards the surface. The unearthly currents were flinging me past Razor-sharp chains in front and behind me. Any second, any blink, and I would find my body being shred to ribbons. I caught a rusted strand rattling towards my peripheral vision just as I broke through.
I flew forward, spun, and fell into the next river. I dropped straight through it like a solid stone. There was a flash of lightning as I broke the snowy air again. The last river was surging in the opposite direction. I grunted from the whiplash, my body spinning like a top. Thunder and noise rippled through the currents. When I came out, I honestly didn't know where I would be flung, until I felt the thud of pain ricocheting through my skeleton.
"Aaaaugh!"
I cried forth as I tumbled to a wet, freezing stop atop the platform. I was sobbing, but I couldn't hear myself. The thunder was everywhere, filling my ears, clawing at the throbbing center of my brain. I tried sitting up, but my hooves slipped pathetically on the rusted, vibrating metal. My eyes opened like a bleeding bird might hatch from an egg. Ropes of lightning danced as far as my vision could illuminate me. I was afraid to stand, or else I might fly upwards--or downwards--into ice-frosted oblivion.
I winced and rolled over. My tears were freezing to my cheeks. I reached both hooves up to my face to feel if my head was still attached. The numbness was overwhelming. Everywhere I looked there was snow and ice and dancing beams of water.
"Dear Celestia Almighty..." Some foalish voice whimpered. "Where am I?"
Only thunder answered. The black infinity could just as well have been a hollow sphere the size of a stagecoach. The acoustics bounced the bass of the thunder back and forth across my skull until I was certain I would implode.
"Is... Is..." The voice started to sound vaguely cognitive, like something I could recognize. I swallowed and murmured, "Is this where the cold comes from?"
I no longer had any doubt, only screams. Before I could emit another one, I realized the darkness around me was doubling, tripling. All this time, I had just one light source other than the lightning. My hooves were empty, and I realized what a bad thing that was. Spinning around, I saw my glowing lyre. The emerald instrument was sliding away on a carpet of ice... until it spilled directly over the edge of the black platform.
"Nnngh--No!"
I galloped towards it. I lurched and fell. The iron spike dangling from my left leg was dragging. Gnashing my teeth, I leaped again, bounded, and slid directly after the lyre.
The instrument went over the edge. I plunged after it. Flailing, my forelimbs barely caught the thing. The situation hardly helped me any; I was dangling now on the lid of the rusted structure. My mouth fell wide as I found myself gazing into a bottomless corridor of criss-crossing, chained lattices. What was more, the rusted strands weren't empty. There were... shapes bound to them, spread apart at indiscriminate lengths. They were the source of the endless rattling, but that wasn't all. When the thunder spread overhead and underhoof, some deep noise in the midst of the shapes responded.
It occurred to me then that the thunder was more than a ghastly phenomenon. For as deep and chaotic as the booming noises sounded, there was a deep and barely discernible pitch to the explosive echoes. I imagined that I could very well have been listening to some timeless track, a song older than death itself, slowed down to such a pitch that the whole grating sensation resembled a sea of tombs scraping up against one another. And with each booming resonance--accompanied with flashes of bright lightning--there was a sickly chorus replying from the forest of dangling bodies below.
"Oh my..." I stammered breathlessly. My quivering eyes squinted. "Are those... are those ponies?"
There was a spray of sleet against my back. I turned around. I gasped. A vertical sheet of river water was sweeping like a band of translucent gray smoke across the platform. In less than ten seconds, it would overtake me.
Panting, I clambered back onto my hooves. I stood on the edge of the platform. The wall of water crept towards me, laced with chunks of ice. There was nowhere for me to run. Panicking, I shivered in place. I thought of Mom and Dad. I thought of Ponyville. I thought of...
Twilight.
"Twilight's Requiem..."
I was there for a reason. Just as I was cursed for a reason. I had no answers, no hope, no light in the center of that nightmare. But I did have a song to play.
With the water rushing straight at me, I considered my options, then promptly dashed every one of them for the impulsive absurdity I was about to perform next. I tilted my head forward, concentrated, and cast a protection spell just as the currents hit.
"Nnnngh!"
I gnashed my teeth and struggled, my limbs buckling as I forced the green dome to stay in one piece. Ice water and snow danced all around me. Random droplets and frigid flakes spilled through and pelted my coat. I counted the agonizing seconds in my head, breathing the last few gasps of oxygen allowable in the fragile pocket I had formed around myself. My aching eyes sought an end to the floating river of water. At the rate it was passing, I had only three meters left. My lungs shook and my heart raced. Just as I could smell the cold air on the other side...
Bands of bright lightning surged past the platform. The thunder rocked my world with a vaporous, bass scream. My shield shattered in an instant. The water caved in around me. Slabs of ice raked my flesh. I screamed bubbles as I twirled back with my lyre, broke through the advancing side of water, and flew into the rattling depths of madness.
"Aaaah!" I howled. I spun. I saw a razor sharp webs of chains encompassing my vision. There was rust. There were shapes. There were hooves.
I splashed into a blurry world once more. Yet another floating stream had saved me at the last second. The current was strong in this liquid body, and I was being hurled towards something rigid and dark. I hoped against hope that it was another platform, so I swam towards it. The current nearly flung me past the structure by the time I broke free.
I shrieked, for I was flying towards a solid black cylinder. A belated flash of lightning illuminated a series of holes carved into the rusted surface, and I aimed my weightless body towards one of them.
"Ooof!"
I landed awkwardly, and so did my lyre. As I clung to the sharp edge of the entrance, my instrument clattered to a stop somewhere inside the thick stalk. I lost my telekinetic grasp on the strings, and they stopped glowing with an emerald shine. I dangled in the darkness, one slip away from oblivion. Struggling, kicking and scraping with my rear hooves, I finally got a solid grasp. I pulled my aching self up into the hollow of the stalk. I took a few more seconds to drag the dangling spike with me as well. Once inside, I was overcome with pitch black. The thunder's bass felt louder in here. I was in a race against going deaf as I fumbled for my lyre. I needed my instrument. I needed to feel. I needed to see...
As soon as I grasped it, the metal touch was hardly a relief to me, for I was being overwhelmed by a new sensation. Beyond the numbness, I realized that there was more than thunder echoing in the cylindrical belly of the stalk. My aching ears twitched, registering a rattling noise that was all around me.
For a few seconds I sat there, hyperventilating, clutching the lyre to my soaked hoodie. The rattling intensified, responding to the thunder in perfect cadence. Finally, after my heartbeat had become indistinguishably rapid, I concentrated mana through the leylines of my horn and enchanted my lyre. The claustrophobic interior of the stalk lit up with a sickly pale green, and where there were supposed to be walls there were only faces.
"Augh!"
I shrieked and huddled in the middle of innumerable bodies. They were ponies... or at least they once were. Their coats had turned to slick, gangrene pale. Where their eyes and mouths should have been, there instead were pairs of metal braces, opaque shackles of the same black rust as the chains that bound their limbs to the walls of the cylinder.
I wretched and covered half my face with the lyre, my pulsating eyes failing to ignore every tiny detail of the corpses around me. Then the thunder resonated again, and I learned that they were hardly corpses. They were hardly anything. They were twitching, lurching, rattling the chains with discordant attempts at harmony. Then as the next round of thunder boomed, and the one after that, they were no longer responding to it. I was there, I was warm, and I had a glowing lyre. They were responding to me.
At first, I thought I was hearing metal scraping against metal. But there's no way that rust can produce a sob or a scream. Their moans rose in a cyclone of cacophony, and I was the center of the necrotic maelstrom. Frozen hooves came to life and reached, groped, fished towards me. Something was knocking their limbs back, shrieking in return, and it sounded an awful lot like my voice.
"Nnnngh! Ahh--Ahauugh!" I thrashed and kicked and bucked the bodies away. Their moans only intensified. They lunged and bounced on the stout lengths of their chains in their attempts to embrace me and my lyre. The howling voices of the blind ponies came out as muffled sobs against the rusted braces clamped over their mouths. I tried dashing towards the hole that I had squirmed in through, but the bodies had doubled in number and were blocking my way.
At that point, the horror was drowned out by a rushing sound. The entire cylinder shook. I realized that another dancing wave of water had overcome the stalk. Already, the frigid currents were pouring in through the holes. As the water level rose up to the ponies' hooves, fetlocks, and knee-joints--I found myself also drowning in more than just their groping limbs. Panicking, I climbed half of the clustered crowd and stared above me. I saw that the hollow cylinder ran the height of one hundred feet straight up. What was more, it had an end, for I discovered a bright circle of flickering lightning directly above.
At this point, I was gasping for breath, for the freezing water had climbed to my neck. I thrashed, fought, and kicked against the water and the shackled ponies all at once. I thrust myself upwards, sputtering, panting. Their moans drowned out as one by one, cranium by cranium, the unfortunate souls were engulfed by the currents below.
And then I jolted. I shrieked and lunged, but I was no longer budging. I looked straight down. Through the refracting surface of the rising tide, dozens of equine bodies swayed like a bucket of drowning snakes, and somewhere in the bustling heart of that squirming mess the iron spike attached to me had gotten caught.
"Nnngh--No! Unngh!" I shouted and pulled and yanked as hard as I could. The cord that was wrapped around my rear leg was biting into my flesh with each motion I made. As the water caught up to my shoulders, I bravely reached down to loosen the noose with one hoof--only to have the limbs of the many bodies scratch and tug on me. "Hnnngh--Let go! Get--Nnngh--Get off of me! Get off! Get--Snkkkt!" I could no longer speak. I could no longer breathe. All was screams and ice and bubbles. Shackled faces bobbed up and down, swarming in on me. My rear legs twitched and thrashed. Chains spun like serpents and my voice was warbling in my ears as the water splashed against the back of my throat. Somewhere in the drowning casket of limbs and moans, a green light billowed, brighter than my lyre, brighter than the Sun. Twilight had stopped sobbing in my grasp, and I wasn't ready to join her. That's when the discharge of telekinesis fired. I had aimed my horn down past me, and the vaporous burst knocked several bodies away in the middle of accomplishing its real task: snapping the cord in two.
I was free. I floated up. I soared up. I bulleted up. I caught up with the current and gasped for breath just so I could scream, sail, and fly.
Lightning welcomed me as I was propelled up out of the hole. I landed on the flat surface of yet another platform at the top of the stalk. The ice water of my would-be-tomb shot up like a geyser behind my twitching body as I crawled like a sobbing infant over the rusted lengths I was suddenly afforded.
I curled inward, hugging my lyre, twitching from head to toe. The thunder rolled once more, and in perfect answer to it there was a chorus of moans. What's more, the chorus was all around me.
My tears dried just in time for me to look up and see a forest of shackled equine bodies lying all across the same platform, curled up in a manner identical to my own. In the middle of this graveyard of rust and rigor mortis, I whimpered into the frosty air.
"Oh Celestia... Oh Celestia... Oh Celestia..."
I closed my eyes and reopened them, hoping against hope that I would wake up in my cabin, in the forest, inside a coffin--anywhere but here, anywhere but this place, anywhere but surrounded by ice and thunder and limbo.
And yet somewhere in the pit of my most sickly desperation, a rational part of me was still alive, the same spirit that had helped me endure over a year of communicating with forgetful spirits, of trying to make impressions in a world where my hoofsteps were as permanent as raindrops on a sun-roasted sidewalk.
The elegies...
Nightmare Moon's tunes...
It wasn't a symphony...
It was a barrier...
It was a seal...
It was meant to barricade... to barricade this...
But what is this?
Where in Celestia's name am I?
What are all these ponies doing...?
My heart stopped, for the thunder had stopped, and yet it hadn't. The bodies all around me were still moaning, still twitching, still pulling at the rusted and rattling lengths of chains. I glanced up and I saw the lightning coalescing into a single beam of finite purpose. Where it solidified, I suddenly didn't want to look. A fear older than life--older than time--was clawing its way up my soul, manifesting itself through a panting sob in the base of my throat.
I was scampering up to my hooves before I knew it. I spun and galloped across the platform away from the sight, gripping the lyre in my mouth, hopping over writhing souls in shackles. I felt as if I had been running from this feeling for as long as I had been alive, even in past lives, even in past dimensions before all things that existed had something to define them.
I approached the end of the platform. Why I didn't just jump off, I still can't say. I'm alive now to write this, for what it's worth. Perhaps it was fate that made me turn around. After all, for whatever wicked grace, I was trotting on all four hooves while every pony around me was imprisoned to the bitter blackness upon which I stood.
But I wasn't brave. No, it wasn't courage that kept me there. Nopony in my place--not even souls as powerful and legendary as Starswirl the Bearded--could have done anything more than gawk at what was rising, what was crowning, what was coming to life with a horrid grace that made me want to scrape my eyes to a bloody pulp with the sharp edges of my lyre. It was a new horror, a new color, a second death. I had stared Nightmare Moon in the face and lived, only to come to this point, to greet somepony darker than even her, possessed by this abyss beyond the elegies that must have once swallowed Luna, and was now digesting me.
When she appeared, I realized that all I had left to protect me was a song. It was what the world began with, and it was what empowered her. The thunder dissolved, and the lightning that heralded it took shape, forming a muzzle, then a long slender neck, then a thin body with a dagger-sharp frame that trudged towards me on impossibly tall legs.
If I had anything left inside of me, it would have joined the frozen refuse atop the platform. Instead, I had one thought ricocheting through my mind.
"Twilight's Requiem."
The lightning too disappeared, and over it there swarmed bands of black that came together to form putrid flesh, her flesh. She was glorious. She was terrifying. She was the end and beginning of all screams, the final breath of waking that drags us to slumber and someday drags us to death.
"Twilight's Requiem."
A song had brought me there. I could only hope another song would take me back as well. I raised the lyre ahead of me. My eyes were locked on her figure as I played the first ten notes of the instrumental. The Requiem was barely distinguishable against the sudden bedlam of moans all around me.
The shackled ponies had shuffled aside, parting like a sea beneath her hooves as they paid the figure their eternal reverence and fear. When the alicorn was but four leaps away, her wings expanded in a gust of cold wind. The limbs were bone-pale stalks, between the spokes of which I spotted infinite pits of black truth stabbing at me with each blink.
I was halfway through the Requiem. I felt rivulets of moisture pouring down my forehead and dripping off my horn. I couldn't tell anymore if it was sweat or blood. The closer she got, her every hoofstep sent my organs aflame. I felt like the world was about to explode through my skin and give birth to a new universe of pain and clarity, and all of it given to her in holy sacrifice.
And that's when she spoke, with all of the thunder channeled through her pale, lifeless teeth. Bright eyes of immaculate magenta glowed as she leaned her muzzle down and spoke to me with the sound of a million funeral bells ringing.
"Sing it."
I was plucking my way diligently through the Requiem. There were twenty chords left. I could barely breathe.
"Sing my song."
Ten chords left. She was so close that I could read the runes burned into her pale flesh. There were thousands of unrecognizable names, and her sinewy limbs swam like velvet mountains underneath them. Off her flaring nostrils, I could smell the end of everything."
"Sing my song and become nothing--"
Before the volume of her holy utterance could echo in my earlobes, I was falling back, plunging off the platform, sailing through the snow like a burning comet...
...until I landed on a bed of grass in the middle of Ponyville. It was the dead of night, and the world was violently warm. Stars and crickets swarmed around me as I shivered and gasped like a drowning fish beside a brown building. My hooves thrashed against the ground and my teeth chattered. I became aware of a pitiful, low siren wailing against the walls and rooftops on either side of me. With each progressive second that I floundered in the wet puddle of otherworldly frost, I realized that this moaning sound belonged to me.
My throat wrestled with countless agonized, indiscernible shrieks. I rolled over, dropped my lyre, and clasped my aching horn. Beyond the numb extremities of my limbs, I could still feel the waves of knifing cold slicing across my nerves. Each throb of pain resonated with the alien thunder tingling in my eardrums. No matter how hard I hyperventilated, the sea of nightmares would not drain away from my mane and hoodie. I shrieked for shrieking's sake. I choked on sobs in a deliberate attempt to test my lungs. There was a pattern rising, slowly, like a river of insects dancing up my spine on feet of broken glass.
I didn't notice the light at first, not until the door to the side of the building next to me had been opened. A series of shuffling hooves blocked the glow, casting a slender shadow on my figure. I was a thrashing, quivering, noisy mess. But instead of griping, instead of shouting in consternation, the pony gasped and dashed to my side, all the while exclaiming, "Blessed Celestia! What happened to you? Are you alright?!"
I shivered, curling away from her as I hissed through clenched teeth. The pattern was setting my insides on fire. I wanted to explode. I wanted to vomit. Nopony in all of creation could come close to being ready for the righteous exclamation to follow. I tried to save this helpless stranger. I tried spitting, hiccuping, retching into the darkness instead.
But the pony did not relent. Tenderly, she reached over and shook my shoulders. "Darling, what's wrong? Why are you like this? Did somepony hurt you--?!"
There was no damming it anymore. The pattern was searing the meat that once made up my throat. The world was built to collapse over and over again, and the two of us were unfortunate mortals flung in between. I clasped onto her hoof and practically dragged myself up her forelimb. Once I was within a whispering distance, I ruthlessly yelled at her.
"There's a ninth! Isn't the world cruel enough?! Hasn't the damnable cold had its fill?!"
"I... I..." A pair of blue eyes widened over a stammering face. "I-I don't understand! A ninth what--?!"
"Nnnngh!" I flung myself back to the ground, growling, seething, clutching my aching cranium in a pair of hooves while the pattern crackled in the depths of my skull. "Dear Celestia, why?! Why is there a ninth?! When will it end?! When will it ever end?!"
My anguished voice was muffled in the blades of grass. In spite of my shivers, I felt a gentle warmth melting through the back of my hoodie. I realized that she hadn't left my side, despite this unicorn's banshee screams. She was stroking my back and shoulders, murmuring breathy whispers into my twitching ears. It was almost enough to break the pattern. Though my head continued throbbing, I started to calm down--in that my sobs lowered to tranquil whimpers against a backdrop of tingling numbness.
"Shhhh... Just be calm. Everything will be alright. You look so terribly cold, miss. I don't know where you've been, but you're safe now. Shhh... relax..."
I said nothing. I merely lay there, limp and weightless beneath her administrations. When I felt her hooves tugging on my shoulders, I had become too exhausted to protest. She hoisted me up, and I limped with her, leaning my weight against her flank as she gently led the two of us through the side door of her home.
"Easy there. One step at a time. Everything is going to be fine. We're gonna get you dried and warmed up. Nopony in Ponyville should have to suffer so."
I barely kept my eyes open. I was vaguely aware of wooden floorboards, white linoleum, and velvety rugs passing below. Every soft sensation was a fuzzy static being dragged across the jagged memories still blistering inside of me. Bright lightning strobes were going off in my head, illuminating the pale faces of shackled ponies all around. Dancing waves of water faded in and out of comprehension, drowning the rattling chains and roaring thunder.
All of this slowly melted away--like a burning photograph, or a horrible dream--as soon as a great, toasty warmth embraced my shivering figure. I was being led into a large kitchen. Several ovens were lined up in a row. I was positioned in the center of this heated place. Before I could collapse, my hostess had rushed over to grab a cushion that she slid over and positioned beneath me.
"Now... sit right here," she murmured. I saw a pleasant smile in my peripheral vision as the mare steadied me. "I run the village's local confectionery. Not a single night goes by when I'm not baking various candies for the next day's work. Lucky for you, these ovens have been turned on since several hours ago. They should be at just the right warmth to make you feel better. Funny how life works, huh? Heeheehee." She cleared her throat and backtrotted from me. "Just stay put, hun. I'll be right back."
I heard her voice, her giggles, her clopping hooves. I didn't so much as look at her. I gazed in a pitiful deadpan towards the flames. My limbs refused to move, or to even twitch. I wondered how glorious a thing it would have been to melt away in those ovens, to have my body exhumed in a holy crucible. At least I could avoid any future chances of seeing the alicorn, of her finding me. Why else would there be a ninth elegy in my head, unless it was her way of branding my spirit? How deep did this pit of suffering go? Had Luna herself gone to the same place? I had been to a frozen purgatory and back. What more was there to discover? How many horrors could one pony's soul contain?
I wanted to burn. I wanted to dissolve into nothingness. I wanted anything and everything but to be there, to be stuck in Ponyville, to be forced to live with all of these horrible memories and to know that my only way to end it all would be to make even more, deadlier ones. There were so many bodies--so many tortured souls shackled to the gaping throat of that eternity. I did not belong there. And yet, after just one incidental visit, I couldn't think of anywhere else I would eventually go. The Threnody wouldn't take me anywhere else. The Requiem was meaningless, for all I was concerned. Even if I mapped out a ninth elegy and pursued it to the bitter end, what truth could that reveal to me other than the horrors I'd already been forced to digest?
Nopony deserved to know what I knew, to have seen what I've seen. I needed to stop showing my face in town. I needed to stop existing. Every time I brushed path with these innocent citizens, I was dragging them upon the thresh-hold of something colder than death. The elegies were the grand seal to a chaotic wasteland, and I was the doorframe upon which such a barricade resided. I was something terrible, a pitiful array of frozen membranes, a hapless junction between sunlight and screaming. The ninth elegy was only just then starting to blossom in my mind. I hadn't the strength to finish it. I hadn't the strength to do anything anymore but die.
It was then that my hostess came back with a bundle of blankets draped over her back. The earth pony paused briefly as soon as she reentered the kitchen. She squinted steadily at me, her gaze studying the soaked lengths of my mane. After a few seconds, she marched the rest of the way.
"Well... you certainly look like you've seen better places," she cooed. She stepped behind me and draped the first of several blankets over my shoulder. It was barely enough to warm me, but I soon discovered she wasn't finished. After another series of hoofsteps, she came back with a large brush fastened to a cylindrical hoof-brace. "I don't suppose you have a name?"
I said nothing. I stared into the ovens as my future melted away one blink at a time. I could barely register the delicate sound of her voice or the sweet scent of vanilla wafting off her mane.
"Mmmmm... That's fine, dear," she murmured. Her warmth occupied the back of my neck. I realized she was sitting behind me, grasping my shoulder with one hoof while her other brushed the soaked lengths of my mane straight. "You don't have to speak. Just sit here and relax. I know better than to ask a stranger too many questions."
My nostrils flared. I shut my eyes and tilted my head limply as she ran the brush through my hair. The grace with which she pulled my tangled knots free was positively angelic. I couldn't help it: a part of me was wilting under her touch. I had been to hell and back, and to my surprise she was actually soothing me.
A slight giggle escaped her lips. Her voice was as warm and soft as the heat wafting from the ovens. "You have a gorgeous mane, if I must say so. I've always wanted straight hair. All my life, I've dealt with these stubborn curls. But yours is like absolute silk. I imagine you must drive the stallions crazy where you live."
She must have meant for me to laugh; I only wanted to curl up somewhere and sob. My limbs had stopped shivering a long time ago, but a part of me could never sit still ever again. I fidgeted under my hoodie as she proceeded with her caressing task, smoothing my mane into an immaculate shine. It wasn't until several minutes had passed into her motions, but I realized I had almost completely forgotten the ninth elegy before it had a chance to form.
"There. Feeling better already?" She paused and rested both hooves on my shoulders. She gave me a gentle squeeze against my drying coat. At first, I was confused as to why, until I heard the tone of her voice in tandem with her reassuring touch. "Now, don't be shy. I'm not mad at you in the least for trespassing, darling. The way I see it, life isn't so terrible that we must keep our painful experiences secret. So, would you like to tell me just what brought you here?"
I blinked. For the first time since I came there, I pivoted my neck. I stared back at her, my mouth agape. A whimper came out of me. "I..." I gulped, then whimpered again. "I fell... just outside, remember? And... and you brought me in. You insisted..."
She smiled innocently at me, her eyes bright and full of life. "Did I, now?"
I exhaled sharply. A lump had formed in my throat. The next voice squeaked forth, "You... You forgot about me..." I shuddered, gazing with pained eyes into her angelic expression. "You forgot how I came here... and yet... and y-yet you still took care of me?"
The mare's teeth showed as she smiled. "And why wouldn't I?" Her hoof stroked my bangs over my horn. "You're a pony in need. Isn't that what matters?"
My mouth was quivering. The image of her disappeared behind a foggy veil. I clenched my eyes shut and hung my head. It was all I could do to keep from collapsing to the floor. I thought I had screamed and howled all my lungs' worth in the horrors I had experienced, but I was wrong. The sweetest and most tender of breaths was reserved for this one, golden moment.
"I don't know who you are..." I stammered. "And I don't know what your name is." I sniffled and whimpered forth, "But I love you." I was leaning towards her without trying. She was there to catch me. I wept into the blind embrace. "I love you so much, and I w-wish I could be your friend. I wish I c-could be everypony's friend." I gnashed my teeth as the sobs came as liberally as the tears. I was no longer cold; I was burning up. This wasn't the melting I had anticipated, but I was so gloriously enraptured regardless. "But I can't be everypony's friend. I c-can't afford it. I can't h-have it. I know you c-can't understand. I don't need you to understand--"
"Shhhh..." She was suddenly cradling me, stroking my tears dry with a gentle hoof as her voice hummed against my drooping ears. "Perhaps what matters, darling, is that you understand." Her coat was silken pure to the touch. I could feel her smiling muscles without looking. "And that it's okay to show how you feel."
And that was when I caved in. I showed her how I felt. In a collapsing mess of tears and sobs, I displayed it all to her. She listened with an endless hug, absorbing every quivering wail I had to give, stroking my mane and rocking me to silence as I emptied myself of every horrid emotion my fifteen months of hell had wrung from me. She was everything I could have dreamed for, a warm soul that carried me, that listened to every indecipherable cry I had to give, that held and cherished me as I collapsed unashamedly in the shadows of all my stronger, crumbling shells. I knew that I was only a blight to her innocent little existence. I knew that in a matter of hours, I would yet again be a strange vagabond staining the air of her kitchen with my melancholic breath. Suddenly, none of the horrible things of fate mattered, for I was taught again what it meant to be a mad pony, to collapse felicitously under the weight of all things malevolent and still call it a victory.
I was reacquainted with love. Like Twilight Sparkle once did, I died in a pony's arms, and what came out the other side was a soul cleansed of pain, anguish, and suffering, so that I at last realized what a gift I had always given Twilight on so many occasions. With that, the guilt was cleansed as well, and I drifted into the exhaustion of my baptism with a smile.
The next morning, I awoke in the center of her kitchen. I was lying on a pair of cushions. Two sets of blankets had been draped over my figure. The heat of the combined ovens had become unbearable. That's how I knew I was sane enough to start living again.
Squinting across the dim light of dawn, I spotted my hostess on the far side of the kitchen. She had apparently positioned herself in a chair across from me, acting as my loyal sentry. Sometime in the middle of her task, she must have fallen asleep. Her mouth hung open in an adorably limp expression of slumbering bliss. Her cream-colored face shone in the golden kiss of the newborn day.
Flexing my stiff limbs, I stood up and shrugged the blankets off of me. My hoodie had long dried. My mane felt silky smooth, courtesy of a kindly mare's touch. Shuffling quietly across the kitchen, I stood before her. I almost said something, but stopped myself. With a sullen breath, I realized there was no point in waking this kindly pony. Hours had to have passed since she took me in. She was hardly Morning Dew; her sleep had dragged her out of the realm of the living. She would only be startled to see me leering above her in a waking blink.
As ever, a part of me wanted to thank her, to somehow bless her in even a fraction of the way she had solaced me. I knew better than to attempt the impossible. And yet, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't regret the state of things. I merely looked at her, reached a hoof forward, and gently stroked it lovingly across her blue and pink mane.
She stirred in her sleep, her face turning over to the side as she murmured something unintelligible into her forelimbs. I left her there on the chair, trotting softly away from the ovens, out of the kitchen, out of the house, and into the glowing world.
I found my lyre. It was left right where I had collapsed the previous night from the frozen world beyond. Mud and blades of grass had caked to its side. I lifted it with telekinesis and slowly plucked the specks free, one at a time, until ultimately sighing at the laborious task and balancing the musical instrument on my backside. Just as I did that, I heard the strangest of sensations. Curious, I turned and trotted towards the end of the alleyway, leaving the candy-maker's house as I approached the heart of Ponyville.
As I came out into the open, I squinted. The morning sun was shining in full radiance. As the burning world came into focus, I saw the source of the rhythm. Zecora was in the center of downtown, seated under a tree. She had a very familiar pair of drums positioned directly in front of her, and as she laid forth a playful beat, she wasn't alone.
Derpy Hooves and her child Dinky were positioned at Zecora's side. The young unicorn foal in question had a flute levitating in front of her. With Zecora's signal, she accompanied the beat with a well-practiced melody. Zecora smiled and Derpy clapped happily as the two equines made music in the heart of town. A few feet away from them, dozens of young ponies stood in audience, smiling at the early morning show. Among the listeners were Caramel and Wind Whistler. Taking a break from a busy week of setting up their delivery business, they sat in peace together. They leaned against each other's necks, occasionally nuzzling each other with warm smiles as the melody's ebb and flow persisted before them.
Glancing over, I saw Scootaloo--very much alive--chatting with Milky White. Instead of frowns, the two were exchanging grins, even laughs. The lengths of arguments, after all, are greatly dwarfed by the bridges of love. Just a few spaces away, I saw Applejack marching proudly across town, a basket of fresh bread hanging from her grasp. Apple Bloom hopped and hopped to keep up with her big sister, smiling and relating some whimsical story against the backdrop of flutes and drums. They ran into Rarity and Fluttershy, the latter of whom blushed as she sported a new gown that the fashionista was proudly showing off. Somewhere in the distance, I spotted Twilight Sparkle sitting at a table, chatting pleasantly with Dr. Whooves.
No sooner had I observed this when two giggling figures dashed by my vision. I turned and watched as Sweetie Belle and Rumble played a prolonged game of tag in the center of town. It ended as soon as Rumble tackled her, and the two collapsed in a fit of giggles and overturned leaves. A few spaces away, seated on a bench, two adult ponies watched serenely, sharing a conversation. Morning Dew and Ambrosia were absorbed in each other's gaze. As I briefly drifted in and out of their world, they actually looked at me... and they gave a gentle nod.
I became aware of the fact that I was nodding back. But that wasn't all. I barely knew the mare who had fallen into a freezing abyss less than twelve hours ago. Instead, in her place, was a mad pony who had the audacity to smile back at them... and mean it.
How long had I been seeing nothing but the shadows of this place? How long have I been inhaling all that's been warm and good, exhaling only the dust and detritus of all my woes? I'm better than this. I know it. I've lived it. In many ways, I've shared it--and to what end?
There is purpose to my being here. There was a purpose before the curse, and it still exists here, even in the coldest depths of my plight. I am not completely invisible. I am not entirely a ghost. The hoofprints I leave behind aren't mere impressions in dust that is blown away by a moonlit gale. I have touched ponies' lives. I have made impacts that only I can see, whereas all other souls are blind and I shouldn't take such an amazing opportunity for granted.
How many centuries have gone by--centuries of selfless ponies doing selfless things with no retribution whatsoever? And here I am in the middle of an unassuming town in the navel of Equestria, and I know the origin of so many good things, for that origin is me. I know why a flightless little filly lives and breathes. I know why a farm stallion got a second lease on life and love. I know why ponies that would otherwise be alone and detached are instead enjoying a brand new warmth in each other's company. What other soul in the grand history of life can stand upon the penumbra of such a dazzling light show and claim authorship, with no doubt, with no shame, with nothing but joy and triumph?
Yes, I am cursed, but what pony isn't? We all throw ourselves against the gauntlet of life without knowing how we'll come out on the other side. I don't know if I'll ever be free of the rusted shackles that bind me, but I can solace myself in the knowledge that I've freed many a soul that never knew such imprisonment to begin with, and would never have to. I am blessed--yes--blessed to be forgotten, so long as I know where it serves me, to serve myself, to serve others.
I was right to think of myself of a doorway to something. And though I may be a barricade to suffering, why would that be such a surprise? Tides of ecstasy crash against the breakers with as much ferocity as agony. What makes victory out of desolation is knowing how to maintain that dam, and in which direction to redirect the flow of all things good and ghastly.
I have been to hell, but I've been to heaven as well. I've released my horrors and my tears in equal shares. Coming back from such collapse, I carry a noble truth. The warmth of life may indeed be encompassed by something grand, frigid, and nightmarish. But if there was something supremely powerful in that miasma, then I'm certain life would have been snuffed out eons ago.
My name is Lyra Heartstrings. I am alive. One day, I will put an end to this curse. And even if I don't succeed, I will know that I have lived, and lived warmly, where eternal waves of pressure sought for so long to drown me out, only to fail time and time again.
"Really?" Twilight Sparkle blinked curiously, her cute face scrunched in surprise. "You mean it?"
"Absolutely." I nodded, standing before her in the library. "Your lecture on Modern Canterlot Record-Keeping sounds fascinating! I'd love to let you practice the speech on me!"
"That... That's great! I mean... uhm..." She blushed a rosier shade of lavender, running a hoof through her mane. "Even my best friends are hesitant to let me practice my Canterlot lectures in front of them. You're being awfully generous, Miss..."
"Heartstrings."
"But I'm not sure you know what you're in for," Twilight said. "I've been told that I can be a total snooze-fest on occasion." She gave a brief giggle, then sighed. "I'm sure you've got better things to do with your time."
"Miss Sparkle..." I looked directly at her. "You strike me as a remarkably intelligent, well-gifted pony. My time in Ponyville is your time." I smiled gently as I said, "Accept a unicorn's gift when she offers it."
"Well, alright!" She tried to contain a bouncy wave of energy flowing through her. She failed. "Heehee--Oops! Uhm... oh dear. I just went off on a horrible tangent, didn't I? Heh... How'd we get off track anyways? Weren't you bringing a book back?"
"Hmmm? Oh... Yes, I suppose I was." I lifted the ancient Shadow's Advent tome out of my book. With a loose breath, I floated it between us. "I'm only passing through Ponyville, so there's no reason to hold onto this any longer." I gulped. The ninth elegy was still a newborn phenomenon in my head, but I put it in the background as I focused on the gentler melody of our voices. "Please tell your dragon assistant that I'm thankful for his help in acquiring this for my studies."
"While I'm at it, I'm gonna scold him for not keeping proper records." Twilight briefly frowned. "There's no mention of this being borrowed in the library checklist. As if I haven't talked his ear off enough..."
"Please, be easy on the little squirt." I said with a grin. I glanced once more at the tome in my telekinetic grasp. "Besides, I doubt he'd remember a book this insignificant any more... than... me..." My voice trailed off. My vision narrowed.
"Miss Heartstrings?" Twilight's voice rang. There was confusion and concern in her murmuring breath, "Is everything okay?"
I wish that I could have told her. My eyes were locked on the book. Where before there had been nothing but senseless, faded scribbles of ancient Moonwhinny, there was something else new, something striking. I saw words--perfectly legible and bold words--and all of them practically glowing with an unearthly blue font.
Before my eyes, the brown cover of the tome read as clear as day: "Nocturne of the Firmaments - The Records of Dr. Alabaster Comethoof." My mouth hung agape. Numbly, I opened the book and flipped through the pages. Every single sheet was emblazoned over with cold blue paragraphs, diagrams, music sheets, and rows upon rows of dense paragraphs. I stopped at a random spot and read the first chunk of letters I could find: "...and upon the forsaken, her breath liberates between the firmaments. An ancient song gives birth to the birthless, her loyal subjects for eternity and for never..."
"Huh..." I muttered aloud. "Well that's different."
"What is it?" Twilight Sparkle was leaning over my shoulder, gazing at the tome. "The book isn't damaged, is it?"
I gazed at her, blinking. "You... you mean to tell me you don't see the words?"
"Of course I do," she nodded with a smile. "It's ancient Moonwhinny. Only few ponies know it. I'm not entirely versed myself, but I'm getting there. Heehee..."
I stared at her. I looked back at the book. I wondered what was different. Why could I suddenly spot such legible words while all Twilight saw was the same old tome filled with a dead language?
And then it occurred to me, a warming revelation, like a gentle embrace in the middle of a stranger's kitchen.
"The Requiem..."
"What was that, Miss Heartstrings?"
"Nothing." I slapped the book shut, its mysterious blue words and all. I smiled placidly at my foalhood friend. "Only... I wonder if I might trouble you to let me borrow this book a little longer..."
Nothing is meaningless.
Do not give up on life's searches. All roads lead to somewhere, so long as they remain roads.
Background Pony
IX - "The Firmaments"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Warden, theBrianJ, Props, RazgrizS57, and Simon Pegg
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | X - Green Is the New Pink | Dear Journal,
Does everything in the world stand to be fixed? Come to think of it, is everypony so imperfect that they necessitate "guardian angels" such as myself to fly to their rescue? I know that I am here in this town for a reason--curse or no curse. But is every facet of this reason up to me to decide? Am I a pawn or a master of this bizarre fate I've been forced to live through?
Assuming that my destiny is designed by reason or fate suggests a perfect world. What, then, needs to be fixed in a world that is perfect? Would blemished things go out of their way and ask to be attended to?
In attempting to find structure and order in my life, I've struggled to map out the rationality of everything that I observe. There is something noble to such a quest. But... is such a quest also divine?
There is nothing good about trying to force a pony or a thing to fly a certain way. I didn't always realize this. Such lessons have come close to burning me in the end. Luckily, I've come out of such endeavors with my limbs and mane intact. I could only wish the same about my sanity.
Sometimes the most beautiful, most serene, most perfect things in life perform their dance in a drunken fashion. It may look funny from the outside, but then you realize the entire world is like a ship rocking in some tempestuous seas. You can only get an even hoofing by floundering all over the place. Chaos and unpredictability are the most difficult dance moves of all. But once I've tasted of those charmingly unique steps, it's difficult to waltz in any other fashion.
And why would I try to? It's like the sound of one hoof clopping, or what your face looked like before your parents were foaled, or like... like...
You know what? Let's just get to the part where stuff happens.
Five days after my curse began, I was a smelly, sweaty mess. At least, that's what I imagined. I didn't want to hang around ponies long enough to see their disgusted expressions, or else I would have run the risk of finding out just how far I had fallen. Besides, every time I witnessed those citizens drawing blanks--and felt the cold of the curse kicking in--a little part of me died inside. It was the same little part of me that I was attempting salvage ever since the day a kindly stallion talked me down from the edge of Ponyville's town hall building.
With great courage, I explored my new life of imprisonment. All I had to my name was my golden lyre and a threadbare saddlebag full of pointless things. I carried several bits with me, of course, but almost all of them had disappeared in my first floundering attempts to buy food at restaurants or rent rooms at hotels, only to have amnesiac waiters and bellhops kick me out of such establishments in confused anger.
So it was that I resorted to walking the streets of Ponyville alone, wandering aimlessly, lacking sleep and food and sanity. I tried to meditate on the stallion's words. I tried to construct a beacon of hope for me to follow in my mind. I was marching after the trailing fumes of a mad pony's lunatic dream, and yet it was hardly enough to fill my stomach. That's how I found myself rummaging through a trash can in the middle of the park just northeast of Ponyville. I bit my lip as I fumbled through the shameful task, wondering how I had come to such a point of ugly desperation. Regardless, I had to press on, I had to find something to nourish me. I had to live for another day in that cold and forgetful world.
And after that... then what? What was I aiming for? What was my goal in this nightmarish void of a town where I couldn't afford food, a home, a friend, or a future? I couldn't think. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't smile. I couldn't--
"Nope!" she said, her pink hooves digging through her side of the trash can. "I'm not seeing it either!"
"Mmmf..." I muttered at the thought. Then I realized that the voice didn't belong to my thoughts; it was way too... chirpy. Blinking, I glanced up, only to have a pair of blue eyes brightly engulfing my emaciated reflection.
"Why would you toss it into the trash to begin with, silly?"
My eyes twitched. I felt part of my face convulsing as I ran a hoof through my frazzled mane. "I... uh... uhm..." I gulped. I looked at the trash can, at my hooves, then back at the pink stranger who was leaning up against the container out of nowhere. "Uhhh..."
"Heeheehee!" She giggled with a snort. "You look like a pony who needs help finding your voice."
"My... voice...?"
"How could you lose your voice in the trash can anyways?" She took a deep breath and shoved her fuzzy head neck-deep into the recepticle. Her voice echoed, "I usually keep mine in my throat, unless I'm singing, in which case I like it way better in other ponies' ears. Hey, you didn't lose an ear, did you? I hear some ponies like to carry ears around. Ears of corn, that is. Say!" She stuck her head back up. A banana peel and a soiled diaper formed a tiara atop her cranium. "Is that why you don't talk? You're always yellin' at the crows so you can shoo them away from the cornrows on your farm?"
"Who... said I couldn't talk?"
"Well now I'm confused." Her face scrunched up as she tilted her head up in thought. The garbage collected on her cranium fell sloppily to the park's path as she scratched her chin. "What pony in her good mind would want crows to eat up all her corn? Oh!" She smiled wide. "You're looking for your scarecrow! Of course! But..." She squinted down at the garbage can. "How could you fit a scarecrow in there?"
"I..."
"Maybe you cut him up into tiny pieces? Turned him into scareflies?"
"I think I need to be going..." I winced and started to backtrot away.
"Hey!" She reached a hoof out and held me in place. "Heehee! Don't be ashamed! You're not the only pony who likes to hide stuff all around the place in case of an emergency!" She dashed towards the nearby tree and reached into a crook of branches. "Take me, for example!" She dashed back my way. "Here, have a ball."
I gasped as I found myself grasping a rubber sphere in my starving hooves. "What... What's this--?"
"Ponies used to think I was weird for leaving balls all around town. When I first met Rainbow Dash, I told her that before I got smart about it, I'd just carry them around in my mouth. Then she started laughing for some reason."
"Uhm..."
"Considering how many that athletic pony's bounced off her face, you think Dashie could relate..."
"Hey... I know you."
"You do?"
I shuddered. Memories of arranging a surprise party for Twilight flashed through my head. Even colder memories of being the only pony to remember that arrangement practically killed me. I had seen these blue eyes before. The look of joy on this pony's face was like a cold iceberg, dragging me down into the horrific depths of yesterday. "Never mind. I really need to get going. You can have this trash can--"
"Me and a trash can? Bleachk!" Pinkie Pie made a face. "What kind of fun party is that?"
I gave her a double-take. I had been cold, hungry, and delirious. Suddenly, I was curious. "Party? Do you... Do you remember?"
"Of course I remember how to party! The day I got my cutie mark, I told myself 'Pinkie, from here on out, you're going to do two things every morning. You're gonna use the outhouse and then throw parties.' Well, needless to say, my family and I had to shampoo the carpet for a few years. So guess what my career choice was!"
"No, I mean, do you remember me?" I asked. "From the other day? Just before the Summer Sun Celebration?"
Pinkie Pie giggled and rolled her eyes. "Ohhhhh girl, don't be so silly! It's a celebration! I talk to alllll sorts of ponies before and after! It's 'cuz I'm setting up so much stuff, you see? So please forgive me if I forgot your name."
"But--"
"No no no, wait! Lemme guess!" Pinkie Pie scrunched her face up dramatically in thought "Nnnnnnghhh-Nnnnngh--'Minty?' No. How about 'Sudsy?' On account of how shiny your mane is. No? Hmmmm... 'Gato?' Nah, doesn't sound like you've ever been to Maredrid."
"Ahem." I cleared my throat and muttered, "It's Lyra."
"Heartstrings?" She added.
My breath left me. I gazed at her with quivering eyes. "Why yes." I felt tears forming along the edges. "Yes it is. How...?"
"Well, if you were named 'Cheesetrings,' then why would you look like you haven't had anything to eat in a while?" She grasped me in a sisterly embrace. "Hop along, Lyra! Let's get to baking!"
"Baking?"
"Mmmhmm!" She tugged me along towards the center of town. "That's one way to fill you up, don't you think?"
"You... You work at a bakery?"
"Oh, you didn't know?" Pinkie Pie howled to the air, "Your flank better callllll someponyyyy! Heehee. Ahem. No, really, trot this way! Delicious morsels await, my merry mare of mint!"
"There was this filly I grew up with. She was younger than me," Pinkie said. "Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the rock fields. Things were good. We made the most of it. During Hearth's Warming, we ran gingerbread into Torontrot... made a fortune. As much as anypony, I loved her and trusted her. Later on she had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for guard ponies on the way to Canterlot. That kid's name was Mare Green, and the city she invented was Las Pegasus. This was a great pony, a pony of vision and guts. And there isn't even a plaque or a signpost or a statue of her in that town! Someone put a cupcake through her eye. Nopony knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry. I knew Mare. I knew she was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when she turned up all covered in frosting, I let it go. And I said to myself, 'This is the baking we've chosen.' I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with baking!"
"Uhm..." I fidgeted, wearing an apron, my forelimbs elbow-deep in bread and cupcake mix. I stood in the center of the kitchen to Sugarcube Corner, delighted to be around so many warm ovens but vexxed to be at the awkward end of Pinkie's monologue. "Why are you telling me all this?"
"Come to think of it, I'm not so sure. But suddenly I want a banana daiquiri."
"A banana-what?"
One of the nearby ovens produced a melodic ding!
"Oooh! First batch is done!" Pinkie Pie clamped her teeth over an earth pony mitten and slid the tray of warm cupcakes out. "Mmmm... You smell that? I love the smell of angel cake mix in the morning."
"But it's the afternoon."
"There you go getting all technical again!" Pinkie Pie stifled a giggle. "Baking should be about fun and sharing your happiness! The best part of making these treats is thinking about who you're making them for! For instance, I'm always thinking about my friends when I bake frosted delights. That's what makes them all the better! In a way, you could say I bake a little bit of my friends into each of these cupcakes." She hoofed a golden-brown morsel to me. "Here. Have a bite. It's always best to sample a taste. That way you'll know whether or not to give your patrons helmets for their one-way-trip to the land of exploding taste buds!"
"I... I..." I gazed at the delicious, piping hot bread. My mouth watered, and my vision turned hazy as my eyes glazed over. "Only... a s-sample?" I whimpered, until my mouth was suddenly full of toasted deliciousness. "Mmmmmf!"
"Heehee. Silly filly!" Pinkie Pie smiled from the opposite end of the forced feeding. "This is your stuff!"
"Mmmmf!" I gulped a warm bite down and cradled the remaining bit in trembling hooves. "M-my stuff?"
"We're baking this all for you! You and me!" She grinned wide. "Cuz you're my friend too!"
Something inside me clicked off... or clicked on. I'm not exactly sure anymore. My senses were suddenly melting with sugary delight as I filled my empty stomach in a flash. Pinkie was lucky she didn't get her hoof bitten off.
"Whoahhhhh! Holy smokes with a chimney on top! Heehee! You enjoying your own hoofwork there, mintcheeks? Heehee!"
"I..." I panted, gathering my breath after devouring the meal. "Mmm... Yes..." I deliriously reeled from the happy sensation of having something edible inside my stomach. "Most definitely hoof-worked over..."
"Well, saddle up for more, filly! Cuz we've got plenty more where that came from!" She slid over several frosting dispensers and confectionery items. "You work on the frosting and I'll make these things Triple X."
I gave her a double-take. "Excuse me?"
She snorted back a giggle and rattled a jar of rainbow-colored candies. "Extra, Extra, Extra sprinkles!"
"Oh..." I gave a hollow laugh and worked diligently on what was bound to be a horribly self-indulgent meal. "But of course."
"You're supposed to smile, greenhooves! Heehee. After all, that's what really matters."
"Ohhhhh..." I sat, hunched-over on a bench along the far side of Sugarcube Corner.
"Got a tummy-ache?" Pinkie Pie asked.
I smiled drunkenly into the spinning corners of the room. "In the best way." I felt a frosting-flavored belch rising up my throat and covered my mouth at the last second. Through thin eyes, I gazed across the table at Pinkie. "I never thought I could down six cupcakes."
"Hee hee. You dainty thing you."
"How..." My brow furrowed with the severity of the inquisition. "How in Celestia's green earth could you possibly have swallowed fourteen?"
"My grandma always told me that I had a stomach of a hydra, cuz it was big enough to support four mouths' worth of meals."
"You don't say?" I smiled thinly. "Your grandmother sounds like a witty mare."
"Yes. Sadly, dear 'ol Granny Pie kicked the bucket."
"Awww..." I gave her a look of pity. "I'm so sorry to hear that, Pinkie Pie. Was it old age?"
"Nah. A wall fell on her."
"Oh." I blinked, fidgeted, and gazed around the place. "Uhm... That's..."
"Hey!" Pinkie Pie bounced up from her end of the table and grinned at me. "Wanna see a stallion go limp?"
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"And then I slapped him with my bare wings!" Thunderlane said proudly.
Cloudchaser and Flitter stood next to him, giggling and cheering. The sunset bathed them in a bright crimson as the afternoon came to a glittering end.
"Wow, that's spectacular!" Flitter said, cooing.
"He had it coming too," Cloudchaser added with a sultry wink.
"Yeah, well." Thunderlane scratched a hoof across his muscular chest and smirked. "He shouldn't have been shoving his beak into our flying team's business. Y'know, some ponies say that griffons are just naturally rare. Truth is, they don't breed enough to contribute to a proper gene pool. I mean, how can they? The only thing tinier than their brains is the size of their--"
"Quick!" I dashed up to him, wide-eyed. I shivered partially from the cold, partially from what I knew I was about to do. "We need your heroics, Thunderlane!"
"And you are...?" Flitter gave me a scathing look.
"Shhh!" Thunderlane marched in between me and the fillies. "You heard her! Looks like somepony needs me to kick some flank again!" He cleared his throat and stood in such a way to show off his wing muscles before the two girls. "What seems to be the trouble, miss?"
"Somepony spotted a squadron of changelings flying in from the west!"
"Changelings?!" Thunderlane made a face while Cloudchaser and Flitter murmured in surprise. "Why, they're almost as bad as griffons!" He blinked. "Almost--"
"Come quick!" I gestured with my hoof and trotted towards the sidewalk. "We need your expert, hawkeye, pegasus vision!"
"Absolutely! We can't have changelings invading Ponyville and... and..." He squinted over his shoulder. "Just what do changelings do again?" Cloudchaser and Flitter shrugged.
"Hurry! There's no time!"
"Alright!" Thunderlane marched after me. I led him to a conspicuously empty spot in the center of the town courtyard. "Where are they? I don't see anything--"
"Scan the horizon, quick!" I pointed. "We have to know how many we're dealing with!"
"But..." Thunderlane winced and squinted his eyes. "The sun's setting over there! It's hard to see anything..."
"Just stand right here." I pointed towards a dark spot on the concrete. "But keep your eyes on the sky!"
"Uhhh..." Cloudchaser gulped, her eyes locked on the spot where I was directing him. "Thunderlane?" Her sister stifled a snicker.
"Hush, girls!" He grunted. "I must concentrate if I want to spot where they are coming from!" Gazing up, he walked blindly onto a wet circle of liquid adhesive. His hooves came to a squishy stop. "Hmmm..." His eyes narrowed bravely towards the burning west horizon. "All I see is a flock of birds. Ma'am, are you sure this is--?"
Biting my lip, I gave a hoof-sign to the air. Pinkie Pie jumped out of a nearby bush and shrieked directly into Thunderlane's ears.
"Run! It's the Lunar Inquisition!"
"Gaaaah!" Thunderlane went wide-eyed. His wings flapped like a frightened chicken's. As soon as he lifted up, the adhesive sticking to his hooves bounced like rubber bands and yanked him harshly back onto the ground. "Oooof!" He grunted, his entire side plastered to the courtyard. "Unnnngh..."
Cloudchaser and Flitter had transformed into a collapsing pile of giggles and shrieks. Pinkie Pie snorted and fell back, kicking at the air as hysterics took over. As for myself: I sat there--slumped on my haunches--with a hoof planted over my gasping mouth. After a while, the horrors of my past few days faded away, and I was thrown deliciously into a sea of hyperventilation and laughter.
Thunderlane, naturally, was hardly amused. "Nnnngh! Pinkie Pie!" He thrashed and fought and struggled to peel himself off of the layer of translucent glue. "Wait till I get my hooves on you!"
"Oh cheer up, mohawk!" Pinkie Pie wiped the tears from her smiling face. "Heehee! Like we really interrupted anything with you three! One way or another, you were gonna end up sticky tonight!"
"That's it! C'mere!" Thunderlane lunged with a growling pair of teeth. Feathers flew from his wings as he managed to get within biting distance of us.
"Daah!" I fell back... into Pinkie Pie's forelimbs.
"Time to split like a diamond dog's behind, mintsicle!" Pinkie Pie yanked me along with her as we collectively scampered to the edge of town, baptized in Thunderlane's curses and the giggles of a pair of rosy-cheeked mares.
"Hahahahaha!" I laughed, almost tripping over a random tree-root jutting across the forested path.
"That wasn't the half of it!" Pinkie Pie bounced happily alongside me in the settling twilight of the day. "Then he tried to make her feel bad by saying 'I bet the reason you never condition your mane is cuz no stallion wants to get close enough to smell it.' And then Rainbow Dash said 'The real reason they called you Thunderlane is cuz of what happens after you eat too many chimichangas!'"
"Heeeheehee!"
"'Cuz that isn't the weather team making all that noise on a Wednesday afternoon after dinner! Real thunder would have lightning to it!' Heehee. Then of course he got mad, but what could he say? Dashie may not be the best at punchlines, but she's pretty good at delivery. I've known her way longer than the other mares, and it makes me happy whenever I can make her laugh. Cuz it's like a challenging little game, you know? For instance, why was the rainbow factory full of blood?"
"Heheheh--Ahem. I give. Why was the rainbow factory full of blood?"
"Because it was really happy to see the snowflake factory
"Snkkkt-Heeheehee!"
"Hehehehe--Yeah, pegasus humor. It's an acquired taste. But I like hot sauce in just about everything. Did you hear the one about the dead sea serpent who visited Cloudsdale?"
"Heeheehee... Mmm. No. What about him?"
"He died!"
"Snkt--Hah hah hah!" I almost collapsed. I was surviving on sugar, endorphins, and lack of sleep. Somehow, Pinkie Pie was the glue that held it all together. As freezing as I was, there was nowhere in all of Equestria that I wanted to be but with her. "Wow, Pinkie Pie. Do you ever run out of fumes?"
"I'm pretty sure Thunderlane doesn't!"
"Heeheehee..."
"Just think. If all a pegasus needed to do was graduate 'fart camp,' no wonder Thunderlane passed with flying colors! Heehee! Get it? 'Passed?'"
"Heheheh..."
"And come to think of it, Fluttershy would have failed that camp too." Pinkie Pie scratched her chin in thought. "Makes you wonder if there's an alternate world out there. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of methane."
"Whew... uhm..." I gazed up, my cheeks sore from smiling. "Say, it's getting pretty dark, isn't it?"
"Ew! I hate dark! Dark never writes home to Momma!" She grinned mischievously and grabbed me by the saddlebag. "Let's do something about dark, shall we?"
"Like what?--Whoah!" I gasped as I was yanked off towards the park where we met several hours earlier.
The next firework flew high into the air, scraped the starry sky, and then exploded overhead in a dazzling array of bright, sparkling colors.
I gasped in delight from where I sat in the center of the field. Pinkie Pie, meanwhile, was jumping for joy and pumping a forelimb into the air.
"Boo-yaa! Take that, dark, you gigantic expanse of philosophical ennui and loathing!" She grinned at me like a wild horse while her teeth lit up in strobing reds, yellows, and blues. "I don't care what Twilight says about Neightzsche. The old stallion was full of it. As far as I'm concerned, the longer you stare into the abyss, the abyss giggles into you."
I smiled and hoofed her another firework. "I imagine you're a lot deeper than ponies give you credit for, Pinkie."
"Mmmm! I love deep dish pies! Especially pumpkin! I wish it was fall already so I could add candy corn as sprinkles! What do you think?"
"I think you're high."
"You know what else is high?" Pinkie Pie gave a pyromaniacal smirk and lit the firework's fuse. "Explosions!"
The rocket twirled skyward, banked a little to the north, and died in a flowery burst of bright golds and yellows.
"Heeheehee..." I let myself fall back into the grass and basked in the darting streams of light and flame above me.
The world was suddenly warm and delightful again. This was because all of my fears had melted away. I hugged myself and squirmed back into the grass, delighting in the touch and texture of everything. Why had I let despair consume me so swiftly over the last couple of days? I should have known better. If only I had been patient, calm, and serene, then this situation would have passed by a lot more smoothly. Of course this curse was only a passing thing. What else would it have been? The only permanent thing in this world was death, and Pinkie Pie taught me that I was anything but dead.
"It's funny," I said.
Pinkie Pie giggled. "You're gonna have to be a little more specific, mint-mare."
"Hehe..." I rolled over and smiled at her in the glow of another bursting firework. "I was so certain that nopony would remember me. Everything that happened after I met Nightmare Moon was so bleak and frightening. It's kind of scary to think how easily I would have given into hopelessness. But today, Pinkie Pie? Today is one of the best days I've ever had. I owe it to you for showing me that all is not lost--"
"Really?" Pinkie Pie grinned as she lit another firework. "You owe it all to me?"
"Mmm... Yes. Thank you so very much for bringing me back to my senses." I hugged myself tighter and closed my eyes with a contented smile. "I can already see my mom and dad now. They must be worried sick about me. I should buy a ticket for the first train to Canterlot in the morning..."
"Well, I'm glad you had a really good day today!" Pinkie Pie's voice said over the hissing of a lit fuse. "I really wish I had spent it with you!"
"Heeheehee," I giggled. "But you did! And I couldn't be happier. I swear: it's like I can't stop smiling."
"Well, cool! I like making ponies smile! Especially ones I've only just met!"
I felt my heart sinking. Something wasn't wright. My eyes fluttered open while my brow furrowed in horrid suspicion. Slowly, I sat up, utterly ignoring the bright burst of color above us. "Wait a second... What... What exactly do you mean by 'only just met?'"
"You seem like a swell pony to hang out with, mint-stain!"
I lips hung open. I blinked several times, and lisped forth, "Lyra." I gulped, then repeated, "My name is Lyra."
"Heartstrings?"
I slowly nodded, squinting. "Yeah..."
"Well, if you were named 'Cheesetrings,' then why would you look like you haven't had anything to eat in a while?"
"But... But I did... We did." I gulped, the shivers doubling, tripling with each bursting second like the fireworks above us. "We baked cupcakes together, remember?"
"Mmmm... Cupcakes." Pinkie Pie practically drooled. "I could sooooo go for some of those right now, with extra, extra, extra sprinkles." Her blue eyes lit up as yet another passing thought bulleted through her brain. "Hey, did you ever hear the story about Mare Green?"
"Wait... You..." I shook my head and stood up. My breath was coming out in fervent little pants. "You... You mean to tell me that you don't remember?"
"Remember who? Mare Green? Hey, what happens in Las Pegasus stays in Las Pegasus, but I'd never forget an old friend! Where else did I get 'stick a cupcake in my eye?'"
"No! I meant us! You and me! Don't you remember the cupcakes? Or pranking Thunderlane?! Or our walk through the forest?! Or... Or our coming here?"
"Hey! Fireworks is always meant to be enjoyed in company!" Pinkie Pie beamed as she fired another one off. "I'm sure as sugar happy you came along, or else I'd feel awfully silly blowing up the night's sky on my lonesome!" She cooed at a burst of rainbow colors high above. "Ooooooh... so flowery!"
"I... You... This..." I seethed and ran a hoof over my head before practically pulling my mane out by the roots. My body quivered upon the breaking point. Finally, I squeaked, "I gotta go..."
"Huh?" Pinkie Pie flashed me a surprised glance. "Awww... But you just got here!"
"No..."
"Don't you wanna hang out and look at the pretty fireworks--?"
"No!" I shouted, hissed, and fought a wave of sobs rising up my throat. "I'm sorry. But I have to go!"
"Don't be such a spoil-sporty-pants, Minty!"
"It's Lyra!" I retorted, practically whimpering.
"Heartstrings?" She remarked, and I realized that she was merely looking at my cutie mark. She smiled as timelessly as ever. "Cuz if you were named 'Cheestrings,' then why would it look like you haven't had anything to eat in--Hey! Where are you going?"
I was running away. Galloping away. I flew straight into the forest, blind and numb. The world was a labyrinth of shadows and invisible frost all around me. In every blink, I saw the dark gaze of Nightmare Moon. I saw bright pony faces looking through me. I saw Mom and Dad's faces fading away, and my sobbing voice was flailing in a desperate attempt to pull them back.
I couldn't believe how stupid I had been. Of all the ponies of Ponyville that could have befriended me that day, it was the village's narrow-minded jester. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. I wanted to roll over in the dirt and die.
It so happens that I did none of those things. My panicked sprint through the forest had exhausted me. I found what I felt was an inconspicuous place and collapsed there, warmed by my tears. When morning came, I discovered I was inside an abandoned barn. My loneliness would have consumed me, hadn't a local farm filly happened to trot by and discover the sound of my voice... and changed my life forever.
Several weeks passed since that first meeting with Pinkie Pie, and I earned more than just a saddlebag attached to my name. Desperate afternoons of playing my lyre in the middle of town had proven fruitful. In spite of my curse, I had been able to earn many bits. Many bits meant plentiful food, good hygiene, decent shelter; though it was a flimsy thing. I was thankful nonetheless for the tent I had pitched beside the abandon barn on the north edge of town. I had plans for something far more permanent, of course, but I needed to take things one hoofstep at a time.
I had just recently discovered the meaning behind the music that was stuck in my head every morning. It turns out that Princess Luna--the same soul that Nightmare Moon had been anchored to--was the composer of ancient music, and somehow my mind had stumbled upon a nearly forgotten instrumental called "Prelude to Shadows." When I had finally written the notes down and performed the piece in full, there was an unexpected psychological effect. The lights all around me had become magnified, and my spirit was assailed with a great feeling of paranoia and anxiety. I almost wished I had a way to log all of the sensations I was feeling, but I was too busy being confronted with something else just as startling. It would seem that just after "Prelude to Shadows" had been performed, a new tune had taken its place. I was as frightened as I was mystified, and suddenly my imprisonment in that town took on a new meaning.
It had been over a month since I became trapped in Ponyville, and I was just starting to get used to my situation. This wasn't a time to let myself become frightened. I had to keep my cool. I still had hopes of seeing my family again someday. And for all I knew, these mysterious instrumentals could have been the key to unlocking something.
"One thing at a time," I murmured. It was a relatively mundane phrase, but a helpful one nonetheless. Adjusting the collar of my hoodie, I got up from my sleeping bag, slipped my saddlebag on, turned around, and zipped open the doorflap to my tent.
A baby alligator flew straight into my face.
"Mmmmfff!" I collapsed into the dirt outside, wrestling furiously with the puny reptile. As I rolled several times over in the soil, I heard a pitter-patter of galloping hooves rushing towards me.
"No! No! Bad Gummy! Get off the mare! Get off the mare! Nnnnngh!" I felt a pair of forelimbs tugging at the alligator's scaly hide. With an obnoxious popping sound, the thing was removed from my cranium.
"Ptooie!" I spat from where I sat on the ground. With a sigh, I pulled my mane out from my eyes and glared up at the bright shape before me. "Seriously, Pinkie! Will you put a leash on that thing already?!"
"Hey, it's not his fault! I thought I could teach him hang gliding! But as soon as I tossed him to the winds, I realized I forgot the glider... as well as the hangers!"
"Did you search the gallows?" I asked.
"Huh? Gallows?"
I sighed. "Never mind. I still think he could use a leash."
"Silly filly! How can a reptile hang glide with a leash?" She smiled and cuddled the wall-eyed gator to her bright cheeks. "Heehee! Good morning, by the way! Sorry about the whole alligator-in-the-face thing!"
I sighed and slowly stood up, dusting myself off. I didn't know what I was angry about more: the fact that this was the tenth time such a thing had happened or the fact that I still wasn't prepared for it. In a lot of ways, this curse had forced me to take the repetition of maniacal ponies like Pinkie for granted.
"Don't mention it. Just try to be more careful, Pinkie," I grumbled. "There are more ponies around town than you think, and tossing an alligator around randomly is likely to get more than just Gummy in trouble."
"Yeah, well, I figured that once he grows his teeth out, I'll try tossing ponies at him for a change." She paused, blinked, then glanced at me. "Hey! How come you know my name anyhow? I've never met you before."
I sighed and tried explaining. "It's because--"
Pinkie Pie then reminded me that there was no need to explain things with her. "Cuz you seem like a pony who's worth knowing! I look at you and instantly wanna have mint sherbet!"
"Yes. Yes, that's nice--"
"Mmmmmm. Sherbet."
"I have to go, Pinkie," I groaned. I zipped my tent shut from the outside and tightened the saddlebag around me. "There's this new song I'm composing, and I need to visit the town library for some help with--"
"How come you live in a tent?"
"Cuz if the tent lived inside of me, I'd need a zipper for my mouth, don't you think?"
I knew that would make her giggle. I hoped it was enough to keep her occupied as I made a hasty retreat. This morning, however, she paused halfway through rolling in the dirt with her laughter.
"Hey! The library! That reminds me! I'm baking muffins for Twilight! I could use a helping hoof!"
I shuddered. I tried each and every day to forget about the first time I took her up on her offer to bake anything. It had been several weeks since our "day together," and already I was trying to become a stronger pony, a better pony. Pinkie's presence only served to remind me just how far I had yet to go.
"Sorry. But I'm a little busy..."
"Too busy for blueberry muffins? Why, we can't have that, Miss--"
"Lyra," I muttered. I immediately wished I hadn't.
"Lemme guess: Heartstrings? Cuz if your name was--"
"And I hate cheese!" I added with a frown. "Almost as much as I hate--" I blinked, then squinted. "Now what are you doing?"
She was balanced on one hoof, her head utterly inverted. "Has anypony ever told you that if they look at your cutie mark upside down, it looks like a tiny cartoon ghost from an arcade game?"
"It does not!" I barked. I blinked. I gazed curiously back at my flank.
"Anywhoo..." Pinkie Pie was suddenly bouncing past me with a small green reptile biting down on her flailing tail. "If you don't want to bake, then I can't force ya! Non-consensual muffin-making is the worst kind of muffin-making! I should know! Mrs. Cake forces me to listen to Tori Haymos all the time!"
"Uhmm..." I was blinking, reeling from her exuberant randomness echoing in both of my ears.
"Next time I toss Gummy around, I'll make sure he grows wings first! Or at least webbed toes!"
"Pinkie, wait." I reached a hoof towards her. I winced from what I was about to do. The day that lay before me was dissolving with each successive blink of contemplation, threatening to lose whatever musical progress I had long planned on making. The fact was that I had become intensely curious about Pinkie all of the sudden. I'm not entirely sure what had impacted me. Maybe it was the delicious lengths to which her smiling cheeks stretched. Maybe it was the twinkle in her eyes that never went away, no matter how gloomy those days could stand being so many times in a row. Whatever was the case, the music in my head seemed a great deal less obtainable. And there Pinkie Pie was. She was very real, standing within hoof's length, grinning at me, smelling of balloons and cake batter. My life had become a strange prison, framed by accidents, abridged by happenstance. There, bouncing in front of me, I had what could only be an opportunity to seize every bitter inch of my predicament and sum it all up with a smile, even if I had to steal that smile. "I've changed my mind," my vocal cords eventually forced through. "I would... nnngh... love to do some baking with you."
"Really?!" Somehow, in the span of two seconds, she had blurred back to smile point blank in my face. "You mean it?"
"Yeah..." I gulped. "Why not? Let's get to it before I change my mind again."
"What's the hurry?! I haven't begun my morning rounds through town!"
"Morning... rounds...?"
"Oh come on!" She giggled and motioned me to follow her down the path. "Who doesn't enjoy a walk in the sun? Hop along, Spyra!"
"Lyra."
"Whatever. Move your flank, green-spleen!"
"Then after insulting the way I bake lemon cakes, he asked me if I wanted to go visit Nuzzler's Lane atop the hill overlooking Ponyville!" Pinkie Pie made a face as she led me through the busy heart of Ponyville. "I mean, really! Could you imagine the mendacity of a stallion like that?!"
"I think the word you're looking for is 'audacity,'" I said. "And so what if he didn't like one thing that you baked? Perhaps you should have given him a second chance, Pinkie. Believe it or not, food isn't always the way to a stallion's stomach."
"Whatever." Pinkie smiled at me in mid-trot. "That's the last time I ever let Rarity try to match-make for me. 'Oh darling, you and Pokey Pierce would make the most exquisite pair!' Pfft! Yeah right! I swear, if somepony put the two of us onto a ship, an iceberg had better hit us!"
I smiled momentarily. "Well, I'm glad you respect yourself enough to at least admit such. Unlike what popular culture wants us to think, we mares are not all bound to be hopeless romantics." I nearly ran into a tulip being held right in front of me.
"Good morning to you, angel," said a charming voice, attached to a charming face, framed with soft blue eyes, a sapphiric mane, and a handsome smile.
"Uhhh..." I blinked. I plucked the tulip from his grasp and stirred where I stood. "Uhhh... Uhmm..."
The stranger smiled, gave a bow, and trotted off towards a gardening wagon.
"What's his deal?" Pinkie said with a blank expression.
"I... I..." I glanced at him, at the tulip, then cleared my throat. I felt my cheeks burning as I tossed the flower away while nopony was looking. "I have no idea." We both marched ahead, during which I rediscovered the strength to speak to her evenly. "Tell me, Pinkie..."
"Hmm?"
"Does it bother you that I'm a stranger?"
"No more than it would bother me if you were a manticore!"
"Isn't that... kind of a dangerous philosophy to live by?"
"Who lives by philosophies, really?" She hummed pleasantly as her bouncing trot led us towards the heart of Ponyville. "At least with baking you know you can feed somepony!" She turned and waved at a bearded stallion. "Hey Ace! How's the tennis elbow?"
I continued. "Because you can never know if a stranger might mean you ill-will or--"
"Just remember, you have three more elbows where that came from!" Pinkie Pie shouted towards the stallion with a giggle. "So don't give up the dream!" His voice chuckled in the distance.
"Pinkie?" I frowned. "Are you listening to a word I'm--?"
"Hey Cheerilee! How're the students blooming? Like an onion?"
"Heehee!" A passing mare smiled at us. "Just as delightfully as ever, Miss Pie!"
"Good! Lemme know when you're enrolling for kindergarten again! I could sure use some nap time right about now!" Pinkie Pie smiled my way. "Cheerilee is best pony. Don't you agree?"
"Do you ever juggle less than three conversations at a given time?" I asked her.
"Whoops!" She smiled nervously. "Sorry, Guyra."
"Lyra. And what are you sorry about?"
"I see a pony who's not smiling and I just dive right in, y'know?" She waved once more towards the random crowd. "Hey Sethistoats! Did that showmare from Whinniepeg ever write you back?"
A passing, yellow stallion glanced over and blushed. "Who? What?" He crashed smack-dab into an apple cart. "Ouch! Dang it!"
"Heehee." Pinkie winked at me and whispered. "That one gets distracted too easily."
"He's not the only one." I stared firmly into her eyes. "Don't you think that life is too fragile and important to take everything in levity? What if something bad happens, and the last thing ponies around you want to do is smile? What do you do then? Are you even prepared for that, Pinkie?"
"Ugh. Is this a lecture?" Pinkie Pie snickered. "Mr. Cake is giving me those all the time. Or at least I think he is. It's hard to tell when he's serious or not. You ever seen that neck of his? I swear, he's one-third giraffe."
"I just think that--at your age and with the part you play in Ponyville's social structure--you could stand to be a little more--"
"Because giraffes used to live all over Equestria before Chancellor Puddinghat's pilgrimage to the Central Valley. Disease is a sad thing, isn't it? Whatever, so long as they're happy with their casinos today--"
"Pinkie, would it kill you to pay some attention?"
"Not half as much as it'd... uh give birth to you to stop being so serious!" She snorted, then grinned at me. "Seriously, Leela, you're starting to sound like a robot butterfly." She hoofed me a golden tulip. "Here, you dropped this."
"I..." I did a double-take, being awkwardly reacquainted with the gentlecoltish gesture. "Uhm..." I felt my cheeks burning once again as I stopped dead in my tracks. "How... Where...?"
"Don't get too far behind!" Pinkie Pie shouted from where she was bouncing towards the entrance to Sugarcube Corner. "I know this isn't the running of Lyra, but we've got some muffins to get to! Hurry up!" She bumped into a winged figure. "Whoops! Teehee! Sorry about that! Muffin emergency!"
"Hmph..." A copper pegasus grunted as she trotted past us. "Friggin' earth ponies, I swear to Entropa."
I placed the tulip behind my ear and trotted for the bakery. Suddenly, I skidded to a stop. On a jolting heartbeat, I spun and glanced behind me. The pegasus had done the same, her amber eyes squinting at me from beneath a jet-black mane. For a few seconds we were absorbed into each other's gazes. With a mutual shrug, we parted ways.
"Whelp..." I adjusted my hoodie and marched into Sugarcube Corner under a wave of cold. "Can't get any more awkward than that."
"And that's how I learned what 'pu pu platter' really means!" Pinkie Pie said, giggling over bowls of muffin mix in the middle of Sugarcube Corner's kitchen. "Whew! I tell you what: after that banquet, Princess Celestia almost decided to host the Summer Sun Celebration in Manehattan instead! I still don't know how her Majesty managed to brush her teeth so well since."
I sighed long and hard, trying to hold my lunch in as I prepared the blueberries. "Well, you learn something new everyday." I gulped and fought the urge to retch. "Most ponies, at least."
"Hey, not everything's black and white."
"What's that supposed to mean, Miss Pie?"
"I dunno. Something about Petrot Molyneigh, I'm willing to bet."
"Every time I think you've almost made sense, you've only lost me more and more."
"That's just what makes you the perfect straight mare!"
"The perfect straight--what?"
"You know, like Stallion and Ollie? Lewis and Maretin? Abbot and Coltstello?" She winked at me while she stirred the bowl of mix. "One of us is goofy and the other one is straight-faced! It'll make tons of ponies laugh when we hoof out these muffins! We'll be the next big hit! Sooner than you know it, they'll call us Harpflank and Sweets!"
"Somehow I think that's already taken," I muttered.
"Heehee! Cheer up! As much as I want other ponies to giggle, I just hope I find a way to make you smile too, Miss... Miss..." For once, her speech trailed off, and her mouth hung open upon the precipice of confusion.
I glanced up at her. I stood up straight. "What? What is it?"
"Uhm... Eheh..." She bit her lip, blushing. "I'm told that I draw a blank a lot, I'm just not used to feeling it when it happens..."
"You don't know my name, do you?" I asked, leaning forward eagerly. "You've... forgotten me? Just now?"
"Well... eheheheh... I came here... to bake muffins... and you... you..."
"Freeze!" I shouted. Several dozen blueberries fell to the tile floor as I leaned forward through the cold and grasped her shoulders. "Stop right there! Think hard, Miss Pie."
"I... I'm trying to remember your--"
"Don't! Don't try!" I exclaimed. I gulped and asked in a gentle voice, "I just need you to describe it."
"Describe what?"
I bit my lip and murmured, "What are you feeling right now? What is this curse doing to you?"
"Curse...?"
"Doesn't it strike you weird that you're standing in the presence of a pony you don't recall ever having met before?" I asked her, searching her eyes for the meaning to something that had been troubling me for several restless nights in a row. "Do you get the feeling that though my face and voice is utterly new to your mind, I'm somehow familiar? I've somehow spoken to you before? Or is it all a total blur?"
"I feel... I feel..."
"Please..." I whispered, my voice wavering painfully. I gazed at her even harder. "This is very important to me. I need to know what's happening to you. I need to know why things are the way they are..."
"I..." Pinkie Pie's eyes thinned as she breathlessly searched the lengths of the ceiling like a introspective pony might search the cavernous lengths of her anxious soul. "I feel like..."
"Yes?" I breathed.
Pinkie Pie blinked, then smiled wide. "I feel like adding pistachios!"
My ears drooped immediately. "Pistachios?" I droned.
"Yupperooni!" She bounced past me and grabbed a jar of nuts from a high shelf. "Blueberries! Hah! Only bored caterers use fruits and fruits alone in a recipe! Ponyville is a gritty farming town! I need to toss something crunchy into the mix! Besides, what are the odds of anypony really being allergic to--"
"Miss Pie!" I almost snarled at her. I blocked her return path to the baking counter. "Who am I?"
"Really pretty!" She winked. "I like your mane, mintilicious!" She brushed past me while opening the jar with her teeth. "Mmmf--Naugh hoov meh duh bloopberrees, pweddy pleeb!"
"I'm trying to be serious!" I plucked the jar from her jaws. "Something extraordinary has happened here--Ewww." I grimaced while shaking the accumulated drool off my hoof. I placed the wet jar of nuts down and stared at Pinkie again. "I've been here for the past hour and a half, and yet suddenly it's like I haven't been here at all. What would you say if I told you that I could describe everything that's happened since we met at my tent just north of town?"
"We met at a tent?"
"Yes! You tossed Gummy into my face!"
"Huh, well I was probably trying to teach him how to hang glide." She smirked at me. "Say, do you know where I might find a glider around here... or some hangers?"
"Pinkie!" I grasped her shoulders and almost yelled. "This is not about you, me, and Gummy!"
"Pfft! Duh! Two's company, three's a crowd!"
"Doesn't it bother you that you don't even know my name?!"
"So? What's in a name?"
"Everything! I'm Lyra Heartstrings."
"You don't say?" Pinkie grinned wide. "Cuz if your name was--"
"I swear, if you so much as mention cheese again, I'm going to--"
"You're a pony who looks like she could learn a thing or two about baking muffins!" Pinkie giggled. "Isn't that enough?"
"No!" I barked. "It's not enough! We are defined as much by who we are as by the things we do!"
"What do you call this, your Big Lyra Theory?"
"Stop playing my words off like an ordinary showtune!" I followed her around as she wandered aimlessly about the kitchen, grabbing even more ingredients. "How would you like it if everypony around you suddenly forgot your name?!"
"I'd have a hard time getting into dance clubs."
"For real!" I folded my forearms and frowned at her. "Wouldn't it bother you? Wouldn't it make you feel as if a huge piece of you was missing? Wouldn't it make you wonder what had happened to have stripped you of so much?"
"Silly Lyra. This isn't Canterlot Court! Not every pony wears clothes."
"Ugh..." I facehoofed. "Pinkie..."
"Nice hoodie, by the way." She returned to the counter and resumed stirring. "Who woulda guessed you were a total flankster?"
"You would have guessed nothing!" I said. "You don't know a thing about me!"
"You're smart, well read, have a thing for music, and like to lecture a lot."
I paused, blinking. "Uhm..."
Pinkie Pie giggled. "Oh please. Mother Nature doesn't give us cutie marks at random! That's like playing dice with the universe! Didn't Einstallion say something about that?"
"You think that's all you need to get to know a pony?" I asked in a monotone voice. I gestured towards my flank. "You see a cutie mark and guess that I'm a musician and somehow that's enough to go by?"
"Well." She motioned towards my flank. "The golden harp certainly doesn't mean you study anthropology, now does it?"
"Ugh... Pinkie..."
"I guess so long as you update on a regular basis, nopony can tell the difference?"
"At least humor me with this," I said, gesturing for emphasis. "Say your name out loud and tell me it doesn't do something to your spirit to just hear it!"
"What, my full name?"
"Certainly."
"Hmmm..." Pinkie Pie gazed up at the ceiling, tonguing the inside of her mouth. "Pinkamena Diane Pie." She paused, her eyes narrowing. Then she shook her head. "Nah. Just as boring as ever."
I blinked crookedly at her. "Uhm..."
"Yes? Something wrong?"
"N-no. It's just that..." I pointed, lingered, then sighed. "Forget it." I slumped lethargically against the counter. "I don't know why I bother."
"Cheer up, girl! I don't understand what all the stress is about! So what's in a name? My parents almost named me 'Surprise.' That probably would have been cool. Cuz then, every time I threw a pony a surprise party, I'd always be celebrating myself just a teensy bit as well! But then I realized--heehee--I do that anyways! So, what's it matter what a pony is called in the long run?"
"At least a 'pu pu platter' has an important name, right?"
"Well, not as much as the smell. Hey, let's finish this up! Why be wastin' when you can be bakin', huh?"
"Pistachios?" Fluttershy smiled and gazed over the counter at us. "Why, Pinkie, this is absolutely delicious. I'm tempted to bring some home so that my little squirrelies could have a bite. Would you terribly mind if I did that?"
"Hey! These muffins didn't become 'free' by following Whinnie Wallace's charge across Haystings Bridge!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed. "Take as many as you like, girl! Go forth and spread the good word of blueberries and pistachios in every forest! And if a squirrel turns you away, dust off your horseshoes and go to the next cluster of trees!"
"I swear..." I muttered into my hoof as I sat slumped against our side of the front counter. "Do you even hear yourself sometimes?"
"Ew. The last time I put my mouth up to a microphone, the only good thing that came out of it was saliva." She waved at Fluttershy as she marched off, becoming one with the colorful cloud of munching ponies across the heart of Sugarcube Corner. "Singing is only pretty when it's natural. So I never plan to do it."
"You never plan to do a lot of things, I'm thinking."
"Fluttershy's different. That pegasus who was here just now?" Pinkie Pie pointed at the yellow blur in my peripheral vision. "I swear, she should totally lead a chorus. It's funny, cuz a lot of my friends say we've got the same voice. I don't hear it myself. Do you hear it? Ahem. Do Ra Me Fa--"
I planted a hoof over her mouth, silencing her as I sat up with a glare. "I've heard enough, Pinkie Pie. You're a sweet, amusing, delightful mare. But I can't help but feel as if you're hopeless."
"Mmmfletth?" she remarked. I removed my hoof. She shook her face, flexed her lips, and uttered, "I dunno about you, but I feel pretty happy."
"Feeling happy and being happy are two different things."
"Eww." She gave me a disgusted look. "Since when?"
"Since the Cosmic Matriarch bestowed her holy breath upon the four corners of this realm and ascended to the cosmos--What's it matter?" I tossed my hooves and stood up. "A pony's soul is never at ease--I mean truly at ease--until he or she is lucid of his or her place in the universal order of things!"
"Is this the part where you ask if I've read Dianeightics?"
"Pinkie Pie, don't you ever value the past or future?!" I looked at her with pained eyes of concern. "Just how long can you live in the present? How can you possibly eke meaning from a life that is measured in the here and now? Doesn't anything hold permanence and meaning?"
"Hmmm... Well, I guess I could dwell on the past, if only to find out what the word 'eke' means," she murmured. She stroked her chin in thought as two more ponies walked up and grabbed more muffins from the counter. "You see, I didn't exactly have a lot to laugh about when I was a little filly. My family built our home in a gloomy little town built in the ravines left behind by the bone spokes of a fallen god's lifeless wings, where to laugh was a sin and the only way to measure one's worth was to labor in deadly mines from sunup to sundown."
"Pinkie..." I exclaimed, my breath leaving me as I rested a gentle hoof on her shoulder. "I... I-I had no idea. Did you really?"
"Snkkkt!" She snorted and pounded the counter. "Hah! I'm just kidding! I grew up on a rock farm."
"Pinkie Pie!"
"Hah hah hah hah!"
"That's it." I grabbed my saddlebag and hoisted it over my flanks. "I'm leaving."
"Awwww... Don't be so down in the mouth! I'm just trying to get you to grin!"
"At this rate, you'll get me to my grave."
"Oh! Where are my manners!" Pinkie Pie stood up next to me. "Of course! You're probably wanting to be paid for helping with the muffins! I'm afraid only Mrs. and Mr. Cake handle the bits around here, but maybe you'd like a parting gift?" She reached behind the counter and grabbed a purple stuffed hippo. "Plushie?"
"Miss Pie, I most assuredly do not want any plushies. Not now, not ever."
"Right. Plushies are so yesterday. Oooh!" She rummaged behind the counter. "You seem like a clever pony! Here, have a book!" She tossed a tome of thick binding into my grasp.
I briefly juggled it, then flung it open. After a few page flips, I gazed dully at her. "All the pages are blank."
"So? Start a journal! You can write, can't you?"
"Why would I need a--?!" I paused in mid-speech. I gazed down as I flipped through the dead pages yet again. "Hmmm..."
"I never cared for diaries myself. They take forever to write. Plus, just what would I put in them, anyways?" Pinkie Pie cleared her throat and thickly orated, "'Dear Journal. Do you like rhetorical questions? How about rhetorical statements? I used to write rhetorical statements a lot, then something happened and it reminded me about something else that happened and then I decided upon being declarative!'"
"Uhm, Pinkie Pie?" Fluttershy said. I glanced over to see her returning to the counter. "I was wondering," she quietly spoke. "Could I... uhm... possibly bother you for two more muffins? Angel's been really good-mannered lately, and I feel as though I should give him some positive reinforcement--" Fluttershy paused, leaning over to stare at me. "Why, hello. Are you a friend of Pinkie's?"
"You don't remember me from five minutes ago?"
"Uhm. No. I'm sorry. Sh-Should I?"
I slapped the book shut and gestured at Pinkie Pie. "Hah! There! You see?"
"Who? Fluttershy?"
"She forgot me!"
"Heehee! She'd forget her wings if they weren't attached to her sides! Uhm... No offense, Fluttershy."
"None taken."
"Nice slippers you sewed for Gummy last week, by the way. He's starting to work on his dance step."
"Oh really?" Fluttershy's feathers fluttered as she smiled wide. "I'd love to visit one of his ballet recitals."
"Yup! It's a world worth living in when an alligator gets in touch with his feminine side."
"Pinkie!"
"You!" Pinkie looked up at me. "Hello, you! Hey, nice book!"
"Oh dear Celestia..." I seethed, my teeth chattering through a sudden chill. "Did you forget me again too?"
"Uhhh..." Pinkie Pie blinked, then smiled. "Heartstrings? Cuz if you were named 'Cheestrings'--"
"Yeah, goodbye."
"I'd like some cheese," Fluttershy said.
"Nopony asked you--" I tripped over the counter in my hurry to leave. "Ackk!"
"Looks like Gummy isn't the only one who needs to learn ballet."
Two voices began giggling, and it made me all the more furious that I suddenly couldn't tell them apart.
The sun was setting by the time I stormed back to my tent. I fumbled with the zipper, cursing under my breath. When I finally opened the flap, I tossed myself in like a sack of potatoes wrapped in a stone-gray hoodie. I lay across my sleeping bag, sighing, basking in the toastiness of a dying summer day. I didn't realize I was hugging something to my chest until I felt the urge to look at it.
It was the blank journal.
"Ugh. Wasted my whole day, I swear to Celestia." I tossed the empty book towards the far end of the tent and turned over. A stretch of flaxen mane hair fell over my eyes as I gazed blankly into space. I should have spent that day figuring out what this new tune was that had become stuck in my head. I should have worked on unlocking this curse, figuring out how to make a more sturdy home to live in, earning myself more bits, anything but what I actually did spend the entire day doing. "She isn't one of your pupils, is she, Moondancer?"
The world was cold and silent. Of course it was.
I shivered slightly, pulling the hood over my horn and hugging my forelimbs to my chest. As my breath came out in tiny vapors, I went over the images of the day's events in my head. If I was in any other circumstance, if I was any other pony, then perhaps even a fraction of the things that Pinkie had said would have done what she always wanted to accomplish. Admittedly, I felt like smiling on a few occasions, but for some reason a frigid new part of me kept that from happening. Because of that, both of us had come to an impasse. Did I really have the curse to blame for that?
What was I becoming? Or, better yet, what was I destined to become? I wasn't always so cold, so joyless, so devoid of any sense of humor or levity. Was the curse such a curse because I was letting it be so terrible?
No. No, it couldn't possibly have been that simple. I just needed to understand things more. I needed to get answers. If I could understand Pinkie Pie, then maybe--just maybe--I could understand everything else as well. There is nothing harder to unlock than randomness. After all, I was dying to know how a pony could live forever in the present, for I realized that I too may soon have to adjust to such an existence.
So, groaning, I turned over and did something I would never have predicted. I lifted the blank journal in my grasp. I opened to the first page. Then--telekinetically grabbing a pen that I had previously used only to write music down on paper sheets--I began taking notes. Then those notes turned into outlines. Then those outlines turned into narratives. Finally, those narratives morphed into journal entries. Before I knew it, there was an elaborate map being made of my imprisoned life in Ponyville.
Twelve months later, seated in the center of a cozy log cabin with a crackling fireplace, I was still illustrating that "map." I calmly murmured aloud while dragging the quill one last time across the bottom of the page.
"'Have you ever had a beautiful melody stuck in your head, but you don't know where it came from? That melody is me.'"
I stopped. I dropped the quill in its inkwell and gazed at my finished entry.
"Hmm. Good thing I'm the only pony who reads this. That rubbish would never catch on."
I took a deep breath and smiled. Life was still tough, but it was manageable. I had discovered many elegies since my first frightful month of the curse. I had made a home for myself. I had planted crops to grow my own food. I had even devised a way to coax Twilight into helping me learn the latest mysteries regarding my predicament.
As a matter of fact, just the day previous, she had helped me discover the name of Elegy #7. I glanced to my left, pleased at the thick pile of notes that I could now safely label the "Threnody of Night." After nearly a year of awkward trial and error, I was finally starting to get the hang of things. It felt refreshing, as if I was actually in a good place.
Perhaps such a sensation was what sparked the feeling of nostalgia suddenly blossoming inside of me. Whatever the case, I was motivated to flip through the first few entries of my journal. I hummed to myself as I spun the pages towards the very beginning of the book. I froze immediately on the first sheet, my eyes squinting.
I had several year-old notes scribbled down in hasty penstrokes. From the horribly jagged hoofwriting, I could tell just how much the cold had made me shiver twelve months ago. Among the convoluted to-do list I saw such gems as "earn more bits," "tear down the barn," "get access to the library's older books," and "acquire musical instruments." But none of these had locked my attention so viciously in place. In the center of everything--with an angry line crossed through it not once, not twice, but three times--was a bold group of words: "learn to think pink."
I blinked at the imperative statement. I made a face. "Ew, really?" My breath came out in a vaporous shudder. I gazed into the flames of the fireplace. "Couldn't I just figure out how to time travel or build an artificial rainbow instead?"
There are times when I am reminded of just how alone I am. I can never predict when such epiphanies take place, but they're almost always followed by an immutable silence that not even my frost-stricken breath can interrupt. The fireplace had seemingly drowned itself into the shadows of the cabin. The instruments hanging all around me faded into obscurity while the stars of night disappeared one by one outside of my windows.
I started to imagine that, with or without learning more about this mysterious Threnody, I had come a long way to reach this place of tranquility and soundness of mind. It wasn't an easy road; I had struggled through many trials and tribulations of spirit over the year. Still, I had a lot to be proud of, psychologically speaking.
And yet, no matter how serene I may have become, I knew it was nothing compared to the joy that Pinkie Pie exhibited through purely natural means. What epiphanies, then, could such a bouncy earth pony be capable of experiencing herself? When she felt terribly alone, who would be there to comfort her? For that matter, who would be capable of telling exactly when and where she crossed the great divide between joy and despair?
Suddenly, "thinking pink" no longer felt like a mission to understand myself, but to figure out yet another soul who frolicked innocently across my accursed path. How could I have ever been possessed to cross such a note out on several occasions?
"I blame it on the alligator," I mumbled.
I knew I might end up regretting it, but my mind was already making plans to do something about this. After all, I had just made another big step in uncovering the elegies. What was to stop me from helping my amnesiac friends discover their true potential as I had so blissfully stumbled upon mine?
I flipped forward through the book and graced the page right after my latest entry. With the pen, I dragged fresh new notes across the page. I smiled to myself. This would take several weeks, but I could already tell it was going to be easy. I had made my connections through town, after all, even if those connections had no recollection of me. All I needed to do was ask the right ponies the right kinds of questions and I would finally have Pinkie Pie all figured out.
And then, just perhaps, I could help her figure herself out...
Almost a month later, in front of Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie Pie was raising Scootaloo's front hooves victoriously in hers. She did a little dance and smiled wide.
"Woohoo! Look who's all better!" She winked at the little filly. "It takes more than a crazy long-range magical pegasus-launcher to drain the spirit from you, eh, Scootszilla?"
Scootaloo blushed. She stepped back from Pinkie Pie and dug a bashful hoof into the ground. "Seriously, Pinkie, I'm fine. And I'm sick to death of everypony constantly celebrating and patting me on the back like I'm some sort of national hero. So I crossed the wrong paths with Dr Whooves' thingamajig. Big deal. That's something I won't be doing again anytime soon. Milky White will certainly see to that."
"Milky White sounds like she could use a tall, cold bottle of sarsparilla down her gullet!"
"She could use something inside her, alright."
"Huh?"
"Oh. Uhm... You hear that?" Scootaloo gestured a hoof beside her ear. "Sounds like Sweetie Belle's singing. I should go and do stuff. Crusader stuff. Over there. Not right here with you."
"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie Pie innocently waved the galloping filly onwards. "Go forth and smite talents in cutie marks' holy name!" She turned and looked at me with a smile. "This one time, I talked about the 'Cutie Mark Crusaders' in front of a bunch of zebras on a pilgrimage to the east? Baaaaad idea." She began giggling--then stopped to blink fixedly at me. "Oh. Uhm. Hi there! I'm Pinkie Pie! Who are you, and why do I feel like I should suddenly avoid the topic of cheese?"
"Well, I guess there's hope yet," I said with a smile.
"Huh?"
"Pinkie Pie..." I strummed my lyre from where I stood against a tree a few feet away. Several close conversations with her close friends had prepared me for this, as well as many nights spent poetically combining heartfelt words with the knowledge that I had accumulated about her family and place of foaling. "Have you ever had a beautiful melody stuck in your head, but you don't know where it came from or what it's supposed to mean, only that you have the natural urge to hum it, regardless?"
"Ew. That's the worst tag line I've ever heard."
"Uhhhhhh huh..." Undaunted, I tongued the corner of my mouth as I thought hard for a way to start over. "Ahem. Here goes." I looked at her with yet another grin. "What makes a pony? Is it her dreams? Her thoughts and her ambitions--?"
"Pssst!" Pinkie Pie leaned over and gazed every which way with a goofy grin. "Am I on Canter Camera? Is that what this is?"
I sighed long and hard. I strummed my lyre with greater volume and spoke with a slightly edgier voice. "What does it mean to be alone? I mean truly alone? Have we come to a point of understanding the feeling?"
"Oooh! I love this game! 'Guess the song,' right? Lemme see what comes next." Pinkie Pie inhaled dramatically to the point of her eyes bursting. When she was finished, she loudly screeched forth, "You've lost that loving feeeeeeeling! Oooooh thaaaaaaaaat loving feeling!"
I made a face. It had been nearly a year since I last attempted a solid conversation with this bright soul. Now I was remembering why. I glanced around to see several ponies glancing curiously our way for the source of the caterwauling. I spotted the mayor clamping her hooves over her ears while Berry Punch was shoving her head deep into a thick shrubbery in order to drown out the noise.
"--feeling! Now it's gone! Gone! Gone! And I can't go on! No-Ohhh-Whoahhh--Da doo! Da doo! Da doo--"
I ran a hoof over my head. "Okay... Let's try taking this elsewhere..."
Many, many hours had passed. Under the glow of a park lamp buzzing with moths, I tiredly clutched my lyre and strummed a few ugly chords into the night. It took all of my leftover energy to mutter, "What does it truly mean to be cursed?" I spat out in bitter monotone, my eyes dull and bloodshot. "Does it mean that we've been robbed?"
"Oooh! Oooh! I know this one!" Pinkie Pie bounced in front of me, grinning wide. "You ever bought tickets to a Stevie Neigh concert? Highway robbery! I'm telling you, she should have stuck with Fillywood Mac!"
"No! I didn't mean--" I seethed, calmed myself, strummed my lyre, and uttered, "Do heroes exist only because history chooses to write about them? Are the greatest ponies who ever lived so legendary because they earned that status, or on account of their--"
"Oooh! Brony Stark!" Pinkie Pie bounced yet again. "Brony Stark is my hero!"
"Dang it, this isn't about... nnnkkt--Whoever Stark!" I barked.
"Ooooooooh..." Pinkie Pie grinned mischievously. "Somepony's angry that Marevel got bought out!"
"Will you let me finish!"
"Finish what?"
"My introduction!"
Pinkie Pie blinked, glanced around at the starry sky, then squinted at me. "This was all an introduction?"
"There was something very special I wanted to tell you and I wanted to do it eloquently--"
"We could have done that with a hoof-shake, girl!" She extended her limb. "The name's Pinkie! 'Pie' if you're nasty," she added with a wink. "'Diane' if you're... if you're... well, if you're really bored, I guess."
"Alright. That's it." I stood up from the bench and lifted my instrument telekinetically. "Lyre time."
"What time?"
"Just listen." I growled briefly before absorbing the air around us with a tranquil little melody. There was something hypnotic about the tune that I produced. Even the crickets were drowned out as the sweet lullaby occupied all currents of the late night breeze. Soon, Pinkie Pie stopped stirring altogether. She gazed at me, her blue eyes locked on my lyre, as I played each gentle chord one by one. With each progressive bar, the earth pony's jaw dropped more and more, so that her teeth shone with as much brilliance as the moon overhead.
Finally, I finished, and I stared at her quietly--patiently--in the ensuing silence.
"That..." She murmured in an unearthly breath. "That..."
"It's a simple folk's song," I said in a calm voice. "It's customarily sung to children before bed. Not many foals in Ponyville have heard it, though. That's because it's not a song that hails from these parts of Equestria. You see, I've done my research. Apparently it's a song that originates from a region to the northeast of here, where many colonies have formed around quarries and rock farms. You wouldn't happen to know of any ponies who are familiar with the tune, would you?"
"It..." Pinkie's voice wavered. Her eyes were locked on the dirt path below us as she gulped and stammered, "My mother. She... she used to sing it to me." She ran a shaking hoof through her fluffy mane. "She used to sing a lot of things to me."
"But she stopped, didn't she?" I gazed at her cautiously as I stepped closer. "Was it because you grew up, Miss Pie?"
Slowly, sadly, Pinkie shook her head.
I squatted down beside her. "Was it..." I gazed gently into her face. "Was it because you decided to leave your family, to move onto better things?"
She bit her lip pensively. Again, her head shook.
"Pinkie..." I placed a hoof on her shoulder. "Did you have a choice, when you moved to Ponyville?"
"I... I..."
"Shhh..." I smiled comfortingly at her. "It's okay. You don't have to hide behind endless smiles any longer."
"I'm not hiding!" she briefly hissed. "I--"
"Pinkie Pie, there's a time and a place for everything. Don't let anypony make you think that smiling is the only way to feel... to release..." I kept my eyes level with hers, absorbing her attention, reaching out to her soul with ever fiber of my being. "Listen. You're a marvelous pony. A beautiful pony. You have so much talent to do so many things. Need they be stifled by a life that is spent entirely on the whimsical mediocrity of the moment? You have the strength and charisma to move mountains, Miss Pie. Where you're pleasantly blowing up balloons and tossing streamers around, you could instead be building a house for yourself and moving out on your own. You don't have to hole yourself up in the Cake family's attic. Don't you think you deserve to start... to start living for yourself and not for other ponies?"
"But... But other ponies need me..."
"What about your needs, Miss Pie?" I asked. "What about what makes you whole, what guarantees you a future?" I chuckled. "You may even find that very special somepony if you just tried."
"I...I wouldn't want..." She seemed to grimace, as if on the edge of something so painful that her face couldn't register an expression to sum it up. "I wouldn't want to repeat..."
"Repeat what? What your family did to you?" I gently stroked her cheek as I saw her eyes turning wet and glossy. "Pinkie. Listen to me. It's not your fault."
She gritted her teeth. She started to sniffle.
"It's not your fault, Pinkie. What they did to you... to kick you out..." I shook my head with an angelic smile. "What they did was wrong. But you have it within you to grow up where they couldn't help out. You can start a family of your own, a family to be proud of, for your friends to be proud of. Tell me... What is it that you truly want in life?"
"I..." She gasped, her lungs heaving. Moisture doubled and tripled along her eyes. "I... I..."
I leaned forward. "Yes?"
"Wachoo!" She sneezed into my face.
"Gaaah!" I fell back on my flank. "Sweet Luna on a bicycle!"
"Whew!" She rubbed her nose and smiled plain as day. "I want hay fever to end! What about you!"
"Unngh! Bleachk! Ptooie!" I wiped my face clean and squinted up at her. "Hay... fever...?"
"Annoying as all get out, isn't it? Heeheehee! Oh! And about my family and stuff." She bounced around me. "They kicked me out because Gummy made a mess on the carpet for the tenth time in a row!"
"... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Gummy."
"Wow, if I knew any better, I'd imagine you could fill that last breath of yours with a lot of ellipses."
"Your family kicked you out because of a baby alligator defecating on your rug?"
"At least I think that's what they're called. The last time Twilight tried giving me a lesson in grammar, her thesaurus caught on fire. I'm still not sure how that happened. I think Spike saw Rarity passing by the window and--well--at least my math is good. Heeheehee."
"You mean that all of this--all your being here--all of... of..." I gnashed my teeth and jumped up. "No! That doesn't explain anything!"
"It doesn't?" She blinked awkwardly.
"No! It does not!" I snarled in her face. "It doesn't explain why you're always, always happy! It doesn't explain why you never think about the past or the future! It doesn't explain why you're perfectly okay with forgetting who I am and still treating me as if I'm not cursed! It doesn't explain--"
"Whoah there!" Pinkie Pie frowned and waved two of her forelimbs strongly. "Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah! Hold onto your horses!"
I stared at her, shivering in anger.
She looked back at me, glanced through the corner of her eyes, and smiled sweatily. "What were we talking about again?"
"Grrrrr..."
"Cuz could we talk about chocolate fudge instead? I've always wanted to talk about chocolate fudge in the middle of the night under a lone streetlamp. There always seemed something deliciously naughty about it--Hey! Where are you going?"
"Home! 'Cuz at least I had the decency to build one!" I snarled over my shoulder as I stumbled away. "Some ponies like to rise above themselves, y'know!"
"Come onnnn! We can still have a pleasant introduction!" She said in a sing-songy voice. "It's not like you're a perfect stranger trying to motivate me into taking a huge step into a philosophical change of character by simply sharing a single melody! Come backkkk!" She plopped down on her haunches. "Hmmph. Someponies. Can't live with them. Can't live without--Oooh! Lookie! Moths!"
"All aboard! Last call for Fillydelphia! Train to Fillydelphia! Last call!"
I took a deep, shuddering breath. Weeks later, I leaned against the bench of Ponyville's train depot as I watched the dismal sight of a train chugging away towards the horizon. The soreness in the back of my throat was excruciating. Every thought was committed towards treasuring the last few words Moondancer had to say to me. Even still, every part of me ached as I hardened those memories, for I soon realized that the memories were all that I would ever have to cherish her with.
I clenched my eyes shut and ran two hooves over my face. I could still see her expression, her violet eyes, her devil-may-care grin. My ears twitched, for I could still hear her voice... only it wasn't hers. It was...
"Whew! Why do trains have to be such steampunks?"
I winced. Gulping, I opened my misty eyes and looked to my side. "Huh...?"
"Get it?" Pinkie Pie smiled at me. She had an empty tray balanced on her back. "Cuz they're big, meanie punks with all the steam they blow out of their stacks." She snorted back a giggle and pointed towards the horizon. "Train humor. I guess only the locals get it."
I don't know why, but I laughed. It was both painful and pleasant all at once. I needed a reason to exhale other than a sob. "It's okay. I get it. At least I think I get it." With another shuddering breath, I glanced lonesomely towards the horizon.
I heard a shuffling of hooves. Pinkie Pie had not left my presence. Apparently my previous, cracked facsimile of a smile wasn't convincing enough. "I just came all the way back from delivering the depot master a mountain of Mr. Cake's best cinnamon danishes, and boy are my wings tired!"
"But..." I gulped and murmured her way. "But you don't have any wings, Pinkie Pie."
"I know! They took off and checked themselves in at the Honeypot Inn! It was the only hotel in town that didn't have feather in their pillows! Hehehe! Get it?"
I got it. It was a horrible joke, but I got it. My eyes began to well up with tears as I smiled for smiling's sake. I had just witnessed my past dissolve and Twilight Sparkle's future crumble, and suddenly all that mattered was the pitifully happy now. I felt silly. I felt weak. I even felt stupid. But somehow, I felt right.
"You're something else, Pinkie." I heard my voice whimper as I gazed towards the horizon one last time. I could no longer see Moondancer's train, and that was what hurt the most. A sharp gasp escaped my body as I hugged my shivering self. I knew I was ready to collapse. If I moved a single muscle, every part of me would shatter. I didn't want anypony to see, and yet I didn't know what else to do.
Thankfully, Pinkie was doing the thinking for both of us... or perhaps not the thinking, but the feeling. I heard the clatter of the tray being put down as she squatted on the bench behind me.
"If I didn't know better..." She said in a very calm voice. "I'd say somepony could use some company."
"Mmmm..." I gulped hard as a tear ran down my face. I smiled halfway towards her, my voice squeaking in gratitude. "Y-Yes, Pinkie. I-I think she could..." I sniffled again, but Pinkie paid no mind to it.
She was too busy chattering forth, "Did you ever hear the one about the horse who walked into a bar?"
"No." I sniffed and ran a hoof through my mane. "What about him?"
"He said 'ouch!'"
"Snkkkt--Heeheehee!" I managed, my breath coming out in sharp palpitations, fixed through a painful but very warm smile. "Well, that was dumb of him."
"Uh huh. You hear about the philosopher who tried to cross the road?"
"Uhm, no. Why did she try to cross the road?"
"To figure out why she tried to cross the road!"
"Heeheehee... That's awful."
"Isn't it, though?"
"Mmmhmmm..." I leaned back, delighted by her warmth and presence. "G-got anymore?"
"Sure! What goes up white but comes down yellow and white?"
"I give. What?"
"Beats me, but you stink at juggling!"
"Heeheehee!"
"Heh heh heh. I got a million of them. Oooh! I know! Here's a doozie. Okay, so this one time at rock camp..."
"And that's when I got Octavia and the rest of the musicians to help me with a song and dance number!" Pinkie Pie proudly exclaimed. Another month, another afternoon, and another giggling breath had brought here there to the center of Ponyville. "I'm telling you, I mopped up the floor of that Gala with all of my dance moves! Ungh! Ungh! Yeah! Heehee! Too bad Fluttershy had to herd the stampede of garden animals into the ballroom and turn the party on its head. Say, that reminds me, does a rabies shot hurt? Twilight's been lecturing me about it ever since we came back a few weeks ago..."
"Perhaps it would be in your best interest, friend Pinkie..." Zecora winced and side-stepped away from her. "To bring this issue to Nurse Redheart immediately."
"Why? Does she need a shot too? I should tell her about Berry Punch, 'cuz that mare is always talking about taking shots. Say, that reminds me, Zecora! If zebras come from a desert land, why are they always talking in rhyme? Wouldn't they get extra thirsty?"
I tapped her pink shoulder.
Pinkie blinked. "My shoulder is talking to me." She spun around and looked at me with wide eyes. "Oh! Uhm, hi!" Her face scrunched up adorably in thought. "Uhmm... 'Something something something cheese is bad,' right?"
"You're just the mare I'm looking for," I said with a smile.
She raised an eyebrow. "I am?"
"She is?" Zecora remarked. Upon the receiving end of my prolonged stare, the shaman fidgeted before nervously blurting, "Show biz!" With a wave of her hoof, she made a swift exit.
"Ahem." I turned back to Pinkie Pie. "I desperately need you for a very important mission, a mission fraught with much uncertainty and cake frosting."
"Oh! Well... uhm..." Pinkie made a confused face, realizing that she wasn't used to making confused faces. "I can definitely do one of those things!"
"I'm willing to bet you could do both." I tugged her along as I marched the two of us towards Sugarcube Corner. "Let's make haste!"
"Okay--Ack! But but but but..." She hobbled awkwardly after me. "What's the occasion? What are we doing? Who are you?"
"Happy to see you! Isn't that enough?"
"Uhhh... Okie dokie lokie!" She put on her best smile and stumbled to keep up with my skipping hooves. "Hey! Wait for me!"
"There's something about the smell, texture, and taste of marble cake frosting that brings out the little singing bird caged inside of me. What about you?"
"Uhhh... Heh, sure! Though... Uhm..." Pinkie Pie fumbled to juggle the many ingredients I was tossing across the kitchen towards her. "Whoah! But... But..."
"What, you've never read Marea Angelou?"
"Oh! Her! Pfft! Like, who hasn't--" She paused in a precarious lean, squinting. "Wait. Did you just make that name up?"
"If I did, would you pat me on the back?"
"I'm afraid my hooves are too full of batter and flour bags to do that."
"Well, so be it!" I slapped a large pan down onto the counter. "Cuz it's time for us to bake the ever living snot out of some cake!" I grinned psychotically at her. The world was alive and I was the center of the spinning bicycle wheel. "What say you? Enough pretense! Let it all hang out like your brother-in-law on Hearth's Warming Eve! Let's kick sprinkles and chew gumdrops and not plan the funeral until the whole sad world has somehow forgotten to enjoy the taste of both of them!"
"Well, hey, that sounds like fun! Uhm... I think."
"Don't think. Just bake. Whew! Celestia! It's good to be alive, don't you think?"
"But I thought I wasn't supposed to think!" She gazed up at me, panting from the weight of all the ingredients she was balancing. "We're just baking, remember?"
"Miss Pie, to bake is to live is to weep is to laugh is to dance is to bake. I dare you somewhere in that abomination of a sentence to find an infinitive worth splitting."
"Oh. Really! I wouldn't dare!"
"That's the spirit! Now hoof me the damnable baking soda already!"
"Sure thing! But... if I may ask..." She squinted at me sideways. "Why are you in such a good mood?"
"Hah!" I cackled as I began the infernal process of making the greatest cake in the history of Equestria. "You of all fillies would ask me that!" I winked sideways at her. "Ebb and flow, Miss Pie. Ebb and flow."
"I'm a little rusty when it comes to my rivers."
"Not all of us can afford to be cheerful all of the time," I explained. "For some of us, it comes in little bursts, because of specific occasions. Only then do we understand what it means to be the embodiment of a spirit, or the skeletal structure of a felicitous dream. All this time, I've tried to understand you. I realize that I can never pretend to be you. I can only be myself--as happy as I'll ever be--because that's what's worth being when the chance presents itself. And it is definitely presenting itself today. Tell me, Miss Pie. Have you ever heard of a Mister Alabaster Comethoof?"
"Who?"
"I rest my case." I slapped a white container down. "And the flour therein! Heeheehee. Ahem. I'm so happy today, Miss Pie, because I've recently did a lot of reading, and in so doing I learned something."
"Oh yeah? Like...?"
"I learned that there are only ten."
"Ten what?"
"Ten elegies," I said in a warm breath as I rummaged through the baking tools she was setting down. "It may seem like nothing... but it's a road home, and a beautiful road at that."
"I don't get it. If all you need is a road to get home, why not just dig your way?"
"Some things are only possible when they're graceful." I glanced aside at her with a teeth-glinting grin. "Care to dance with me?"
"Whoah! Whoah! Yeesh... Watch it!" Pinkie Pie winced and squeaked, dancing left and right of me as I levitated a huge, wobbling cake down the center of Ponyville. "Careful! Oh jeez! Oh jeez, I just know you're gonna drop it!"
"After the four solid hours we spent hammering this masterpiece of vanilla and mint into the world of the living...?" I grinned back at her in mid trot. The glowing, floating cake teetered in midair between us. "Miss Pie, I'm surprised that you've remembered me this long!"
"I'll remember you forever if you let this go to waste!" She whimpered as she tilted herself from side to side, eager to catch the thing at a moment's sneeze. "It cost you thirty bits for Mr. and Mrs. Cake to let us bake this thing! I don't wanna ruin it!"
"Ruin what? We're having fun, aren't we?" I gestured towards the horizon. "Go long!"
"Aaackies!" She dove dramatically forward, only to have to catch nothing.
"Heeheehee!" I was still levitating the cake with me. "You scare too easily."
"That's cuz you get freaky too easily!" Pinkie Pie briefly frowned. "What's your deal?! Cake is serious business! You think I'm lying?"
"Not at all. But the game mustn't go on for long. After all, we reached our destination!"
"Huh?" Pinkie Pie glanced at the door to the apartment we had just stumbled upon. "We're delivering the cake here?"
"Yeah. That a problem?"
"Well, no. I just think this pony has enough sweets as it is. Truth be told, Sugarcube Corner's always kind of had a teeeeeny-tiny friendly rivalry going on with her..."
"Well, consider this a step forward in diplomacy. Here." I set the huge weight of the cake on her backside.
"Ooof!" Her legs wobbled as she struggled to balance the thing. She cast me an incredulous look. "Me? You want me to give it to her?"
"Absolutely!" I said with a pleasant smile. "The thing about this gift, is that it only stays a gift if I remain anonymous."
"Anonymous?" Pinkie Pie sweated and strained. "You mean like what they say about William Flankspeare?"
"Heheheh... Not exactly Pinkie. Lemme just ring the doorbell." After I did so, I gasped. "Oh! Shoot! I almost forgot!"
"What? What?" she panicked, shuddering beneath the cake's enormous girth.
I pulled a tiny velvet bag out from my hoodie's pouch and hung it by a golden string to the edge of the cake pan. "That makes it all complete."
"I knew there had to be a cherry on top."
"Oh hush." I said. There was a shadow at the door, and I gasped. "Oooh! Here she comes! Try to look happy and cute!"
"Hey! Those--nngh--I can do!"
"Indubitably." I darted off to hide behind a thick row of bushes. I gazed through the afternoon sunlight, watching as the door opened up and a cream-colored earth pony marched out.
"Pinkie Pie?"
"Oh... Hi there, Bon Bon!" Pinkie wheezed. "I'd sing a happy-surprise-afternoon-fun-cake song, but... nnngh... well..."
"Oh you poor thing!" Bon Bon leaned over and used her shoulder to bear part of the weight. "Here, let's put that down so you can speak!"
"Inside..."
"Huh?"
"Inside your apartment."
"You... You mean this enormous thing is for me?" Bon Bon giggled confusedly. "Why... I'll have to put it on the far side of the house to keep from melting on account of my ovens!"
"Don't thank me! I'm not the pony of the hour!"
"Oh? Who's responsible for this... treat?"
"Uhm..." Pinkie helped place the cake down inside the atrium of her house. "Whew. Anonymous."
Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. "'Anonymous?'"
"Yeah. Creepy, huh? Sounds like a bunch of lurkers to me."
"Did this... anonymous pony give a reason for why I'm bestowed with such a baked delight?"
"I dunno. But he or she did leave a pouch."
"A pouch?" Bon Bon turned and glanced down at the pan of the dessert item. "Oh! My oh my... isn't this interesting!"
"Is that a bag you recognize?"
"I should say so. It's Stalliongrad tradition. Most ponies where I hail from give each other gifts in little velvet pouches like this."
"Wow, Bon Bon. I had no idea you were from Stalliongrad."
"Well, I would think as much," she murmured as she lifted the tiny velvet purse in her hooves and pulled loose the gold string. "It's not something I tell many ponies. As a matter of fact, it's taken several years for me to adopt a new accent since moving... to Ponyville..." Her voice trailed off as her breath left her.
Pinkie Pie squinted. "I don't get it. Is something wrong?"
"No. Hardly. These..." She covered her mouth with a hoof, then reached into the bag to grasp a cluster of shiny, glittering spheres. "These are street marbles. Every filly where I was foaled plays with these at a young age. They're... They're fashioned out of the same rock that forms the walls of our city. And... and..." Her nostrils flared and a squeaking cry left her throat. "Dear Celestia! It even smells like it..."
"Like what?"
Bon Bon's face tightened into a bittersweet sob. "Like h-home." She sniffled and bit her lip as a fragile smile graced her features. "Oh Pinkie Pie... How long it's been since I've heard the sweet anthems of that majestic city, since I've listened to my family singing along."
"Jee. I always heard bad stories about Stalliongrad and thought it wasn't exactly a happy place."
"That's the thing about happiness..." Bon Bon shuddered as a tear rolled down her cheek. "It springs from nothingness. It squeezes out of the barren, most unlikely of places. And there's so much warmth to be had. Even at my age... after all the years that have gone by..." She escaped a sob only by chuckling. Looking up at Pinkie Pie, she smiled with glittering, moist eyes. "Please. I must know who this pony is... who could have pierced so many walls to have blessed me so..."
"Uhhh..." Pinkie Pie squirmed where she stood. "I wish I could. But--"
"No. It's okay." Bon Bon choked and smiled once more. "I understand. And it is a sweet gift. Such a sweet gift. It's like they knew. Somehow, they knew exactly what I needed..." She shuddered long and hard, then all but tackled Pinkie Pie with a warm embrace. "But I still gotta hug somepony!"
"Eeek!" Pinkie Pie gasped upon the receiving end of the hug. She ultimately giggled and hugged her back. "Heehee! Well, I'm happy that you're so happy because somepony was happy to make you happy and not unhappy!"
"We are precious things in a precious world, Pinkie," Bon Bon said in a wavering voice. Her tongue twisted slightly, so that her words came out with momentarily foreign inflections. She covered it up with a clearing of her throat and a gentle smile as she leaned back from her fluffy-maned friend. "I hope you never forget that, because I know I won't." She giggled and wiped her cheek dry. "And I know I'll absolutely be loving this cake. So don't think that you didn't have a hoof in all of this. I thank you, Pinkie. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
"Hey... Uhm..." Pinkie Pie waved back as she trotted out of the house. "No problem! Good luck... uhm... playing candies and baking marbles--er, I mean..."
"Heehee... I know what you mean, Pinkie." Bon Bon smiled. She nuzzled the velvet pouch and trotted into her house with a lasting grin. "More often than you think, ponies understand you, and are grateful for you."
The door shut quietly, and Pinkie Pie was left standing in her yard with a blank expression. "Huh..." She turned around and slowly trotted out onto the sidewalk. "Now if only I could understand me as well."
"The question of the century, no doubt."
She heard a few strumming notes from my lyre and looked over. "Oh, you're still here?"
"Is that half as surprising as the fact that you still remember me?" I replied with a wink.
"I don't get it!" She marched over to me and pointed in the direction of Bon Bon's apartment. "Why did that have to be so animaniacs?"
"Anonymous."
"Gesundheit. Seriously, though?"
"You, Pinkie? Serious?"
"Hey! Believe it or not, I'm smart enough to know when I'm being made fun of!"
"Heheheh..." I strummed a few more chords and smiled pleasantly at her. "Don't sell yourself short, Pinkie. You have the mind of a scholar, the voice of a philosopher, and the heart of an angel."
"I'd give it all just for you to have the voice of a bullhorn."
"Very well." I paused in my instrumentation to point at the apartment. "There you have a pony who, from the utter kindness of her heart, once did something very special for a stranger, when there was no promise for a reward in return. Little did she know that what she did was exactly what that stranger needed at that one moment in time. I found it amazing that a mare like her could have been so capable of doing something so kind for a soul she didn't even know. But then, it dawned upon me, that she was hardly the first example."
"Oh?"
"Tell me. What pony in Ponyville is the utter example of kindness? A shining beacon of joy and generosity? And an infectious spirit of levity all at once, without needing an explanation for all of those marvelous traits?"
"Uhm..." Pinkie Pie stirred where she stood before bestowing me a sheepish smile. "Can I take the physical challenge?"
"Heheheh. It's you, Pinkie Pie," I said. "You are the living embodiment of happiness. You exist just so that felicity itself may exist. If it was possible for a spirit of rapture to have a soul, you would be the vessel, with all of your bounciness, your delicious absurdities, your attention and lack of attention to detail all at once--heeheehee--your utter you-ness that makes up... well... you."
"Ohhhh... Um. You are complimenting me, right?"
"I would hope so."
"Oh! Cool. Uhm... Can I blush now?"
I winked. "Be my guest."
She turned a brighter shade of pink as she gazed towards the sky with an adorable snicker. "Heeheehee--Ahem. Really, though. I just like it when other ponies smile, like Bon Bon there. You think what just happened made her day? Heck, it just made my week! I only wished I could be better at it."
"You don't realize how happy it makes me to hear that."
"To hear what?"
"That you know that you stand to improve yourself," I said. "That you're aware of your gifts, and that you plan to make them even greater. Because that's what makes you and I alike. We're trying to become better ponies, even if one of us appears to have everything together so perfectly. And I must admit, Pinkie, you've had my envy for a long time."
"I have?"
I slowly nodded. I strummed on the lyre gently as I dripped forth, "The way you could live in the moment without seeming to care about the ills or dangers of the world. The way you could be smiling and gleeful when others around you wanted to do nothing but sob. The way you could be annoying, and not know it, so that when other ponies look back on the moment that they met you... they can only do what you've always wanted them to do from the beginning. They can only smile. Because that's what you've become, Pinkie Pie. You're a smile that keeps on going. That's something that's more than a passing expression. That's something immortal, something that isn't bound by either the past or the present, something that I would greatly like to master... for someday I may too end up nothing more than an idea, and if I must find a way to deal with that, I wish to do so happily, with a smile and not with a sob."
Pinkie Pie gazed at me long and hard. Her lips curved ever so slightly. "I look at you, and I don't think I quite understand everything that's coming out of your mouth. Still, all I wanna do is grin. Does that help things any?"
I slowly nodded. "It does. And after fifteen long months of trying to figure out one of life's biggest mysteries, I think a huge chunk of my mind--and my heart--can finally relax and laugh."
"Heeheehee. Musicians like you always know how to knock it out of the park, huh?" She bounced past me, gleefully uttering, "Keep on with your lyrical musings, madame mint. One day, they'll throw you flowers."
I smiled after her as she bounded towards the center of town like a bright pink ball. I let loose the longest, most succulent breath of my life.
"I don't get it."
"Nnnngh!"
"Hnnngh!"
"Hckkk--Hah!" Applejack yanked her forelimb across a tree stump.
"Waaah!" Rainbow Dash was flung onto a patch of grass in Ponyville Park. Her legs curled up like a blue cockroach's as she groaned into the crisp afternoon air. "Dang it! Not again!"
"Reckon we can take a break from hoof-wrestlin' now, sugarcube?" Applejack leaned back with a sigh. "My elbow's startin' to itch just a tad."
"Nuh uh!" Rainbow Dash kipped up and glared across the stump from Applejack. "I'm not quitting that easily!"
"Please, RD!" Applejack groaned. "The dag-blame'd Gala is over and done with! There ain't no more tickets to fight over! Can we move on from this here dark chapter of our lives?!"
"Bite your tongue! We're doing this to the end!" Rainbow slapped her forelimb once more atop the stump while smirking. "Best out of one thousand three hundred and thirty-seven!"
"Ungh..." Applejack gripped her limb with hers. "Fine."
Before the two could start again, Pinkie Pie suddenly bounced up. "Hey! Whatcha guys doing? Spelling it out?"
Rainbow Dash growled. "I was about to wipe this farm filly's smug face full of freckles all across the--"
"Nothin' much." Applejack smiled up at Pinkie. "What's on yer mind, sugarcube?"
"I was wondering, AJ. I just mapped out this nifty plot of land south of the Carousel Boutique. You think you could teach me how to build myself a house?"
"Well that's nice, Pinkie. But right now I'm in the middle of teaching RD a lesson she won't--" Applejack's green eyes bulged. She adjusted the brim of her hat and squinted up at Pinkie Pie. "Mind repeatin' yerself?"
"You wanna build a house?" Rainbow Dash asked with no less a bizarre expression.
"Yupperooni!"
"What for, darlin'?"
"Well..." Pinkie Pie took a deep, deep breath. Her following speech came out like a gatling gun. "It suddenly occurred to me in the middle of giving Gummy a sponge bath that the only reason I'm in Ponyville is because my parents kicked me out of the farmhouse back home in a fit of anger and ever since then I've been gleefully eking the fruits of my existence by making everypony around me smile and if I don't suck it up and act like an adult real soon I'll discover too late what it means to be a sad-sack of a lonely background pony with nothing better to do than to just sit around and philosophize!"
A bent haystalk fell out of Applejack's gaping mouth. Rainbow Dash was also brandishing a blank expression. It wasn't until a light breeze kicked at their manes that all three ponies realized something wasn't right.
"Huh... What...?" Applejack tilted her head around.
"I think the music just stopped," Rainbow Dash said.
The three mares looked in my direction.
I fumbled to pick my lyre back up from where I had dropped it beside the tree. "Ahem. Uhm... My bad. Eheheh... Please, carry on." I resumed my role as a random minstrel, filling the air once again with gentle strings.
Applejack shrugged, her hoof still entangled with Rainbow Dash's. "Well, uhh..." She smiled nervously up at Pinkie Pie. "I reckon that's a mighty big step yer takin' there, Pinkie. I can't pretend to judge you on the decision-makin', but I'd be more than happy to assist you in buildin' a log cabin. Assumin' that's what you really want."
"Actually, what I really want is some pistachios mixed with blueberry," Pinkie Pie said, gazing off towards the sunrise as she licked her lips. "Hmmmm." After a pause, she blinked and cleared her throat. "And a log cabin. That too. I think it's about time I lived on my own."
"Well, shucks! When did you wanna start plannin'?"
"Anytime you were willing to lend a hoof, AJ!"
"Fine by me! Just one second!" Applejack's face tensed as she slapped her hoof across the tree stump.
"Waaah!" Rainbow Dash was flung once more onto the grass.
"Now I'm ready!" Applejack stood up with a grunt. "Yeeha! Time to fetch us some cuttin' tools!"
"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie Pie gladly led the way with a girlish bounce while a smiling Applejack trotted along.
"Hey! No fair!" Rainbow Dash grunted and scampered after them. "You're not getting away that easy, AJ! Best out of one thousand three hundred and thirty-nine!"
"Awww why dun ya just stuff it?!"
"Stuff you! We're ending this once and for all!"
I gazed after them, playing a few prolonged notes on my lyre. My eyes fell on Pinkie Pie's bouncing form, and I shook my head in amusement.
"So typical, she's atypical." I took a deep breath. Placing down my lyre, I reached into my saddlebag and produced an ancient brown tome. I squirmed comfortably against the tree trunk as I opened the book, its magical glowing letters shining bright and blue in the delicious shade. "So, Mr. Comethoof. Let's see if you have anything less absurd to teach me..."
Come to think of it, pistachios and blueberries would be nice right about now.
Allergies be damned.
Background Pony
X - "Green Is the New Pink"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: RazgrizS57, Warden, Props, theBrianJ, and L Ron Hubbard
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XI - Unsung | April the Fifth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
They call this the Age of Shadow, a time of great darkness and foreboding. Sarosians, night guards, and all other ponies of nocturnal blood: they look upon the great white bowers of Luna's home and mourn her divine absence. They wait for her to come out of hiding and reveal to the ponies of the night exactly what it is that she has been meditating on over the past decade. My brothers and sisters know what it means to be pious, and yet--I fear--they forget what it means to be joyous.
The wind in the air is chilling these nights. While many in my family are apt to call it melancholic, I can only find the entire sensation exciting. Perhaps it is due to my mixed blood, but I am overwhelmed by great anticipation. I feel as though we are on the crest of great discovery and enlightenment. I can feel it in my bones; I can feel it in my horn. This world has been nothing but science and mundanity since the end of the Discordant Era. Even Starswirl the Bearded's accomplishments, for all of their practical merits, have only filled Equestrian life with simplicity instead of enchantment.
We deserve more in this life. There is more to existence than dirt and air and blood. There is a truth beyond the base elements of our superficial existence. There is something that can't simply be exposed by Celestia's brilliance, something that must instead be dredged from the shadowed alcoves of Creation I suspect that our royal Majesty Luna, the ever vigilant Goddess of Shadows, is on the verge of such an endeavor.
Why else would she have summoned me, Whinniepeg University's leading scholar in ancient mysticism, to join her in an unprecedented meeting of secret importance? There is more to this invitation than a royal alicorn wishing to engage in one solitary function. After all, I have been asked to take residence within the Midnight District of Upper Canterlot. What could her Royal Highness desire of me? How could my intellectual gifts be of service to the Princess in her time of solitude and seclusion?
I can only guess the gravity of this situation. What has she discovered that would require my sudden and potentially long-term relocation? I am more than happy to oblige, of course, especially since I was allowed to move to Canterlot in loving company, instead of on my lonesome.
I can't shake the feeling that this world is about to change. Verily, I shall embrace this new chapter in my life as the dawn of a new awakening.
They call this the Age of Shadow, and if that is true then it is a glorious, soul-cleansing shadow. I cannot think of another era that a unicorn would be more blessed to witness. Now more than ever, I rejoice at being alive.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Seventh, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I do sincerely apologize for the poetic ambiguity of my first entry into this journal. I hold degrees in over five areas of magical study; I'm more than capable of succinctly chronicling my experiences. However, I've been summoned by Princess Luna herself. This is not something that happens to everypony, no matter how elite. I suppose that, even at my age, I can let myself get overwhelmed with excitement. To that extent, I believe some explanation is in order.
I was bequeathed this journal by my cousin Crescent Shine, and with it he gave me a message. When one is delivered a message directly by the Captain of the Royal Night Guard--blood relation or not--one pays close attention. As it turns out, Princess Luna has broken her silence for the first time in nearly ten years, and her first public act was to request my services as a scholar and a researcher.
To say the least, I was speechless. Crescent Shine merely mocked my numb reaction to his delivery. For as long as we've known each other, he's taken it upon himself to tease me good-naturedly for the intellectual path that I've taken in life. I know that deep down, he is as proud of me as I am of him, especially now that my time has come to serve the Goddess of the Night as he has so dutifully done all these years. I can only hope to live up to the legacy he has established with the Night Guard, so as to bring Luna the glory and respect that she deserves.
Crescent, it would appear, was the first non-alicorn to speak with Luna face to face in a decade. Naturally, I asked him if he could give me any details of the Moon Goddess' countenance. Was she as everypony suspected: a soul embittered by loneliness and melancholy? Was she full of vigor and excitement, enlivened by an epiphany befitting only an immortal equine? What could have possessed her to ask for the assistance of a unicorn scholar gifted in ancient mysticism and music theory?
Naturally, Crescent was reticent to give me any details. His loyalty to Luna is a holy thing. He keeps her feelings in silent confidence. He did, however, tell me that Luna had acquainted herself with many of the records that I had kept in the past when toiling on previous research projects. The fact that Her Majesty had actually read my humble works both shocked and excited me. Before I could process any of that, Crescent informed me that Her Majesty also wished me to keep record of my current experiences, now that I am about to enter a new field of study.
There was no way I could refuse such a request. To think that these words that I am writing right now could act as a direct commentary to the research Her Majesty and I are now committed to: I am beyond ecstatic. All my life, I have studied history; it never once occurred to me that I might become a part of it. It's one thing to be invited into the esteemed presence of the immortal Princess Luna. It's another thing altogether for her to give me a chance at literary immortality.
And so it is that I write about this new chapter in my life, and of the things I've yet to discover. It's safe to say that I've waited my entire existence to experience something as glorious as this, and I knew exactly what I would do when such a moment came.
I've written several records in the past, and all of them were meticulously dull. For once, I have a chance to write something with significance that will transcend the ages. I can't think of a better occasion to dedicate something to you, for your preciousness exceeds even this, the apex of my being.
Thus I, Alabaster Comethoof, write these records to you, Penumbra, the love of my life, my constant star, my evening breath. It is you who has made this possible, who has patiently stood by my side for years upon years, who has given this scholar a chance to feel when everything else in his life was mere pretense and study.
I write these records for you, dearest Penny, so that you--more than any other soul in Equestria--will know what has happened in this time, and what this age will mean for the legacy of our kingdom, and how it will pave for us a new and glorious age of enlightenment. I feel that this coming era will enrich us, but it will never redefine us, because the only thing more permanent than an immortal alicorn's will is the fabric of our love.
Read these words, Penny, and know that all of this is because of you, and for you. Let them be food for the mind, and lyrics for the soul.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Twentieth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It was a six hour ride by air coach from Whinniepeg to Canterlot. Ridden without you, Penumbra, it felt like an eternity.
I arrived at the outer walls of Canterlot three hours ago. I'm almost too exhausted to write this, but I am far too excited to sleep just yet. Canterlot deserves its standing as the capital city of Equestria. It is a magical buttress filled with the most brilliant and creative minds in all the land. Every street is full of music, art, poetry, and color. Torches burn even in the daylight. I know this, for I've seen them with my very own eyes.
Fear not, Penny. I garbed myself well, and the only thing I burned on the way to our new apartment was my bag of bits from asking for too many directions of the street-folk. Thankfully, before I could get entirely lost--or broke--Crescent Shine found me. I did not expect him to be flying around in the daytime. Apparently Canterlot business never sleeps, and the same can be said of the royal sarosian Guard. You yourself have always said that he looks majestic at night, flying about with his elite squadrons. When his shadow armor glints in the sunlight, Crescent is positively intimidating. Several ponies around us cowered at the sight of his glowing amber eyes peering out from under that onyx helmet of his. The two of us had a hearty chuckle, and after a swift embrace he led me to the Midnight District and hoofed me the schedule for my first meeting with Luna.
You will never believe how spacious our new home is, Penny. It positively dwarfs our flat in Whinniepeg. The windows have thick shutters that will keep me safe in the daytime, and yet will open freely for you when I am away. The kitchen possesses a royal girth, and I can already imagine the feasts that you and I can invite our new neighbors to. They are a very social lot, our next-door tenants, and most of them are also sarosian. I've always wanted a chance for you to commune with more of my kind. Believe it or not, a great many of them aren't nocturnal. I love to think that you and I can make many new friends here in Canterlot.
I would write more, if only I had something to write of. I've only barely glimpsed the splendidly decorated alleyways and winding streets of the Midnight District, but this trip has exhausted me greatly. I hope that you arrive here sooner, even if it means abandoning all of our things back at Whinniepeg, though we both know I could never ask you to do that. A week is a terribly long time to wait for my wife. I'm giving Luna's summons a final read. She wishes me to bring the records I wrote when I researched Proto-Equestrian symphonies of Dream Valley. What she desires to pull from that chapter of my scholastic career, I can't even pretend to know. She still hasn't even given me a clue as to what exactly we will be studying. For the time being, I don't have a title to give this tome I'm currently leaving notes in. I don't know whether to feel confused or excited. I think I shall just settle for "tired" and do something I haven't done in ages, and that's sleep while the sun is down.
I miss you dearly. There's no joy in standing on the crest of discovery when one is alone.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Twenty-Second, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It's official. Tomorrow, I shall finally go and meet with Her Majesty. I've been so preoccupied with waiting for you that I forgot I was also waiting for Princess Luna as well. Don't take it the wrong way, Penumbra. You are not a distraction to me, but rather a buffer. Just knowing that you will be here soon, joining me in my new home, is a blessing, and it animates my body and mind in such a way that I feel like I'm an alicorn myself, incapable of death or decay.
I've taken it upon myself to scour the Royal Archives in preparation for my studies with Princess Luna. What's more, I felt that I should visit the city library in the daytime. I don't tell you this to alarm you, Penny, but rather to let you know that I am more than capable of adjusting to the lifestyle of Canterlot. Though you and I may be living in the Midnight District, it is not my desire to force you into a nocturnal lifestyle any longer. After all, my love, you have labored all these years to live under the moon on my behalf, and now that we are entering a new chapter in our lives, I couldn't possibly wish more torment on you. I know you'll only say that I'm being unnecessarily humble and melodramatic, but I can't help it. The ponies of Canterlot--the majority of citizens who fill this town with so much life and energy--live by the daylight, as you do... as you were born to do. It is high time that I changed things so that our lives can be convenient for you from now on. You no longer need to make the sacrifice, my love, though I shall always cherish the lengths to which you have gone to help advance my career.
As it turns out, visiting the library in the daytime is not nearly as harrowing as it may sound. My moonsilk cloak is as useful here as it was in Whinniepeg. As a matter of fact, there are many places throughout the location of the Royal Archives that provide a great degree of shade. It would seem that Canterlot has long made its facilities and public places accessible to sarosians. Princess Luna, after all, has been living here along with her sister for the past four thousand years. In a lot of ways, it's like a piece of Whinniepeg has been seeded throughout the remote areas of Equestria's capital.
This doesn't, however, stop several citizens from glancing curiously my way. In every street and building I've visited, citizens have stopped to look at me, and a few to even talk to me. I hardly find it annoying. As a matter of fact, I'm greatly amused by their curiosity. I imagine it's not often they see a sarosian without wings. I don't show them the horn, of course, for fear of suffering burns. I've taken it upon myself to invent a fabrication once or twice about being in service of Crescent Shine's guard, only to have my leather wings chewed off by a manticore. Yes, darling, I know you will frown upon such childishness. I wish there was a better way to share with you just how happy I am to be in this city full of lively ponies, willing to learn and eager to socialize.
Once I got to the library, I spent several hours there. Despite the full knowledge that I would be in direct conversation with Princess Luna the following day, I managed to concentrate perfectly on my research. I'm in a special place, Penny, a state of extreme lucidity that I haven't had the grace to feel for years. My eyes and ears are wide open, ready to learn what I am here for and what it is that I can provide for her Majesty.
I wonder if this is what you felt like when you were attached to the botany research division at Whinniepeg University the first year that we met. Oh, and speaking of such, I have a surprise for you when you arrive in a few days. Even now, if I had a choice for what I desire to experience the most--hearing Princess Luna's divine voice or seeing your immaculate face--I think I would gladly choose the one I can cuddle up against at night. Do you suppose her Majesty's wings are sharp upon contact?
I joke, Penumbra. Forgive my jocularity, and believe in my sincerity as I long for your arrival, so that I may share with you the glories of tomorrow.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Twenty-Third, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Well, my darling Penumbra, it has happened. I have met with Princess Luna, and... I don't quite know what to write about.
The meeting was scheduled at night, of course. She had just raised the moon by the time Crescent Shine showed up at our new apartment's balcony along with two guard ponies. Together, they brought me to the threshold of Princess Luna's quarters, which came as a complete surprise. I imagined that I would be conversing with Luna in her throneroom. Apparently this was not the case, and nopony thought it right to warn me. This would be a good time to reemphasize the good humor with which I wrote one particular snide remark in the last entry.
I stood before the doors to Princess Luna's quarters, shaking in my horseshoes. I had imagined an entire night of study and research, and so I brought my moonsilk cloak in anticipation of the coming sunrise. Naturally, the cloak only added to my nervous perspiration.
Finally, the doors to her chamber opened. Without a word from her or any of the guards lining the hallway, I took the bold move of stepping inside. I found her sitting beside the windows, overlooking the starlit rooftops of Canterlot's moon district and beyond. The sight of her filled my soul with a numb sensation. I don't think there is an eloquent enough way to put it into words.
You yourself have met with Princess Celestia, Penumbra. I think I recall you describing it to me as "being born again." That's not quite what it felt like for me upon seeing Luna. Instead, it felt like a part of me was dying. I don't write that to sound grim or melodramatic. I only wish to convey that I felt extremely humble, insignificant, and yet special all at once. I was in the presence of an immortal, and a part of me felt drained from merely looking at her, so that I became aware of how small and precious I am in this world.
I said nothing. I expected her to speak. She did not. Silence filled the room. This awkward quiet occupied the space of several minutes, and then those minutes became an hour... two hours. I wondered if I was doing something wrong, if I was the reason for such terrible silence. Still, I couldn't summon the courage to say something, for fear that the quiet was something sacred for a reason, even if I didn't know that reason.
My legs were starting to go numb I didn't know how long I could politely stand in her presence, all the while she merely sat there, staring out into the night sky as if she were a part of the cosmos itself. For fear of fainting, I took a brave seat on the far side of the room. Still, she said nothing. With polite silence, I rummaged through my things and refreshed my memories with the notes I had taken regarding Proto-Equestrian symphonies, in case she might quiz me on my scholastic knowledge. She never did.
My eyes swam about her quarters. I felt like I belonged there--in that the walls were adorned with almost every known instrument in Equestria's long history of music. There were even some objects I had never seen before, and you of all ponies should know that my knowledge is quite extensive, Penny. I saw wind instruments carved out of the wood of extinct trees. I saw drums fashioned out of material as old as Creation. The dust that had collected on several of the string instruments had gathered well over the centuries, so that I felt like a pebble marinating at the bottom of some unfathomably deep well.
Then my attention was drawn to the center of the room. Standing on a pedestal was an object of mystical importance. A glittering effluence of black light hung off the instrument's polished surface and moon-pale strings. I imagine the only reason I hadn't seen it when I first entered the room was because Luna's glorious visage had drowned my attention to any other detail.
It then occurred to me--in a gasping breath of realization--that I was staring at none other than the Nightbringer. What legend tells of its fate is a lie, Penumbra. I've seen the holy instrument with my very own eyes. It was not--as ponies say--destroyed during the war with the dragons three centuries ago. It not only exists, but it is in perfect condition, still imbued with magical energies. What's more, it is in Princess Luna's possession.
Was this why she had summoned me to Canterlot? Was it because she had discovered the Nightbringer, that she had somehow excavated it from the sediment of all Equestria's yesteryears? Or did the alicorn sisters possess it all this time? If so, why would they have kept the truth from us?
Princess Luna never said a thing that night. In a way, she didn't have to. Bringing me there to see the Nightbringer was enough to shake my soul apart. This changes so many things. This means that we modern Equestrians could very well be privy to hearing--with our own mortal ears--the songs that brought forth the chorus of Creation.
I almost broke the silence right there, if only to ask her what it all meant. But that never happened. She turned her head, like a statue coming to life, and tilted her majestic horn towards the chamber entrance. Right at that moment the doors to her quarters opened for the first time in hours. Crescent Shine and his two fellow guards marched in, and without so much as saying a word, they escorted me home.
Right as I was dropped off at the Midnight District, I was given a letter. Apparently, I'm to visit Luna again tomorrow, just a day before you arrive. What do I have to expect? What is the point of such curious silence? I am extremely confused, and yet I am supremely enraptured. I have witnessed a tool of Creation with my very own eyes, Penumbra. I've stood in the presence of something that was once pure energy, a formless song that had accompanied the dawn of all light when the Cosmic Matriarch herself trotted across this landscape.
I may not have any answers, but I definitely have purpose. I shall fulfill my obligations, if only to be given a chance to witness such glory yet again, no matter how obscured.
Yours faithfully and forever,
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Twenty-Fourth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Once again, I was summoned to the Princess' chambers. Once again, I had to walk into her quarters on my own accord. And--just like the night previous--Princess Luna sat on the edge of her balcony, gazing out the window, giving me time to study the Nightbringer up close. I stood around it, trotted around it, gazed deeply at it. As terribly tempted as I was, I could not bring myself to touch the dark instrument.
And so it was that she finally spoke to me, and I realized that less than an hour of silence had transpired since I had first arrived there. Hearing the Goddess of Shadows speak in the very same room is like living through a divine explosion. I felt every fiber of my being burning and freezing at once, so that all I could do was stand still and absorb every booming word she had to say. Only an alicorn like Princess Luna can say things in a whisper and yet resonate with thunder. Between each breath, I had no reason to doubt her authority, her righteousness, her connection with all that was complicated, glorious, and eternal.
When she spoke to me, it was not in regards to the Nightbringer. It was not about the topic of mystical research. It didn't even touch the subject of Proto-Equestrian symphonies. She asked me how I had managed to live my entire life as a sarosian unicorn. And, well, of course I answered her, Penumbra.
I explained to her what it meant to grow up as the only non-winged sarosian in my village. I explained to her the rudimentary facts of genetics that led to one in every five thousand unicorns being born like me. I skipped the details of the ridicule and harassment I received as a child, from foals who lampooned my albino coat and slitted eyes and leafy ears. All of the things that I had become well acquainted with, I explained in moderate detail, as if I had become an amnesiac and somehow had to teach myself just who and what I was in a short period of time. After all, what was there for me to teach her? Surely she knew everything there was to know of sarosians--both pegasi and the seldom few without wings--who had all long sworn their allegiance to the Goddess of the Night and her eternal will.
When my speech was over, Luna neither smiled nor frowned. She stood up and marched beside the Nightbringer, all the while giving a meager but very satisfying explanation. Apparently my first invitation--and the ensuing silence that engulfed our initial meeting--was all a test. She brought me there within the presence of her and the Nightbringer to gauge my reaction. The fact that I didn't speak was apparently something that worked in my favor. She determined that I was not a pony who was outwardly swayed by grandeur. Paraphrasing the Goddess of Night as best as I can, she essentially said that I thought and acted upon scholarly intent, and that I had supreme control over my whims, since I didn't break her silence or attempt to touch the Nightbringer with my own mortal hooves.
I listened to everything she had to say, and I felt it best to exercise the same tactful silence. I bowed when I needed to, responded only when I needed to. In the end, she said something that absolutely floored me. She was putting together a symphony. That's right, Penny: our very own Princess Luna, the steward of the moonlit sky, is coming out of ten years of silence to give Equestria a song of her indomitable spirit. And what's even more amazing... she wishes my help in writing the music.
I knew better than to faint in the Princess' presence. I relayed to her my enthusiasm in as gentlecoltish a manner as possible. She gave me no information regarding the nature of the symphony, nor the number of movements. Furthermore, she seemed fit to overlook the fact that I was merely a scholar of history and musical theory. Couldn't she have called upon Celestia's royal conductor for such a task? Wouldn't it have been more prudent to enlist the help of Marezart or some other world-famous composer? Alas, she wants my help and my input on this endeavor. I don't know if there's been a luckier soul in the history of Canterlot, Penny, to be the one pony to process Princess Luna's one and only artistic endeavor into a medium through which mortals could preserve and enjoy her glory for the eons to come.
She must have known just how unbearably enthused I was, so she sent me home early--at least much earlier than she had the previous night. The only hint she gave me for when I was expected to return were the words "After you have settled in with your loved one, Penumbra." She knows your name, Penny, as well as she knows how honored I am to be given this opportunity. That's how I believe that everything I've ever hoped for is coming true. I am in this project for the long-run, and as much as I'm dedicated to writing this information down, I can't wait until I can see you tomorrow and tell you face to face, and hold you, and find out once again what it means to laugh and cry at the same time.
With great joy and enthusiasm,
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Twenty-Fifth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I told you that I would have a surprise for you. It was easy to forget it the moment I saw your face, your shiny gold coat, your pearlescent blue eyes. You leave the scent of jasmine everywhere you go, especially in this new home of ours. And now I know that it is truly our home, for it smells of you.
I can't get over how adorably confused you were as I practically dragged you out onto the balcony. I told you to close your eyes. I measured the increasing length of your smile as your trot seemed to go on forever. Just how large was this balcony? Was I about to lead you over the edge? Surely I didn't grow wings like Crescent Shine overnight.
Then, when I told you to open your eyes, the look on your face was worth every fitful dream that brought me to that moment. I expected gasps of joy; I didn't quite expect the tears that came along with them. I hope you forgive me for nuzzling them immediately away, Penny. I prefer kissing a dry cheek over a wet one any day.
I bet you never thought you'd have your very own greenhouse, instead of having to walk across town and use one in a university. I meant it when I said that a little bit of Whinniepeg was seeded all over Canterlot, and that's no less true than right here in our home. Our apartment is the only spot in the Midnight District with a balcony touched by the midday sun, and I chose it specifically with you in mind. Now, no matter how long I may be away at research, you'll have a place to water your plants and continue your studies in botany. I can't presume to understand the nature of flora, but I like to think that I'm well acquainted with your smile, and it grew most majestically last night when you arrived and I showed you the "surprise." I hope it blesses you in every facet of your life, as you bless every part of mine.
It's an immeasurable joy having you here: your scent, your eyes, and your laughter. I know I've written this multiple times--to the point that it's almost a complete distraction--but being around you almost makes me forget what's happening here in Canterlot. I wouldn't have even mentioned seeing the Nightbringer with my own eyes had you not asked how the initial meetings went. I know I could very well just let you peruse these records I've been keeping, but what's the point when you're right here with me? What I'm writing here is a chance to preserve us as much as to preserve Luna's legacy. What we do and what we contribute to the glory of the Moon Goddess will mean nothing if we don't preserve ourselves and that which is most precious to us.
There is much unpacking to be done. I'm about to try and convince you to put it off for the night so that I can be with my darling wife yet again. Months or years from now--when you finally read this--maybe you can tell me if I succeeded or not, and I greatly trust that the answer will be "yes."
Indeed. Jasmine. Such an enchanting scent.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
April the Thirtieth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It is with a heavy heart that I parted ways with you this afternoon. After almost a week of setting up the apartment and getting acquainted with the neighbors, it's only right that I return to Princess Luna to get a start on this epic undertaking that her Majesty has allowed me to take part in. I'm happy to think that you are not entirely alone while I am gone for the next week, Penumbra. You have your plants to decorate the greenhouse with. You have an entire city full of courtyards, gardens, shopping districts, and cafes to explore. What's more, you have my eternal love and respect. I hope the latter is enough to keep you happy during my absence, though I am terribly tempted to suspect it will be the shopping districts.
The flight with the sarosian guards to Princess Luna's Palace was over in a flash. I wonder if I'll ever get used to how insignificant the travel is compared to the destination. This was my first occasion of arriving at Princess Luna's quarters in the daytime. When I arrived, she was more alive than ever. All of the stillness and solemnity of the previous two visits was gone, replaced by a spring to her trot as she scurried like an overgrown foal from one side of her room to the next. Apparently she had taken the time to extract half of the books on music theory from the Royal Archives and relocate them to her quarters. I had to trot over several piles of books before settling down.
When her Majesty spoke to me, it was in short, curt bursts. I realized that the ritual for introductions and pretense was over. This was the time to study, to process, to make some semblance out of the music in her mind and put it down on paper.
I didn't quite know how we were supposed to go about the method of writing. This was to be Princess Luna's masterpiece, after all, not mine. I merely expected to serve as her assistant. As the minutes limped into hours, and Princess Luna's dissertations resembled a chorus of confusion and madness, I began to realize that the best thing I could do for her was to exercise patience. Princess Luna was unraveling a tangled string of substance in her head, and she needed a learned soul such as mine to spool it into a finely woven tapestry.
Surely, Penny, you've heard the utterly horrible nicknames that our fellow Equestrians have occasionally given to her Majesty, especially during the last nine years of the Age of Shadows. I shudder to write them, for they feel blasphemous to even think of. Luna has been called "Shadow Brained". She's been referred to as "The Looney Princess." Even in Whinniepeg, ponies joke that she's a "Keeper of Cosmic Dust," and that her heart and mind are not on earth like Equestria, but rather Luna is a veritable "Mare in the Moon." All of these names serve as a great insult to me. It is not simply because of my sarosian heritage. I feel as though the majority of Equestrians do not understand her Majesty, nor the methods behind her superficial madness or this decade-long seclusion.
Seeing her up close, being in the same room with her: I've come to realize that she is more than just the Goddess of Shadows. She is a mirror to us all, to lonely souls in a dark world attempting to shine. In the grand scheme of things, we are all alone, just like her. To eke substance out of the blackness of eternal night is to be the very essence of mad. For thousands upon thousands of years, it has been Princess Luna's selfless task to be the steward of such necessary madness, and now it's come to pass that her latest endeavors involve dragging a song out of the deepest, darkest depths of the universe.
I do not know what purpose this symphony will have, nor do I care. If it helps Princess Luna exorcise the collective shades constricting her divine thoughts, then I am happy to be of service. After all, she is forever our Goddess of the Night: the one shining beacon we have in the darkness. One does not find purpose and meaning in humbling himself to the "Mare in the Moon," for she is anything but that. She is here. She loves Equestria, and she is about to usher us into a new age of beauty.
That age will have to wait for a few more hours. After a full afternoon of work, we only managed to get a few musical notes written down. Right now, she is raising the moon, and I am resting in the guest quarters of the royal palace. I need to meditate on what I've learned, but it's hard to do when all I can think of is you.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the First, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Dearest Penny, we have created something.
It is a very short piece, harmonic and dissonant at the same time. The introduction is full of diminishing strings, so that a part of me wondered if Princess Luna was merely experimenting with the notes that she had me write down.
Soon enough, though, the piece was complete, and I understood the majestic beauty that it was always meant to possess. I was allowed to borrow a harp from the walls of her quarters, and I performed half of the instrumental on it. I was enraptured by its beauty, and I wanted to worship her Majesty all the more for being able to transform the world with song in the same way she did with moonlight.
And then she decided to perform it. When she did so, she placed a series of dark crystals around the room. I recognized them to be sound stones, fragments of the Harmonic Rock that was once used to build the Equestrian barricades during the ancient war with Discord. Furthermore, Luna chose to use the Nightbringer. I couldn't imagine my good fortune for being in the presence of this divine instrument as it was being played. Every pluck of a string was like a continent being formed along the crest of bells in my ears. I reveled in the sound of life itself.
But then, as the song culminated, I experienced something that I would never have imagined. I've been under enchantment before, Penumbra. You remember when Doctor Halftrot's transmutation spell backfired on the entire science wing of Whinniepeg University. This, however, completely surpassed that experience, both in severity as well as in shock.
I felt as though the walls were closing in on me. At the same time, the tiniest specks of light in the room magnified. The sound stones flickered as if they were blazing flames. I feared for my safety. I felt that the luminescence was going to burn through my pale sarosian flesh. However, I was too overcome by a paralyzing paranoia to so much as gallop across the room and grab my moonsilk cloak. I've never felt so nervous and petrified before in my life. Soon, however, I was being ushered back into a warm world of safe shadows.
It was then that I realized exactly where I was, and just who was beside me, comforting me. Princess Luna herself had given me a motherly embrace. By her divine presence, the ominous magic was driven away from my being. I was so relieved to be freed of such paranoia that I hardly registered the fact that she had stooped so low to make contact with me. I expressed my gratitude, though it was hard to find my voice.
She silenced me, and spoke for the both of us instead. She told me that she had known that the song had magical properties, that all of the songs we were writing would. I asked her why, and she said that the symphony serves a grand purpose. She is writing it for the safety of this world. It is bound to have side effects, but she must know if they will positively or negatively impact the mortals of this realm.
I'm starting to understand why I'm here. I've had experience with enchantments before. If she had chosen just any musical expert from the art halls of Canterlot, they wouldn't have been nearly as capable of weathering the impact of the first instrumental, nor the ones potentially to follow. I am more than just her assistant in unraveling this music. I am her humble test subject.
You can probably expect what happened next. She asked if I was too distraught from the experience, if I wished to step out of the project altogether. Her Majesty's grace is equal to her strength. I told her that. I also told her that I was dedicated towards helping her all the way through the creation of this symphony. I was committed, as she was committed.
She accepted that, and for the first time I saw her smile. That's when she told me exactly what it is that we're working on. She's calling the symphony "The Nocturne of the Firmaments," and the first movement shall be named "Prelude to Shadows."
I do not know what will transpire next in this process of discovery. But I know one thing. I finally have a name for this tome, and shall title it forthwith.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Third, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
We've constructed the second movement of the "Nocturne of the Firmaments." It is a far livelier piece than the "Prelude to Shadows." Its tempo is upbeat, and I suggested a heavy use of percussion in the orchestral version, to which Luna swiftly agreed. There is a sense of urgency to this project, brought on by her Majesty herself. It's as though she wishes us to write these songs as swiftly as possible. I wouldn't describe her motives as impatient. Rather, there is a righteous determination that is forcing her forward--and me along with her--at a breakneck speed. I find the enthusiasm to be positively infectious, and it feels as though I'm doing everything in my power just to keep up.
This latest instrumental is the very embodiment of such a spirit. I was thinking of coining a name for it myself, but Princess Luna spoke up and immediately called it "Sunset Bolero." I can't think of a more meaningful name. It embodies that whimsical feeling ponies get when they rush to accomplish innumerable things while the sun melts into the west horizon.
When Luna performed the written song on the Nightbringer, I felt my heart beating faster and faster. You know me to be a fairly reserved, unathletic unicorn, Penny. But hearing this music from the ancient instrument made me want to gallop in circles and do backflips. Such would be unbecoming of a young colt, much less an esteemed scholar such as myself. I couldn't help but chuckle from a deep wave of merriment passing through my body. I don't know if "Sunset Bolero" is a prophetic installment in the grand piece that will become the "Nocturne of the Firmaments," but one thing is certain: I am more excited than ever to be a part of this project.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Fourth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I haven't slept in nearly twelve hours. How can I? The rhythm of the "Sunset Bolero" is still entrancing my spirit. It's hard to even sit in one place for too long. How will I get the daytime sleep I need before I'm called to help her Majesty with the next instrumental?
No. Sleep will not come to me. Not now. Not during this great moment of discovery and magic. I have to do something to concentrate, to focus my thoughts.
What better a time than to cover the magic of song itself? You know all that there is to know, Penumbra. After all, you've been around me long enough. You've heard every tale of creation told and retold ad nauseam. Still, though, if this is to become an official record regarding the "Nocturne of the Firmaments," then it is important that I put together a necessary dissertation on the power of song, so that I may have a pertinent introduction by the time I process this into a final draft.
They say that the world began with a song. I've always assumed that, and after playing audience to the Nightbringer, I believe it all the more now. It's said that the Cosmic Matriarch came upon a cloud of chaos floating adrift in space. She saw the disruption as a blemish upon the tranquility of the universe. If this nebulous spot in the cosmos was to be unpredictable, then she saw it fit to reshape the leylines of energy to reflect order and purpose. So, she imprinted herself upon the cloud. She did so with a song, giving birth to harmony by the sheer power of her holy voice.
For, after all, what is more harmonic than music itself? Noise is merely disruption across the medium of a fixed space. Only when patterns emerge with a purpose towards order and tonality does that thunder become the ringing of bells. We are shaped by music, empowered by music. In the throats of mortals, music becomes an ode to all that has come to be--in ways that we can record and illustrate all of life's construction. In the lungs of goddesses, music becomes something immanent in the foundation of the world. The earth is solid, for the instrumentation that brought it into being holds true.
The Cosmic Matriarch forged the world from chaos with a song, but that was not enough to preserve Equestria forever. After all, what power does a song have if there stands the chance that it will no longer be sung?
So it was that the Matriarch created the Firmaments. The Firmaments were to become barriers, necessary shields against the chaos and cold of the universe that forever surrounds the bubble of life that is Equestria. The Firmaments could not function by themselves, though. They needed stewards, eternal sentries charged with maintaining the chorus for eternity.
It was then that the Matriarch performed the greatest sacrifice of all. She broke her song into two distinct parts. At the same time, she broke herself into two distinct parts. Thus she gave birth to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Princess Celestia was charged with the Firmament of the Earth: and the sunlight and the seasons that governed its cycles of growth. Princess Luna was charged with the Firmament of the Sky, and the safe protection against the extraterrestrial elements.
Under the spheres of both the Earth and Sky, mortals were born to give beauty and honor to the songs of the Matriarch and her two holy daughters. When her labors were complete, the Cosmic Matriarch returned to the stars, for her work in Equestria was done. The Firmaments had their functions as well as their two guardians, and her song's harmony was bound to be protected forevermore.
Since the departure of the Cosmic Matriarch, Celestia and Luna have faithfully stood watch over the fields of Equestria, empowered by the omnipotent song that created them as much as enchanted them. Very rarely did they shatter the seal of their heavenly chorus. After all, the song can be broken up into smaller parts. There is no foreseeable way for the smaller parts to reconstitute a whole, not unless the Cosmic Matriarch was to somehow return and give us more music to reshape the world with.
When the monsters of chaos banded together to ravage the landscape, the alicorn sisters broke the song in order to construct the "Titanic Ballad". Together, their new and holy chorus created Tartarus, which became the eternal prison for Equestria's most brutal abominations. When Discord appeared in this dimension and attempted to tear the Firmaments asunder, the sisters once again disassembled their mother's gift, giving birth to the "Elements of Harmony". The instrumental was transformed into material pendants, and such spheres of magical importance were used to trap Discord in stone.
With the Matriarch's song becoming something tenuous and threadbare, it became necessary to channel the energy of Creation into something permanent, something capable of being preserved. For if the timeless song broke too many times, even if in the best interests of life, all of Equestria stood the chance of dissolving into the same chaotic miasma that the Matriarch first discovered when she graced this one nebulous spot in the cosmos.
So it was that the two alicorn sisters decided to transform the song into an instrument itself. They created a vessel that would forever embody the power of Creation, the razor-sharp edge upon which light and darkness hinged eternally. That vessel would later be called the "Nightbringer," and it is as glorious to look upon as it has ever been awe-inspiring to dream about.
Simplistically speaking, the Nightbringer is a normal-sized string instrument. It resembles a lyre, only larger, with the elegance and beauty of a royal harp. But it is far too holy and pristine to be compared to any ordinary tool of music. When its strings vibrate, one can feel his essence spreading apart and coming back together. To stand in the same room with it is to stand upon the precipice of nonexistence. It may not be as powerful as the Matriarch's original song, but its strength and presence are still overwhelming to a mortal such as myself.
The fact that the Nightbringer is being used to write the "Nocturne of the Firmaments" into reality fills me with both trepidation and wonder. Surely the Princess is not breaking the song down again. If she was, then Celestia would be a part of this project as well. As it stands, this instrument is merely serving as a way for Luna to transform that which is in her head into something corporeal. Upon contemplating this, I am filled with intense euphoria.
Could it be, for the first time in ages, that a new song is being created? Is that even possible for the sentry of the Firmament of the Sky? Has Luna suddenly become more powerful in the last nine and a half years?
Only time will tell. I fear that--for a mortal like me--I may not be told. So I tell you what I know, dearest Penny, so that when all is said and done, you and I can tell all other ponies as well. When the time comes that Equestria hears the Nocturne, mortal ponies may bear witness to our words as well, and we will all become one with a heavenly chorus, something spawned out of darkness and given enough harmony to bring new strength to the Firmaments.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Princess Luna calls it the "March of Tides." I call it one of the strangest instrumentals I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, much less writing into being. If one hears it with his ears or even reads the music sheets with his eyes, it feels in both ways like the "Sunset Bolero," only backwards and at a slower tempo. One would think hearing such a strange tune would curse me with the same unease and paranoia that the "Prelude to Shadow" brought. But this is not the case. I am filled instead with a great sense of awe and wonder. I feel like I am making a journey, and the "Nocturne of the Firmaments" is my path into such a starry expanse of mystery.
All the while, I keep looking upon Princess Luna's holy visage. At some point during this study process, I've felt it was necessary to gauge her progress as well as the symphony's. There is very little change to her expression. The smile that she gave the other day is gone. I wonder just how many details make up the righteously cold facade that she maintains for the sake of swiftly finishing her sacred, musical duty. There's been no word on Celestia, on whether or not she is privy to this project and the role that the Nightbringer plays in creating the Nocturne from nothingness.
I almost hate myself for thinking too hard on the matter. The two royal sisters have lived with one another for millennia, performing their sacred duties to the Firmaments in a binding of absolute trust. Perhaps it was premature of me to think that Luna was creating a whole new "holy song" in this endeavor. After all, Celestia has composed her own instrumentals for the royal orchestra to perform. Did she ever request Luna's attention to such personal hobbies?
But every time I hear the mighty strings of the Nightbringer plucked in the air of Luna's quarters, I feel parts of myself burning, as if I am being set aflame from the inside out. Something truly amazing and magical is happening here. I feel blessed beyond imagining to be a part of it. I only wish that Luna's immaculate face would register the same emotions that I feel. It would make me a great deal more at ease to see just what this symphony means in her eyes, instead of the constant, unchanging solemnity that clouds her royal features.
Alas, our studies are over for now. I am being sent home. I relish the thought of seeing you once again, Penny. When I arrive at our apartment, I don't want to think about music for once. I only want to think of your forelimbs engulfing me as I drown myself in your jasmine, your voice, and your perfection.
Of course, you may be too encumbered in tending to your new greenhouse to indulge this stallion's lovesickness. But that would be just fine. You've been patient for me, and I shall be eternally patient for you, my darling wife.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Eighth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Today is the best day I've experienced since I came to Canterlot, and that's because I spent it all with you. After a solid week of studying music and putting melody to paper, you have no idea how joyous it is to just be by your side. It didn't matter much to me where we went or what we did, so long as it was something you enjoyed. In the end, you chose to walk through the Canterlot gardens; I couldn't have been happier.
I knew that you would be enchanted at the sight of the many endangered plants that the royal sisters grow in their capital. I specifically suggested we stroll through the gardens in the daytime. I don't care how cumbersome the cloak of moonsilk can be, it's worth wearing just to watch you giggle like a schoolfilly at all of the remarkable, sunlit specimens surrounding you. I chuckled as you asked that I curry favor with Princess Luna in order that she would let you take a sample home to the greenhouse. Unfortunately, my love, my influence with the Princess of the Night begins and ends with the Nocturne.
I'm glad that you chose an open marketplace for us to eat at. I don't want you to feel like you must hide me in the shadows. I love knowing that you aren't ashamed to be an earth pony married to a sarosian, that you're willing to let all citizens of Canterlot see us together.
It reminds me of the first few years we spent together at Whinniepeg University. I was the only unicorn of my type in the entire institution. In the daytime, I resembled a mummified pony shuffling through the hallways. At night, students trotted out of my path, for fear that I might grow fangs and pounce upon them suddenly under the moonlight.
You saw past all of that. You saw something in me that enchanted you. At first, I thought that you were attracted to my peculiarities, to my living oddities. You were the first pony not to flinch at my sarosian diet. To this day, I still don't know how you managed to hold your lunch the first time I ate meat in your presence. But then I no longer had to worry about anything, or had to think about anything.
I had become engulfed in your kindly smile, in your melodic laugh, in the way that you loved to play with my ears when nopony was looking. I wanted to know all about you, and I learned an encyclopedia's worth of wonders. You were so fascinated in the science of plants. You taught me how nature grows and sustains itself. It took my poetic ramblings to teach you that there was an underlying magic beneath all of reality. Together, we formed a balance, a harmonic duet that fused pragmatic and ethereal realities together into an other-wordly chorus. We became the prince and princess of Whinniepeg University, and when all ponies gazed upon us, they understood what true love was. It could form out of complete uncertainty much like the Cosmic Matriarch's first song did.
All of those years, as I ascended the ranks of scholastic mastery, you stood by my side. I was your creature of the night, and you joined that daring darkness with me. You learned to forsake the day, so that we would be awake together under the moon. What other esteemed botanist in the history of all Equestria has made such a sacrifice? I wanted more than anything to make it up to you, and all you ever did was silence my worries with a kiss, letting me hold you closer as the stars spelled out our future.
I love you, my dearest Penny. And I want so much to give you all the world's treasures. But then I realize that all the beautiful things in Equestria are already within reach, for I've been given you. These days in Canterlot are bound to be the best days of my life, because I know that I'll finally have a chance to give back to you all that you've ever sacrificed for me. I only regret that the reason for our coming here distracts me so often. I despise the fact that it forces me to be apart from you, throwing me into the depths of magic rather than the warmth of your loving voice.
One of these days, we'll start a family. We'll have children, and they'll be our song to preserve our love between the Firmaments of Creation. What we are, what we've forged together in our short, bleak, and altogether beautiful lives, is something priceless, and it must never be unsung.
Until then, we both have work to do. And I look forward to the time when all of our duties are behind us, for they will have dissolved just as righteously as our fears did the day that we met.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Tenth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I'm making an entry right now, though I have no concrete reason to. I've just now arrived at Princess Luna's quarters for another week or two of study. We haven't even begun writing yet. Still, I feel like I should write down an observation before my studies necessarily eliminate it from my mind.
It feels as if the sarosian population of Canterlot has increased dramatically since the time I arrived here. I noticed this on the day that we went out together, Penumbra. There were pegasi of the night in the streets, garbed in moonsilk and shadow armor. This didn't just happen in the Midnight District. Everywhere I looked, there were more and more leather-winged, slit-eyed brothers and sisters. What's more, they seemed just about as new and inexperienced with the alleyways of Canterlot as I was when I first showed up. I'm almost tempted to think that there's been some unofficial pilgrimage of sorts. Did word spread that Princess Luna was coming out of hiding, that the Age of Shadow is coming to an end? What else could explain so many nocturnal ponies having arrived at the threshold to their patron alicorn's dwelling?
I asked Crescent Shine about it. He had no answer, at least not one solid enough. He seemed preoccupied. There was a nervous shuffle to his hooves, and his eyes looked twice as pale. I know that look very well: it's the sign of a sarosian who has seen too much sunlight. How much has Princess Luna been overworking the captain of her Night Guard? Has my cousin gotten any sleep these past few weeks?
Perhaps I'm reading too much into things. Admittedly, my heart is feeling a sense of unease. It's more than the fact that I'm having to part from your presence again. As I walked the hallways of Luna's wing of the Palace, I felt as if something from the shadows was looking out at me. My ears twitched, and for a moment I thought I heard the ghostly sensation of metal rattling against metal.
I don't think Crescent Shine is the only sarosian missing sleep. I need to keep myself together if I'm to be of any proper assistance to her Majesty. I surely hope that the next installment of the Nocturne is something promising.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Eleventh, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I've never felt more frightened in my entire life.
It began with the writing of the fourth instrumental, or "elegy," as Princess Luna suddenly called it. She surprised me when she told me out of the blue that there would be ten movements to the Nocturne in total. I daringly asked her if she had always planned to write ten elegies. She ignored my question. Her face was as vacant and lifeless as ever as she told me the title to the fourth instrumental. She wished it to be called the "Darkness Sonata."
I wondered what had possessed her to name it before it was completely written. But then we finished creating it, and she performed it without hesitation on the Nightbringer. That's the moment when I died, or at least I thought I had become dead.
A sarosian, as you well know, Penny, is well acquainted with darkness. This is most evident in the pegasi who possess the night blood. Our innate powers of echolocation have guided us through the thickest of time's shadows. It's what helped us find flying food under the fall of night before Luna gathered us under her wing thousands of years ago and taught us to hone our powers into becoming her elite Night Guard.
The darkness that followed after the performance of the Nightbringer was blacker than black. None of my senses were capable of penetrating it. It was as though the walls and floor of the room had been lifted away and thrown into the void of space. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Even the sound had evaded my detection. I quite literally thought I had died.
I floundered about in desperation, calling for the Princess' name. She found me, and held me still like a mare might coax the fear out of her foal. I was beside myself with panic and fright, and I unashamedly clung to the Princess for the time it took for the light to return, for it would return--or at least that's what her Majesty assured me of.
In spite of my horror, she was as calm as an underground lake. She was distant too. Her voice could have been a million miles away, and yet I could hear every word that dripped out of her. They were strange words, frightening words. The Princess was rambling, speaking of a world between worlds, of a place far darker than even the Sonata's magical strings could evoke. Was she telling me this to educate me? If so, what could I have possibly learned? The truths she had to lend me were her truths alone, seemingly absurd dissertations on the countless shapes of chains she saw swimming all around her. Something had come to her in her sleep, and she needed to shape such a formless monster into song or else her mind would be ripped asunder.
For the first time since darkness enveloped me, I started to fear for her instead of myself. Ponies' incessant insults regarding the "Mare in the Moon" came to mind, and I hated myself for letting my thoughts wander into such desperate fields. As her and the walls of her room came back into focus, I asked her if she had told her sister about her visions. She merely stood up and walked away from me as if I was never even there to begin with. She placed the Nightbringer back on its pedestal and dismissed me, saying that there were six more elegies to the Nocturne to learn, and I needed my rest to be of proper assistance to her.
Right now, I'm sitting in my chambers, surrounded by twice as many candles than I had lit the night before. They're so collectively brilliant that I can already feel my pale coat starting to singe, but I don't care. The light is precious to me. It always has been. What are ponies but awkward pebbles rattling around in a dim crucible hung beneath impenetrable darkness? I think of you, of the forbidden sunlight that I can't enjoy, and yet it's there for me every time I gaze into your eyes. This world is fragile and can be snuffed out at any second, but it is ours, Penny. For the first time in my life, I can fathom it disappearing, and it is so unbelievably cold.
What is the meaning of this Nocturne? Why is it frightening and exciting all at once? Furthermore, can a single mortal like me withstand the birth of a new and hauntingly glorious symphony?
I need strength. I need to be there for my Princess, and I need to be there with you.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Twelfth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
The "Waltz of Stars" is haunting, but at least it has poetic beauty to it. I can listen to it and not feel my soul draining away as with the "Darkness Sonata."
As soon as Luna and I finished writing the fifth elegy, she had to leave for raising the moon. She didn't bother dismissing me. I was alone in her chambers, and I decided to make the best of it.
You may think it dishonorable of me to have snooped around the living quarters of the Goddess of Shadows, Penny. Looking back on it, I feel a horrible pit of shame as well. But if you had been forced to endure the "Darkness Sonata" like I had, if you had been there at the birthplace of so many otherworldly songs, you would be no less empowered by an unquenchable thirst for answers yourself.
A key thing to understand is that throughout the entire time I've worked on these elegies with the Princess, her room has been utterly in shambles. You would find this rather surprising for the domain of an immortal alicorn. I myself chose to ignore it, for I felt that the research we were performing in the creation of the Nocturne was far too righteous to second-guess. However, with the utter fabric of light drained and restored to my eyes, I saw everything in a brand new texture. There was no way to dance around the description: Princess Luna's chambers bore the signs of a mad pony.
Books were lying in disarray. Tomes were spread wide open, their pale pages flickering under candlelight. Unrolled scrolls and layers of parchment gathered dust in the corners. What was most alarming was that half of the books were sparsely written in. As a matter of fact, many of the books--the most ancient and antique of the lot--were utterly blank. This didn't feel like some freak happenstance, either. The books were of uniquely different styles of binding. I saw signatures of bookmaking from all corners of Equestria, from as far as Timbucktoo to the stylistic nature of Dream Valley. The only way so many diverse and differently-bound books could be together under one ceiling was because they had been summoned there. Upon that thought, I perused through a series of letters that had accumulated atop Luna's workbench. I found several missives that had ordered members of Crescent Shine's Guard to acquire these books from the most remote libraries of Equestria. What's more, the rarest of these books were the ones that were mostly blank.
It startled me that I hadn't noticed all of these details before. I was so enraptured in the process of writing these elegies that I hadn't taken even a second to step back and look at this composition more objectively. Was it pure genius that was inspiring Luna to write this symphony? Or, perhaps, was it something more that was helping her transform that which was incorporeal into the material?
I didn't have too much time to ponder it. Princess Luna returned from the moon raising. She didn't look even the least bit exhausted, nor ready to quit. She ushered me back to her side, and immediately we began working on the sixth elegy. I saw a fire in her eyes, and for the first time I felt that I could register an emotion. It curiously looked a lot like anger.
More on this when I have the time to think it over.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof.
May the Fifteenth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It's been three days since the Princess and I finished writing the sixth elegy. Unlike the "Darkness Sonata" and "Waltz of Stars," she did not give the instrumental a name. However, it struck me as far more important than all of the tunes previous. The very day after it was written, I heard it in the hallways. It was being hummed by the guards. At first, I was furious. I felt as though they had eavesdropped on us. Apparently, though, this was not the case, for I found several reprinted sheets documenting the very same elegy that I had written into being just the day before.
Now, I hear it when I go to sleep and I hear it when I wake up. The sixth elegy is nameless, but it isn't formless. It's taken residence in the heart of every member of the Night Guard, to the point that it's become a soundtrack to this wing of the Palace. Personally, I rather tire of hearing it, but I dare not say that out loud. I'm filled with a deep sense of nervousness, as if to sing anything else would be a crime. I don't know if Luna meant to spread this song on purpose, but it's already become an infectious anthem. The anthem to what: I have no earthly clue. I can only wander these halls, my ears echoing with the marching beat, waiting for Luna to summon me to her room once again.
Something just doesn't feel right. My services haven't been needed for days. Why can't her Majesty send me home during the interim? I want to smell your jasmine. I want to hear your voice. My ears need a song that doesn't belong to shadows. I'm overcome with a terrible sense of cold. Maybe I should light some more candles.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Eightteenth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I got the shock of my life today. I was finally summoned to Princess Luna's quarters, and when I arrived she was not alone. There were four other ponies in her presence, but they weren't just any ponies, Penumbra.
Two of them I recognized instantly: Professor Flat of Blue Valley University and Marerice Ravel. The others I had to be introduced to, and I was amazed to discover that I was in the same room with Marezart and Doctor Hoofstone of Stratopolis. Before me were four living legends of Equestrian music, and they were all sitting down and having tea with Princess Luna as if it was just any other Friday afternoon. The fact that they were there wasn't half as startling as the fact that they weren't elsewhere, for it was my explicit knowledge that each of the four equines lived far from each other, and far from the Palace for that matter.
It would appear, though, that I had arrived at the tail-end of whatever conversation they were having with Luna. When I asked just how they all showed up there, they gave me a funny look. All of their dialogue ended, as if they had run out of reasons to say anything, their souls stripped of all logic. It was at this point that Princess Luna gazed my way. I wondered if I had said something wrong. Whatever the case, she reached her hoof over and tapped a polished black object. I realized she had the Nightbringer by her side. Under her careful touch, the strings stopped vibrating, and suddenly all four of her guests disappeared.
I was amazed at such magic. I asked Princess Luna where they went. In her usual, curt way she explained to me that she had completed the "Song of Gathering." It took me a while to process what she meant. Then it occurred to me that she must have played the ancient tune on the Nightbringer. I had read old tales of how such a song was used by the Princesses during the griffon/pony war to summon the souls of generals from across Equestria to their strategy room. It was one of the most powerful spells in the alicorns' repertoire. The fact that Luna used it to summon four musicians struck me as strange, and then I realized that she must have done it in order to get a better understanding of the elegies left to unravel. Whatever the Nocturne had in store for us, we were headed into territories that required the combined knowledge of Equestria's finest musicians.
I no longer felt as adequate as I did the last session we had together. I felt like asking her if she truly needed me, but her swift actions and blurred gallop across the chambers suggested that she was in no mood for a complicated conversation. We were on a mission of celestial importance, and Luna wasn't about to turn things around.
Dear Penny, what have I become a part of? I came back to my quarters now just to breathe. She's making me write down a tune called the "Threnody of Night," and already I feel like something is clawing at me from the shadows. I have less than ten minutes at this point before I must return to her study and resume transcribing the symphony, but a part of me is extremely hesitant. I fear that I will not return as the same pony. I can't explain it succinctly enough, but it's as if my ears stopped being mine several days ago. The room is so cold that I can barely summon the magic to lift this pen.
She is requesting my presence. I have to go. I have to perform my duty for her Majesty. Heaven help me, but I must.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Twenty-Fifth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
How much time has passed? I had to ask the guard outside my door what day it was. Comparing his answer to what I have written in my journal, I judge that an entire week has transpired. It's all a blur. I feel hungry and cold. I have facilities around me. I can use them. I'm quite sure I have used them. Still, this entire place is miserable. I'm miserable. When was the last time I saw her Majesty?
My memory is tenuous at best. I know that we finished writing the "Threnody of Night." I played it. I wished I hadn't played it. I felt like I was drowning somewhere, but I hadn't moved a muscle. I sat there, paralyzed, in her room, expecting her to perform the same tune on the Nightbringer.
She didn't touch the ancient instrument. For the first time in days, part of me rejoiced. But when I looked in Luna's eyes, I didn't see an alicorn who was afraid to gallop herself past the final, fragile membrane of magical sanctity. As a matter of fact, I didn't see the Princess that I knew at all. It was as if she had become an empty space, a living doorway for something enormous and lifeless and full of black dust. I looked upon her, and it was like I was treading water upon the event horizon of a churning nightmare.
She spoke of things. I didn't have the strength to listen to her at that point. I had missed sleep. Somepony carried me to my chambers two nights ago. Was it her? It must have been her. The Princess' words are coming to me now. She speaks of voiceless souls, of bodies within the depths of all our forgotten yesteryears. She speaks of a lost entity, somepony's beloved. Yes. I know that word. Beloved. She speaks of beloved. She speaks of beloved. She speaks of beloved. She speaks...
What's come over me? Have I been entranced? What was the last song we wrote? Something about twilight. Yes, a requiem. "Twilight's Requiem." I hear the tune going around in my head, swimming circles around me like a predator. Why do I keep thinking about seas and oceans and deep, inescapable fathoms? She speaks of her beloved. She abandons him in the world between worlds, the lost currents of time and space and songs. His love is his anger which is also his menace. When he destroys worlds, he's simply trying to claw his way back to her.
Dearest Penny, I wish I could explain to you what this all means. But as soon as I put pen to paper, these things come out. Things that I can't explain. Things that can only echo the fragile remnants of her, of her world, of a cyclone of frost hungrily undulating beneath all our hooves. They sing her chorus and become nothing, and upon the forsaken her breath liberates, an ancient song giving birth to the birthless, her loyal subjects for eternity and for never. They no longer serve her beloved, for the domain of the forever dying has become hers, a task equated to the unbirth of everything, the unwritten symphony that holds the Firmaments together and separates them all at once.
I have to stop. I have to stop writing. But all I can do is lie here. Outside, ponies are marching. To what, I can't tell anymore. Something terrible is about to unfold, and I just want to see you. I just want to hold you. I just want to stop hearing the music in my head.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Twenty-Eighth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I think I can write now, now that I see you lying next to me. When did I get home? Yesterday? It's all slowly coming back to me. Crescent Shine dropped me off at the apartment, quite literally. I woke to your shouting voice. You were angry at Crescent. I didn't understand why until I felt half of my face burning. He hadn't taken the time to notice that my cloak had come undone in the sunny afternoon. I don't think he cared. The air echoed with a grunt of indifference, and he was gone.
But you... Your gentle hooves pulled me up off the balcony and led me into the house. You nursed me. I felt the cold kiss of the washcloth against my burnt brow. As soon as I knew it was you, I seized your forelimbs and pulled you to me. Sweet jasmine. I don't know how long I held you, or that you held me. All I know was that I was happy, and you were scared. I didn't want you to be scared, Penny. I never want to frighten you. But I didn't know what else to say at the time. What could I have said?
There was a ninth elegy. I remembered Princess Luna's words. In between rambling about somepony's beloved, she dropped the word "Desolation." Was it the "Song of Desolation?" "Desolation's Elegy?" I don't remember now. All I know is that we incorporated the notes she had taken with the four souls she had teleported to her chambers ten days prior. Furthermore, it took the two of us to perform the ninth elegy. Did she use the Nightbringer?
No. No, I am still here. What does that even mean? Where else could I have gone? Even in my own apartment, I feel chills. You started a fire two hours ago, before you fell asleep. I wished I had an explanation for you, something to convey the fact that the fire won't do anything to help me. I am going someplace, and I just don't know where.
Dearest Penny, all day you stayed by my side. I barely said a word, and yet you clung to me like a second skin. How you're not mad at me, I can't even begin to fathom. There hasn't been a single explanation for why I've been gone this long. I could invent an excuse, but it wouldn't justify things.
I want you to know that I am happy to be married to you, and I am sorry, Penny. I am sorry that something great and dark has consumed your husband's time, energy, and sanity. You've sacrificed so much as it is. I'd hate for you to sacrifice more. This was supposed to be a time of opportunity, a time of joy. I don't know what's in store for me. I don't know what will happen when Luna and I write the tenth elegy. This Nocturne is bigger than anything, and I fear it will consume me like a whale might dine on shrimp.
Please forgive the awkwardness of this entry, Penny. You might think these blemishes to be tear stains. You might be right.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Thirtieth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I scared you again. I didn't mean to. It's just that I wanted to see you. And things have been so cold, so confusing, so full of this ringing music in my ears. I stepped out and entered the balcony's greenhouse because I wanted to see the sunshine in your eyes. But the sunshine was everywhere. Only when you started screaming did I realize what I had done. It was as if I was reduced to a toddler, numb to pain, lacking in common sense.
You rushed me back into the apartment before the daylight could do any permanent damage to me. I hate making you mad, even when your anger is merely a mask to your confusion. I'm confused too, Penny. Like Luna, though, I have no mask. I merely have darkness, and it's clouding me everywhere I look. Why must there be a dichotomy of sunlight and moonlight? The world is so imperfect. If only we could bathe Equestria in solid shadow, then everything would be gorgeous. Everything would be simple. You've lived in darkness before. You're evidence that ponies can survive that way. You will be perfectly fine. I will be there for you. We can have a family of shadows, in the shadows, by Princess Luna's glory, safe from her song and her beloved...
I can hardly write. I still hear your shouts. You love me, but you hate what's happened to me. You hate the fact that I can't tell you. I hate it too. Every time I try and open my mouth, the tears start flowing. There are horrors that you must not know. I don't want the sunlight to die in your eyes. As perfect a world as this would be in perpetual shadow, I can't let you fade away. Have I been struggling with this conflict all my life? It's like I've discovered a beat that I've been trotting to since the beginning of time. I'm not sure if I want you dancing to that same bone-skin drum. Something precious would be lost. Something precious has been lost.
I see your face when you think I'm not looking, and there is something sad there. There is something that wants to tell me a secret both terrible and beautiful all at once. But you can't speak any more than myself. You fear that my ears wouldn't belong to the husband you married, and they don't. We're becoming shades of what we once were. Luna's symphony has stripped me of colors, but you? You're warmer and rosier than ever. Why can't I touch you and feel you like I once did? The love is there, but the life is draining away like moisture on a windowsill.
The sun is setting. Luna hasn't called me. I need to go for a walk. You will understand. At least I hope you will. I have to go somewhere. You love me. You adore me. She adored her beloved too, and even her beloved had to go. Twilight's Requiem. Desolation and dead notes. A pool of frost, enveloping, like an endless choir of banshees.
I have to go somewhere, dear Penumbra, or else I will die.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
May the Thirty-First, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I have multiple bruises, and each one of them stings. You didn't believe me when I told you how I got them. You thought that I had made the story up. Right now, I can't explain things better. I can't afford to in this time of tribulation. Regardless, I must write the truth down. Maybe you'll understand when time has gone by, when you summon the strength to read these records I've written.
I met with Crescent Shine late this morning. He didn't want to see me. He was too busy. Every member of the Night Guard was busy, and that was precisely why I wanted to see him.
When I was inside Luna's wing of the Palace last week, I could have sworn I heard marching. I didn't have the strength nor sanity at the time to investigate the noise, but I did today. I do not like what I discovered. Something has happened to the multiple sarosians who have flocked here to Canterlot. More than three-fourths of them have joined the Night Guard. All of this rapid induction has transpired in less than a week's time. This is not only unprecedented; it's downright frightening.
I've been even further flabbergasted upon discovering what tune they used to march to. It was the sixth elegy, the one that Princess Luna and I personally wrote down just days ago. The song had been transmitted to a record, and it was being broadcast throughout the courtyards of the lunar wing. Every guard pony was marching to it, their leather wings lined up in perfect synchronization. I admire Crescent Shine's authority and command as Captain of the Guard, but not even he has the power to hold sway over so many ponies. No mortal could have taught these new recruits to function as a unit so swiftly.
I know what's happening here. The sixth elegy has taken hold of these ponies. Something dredged from the depths of darkness is controlling them, empowering them, and it's my fault for helping Luna bring it to the surface of this world. These sarosians hear the incessant beat, and it speaks invisible secrets to their hearts. But do they hear the chorus? Do they hear her undying voice? Has the cold wriggled its way into their lungs as it has into mine?
I tried to tell Crescent Shine that what was happening here was wrong. He refused to hear my words. He's changed. Something about him is hollow, lacking, like the shell that Luna herself has become. All of my life, I have gotten along with my cousin. Now, it is as though I'm staring into the polished marble of a sepulcher. I tried to reason with him. I tried to get him to see what was happening, but how could I? I only know so much as it is.
Where I'm easily confused, he is easily frustrated, and after my last frenzied attempt to grab his attention, he grabbed me--physically--and threw me to the ground. I was too shocked to register his bucking hooves until a pair of lieutenants rushed over to lift him off my battered body. He shouted something. He called me a "traitor" and a "coward" and threatened to do horrible things to you, Penumbra, which is why I didn't tell you too many details when you gazed with shocked eyes upon my beaten complexion.
You mistook my silence for something else, and you turned a cold shoulder to me, colder than the elegy of Desolation. I can't blame you for being mad. I could never blame you. I just want these elegies to be finished. Somehow, I feel... I know... that everything will be alright once the Nocturne is finished. The cold and the music and the madness will stop. I will be able to explain things to you then. And if I can't, what will there be left to write about?
This journal: I feel that it means more than I had ever intended it to. I must guard it carefully, for fear that somepony like Crescent Shine--or whatever spirit may be possessing him--might do something terrible to it, and then to us, dear Penny.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the First, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I love you so much, Penumbra. I love you more than life itself.
I write this in glorious affirmation, because I fear that saying it out loud no longer holds the same sway over your countenance. Today you crawled up next to me in bed and you held me dearly. You sobbed for over an hour. I tried to dry your tears, but you batted my forelimbs away from your face. You told me that you just wanted me to hold you. If only every moment of my life was so simple, so gorgeous. I complied sincerely, and you nuzzled me, murmuring and whimpering how sorry you were for being angry the past few days. You said that you were simply confused. I already knew that. But more than anything, I knew that I loved you anyway, and shall continue loving you. You've waited for me all these years, and I shall forever wait for you.
You said that you understood that I couldn't explain everything. You were merely scared, for this was the first time in our lives that the scholar you married couldn't put something into digestible words. I tried to solace you by saying that some songs require the sound to carry their meaning far more than the lyrics. I don't think this made you feel any better, so I kissed you and held you even closer. Sweet jasmine.
It was then that you finally told me what had brought you there. We had just been delivered a letter from the Night Guard. Crescent Shine was either too busy or too angry to come see us personally. Whatever the case, I'm to report to Princess Luna as soon as possible. Our time together, however precious, has once again been curtailed.
You didn't want me to go. I didn't want to go either. But we both knew what the Night Guard would do to us if I didn't comply with her Majesty. You were scared. I tried not to look scared. I kissed you, and then I asked you what it was that you wanted to tell me. I knew that something had been troubling you, something that you were too nervous to touch. Then you looked even more scared. The colors in your cheeks burned brighter. I knew you were trying to keep something secret from me, but enough of my senses had woken from the cold to remember the tiniest of your quirks.
You dismissed my inquiry with a smile. You nuzzled me and told me that I would learn the truth by the time I returned. I've never before had a better incentive to face the darkest night of my life. Whatever writing the last elegy will entail, I am no longer afraid. I have you to come back to. All of this madness and confusion will end. I promise you this, my dearest Penny. I love you and I promise you: everything will be tranquil once again.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Third, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
There are ponies marching and performing drills outside the Palace. In the lunar wing, nopony would imagine so. Here, it is deathly quiet. All of the guards are gone. They and the servants have been dismissed from these halls. It is quite literally just me and the Princess, alone, surrounded by musical instruments. Every breath and plucked string and murmur between us is louder than the voice that brought about Creation. All the while, the Nightbringer rests in the thick of our invention, like a judge from the past who's about to witness the first newly written song in millennia.
Princess Luna is in another world. I feel like I'm working alone, for she is merely a hollow outline of an alicorn that floats around me. When she speaks, it's as if I'm listening to a voice from beyond a great, obsidian wall. She says something, and it sounds terribly like the title of a song, the one and only song, the last song.
"Dawn's Advent," she calls it. I am enraptured at the name. Tears are coming to my eyes, and I haven't even written a single note. I feel a great darkness coming, but suddenly I'm no longer trembling. I think about the forbidden glow of the morning. I think about the sunlight in your eyes. I'm coming home to you, dear Penumbra. There's one last elegy, and I am coming home to you.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Fourth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I thought that we were done, but Luna's complexion says otherwise. She sits in the middle of her room like a statue, a ghastly gargoyle carved out of the blackest stone. I tell her that our task is finished. I tell her that we've written the last elegy. We are done with the project. The "Nocturne of the Firmaments" is complete.
She doesn't look even remotely capable of believing me.
What is there left to do? She stares past me. Her eyes are locked on the Nightbringer.
Dear heavens. She wants to perform it. She wants to play the song on the timeless instrument, the leftover fossil from the Creation of the World. But as long as I stare at her, she refuses to move a muscle. Is she sick? Has a terrible, otherworldly ailment finally consumed my Liege?
Could she be afraid? Could she suspect that there sits before us a horizon too ominous to contemplate crossing? Then why would we have come so far? What was the point of this exercise?
The hallways are empty. There are ponies marching outside to an incessant beat. I hear the rattling of chains in the distance, rising, like a sea of rust and sorrow. She misses her beloved. I don't want you to miss me too. If something doesn't happen soon, I'll be stuck here, frozen in place like Luna, lodged into a position that affords a mortal no rest, no peace, and no chance to see the mare that he loves ever again.
I write this because I did something brash. I reached over, and I touched the onyx surface of the Nightbringer with my very own hoof. When I did so, I looked over at Luna, and her Majesty was looking at me.
It was then that I understood. She is the audience. She's always been the audience. This symphony was written for her. I know why she needed me all this time, and why the four musicians were teleported here and away again with the whimsical spell of the "Song of Gathering." She didn't trust them, but she trusts me.
I no longer have the energy to question my place in this. I want this to be over. I want to see you. I want the music to end. For that to happen, the music must also begin.
May you, Penny, and any other pony who reads these records forgive this sarosian mortal for desecrating the holy Nightbringer. But I must do this. I must lay down the sound stones. I must play the elegies. The Nocturne must be heard, for its first time and its last time.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
It's so cold. It's so very cold. There were voices, muffled and screaming. Chains formed a tunnel that rattled all around me. I was swimming somewhere. Luna was nowhere to be found. I awoke in a puddle on the floor of the palace hallway. I was numb. I couldn't move. I still can't move. I'm in my quarters. How did I get here? There's a fire; I must have built it. It's large and blazing, toasting my skin. I can barely feel my skin. There's something black in the corner. The Nightbringer? Why do I still have it? Can't think. Can hardly breathe. So cold.
-Comethoof
?????
Still cold. My head hurts. I hear a melody. It is endless. I recognize it. It's the "Prelude to Shadows." I performed that, didn't I? I performed many elegies. The Prelude and the Bolero and the March and...
The last thing I remembered playing was the "Threnody of Night." Then everything went black. Luna disappeared. The world disappeared. I disappeared.
But I am here now. I'm here with the cold, the dying fire, the music in my ears, and the Nightbringer. Where is everypony?
Something just thundered. The walls are shaking. Is it something outside? I need to go look, but I'm afraid to. So cold. Freezing. Penny, forgive me. Penny, something horrible has happened. I'm so cold, Penny. So cold.
-Alabaster
?????
Ponies are dying. I have seen their bodies. Blood bathes the walls and floors of the Royal Palace. Luna's nowhere to be seen. I hear screams announcing her voice, and they are full of horror and anger. We must be at war. I do not think I can make it out of this Palace alive. Anypony who reads this, search my saddlebag. I have the Nightbringer. Take it and keep it safe from evil.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
My cousin is a murderer. I saw him slay another guard with my own eyes. What is Crescent Shine doing? He's not alone. The Night Guard are flying with him. They are setting fire to rooftops. They are killing ponies. No, it's more than that. They are killing all non-sarosians. This is a bloodbath. I must get--
?????
So many fires. So bright. I am freezing. I see my own breath. I am hyperventilating. I've thrown up twice. I've never been to a battlefield. It smells like singed hair and vomit. Canterlot burns. Ponies are dying in the street. Those still alive are wailing out loud. They are all cursing a name, one name: Luna's name. Her Majesty has committed a terrible atrocity. She's turned against Equestrian kind. Why? I was just with her hours ago, performing the Nocturne. What has happened to her? Why is she destroying the capital of her kingdom?
So cold. I'm writing this to a holocaustal fire. Night is falling, but I do not feel comfort. I'm scared to show my face, but I must. If I can get the Nightbringer to Celestia, then maybe she can do something about this turn of events. But I do not know how long I will last as soon as I show my sarosian face. My brothers and sisters have shed blood in the name of the night. It's as if they are all possessed, and Princess Luna's madness is leading them.
-Comethoof
?????
I've found members of the Royal Guard. They aren't sarosian. Upon seeing me, they were briefly startled, but they appear to mean me no harm. I gave them the Nightbringer. We're holed up in what remains of the city library. Just weeks ago, I was studying here in peace. Now everything is cinder and flame. There are bodies covered in sheets behind me. I hear the Captain talking about an evacuation route. I must know if you're okay, Penumbra. I must--
They're looking at me strangely. Their faces.
Something is wrong.
-Alabaster
?????
My name is Doctor Alabaster Comethoof. I am thirty-seven winters old. I have a degree in historical mysticism and advanced music theory at the Whinniepeg University. I have a wife named Penumbra Comethoof. We both live in the Midnight District. Please, help me. Help her. I beseech whoever reads this.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
I keep showing the guards the last page. I know I've written the words down. I've seen them. They can't read a single letter. It's like there is no hoofwriting at all. I try to explain who I am to them, and then their faces return to the same blank expression.
What's happening? Why doesn't anypony pay attention to what I'm saying? These are trained guards. These are--
We're being attacked.
-Alabaster
?????
The battle is on the other side of the city. I'm safe here. It's still deathly cold. There are other ponies huddled here with me. Every ten minutes, they look at me with shocked expressions. It's like I've emerged from the shadows over and over again. I've told them my name at least five times. This can't be a joke. We're at war. It's no time for sick humor. Did Luna cast a spell on the city? Are all sarosians empowered by some sort of magically empowered amnesia? I try showing the ponies my journal. None of them see a single word I've written, even if I write in large bold letters. There's more here than just a civil war. I have the Nightbringer. I have the elegies stuck in my head. Oh dear heaven, did I do this? Did I start all of this madness? Did I--?
?????
I am bleeding. I am in pain. I still must write.
Several ponies just finished letting their frustrations out on me. They took one look at my slitted eyes and pale coat and immediately thought I was part of Luna's murderous army. They bucked me across the cobblestone street. They tore my moonsilk cloak into tatters. They called me every horrible name I've ever been teased with since birth, only now with venomous hatred. They promised to kill me, along with "Nightmare Moon." Is that her name now? I look at the flames and smoke that have gathered above Canterlot, and somehow I can believe it.
They stopped beating me up, but not for want of my asking. They gazed at me in the same stupor that had overwhelmed the guards. I felt a chill of invisible frost across my limbs. I tried to get up, and then they took notice of me. Their anger repeated, as if seeing me for the first time. The beating repeated itself, just as violently. Then, when I was bleeding far too much to see, they fell into their amnesiac spell again.
That's when I ran away. I took the Nightbringer with me. It would be no safer in the hooves of those brutes than it would be in Crescent Shine's possession. I limped through the crumbled, war-struck districts of Canterlot. This beautiful city is decaying from the inside out. It's all happening so swiftly.
For fear of my life, I've holed myself up in a half-collapsed infirmary. I've taken advantage of the tools left here to heal myself. Still, it doesn't stop the pain throbbing in my extremities. It hurts even more to write, but I must commit these horrid memories to paper. Something terrible is happening, and I fear I may be the cause of it all. I performed the Nocturne. I saw all of the warning signs, and yet in blind reverence and worship of the Goddess of Shadows, I took the Nightbringer into my own hooves and played a new and altogether dangerous symphony. I should have known better. I should have thought with my mind and not with my heart. I should...
Oh dearest Penny. Where are you in this madness? Where are you in this dark bloodshed of Nightmare Moon? I must find you. It's so cold, and the city is still collapsing all around me. But I must find you, my love. I must know that you are safe.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I only know what day it is from a passing coroner's muttering answer. Two days have passed since I played the Nocturne, and half of Canterlot lies in ruins. They are combing the streets, piling bodies into wooden carts. There's a mass grave on the east side of the city gates. I can smell the horrible fires from here. They must prevent plague and infestation at all costs. This is, without a doubt, the worst disaster since the Discordant Era.
I must find you. I found a bundle of blankets in the collapsed infirmary. It's not moonsilk, and I already feel my coat hairs burning from the midday light, but it hardly matters. I must find you, Penumbra. I must get to you.
The attacking forces were sarosian. It's logical to assume that the Midnight District is the one place they didn't ravage. I pray that you're still there. I pray that you're safe in the apartment, that you've locked yourself in the center-most part of the building. You were always resourceful in Whinniepeg. Right now, I have no choice but to believe in your tenacity.
There're explosions in the distance. Luna's forces were driven out of the city hours ago. I fear they might be attempting a return siege. I must be swift. It hurts to move, but I must get to you.
-Alabaster
June the Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Dear heavens. There are fires in the Midnight District. Citizens of Canterlot have formed a militia, and they are taking their frustrations out on the sarosian neighborhood. This is worse than I thought. I must get in. I must find a way. Stay safe, my love. I'm coming to find you.
-Alabaster
June the Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I am Alabaster. Your Alabaster. Your husband. We were married under a gazebo on the Whinniepeg University Campus grounds. You wore lavenders in your hair, your most beloved flower. You smelled of jasmine, my favorite scent. Please, my love, tell me that you read these words. Please tell me that you remember me.
-Alabaster
June the Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I know you.
I know you and I love you.
Look into these eyes.
Feel these ears.
You always loved to play with my ears.
Dearest Penumbra, it is I.
It is your husband.
Read these words.
Tell me that you know me.
Please.
-Alabaster
June the Seventh, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I am in our apartment, just a room away from you. But you don't know it. You won't expect it. You'll shuffle out of the bedroom to check on the carnage outside. You'll see me. You'll gasp in shock. You'll cry and beg that I not bite you with my sarosian fangs and drink of your blood. You'll tell me to go back to the Mare in the Moon, to rejoin the army of death and destruction. And just as your hysteria reaches a fever point, you'll teeter and collapse, as if overcome with a great dizziness. I'll disappear for the sake of your sanity, and you'll wander back into your room, alone and confused. Then you'll come back out a few moments later. You'll see me, and the whole nightmare will repeat itself.
I know you. You are the pony that I fell in love with, the pony who fell in love with me. You are here. I can smell your sweet jasmine. I can see your golden complexion. And yet, you are not here.
You are not here. Dearest Penny, where has the song taken you? For I now know that it is the song. I know that this is all the song. The Nocturne has separated us as far as the east is from the west. I don't dare try and hug my wife, or else you'll think me a sarosian pillager come to defile you.
It is so cold here, colder than in the rubble-strewn streets, colder than the Palace halls where the holocaust began. I sit here, slumped against the wall with the Nightbringer by my side. I gaze out beyond the balcony. Your precious greenhouse is smashed, much like our lives. Smoke rises endlessly from the rooftops of the Midnight District and the neighborhoods beyond. Equestria is sundered. The two alicorn sisters are at war with one another. What has become of us? What has become of our future?
I would write more, but I hear your hoofsteps. A geist painted with the colors of my wife is coming out to shriek at me once more. Maybe things will be different if you see me cry this time. But I know better.
-Alabaster
June the Ninth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Luna's forces have been driven away by Celestia's Royal Guard. Word on the street is that Nightmare Moon's army--the Lunar Empire--has taken over the northern territories of Equestria. That means Whinniepeg is in the clutches of the Mare in the Moon. I no longer have any home to return to.
It's not like I could. I tried marching out to the outer gates of Canterlot. I found myself incapable of going beyond Twentieth Street. As soon as I reached the furthest edge of the capital, I felt my body overwhelmed by intense cold, as if my very own blood was freezing inside of me. I tried heading towards the opposite edge of town. As soon as I reached the western cliff-faces, I felt the same invisible wall of cold assaulting me.
I'm sensing a pattern. I judge that I have less than two miles in either direction to walk before this freezing sensation I'm constantly feeling intensifies to an unbearable degree. But what is the center? After much exploration and experimentation through the ruined streets of Canterlot, I judge that the Royal Palace is the heart of my new prison. More specifically, the center is Princess Luna's former place of residence. It makes sense. After all, that's where I performed the Nocturne with the Nightbringer. There must be some sort of connection.
I do not know what to do now, Penny. I've spent the last twelve hours hovering about our apartment as a ghost. I stopped bothering to interrupt you, for fear that my constant and startling presence would only give you a heart attack. At least ten times now we have "met," and on each occasion it was as though you had never met me before. I know that this couldn't possibly be an act. There is no more sunshine left in your eyes. Nothing in your spirit recognizes me. I am but a shadow to you, a shadow that loves you no less than he did the day that we said our vows. At least I remember them, and that's all that matters. For it means that I must find a way to undo what's been done. Luna and I ushered a great darkness into this world. Surely, with the Nightbringer, I should be more than capable of restoring what's been lost. Perhaps I will even be able to salvage the Princess from this "Nightmare Moon" that has taken hold of her spirit.
Yes. Yes, it's coming to me now. A possible solution. If everypony in this city forgets me--including my own wife--then it means I'm speaking to the wrong equines. I must meet with an immortal alicorn. I must speak with Princess Celestia directly. She's been alive since the dawn of time, when the Cosmic Matriarch's voice was powerful enough to alter reality. A piece of that very same magic is in my possession. I hold the Nightbringer. If I hoof it over to Celestia directly, she may be able to undo this horror. She can finish the nightmare, and you and I will be reunited, my beloved Penny.
Rumor is that she's returned to the capital to assess the damage and strategize a counter-attack to the new Lunar Empire. I have no time to waste. Please continue to wait for me a little bit longer, Penumbra. I shall return to you, and together we will experience a new dawn together, refreshed and resurrected unto hope.
-Alabaster
June the Tenth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I am outside the gates to the Palace. It's less cold here. I feel energized. It's now or never. This cursed state I'm in: it should afford me a mystical form of stealth. If I pace myself carefully, I should be able to take advantage of each group of guards and their amnesiac spells. Sneaking my way into Celestia's war room will be akin to skipping across a pond over a series of sporadically placed stones. The only thing I must be cautious of is my tenuous bravery. I've never liked conflict, and this is undoubtedly going to involve coming to blows--or near blows--with many a guard unhappy to see a sarosian in the flesh, winged or not. And if all else fails, I have the Nightbringer with me to win their favor, or at least distract them. Celestia, give me strength. I'm coming to deliver you the key to Equestria's salvation. I only hope I'm not too late.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Twelfth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I'm still recovering from the terrible shock that the explosion caused. My ears ring constantly. I'm lucky I haven't gone deaf.
Sadly, I never got to meet with Princess Celestia. As soon as I arrived at her Palace, a gigantic explosion engulfed the military wing Apparently Princess Luna had anticipated her transformation to Nightmare Moon, and the lengths to which her older sister would resist her. Already, the Canterlot Guard is describing the bomb as something of sarosian design. The Lunar Empire has stooped to an all-new low. It wasn't enough that Nightmare Moon shed the blood of innocents in the streets of Canterlot. She's now resorted to attempting the outright murder of her sibling.
Yes, I do emphasize "attempting," for as nefarious as Luna's tactic was, it ultimately failed. Princess Celestia is alive. There's not a single scratch on her. I wish I could say the same about her military cabinet. Several key generals in the Canterlot Defense Initiative are dead. This moment in Equestrian History keeps getting darker and darker.
I've since returned to the apartment, hanging in the shadows of the balcony, encumbered by the stench of death, anchored to your distant and vacant stares. I swear you've seen me at least half-a-dozen times since I've returned, but it's almost as if you no longer register my existence, whether you remember me or not. I don't remember a time when I've seen you so detached, so full of depression and ennui.
How alone you must be, my beloved. Your husband no longer exists, and I'm starting to think he never has as well. Everything I write turns invisible to ponies around me. I've tried spelling my name out in the street, knocking things over, setting rubble on fire in a desperate attempt to get survivors to notice me. Every physical thing I've done is either ignored or excused as freakish happenstance. There's no denying it: I've been magically robbed of the ability to prove my existence. Ponies remember me for a few minutes or a few hours at most, but then I am once again nothing.
I've tried educating you as well, Penumbra. I've eased your frightened spirit, sat next to you, and stared into your eyes as I told you my life story, our life story, again and again. I know that the most you can commit to is a hollow belief, an acceptance of something that could--at best--be the utter fabrication of a desperate, sarosian stranger. I can share with you the knowledge of our legacy, but I can never spark within you the sincerity or the love. Our union has vanished, and I fear that your joy has gone with it. With each subsequent moment I reveal myself to you, you respond with less and less vigor, as if the part of you that recognizes death and decay is the only thing that remembers me.
When we last were together, there was a color to your coat, a rosiness to your cheeks. I knew that you wanted to tell me something, like I wanted to tell you so many dear things. Now, I fear that we may never get that chance. I don't know what's to become of me; I hardly care. I stand here and I look at you in the shadows, and I see you becoming one with the darkness. Could a part of you be searching for your husband, for that soul you once loved in the nights of Whinniepeg, that you are now drifting into bitter blackness in a blind attempt to find that part of you forever missing?
Why don't you leave the apartment? Why don't you abandon the empty bowers of the Midnight District and join the other ponies in the relief effort? There is nothing for you here, Penny. I don't know why you stay. I want to help you. I try to help you. But you barely have the energy to move anywhere. Are you sick? Did the elegies curse you too? Are we so joined, so connected, that a part of me dragged you into the same depths of frost and horror that have consumed me?
I can't stand to see you like this, but I don't know what to do. My attempt to meet with Princess Celestia has failed. After a swift ceremony to honor the fallen, she's left Canterlot to make her camp on the new frontline just beyond Blue Valley. Civil War is upon us. Equestria is burning, and I've lost the love of my life. I'd give everything up just to be sure that you don't lose yourself, Penumbra. But I don't know what to do.
Blessed Matriarch, I just don't know what to do.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Eighteenth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
Something doesn't make sense.
In the depths of my new existence, I found myself turning to the Nightbringer for comfort. Plucking the strings of the magical instrument--it would seem--awoke something inside of me. I wonder why I hadn't thought of utilizing the corporeal song of the Cosmic Matriarch before.
Something doesn't make sense about the explosion that went off in Celestia's Palace. For one thing, the expressed nature of the bomb doesn't match traditional sarosian design. Furthermore, how could Luna have found the time to set up the explosive? During the time it was said to have been planted, she was writing the Nocturne with me.
I don't know why I'm thinking of this all of the sudden. Again, I think it might be due to my possession of the Nightbringer. Carrying it empowers me, in spite of the frozen pariah that I have become. I feel as if there is something I'm overlooking, something that I can and must discover.
I look back and I realize that I never did quite perform the entire Nocturne. At least, if I did, I lost memory of the event immediately upon playing the "Threnody of Night." Did I perform "Twilight's Requiem," the "Desolation Elegy," and "Dawn's Advent" afterwards? Or did Princess Luna finish the rest of the symphony in my stead? If so, why is it that I possess the Nightbringer and not her?
If there's anything that you've taught me about science, Penumbra, it's that a true scientist knows the importance of repeating an experiment to achieve results. That is what I must do right now. If I never got as far as performing "Twilight's Requiem," then I must make that my immediate goal. However, I can't do that here, not in the midst of this pain and destruction. I must return to the place that the experiment began. I must return to Princess Luna's wing of the Palace, assuming it still stands after the terrible explosion that the bomb caused.
I only regret that I must leave you to do this. It's not something that will be easy, nor is waiting around here and watching you suffer. And you are suffering, Penny. There's no denying it, but there's no explaining it either. Your body's growing weak. Your limbs are shuffling slower and slower. I don't know why this is happening to you, and Celestia knows I've done all I can to nurse you back to health. I've appeared to you under the guise of a Canterlot relief worker. Naturally, it's taken a great deal of tact on my behalf to make you look past my sarosian exterior, but I've managed to get you to see sunlight, to eat, even to visit the local infirmary.
Nothing seems to be working. All I've done for the past two days is hover around you, a ghost helpless to bring healing to the mare that he so lovingly haunts.
That's why I know I must take this drastic step. If Celestia can't help me, and if Luna is now a phantom of rampant destruction, then I must take the solution to this curse in my own hooves. If I can unlock the venomous power of the Nocturne, through the power of these last unplayed elegies, then maybe--just maybe--I can cleanse the taint that has turned me invisible, and has rendered you an invalid.
Not once will I stop writing. This journal may appear invisible to everypony, but I trust that it won't be that way forever. Equestria must know what has actually transpired here. If I am to take the blame for Princess Luna becoming Nightmare Moon, then so be it. I don't care what happens to me, so long as you are restored to your health, my beloved Penny. I shall bring you back. I shall bring everything back. This, I promise.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
June the Twenty-First, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It's taken a great deal of physical and mental effort, but I've arrived once more at the Palace. I employed the same tactics I anticipated using when I first attempted to reach Celestia. I only hope an explosive doesn't go off once again under my nose. Surely fate can't be that damnably cruel.
I've snuck my way into the Lunar Wing. Just ten minutes ago, I arrived at Princess Luna's quarters. I'm amazed at how untouched everything is. Things are in the same disarray as when I was last here. The same books are splayed open across the floor and tables. The same scrolls and notes are dangling off of the Princess' workbench. There's even a stain on the floor in the hall outside where I awoke in a mysterious puddle of water eleven days ago.
The details of my surroundings aren't important. What matters is that I've returned. It's remarkably warm here in the center of my accursed prison. I have a fresh set of sound stones laid down in a circle. I'm ready to finish the elegies. So, with the Nightbringer in hoof, I prepare to continue from where I left off. The melody of "Twilight's Requiem" is already surging through my beleaguered mind. After a solid week of horror, it's come to this, to where it all began.
May history show that my endeavors have been worth it.
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
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?????
I woke up two hours ago to my forehead covered in blood. My head felt like it was splitting in two. I brought a hoof to my horn, and shrieked at the scorching contact. It was like my magical leylines were burning a torch at the end of my cranium. I glanced down at my journal, and I saw that I had furiously scribbled two pages worth of words, all repeating the same phrase over and over again. No wonder my horn is nearly burnt out. How quickly did I write those words, and for what purpose? Was I entranced yet again?
It's taken me several minutes of resting and meditating before I could summon the telekinesis to write once again. And yet, I don't know what to write about. I played "Twilight's Requiem." That much I know. What happened afterwards is a blur. All I remember is a sudden and irreversible migraine and...
Must stop writing for a moment.
-Comethoof
?????
This is incredible. The books all around me--the ancient and mysterious tomes that Princess Luna had gathered from all across Equestria--are no longer blank. There are words on them. I don't know why I never saw them before. They shimmer with an otherworldly luminescence. The language predates Basic Equine, and yet I can read them as if I was taught their syntax from my foalhood. They speak of shadows, souls, and songs between the Firmaments. They also speak of a singer, as beautiful as she is dreadful. She guards over the forgotten. She mourns for her beloved, who is never to return. What's more, when I glance back at the last two pages of my own journal, I find that the repeated phrases I've written glow with the same supernatural quality as the words of Luna's tomes.
Wait. Could it be...?
No time to write. I must read.
-Comethoof
?????
My head hurts again. I went back over the last few entries I've written. I read the parts where I detailed the bomb that blew up before I could meet with Princess Celestia. It was then that something happened. I recognized the words that I had written--or at least thought I had written. But then, I started to see through them, beyond them, as if my vision was being siphoned down a deathly funnel of ice and chains and lightning.
I was unprepared for the flood of memories that assaulted me. I fell to the floor, the room shimmering from the burning glow of my horn as the truth bled back into my leylines. There was no explosion. There was no bomb. I met with Princess Celestia. I know this. I know this because it happened. I snuck past the guards. I slipped past the Sun Goddess' amnesiac line of defense. I stood before her and her entire military cabinet with the Nightbringer in my hooves. I told her the truth. I told her about the Nocturne. What's more--when she asked me what happened--I felt it was necessary to show her. In the end, for whatever reason, I was motivated to perform the symphony once more, in her presence instead of Luna's.
What resulted was the destruction of that particular wing of the Palace. But it wasn't a sarosian bomb. Rather, it was Princess Celestia herself. I am writing down the absolute truth here, the truth that I now know as clear as day. Before I had even reached the Threnody, something seeded deep in Princess Celestia's spirit responded violently to the Nocturne, and pure solar energy burst outward from her being, as if she was attacking everything in sight. I was too shocked by her blatant destruction to even scream. When I came to, I believed that it was all because of a sarosian bomb, and that's exactly what I wrote in my journal... or what I thought I wrote.
But obviously I wasn't alone. Everypony inside and outside of Canterlot--including those witnesses who were there to witness Celestia and the military advisers who died around her--believe that it was a bomb that destroyed that part of the palace. It wasn't just my memory that was altered, but everypony's memory. History was rewritten, just like the Nocturne was brought into being. But something isn't quite right about that either. Why is it that these memories are becoming clear to me? Does it have something to do with all of the glowing letters I now see? Did "Twilight's Requiem" bring this about?
There is only one way to find out. I have more reading to do. More specifically, my entry about the first performance of the "Nocturne of the Firmaments." Will that also have changed, I wonder?
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
Every time I try to breathe, I only want to vomit. Can't write. Can't think. Must wait. Must recover. Will write. Just not now. Not now.
Blessed Matriarch, protect me, protect us all. -Me
?????
I just woke up. I wish I was asleep. I wish the nightmare wasn't real. But it is real. It's burned into my brain. There is no removing it now. There is no forgetting the truth, not for me at least. I have the ears for the songless, eyes for the unblessed, hooves for the souls enslaved by the eternally forgotten now.
When I wrote that I woke up after the performance of the Nocturne in a puddle of water, I only wished that was the only truth. Reality is far darker than all the shadows of time mixed together.
I have been someplace. I have been someplace cold and terrible and without measure.
I was alone there, and yet I wasn't. There were bodies--shells that once housed souls--and they were strung together in clusters of rusted chains stretching onward into infinity. Between the eternal thunder and flashes of lightning, seas of ice-cold water spun like cyclones between platforms of impenetrable metal. There were ponies strapped to these purgatorial machines, and they were too busy singing a haunted chorus to even register the lengths of their torture.
And then she was there. She has always been there. She has always been watching us. Her beloved came and went, and yet she stayed there--in the limbo between Firmaments--wailing her endless song.
For it is her song. The "Nocturne of the Firmaments" is her song. It has always been her song. It was written for her, to protect her, to imprison her, and to protect us. And when Princess Luna and I dredged this forsaken symphony up from the forsaken depths, we were not writing it. We were discovering it.
Princess Luna... to think that I worshipped her and Celestia as the only two precious alicorns this world has ever known. All of that allegiance feels hollow now, stripped of meaning and purpose, which is the very crux of my current despair.
The truth is, there have not always been two alicorns. There have been three. When the Cosmic Matriarch shattered herself, she became four entities.
There is a third alicorn. There is a second daughter, a middle child. Princess Celestia guards the earth. Princess Luna guards the sky. And she...
She guards the unsung. She is the grand Queen of the Firmaments, between the Firmaments. She holds the universe together by tearing it all apart. I don't know if Princess Luna ever intended to do it, but in her ten years of seclusion--the Age of Shadows--she meditated too deeply, and chanced upon discovering this magical barrier between worlds. I don't know what empowered her to osmotically absorb the forbidden knowledge of this place. Perhaps it was the same connection she's always shared with the fabric of the Cosmic Matriarch's being. But she reached out to her sibling, and whatever it was that reached back poisoned her.
I was part of that bridge of communication. With the Nightbringer as my key, I unlocked the gates to the world of forgotten anguish. Princess Luna, a soul empowered by magic, could not allow herself to crumble completely under the force of the unsung realm. I imagine that must be why she shattered into two. The Goddess of Shadows I once worshipped had become no more. The seeds of her deconstruction had been planted long before she summoned me, but the "Nocturne of the Firmaments" is what finally pushed her over the edge. She's become Nightmare Moon, and now she spreads destruction over the land of Equestria. I don't know what the purpose is in this. Perhaps by razing the landscape, she seeks to paint a picture that resembles the landscape of the unsung. Perhaps by covering the world in endless night, she intends to turn Equestria into a blank canvas upon which she'll illustrate the forsaken song forevermore.
All I know is that Luna must have gone into this exploration in the good faith of reconnecting with something that was once lost and forgotten. But when Celestia was exposed to even a fraction of the truth--her ears filled with the unsung symphony, her reaction was necessarily violent, an instinctual effort to silence the instrumental and keep the barrier between the Firmaments sealed.
And it was then that she did the rest. She sang reality into a different shape to patch up the wound I had made. If the same thing had happened with Luna, then perhaps I wouldn't be here right now, cursed by the same mystical effluence that keeps the unsung out of everypony's collective memory. But it's too late. The damage has been done. Luna's been transformed by the same terrible sorrow that should only populate her realm, the land between Firmaments. What it's produced in this world is the terrible Nightmare Moon.
Who knows what other horrors lie lurking in the depths, but I fear that it's not worth exploring any further. I may not be an immortal alicorn, but I possess the Nightbringer. What's more, I contain the forsaken knowledge that was never meant to be unlocked by pony minds. As a result, I am a living doorway, invisible and intangible, a fleeting thought that passes through a random pony's head and then is gone like ash in the wind. The fissure between Firmaments now lies within me, for "Twilight's Requiem" has unlocked the truth for my eyes and my eyes alone. And as long as I am the junction for all things that exist and all things that are forgotten, I am but a bodiless spirit, doomed to haunt the permeable Firmaments, forever nameless and unsung.
What options do I have? I could perform the "Threnody of Night" again. But to what end? It would only launch me once more into her domain. I would be her puppet, just like every other pony chained to the platforms in that world of thunder and chaos. Just where did those shackled equines come from? Were they souls just like me who had been so dreadfully cursed in the past? Did they write all of the myriad of books surrounding me in Luna's study? Am I just another doomed soul in a long line of pariahs, linked together by forsaken thoughts like rusted chains suspending the world above oblivion?
Blessed Matriarch, I can't think. I can't even breathe. I must go someplace, anyplace, just so that I'm away from this room, away from these books, away from these glowing words that shine with her colorless color. I have seen a fate worse than death, and it's slowly biting into me with teeth as cold as ice.
I must go somewhere. I must go. I must...
-Doctor Alabaster Comethoof
?????
Good heavens. They're everywhere. I can see them now. They started fading at first, but then I took the Nightbringer and performed "Twilight's Requiem" again--unabashedly, in the streets--and they once more came into focus.
They were bodies. They were words. They were splotches of blood, names scattered with debris from the carnage. They weren't there before I performed the Requiem, but they're there now. They're all around me, all around us. Right now as I'm writing this, there's a pony hanging from a noose right above me. He's shimmering with the same aura as the re-written words in my journal, or the letters splashed across the empty tomes of Luna's study. His body is greatly decayed. I can see his skeleton, and a fine mist is wafting out--cold and vaporous. Nopony else can see him. How long has he been here? What's more, how long until she finds him and drags him into the depths where he belongs in chains, under her eternal stewardship?
When will she find me? Will it be after I'm dead, or when I've collapsed and become too weak to outrun her?
I have the Nightbringer. I have my knowledge. I exist, and I must find a way out of this. Maybe it's worth the risk of playing the "Desolation's Elegy" and "Dawn's Advent." Maybe things will be different if I actually manage to play the entire Nocturne straight through. Maybe I can still...
Wait, what day is it?
-Comethoof
June the Twenty-Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
It's been five days. Blessed Matriarch, five days have gone by. How could I have been so foolish to have been entranced that long?
Dearest Penny, I'm coming for you.
-Alabaster
June the Twenty-Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
You're not at home, Penumbra. The apartment is empty. Where could you have gone in my absence? I know that fate demanded I learn what I know now, but nothing excuses my negligence in this matter.
You've been so sick. I'm worried, Penny. I don't know where you are. I must find you. I must...
A guard just flew by. I managed to flag him down. He says the former tenant of this building was taken to a field hospital in downtown two days ago. Praise Celestia. I'm coming, Penny. Please wait for me. Please wait for me, as I have always and shall always wait for you.
-Alabaster.
June the Twenty-Sixth, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
No. It doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense. Magic has rules to it. Magic can't be broken. I don't care if she can sing reality into a patchwork mosaic of what it was ever destined to be. This isn't real. All of my years of study and research...
I've screamed. I've screamed louder than those in the realm of the unsung. And yet nopony can hear me, and neither can you.
Damn Princess Luna. I don't care if the Cosmic Matriarch strikes me dead. Damn Nightmare Moon. Damn her to burning ash in the pits of Tartarus.
This doesn't make sense. It doesn't. It doesn't. It...
June the Twenty-Seventh, Year 6233 of the Harmonic Era,
I've held your hooves for the last twenty-four hours, and still they haven't moved. Every so often, a nurse strolls by, takes one look, and draws the sheet over your golden features. I've stopped fighting them. There's no point in making a scene. I just wait until she's gone, and I pull the sheet back once again. I love you. I don't ever want to stop looking at you. I don't ever want to stop holding you. I don't...
Two months, the nurses said. Two months with foal. Dearest Penumbra, why didn't you tell me? Was I that blind? Was I that encumbered by the euphoria of my new task here in Canterlot? You had to have conceived before we both set out from Whinniepeg. If I had known at the time, I would have never taken up Luna's request, Princess or not. I would have never...
It all makes sense now. I wish it didn't, but it does. Your constant lethargy. The ennui that poured out of your eyes where there was once sunlight. I had disappeared from your world. You found yourself in a stranger's house. What was more, you carried inside of you a hollow life, the seed of the unsung. How it must have poisoned you, torn you from the inside out, frozen you in your sleep and in your thoughts and in your sobs. All that made you whole, all that made us real: it was ripped from you. Why couldn't her song heal it up? Why couldn't she spare your life? Just because I was gone didn't mean you couldn't be alive, couldn't be a mother, couldn't be happy.
Now I understand. I carry the knowledge of the unsung. I am as much a danger to the fabric of reality as Luna was--before becoming Nightmare Moon changed her into a horrible despot, and yet a manageable evil. Everything that I do or say must be forgotten. Every mark I have to leave upon this world is swept away like leaves across a granite path. I must not be allowed to exist, in any fashion whatsoever.
She took our child, Penny. She took our child, and then she took you. I understand, and yet I don't understand. I can hardly write. I can only hold you and dream that all of this is just a shattered song, something that was meant to be believed in, but never real. Somewhere you are out there, invisible, as lost and as lonesome as I. We are right in front of each other, looking for each other, and all that separates us is a broken symphony.
I can patch it together. Yes, I can bring us back together again. I'm looking at these words while I'm writing them. They haven't yet transformed into the shimmering text. But that means I just need to play the Requiem again. It's the "Desolation's Elegy" that I can't seem to figure out. I remember so many things, but that instrumental has escaped my mind. Maybe it's because Princess Luna is no longer here. Maybe it's because Nightmare Moon sapped me of the notes. But it doesn't matter. I must keep searching. I have the Nightbringer. I have the Nocturne in my head. I can rewrite the song of Desolation. I just need to keep playing it over and over again, and I will reach "Dawn's Advent."
Then I will find you, dearest Penny. This world is a facade, as fake and full of dust as this miserable corpse lying before me, trying to convince me that it's you. Please wait for me, my beloved. You've always been so patient. I pray that I find you with your forelimbs outstretched for an embrace, instead of your body at the end of a noose. You are somewhere in this city, in this frozen prison. We are not alone. We will be together once again. We will be. We will...
-Your faithful and loving Alabaster
"From there," I said, lowering the ancient book as I stood across the library from Twilight Sparkle. "The journals become increasingly erratic. Doctor Comethoof begins to ramble. His eloquence gives way to cyclical gibberish. It's a classic descent into madness. I've been able to spot familiar terms in the midst of the garbled mess, such as 'unsung' and 'her beloved.' But most of it is merely textual chaos. Even the diagrams stop making sense. Nowhere does Comethoof bother writing down the actual music notes to the elegies, but judging from his opinion on their mystical function, I seriously doubt he would want to, even if he assumed nopony was capable of reading what he had to write."
"Well, forgive me for saying so, Miss Heartstrings..." Twilight remarked, her face scrunched in an unending look of confusion. "But I find all of this very hard to believe. Everypony knows from grade school and onwards that the Lunar Civil War started at the end of Shadow's Advent, with a horrible explosion being discharged in Princess Celestia's royal cabinet. What you're suggesting here is a complete re-write of Equestrian history!" A soft, afternoon light wafted through the windows of her library and illuminated the lines in her furrowed brow. "Furthermore, all I've seen in that book of yours is a bunch of unrelated text about Whinniepeg farming methods written in Old Equine. Are you're telling me that a 'Doctor Alabaster Comethoof's' words somehow appear magically over them?'"
"Yes. I imagine that long after he died, ponies found the journal in the streets of Canterlot where he was imprisoned. They thought the enchanted manuscript was blank, and so they cycled it through the national libraries for reprinting purposes until it became a Whinniepeg almanac several decades later."
"But none of that explains how come I can't see Comethoof's words and yet you can!" Twilight exclaimed. "You seem to suggest that it's all because of some bizarre curse that he could see invisible words. How exactly is any of that related to you?"
"As strange as it may sound, Miss Sparkle, I find this to be an extremely real circumstance. What's more, Comethoof's words have taught me more about my situation than I could ever have imagined... or have cared to."
"Situation?"
I sighed. I didn't want to tell her too much. Not now. I just wanted somepony with a penchant for history to hear me out. "Please. Tell me. What do you know about a 'Penumbra Comethoof' who lived in the Midnight District of Canterlot the very month of the Civil War's beginning?"
"Well, I'd gladly tell you, Miss Heartstrings, if only a certain assistant didn't stop dragging his tail with fetching the records I asked for!"
As if on cue, Spike waddled into the room. He muttered something under his breath and handed a dusty old scroll to Twilight. "Here you go. I still don't understand where you get off having surprise study sessions with strangers. Don't we have a dinner party to go to at Sugarcube Corner in an hour?"
"Shhh! Just hand me the scroll, Spike! This is actually rather fascinating..."
"Yeah yeah, if you say so." Spike glanced at me and did a double-take. "Oh. Hi there. Dig the swell hoodie."
"Uh huh." I glanced over at Twilight. "Anything?"
While Spike waddled away, Twilight unscrolled the parchment and read down a list of names. "Well, it does mention an earth pony by the name of 'Penumbra.'"
"Yes?" I leaned forward. "And?"
"Well, that's just it." Twilight shrugged and glanced at me. "She has no last name, married or maiden. It says here that she was living alone in a lush apartment in the upper heights of the Midnight District when Nightmare Moon's initial attacks took place."
"Any news on how she died?"
"My Old Equine is a little rusty," Twilight said, squinting as she read the words before her. "But it lists 'hemolytic anemia, as a result of malnourishment during early pregnancy...'" Slowly, she glanced up from the manuscript until her eyes met mine. Any sign of deep thought was swiftly washed away by an air of pragmatism. "Ahem. But seriously, Miss Heartstrings, this all happened a thousand years ago. That's a long time for history to be twisted by untrustworthy sources."
"Don't you find it strange that there would be a single earth pony mare living alone in a rich apartment of Canterlot, surrounded by nocturnal sarosians, with no family or spouse to provide for her? And on top of that, she dies from a simple complication of pregnancy that could very easily have been prevented by doctors who were around her at the time?"
"It was the start of the Lunar Civil War, Miss Heartstrings. Canterlot was burning. Supplies and resources were scarce."
"I know. I know." I grumbled, pacing around the library. "Nothing I do will convince you that history as we know it is wrong. Furthermore, you'll only forget whatever it is I have to say, no matter what evidence I could even provide."
Twilight squinted hard at that. "Wait. Just what are you meaning to imply?"
"I don't know, Twilight. I don't even know what to think anymore." I slid a hoof out from my hoodie's sleeve and ran it over my aching head. "I just can't help but feel as if Comethoof and I are taking the same hoofsteps. After all, he made it clear that when he went directly to Princess Celestia with the Nocturne, not only did the meeting result in a horrific discharge of magical energy, but the entire event was completely forgotten, and instead they blamed it on a sarosian explosive."
"Uhm...?" Twilight gulped nervously and trotted towards me. "Just what are you getting at?"
"Tell me, Miss Sparkle." I turned and looked at her. "How many times has Princess Celestia visited Ponyville since the Summer Sun Celebration before last?"
"Uhm... Well, let's see." Twilight scratched her chin in thought. "There was the return of Princess Luna, the tea party at Sugarcube Corner, and the Annual Running of the Leaves." She paused briefly, then blurted, "Oh! And then there was that one time when she was scheduled to visit Ponyville, but had to cancel at the last second on account of a parasprite infestation several months back." She tilted her head aside and squinted at me. "Why, Miss Heartstrings? You said you've been here in Ponyville for over a year. In all that time, you never once crossed paths with Princess Celestia?"
"That's just it, Twilight." I gulped and stared into the dusty shadows of the library. "I... can't remember..."
For the longest time, I thought this curse could be ended with a simple symphony.
Now, I'm not sure of anything anymore.
Background Pony
XI - "Unsung"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Warden, Props, theBrianJ, Razgriz, and theworstwriter
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XII - What Sound a Stone Makes | Dear Journal,
When our days come to a close, what is more important? Should we be able to remember all that's happened in our lives, or should we endeavor for other ponies to be the bearers of our legacies? Which of the two outcomes makes us more permanent... or at least feel permanent? Is it more important to be something, while sacrificing the ability to feel what it means to be that something?
Music is a time capsule, a bodiless vessel for storing both our substance and our emotion. The message that confirms our existence--no matter how harmonically framed--will always lose an element of its cohesiveness. Every pony's ears are different from another's, after all.
What matters, though, is that we make an effort. We must try our best to leave an impression if our part in this world holds any hope of leaving a mark. We are all fantastic creatures of glorious happenstance. We make sounds in this world that no rock or mountain or continent could ever hope to emulate. We deserve more than just being heard; our symphonies deserve encores.
What I must be careful of--what I must hold myself responsible for--is the risk of digging my hooves into another pony's composition. We make glorious sounds in this world, so long as they remain our sounds alone. And most of these sounds, as it turns out, can't be forced. If they must be heard, they should be respected first and foremost. When all is said and done, an encore is best enjoyed in the original composer's memory, for that is the song's purpose since its day of creation.
The roar of crashing pins echoed throughout the alley as Rarity rushed over to a series of chairs in front of one of many shiny lanes. She came to a stop, panting, and busied herself with removing a silken scarf from her neck. "So terribly sorry for being late, girls!" She smiled tiredly at her five close companions in the center of the noisy place. "But I had a mountainous pile of dresses to patch up today at the Boutique and--well--you know how it is..."
"What matters is that you're here now and I can begin properly keeping score!" Twilight Sparkle cheerfully said from where she sat at the local scoreboard. Applejack was lining herself up to chuck another ball down the lane before the other five mares as she continued, "We're only at the end of the third frame. I hope you don't mind that we had Fluttershy bowl for you the first two times."
"Rarity, I..." Fluttershy bit her lip and blushed behind a pair of loose bowling shoes in her grasp. "I may have hit the gutter once or twice..."
"Do not fret yourself, darling," Rarity said with a wave of her hoof. She looked sadly over at Twilight. "I'm here only in spirit, Twilight. I absolutely cannot toss any large balls at ungainly cudgels tonight! I spent a better part of the afternoon at Aloe and Lotus' Day Spa, and I'd hate myself forever if I were to muddy these hooves in such dreadful shoes as this place offers."
Fluttershy squeaked and dropped the shiny articles in her grasp. "I knew it! They are dirty!"
"They are not, Fluttershy! They're disinfected all the time! I promise you that they're fine!" She cleared her throat and looked at her other friend. "Rarity, nothing stopped you from bowling that one evening a week after the Gala! I thought you enjoyed yourself here in the alley!"
"That's because anything was rapturous following that most deplorable of excuses for a 'Gala,'" Rarity said with a roll of her eyes. "I know you're wanting to make a regular thing out of this... whimsical sport, Twilight. But whether we're throwing darts or playing badminton, none of it matters to me so long as I'm in your loving company." She tilted her head up with a tiny smile. "I just have to sit out this one for the time being. Next week, I'll be more than capable of dipping my hooves into the bowling water, if you pardon the pun." She sat down in a red chair beside Fluttershy. "Just wait. You'll see--Eww hew hewwww!" She shrieked and hopped out of her seat, desperately rubbing her flank. "Was that gum?! Gross gross grosssss!"
Twilight sighed. The crashing of pins filled the air yet again.
"Awwww shucks!" Applejack's ears drooped as she gazed at one remaining pin.
"Ooooooh! What's this?" Rainbow Dash orbited Applejack with a wicked grin. "Has the apple fallen far from the tree?"
"It did?!" Pinkie Pie's face popped up between them as she gasped at Applejack. "Did it fall into a chocolate lake on the way down?--Whoah!"
Applejack was shoving Pinkie out of the way to glare at Rainbow Dash. "Nopony in Ponyville has gotten a perfect score at bowlin' in over ten years! I'm catchin' up to you yet, ya flyin' featherweight!"
"In your dreams, apple-snort!" Rainbow Dash spat on her hooves, rubbed them together, and grabbed the nearest ball. "Cuz Miss Perfection has shown up to dance!"
"Oh get off your high... erm... self!" Applejack frowned. "You couldn't dance yer way out of a cornfield!"
"Why's everything gotta be a farm reference for you?" Rainbow Dash angled herself sharply down the lane, holding the ball ready. "Prepare to kiss my tail!"
"I ain't puckerin' up to no pot'o'gold!"
"My, we're all rather festive tonight, aren't we?" Rarity remarked as she finally took her seat. "Dare I ask who's winning?"
"Uhm..." Fluttershy blushed. "Not me."
"I'm pretty sure you'll have time to catch up yet," Twilight Sparkle remarked. While Rainbow Dash loudly flung her ball, she floated a book entitled A Common Equestrian's Guide To Knocking Pins in front of herself. "It says here that in the year 957 of the Celestial Era, a pony named Filly Frames came back from a fifteen point deficit to win a national tournament."
"A charming anecdote, Twilight," Rarity said with a dainty smile as Pinkie hoofed her a cup of juice from the concession bar. "But we're not exactly here this evening to make history."
The sound of thundering pins echoed again, followed by Rainbow Dash's loud, self-indulgent cheers.
Rarity sighed as her eyes went square. "Well, most of us aren't."
"Somepony stop the bus!" Rainbow Dash hovered back to her chair with her head held high. "Cuz I gotta get off on 'Awesome Street!'"
"I thought I left the manure shoveling back home at the barn," Applejack said with a groan. She took a cup of juice from Pinkie as she gazed over at Twilight. "Who's next, ya reckon?"
"Well..." Twilight scanned the scoreboard and drew an "X" in the last white box. "Rainbow Dash has thirty points in the first frame. That much we know."
"We also know that I'm goddess supreme of the alley!"
Twilight rolled her eyes and continued going over her sheet. "This is the beginning of the fourth frame. Which means--Oh! Rarity! Good timing! You're up--"
"Can't be done, darling. Remember? Besides, I'm quite vexed with gum and coffee stains over here."
"Oh yeah. Right. Uhm..." Twilight scratched her chin. "Fluttershy? Did you want to keep taking Rarity's turn this game?"
"Why would I want to do that?" Fluttershy asked. Her wings melted limply around her as she cast a sad gaze towards the floor. "Oh. I see. It's to give me a chance to maybe--possibly--get a score high enough to compete with you girls..."
"N-no!" Twilight exclaimed. "Nothing like that!"
"Oooh! Oooh!" Pinkie Pie bounced in front of Twilight's face. "Lemme take Rarity's spot! It'll give me even more chances to throw the ball through the hoop!"
"Pinkie..." Twilight frowned and pointed towards the back end of the alley. "That hoop is part of the arcade behind us! It has nothing to do with our game here! You know?! With the pins?!"
"Yeah, but if I go twice as much, then I'll have a greater chance of scoring the purple monkey!"
Twilight Sparkle blinked. She swiveled to face the score-sheet once more. "Maybe we should just let somepony else join."
"Why the hay not?" Applejack stifled a yawn and kicked back in her seat. She pushed the brow of her hat over her smiling face and listened to the distant crashing of pins like waves on the beach. "The more the merrier, right?"
"Uhhh..." Rainbow Dash blinked. "Like who?"
"Lemme pick! Lemme pick!" Pinkie Pie's eyes scanned the immediate vicinity beyond where they sat. "Mmmmmmmm..." She looked and squinted and gazed. "Mmmmmm..." Her eyes fell on me, then brightened. "Oh!" She hopped over and was leaning on my table so hard that she almost tipped it over. "You look really, really bored! Wanna help us knock over loud pins? Huh huh huh?"
I looked up from the ancient tome in my grasp, shivering. No matter how many times I think I'm prepared for it, Pinkie Pie's introductions still manage to startle me. I broke through the chattering of teeth in time to utter, "Knock over pins? You mean... as in join your game?"
"Uh huh! Uh huh!" She nodded wildly, her puffy mane dancing like a fuchsia stormcloud. "You might win a purple monkey!"
"Pinkie!" Twilight groaned from the background.
"I... uhm..." I gazed from her to the group of seats. I saw five sets of eyes gazing my way. The group was full of happy, bright, friendly faces. In a cold world, I couldn't imagine a more heavenly place worth melting in. I weighed all of these beautiful things, and quite gravely said, "Sorry. But... I'm just here to catch up on some studies. I can't afford to go into a game."
"Studies?" Pinkie Pie's face twisted confusedly. When she looks vexed, I know that something cosmically bizarre has happened. "You'd have better luck doing homework in a dragon's nest!"
"Meeep!" Fluttershy sunk in her seat. "Please, Pinkie. You know how much I hate the 'd'-word!"
"Oh stop being a scaredy-cat, Fluttershy! Rainbow Dash says the 'd'-word around you all the time to describe Angel! No, wait, that's the other 'd'-word..."
"I do not!" Rainbow's voice squeaked. Applejack chuckled.
Pinkie's head twisted to face me again, followed by the rest of her body. "You sure you don't wanna come and join our super fantastic game of heavy ball-tossing?"
"Pinkie..." Rarity sing-songed from across the loud alley. "Be a dear and leave the delicate unicorn alone."
"I'm quite fine, ma'am," I said with a soft grin. "Go be with your friends. I'm just biding my time."
"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie turned around and bounced off. "Guess time can't bide itself! Good luck with that!"
I waved her off. Once she was gone, submerged in the warmth that had gathered around Twilight--as had always gathered around Twilight--I let my hoof drop to my side as I sighed . Forcing my gaze to tear away from them, I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie and tried absorbing myself again in Comethoof's maniacal ramblings. I was only meagerly successful.
I know it's as though I'm stalking these six ponies at times. But does it really count as "stalking?" I could be in the same building with them thirty nights in a row and still they'd never know that I had ever been there. Is it a crime to live on the fringes of something so deliciously warm that it feels as though I'm there in spirit? It's not hurting anyone. It certainly isn't hurting myself.
I sighed, trying to focus on the glowing blue paragraphs in front of me, as if there was anything worth studying them for. I had learned on the very first day of reading Comethoof's records that only so much could be gained from the magical words he had unwittingly bequeathed me.
I had attempted taking my findings to Twilight just two days ago. I think that was a mistake. Exposing her to the forgotten history of a cursed sarosian unicorn only led to more confusion. No matter how learned a pony Twilight is, the only way she can remotely help me in my search is for me to coax her into the reality of my cursed existence. And if I can help it, I'd like to reduce the amount of times I force Twilight to once again become my foalhood friend, only to extinguish her like a dim candle.
Perhaps the reason why I tried sharing Comethoof's legacy with Twilight is not because I needed her knowledge or resources concerning the forgotten fate of Princess Luna's loyal composer. It's just that Comethoof suffered such a terribly lonesome existence, defined by the same curse that now consumes me. Being able to communicate with another pony about him makes me feel like I'm looking at a mere history book, instead of a gruesome map to my own destiny. I feel less like I'm a shadow to Comethoof when somepony like Twilight looks at me, when I see her warm eyes, when I remember what it's like to have meant something to somepony beyond a casual, fleeting glance.
I remember now, as I remembered then, that somepony once meant everything to Comethoof, and still that didn't stop the curse from tearing his life asunder, to the point that only madness served as his eternal companion. He was loyal to his princess, to his wife, and to his city. In the end, what did that get him? What will that get me? The thought was too unbearable to comprehend. The crashing of bowling pins turned into horrific thunder in my ears. I swept my belongings up into my saddlebag and practically galloped away from that place of hope and whimsy.
After three solid nights of perusing Comethoof's text, I could barely get any slumber. I knew just how much sleep I had lost by the time I was trotting into Ponyville, only to hear the bell-tower on the fringes of town announce that it was six in the morning. There was light on the horizon, but nopony but myself was awake. I used to adore mornings like that. There was something tranquil and blissful and ghostly about them. In the dim, golden light, foggy mists rolled into wispy clouds that danced atop the lake waters and cattails and grass blades.
Normally, on a morning like that, I would find a place to stand, pull out my lyre, and strum a few random bars of music while my eyes scanned the landscape for the town's early birds: Carrot Top with her wagon, Derpy Hooves on her mail route, Morning Dew and Ambrosia sharing a walk. However, on this one sunrise, I was completely sapped of strength. Every time I lifted my eyes, I had visions of Canterlot's bloodstained streets, of invisible bodies appearing in a haze of magical, purple incandescence, of a pony hanging from a noose above Comethoof where before there was nothing.
Doctor Comethoof had played "Twilight's Requiem," and for doing so he had been granted the ability to see a lost world within the realm he had existed. I too had played the Requiem, and though its magic faded over time, I was afraid to look around too much or else I might see something in Ponyville that would answer my questions and confirm my horrors all at once.
Comethoof's book wasn't the only journal I had fitfully read those sleepless nights. With great foreboding, I performed "Twilight's Requiem" again and perused my very own written entries. I found what I hoped I wouldn't find: many of the paragraphs that I myself had written looked suddenly different to me. Several of the words glowed in an unearthly light, appearing to float off the very surface of the paper. Every time I stared at them, I was immediately reminded of her eyes. Without knowing a single thing about Comethoof, I myself had taken an unwitting venture into the realm of the unsung, and when I came back a piece of her had come with me, clinging to the haunting notes of the eighth elegy.
Her song had turned Comethoof's life upside down, rewriting the very reality he had come to accept as truth. Just how much of my own existence has been defined by her song? How many of my words are hers instead of mine? What is real anymore? What can I believe in anymore? She took Alabaster's and Penumbra's child. She took my life and my friendships away. Must she have the world too? Must she slice and dice up existence until it fits within the chords of her forgotten Nocturne, until everything that we take for granted has become the hideous, repetitious encore to an unholy symphony?
No wonder I'm so cold here. There's no warmth or joy to be had in a world that's pillaged of all its truth. There could have been something divine and unblemished in the grand history of everything, but that was not meant to be. She had to exist. She had to be the splinter upon which all of life's accidents and miracles hinged. She guards the realm of limbo, filled to the brim with anguished souls too absorbed with their own torment to peacefully die, and I can't help but feel that the only reason she hasn't siphoned all that's good from the realm of harmony is that she's spending all her time haunting victims like me. Alabaster Comethoof was no different, and her song drove him to insanity. Princess Luna, for all her immortal might, was not immune. She had to become Nightmare Moon in order to contain the maniacal knowledge she had absorbed. And Princess Celestia...
Princess Celestia was too old, too mighty, and too majestic to succumb like the rest of her victims, but Celestia's only recourse was anything but a pretty one. Whatever spell she summoned to protect this realm from becoming aware of the unsung, it caused an explosion of a nightmarish scale. She emerged from it an amnesiac, and the very fabric of reality bent itself to appropriate the knowledge Celestia and her mortal subjects chose to bear... that she chose for them to bear.
But Comethoof saw through it. He played "Twilight's Requiem" and he learned the truth that nopony else knew. Could I learn such a truth myself? Have I actually met with Princess Celestia? And if I did, do I really want to know what has happened?
I suppose that, by now, I should know. But I don't know, just as I didn't know that morning when I limped through the misty reaches of town. I had played the Requiem several times and approached the pages of my own journal after each occasion. I saw the glowing words that pretended to be mine. But, no matter how much I stared at them, I couldn't summon a deeper truth from my thoughts. It occurred to me that the only way I could figure out the grim reality behind my discolored entries was to go about it scientifically: by repeating exactly what Comethoof himself had done. He had gone to the exact place where his curse started--in Princess Luna's chambers--and it was there that he performed "Twilight's Requiem". If I wanted total clarity, that meant one thing. I had to go to the center of town--to the exact spot in Ponyville where Nightmare Moon had landed and infected me with her unsung essence--and I had to perform the Requiem there.
But I didn't go to the center of town. My legs just wouldn't let me. Instead, I trotted across the village that morning until I stumbled upon the Ponyville Town Cemetery. I know it sounds grim, but I've taken strolls through that place on several occasions. It has not been uncommon of me to do so on the edges of both day and night. Life is most evocative upon the shores of death, and that is true at any age and in any generation. What are graves--after all--other than the poetic encompassing of warm and happy lives? I imagine an empty cemetery reflects an empty community, something that is full of ponies too afraid to embrace their pasts and futures all at once.
History is full of many things: most chiefly names. So many of them glisten before me in that lonesome garden of graves. The dates beneath the chiseled letters add gravity all on their own, but nothing pulls at my heartstrings more than the added words, the subtext, the lyrical markers left by hooves that are no longer with us:
"Ink Step - 920 - 995 - Beloved Father and Husband."
"Serenade - 811 - 877 - Sleep in Perfect Harmony."
"Golden Harvest II - 920 - 982 - Your Flowers Bloom Forever."
"Gracious Silver - 922 - 988 - Wife, Mother, Nurse."
"Granite Shuffle - 918 - "
I paused in front of the last gravestone, a pale slab with black borders. I squinted at the name. The characters were very solid and real, and yet the date didn't have an end. I was unaccustomed to stumbling upon half-finished graves.
I wonder: when I die, will they forget the body? Will they scoop me up from wherever I am and attempt to find a cheap, untitled plot in the ground to bury me in? Will they forget halfway through the job, so that they stumble upon me again and again in confusion and ultimately resort to cremation? Will even my ashes be forgotten?
I shuddered and ran a hoof through my mane. This wasn't right. I was letting my thoughts turn defeatist. Still, I couldn't help myself. I felt like I had only one friend in the entire world, and he dissolved into madness within the streets of Canterlot at the very end of the Harmonic Era. I've always prided myself on my intellectual prowess, but now? If I can't be sure of my very own thoughts, then what do I have left to stand on? It's already a frightening enough concept, worthy of being driven to insanity.
I had enough of the cemetery. I didn't realize I'd ditched the site until I heard the clopping of villagers' hooves around me. I was once more in the center of Ponyville under the early morning haze. But where did I have left to go? Where would I ever have left to go?
"You never forget anything, do ya, Miss Smith?" an elderly voice said to the side.
It was a good five seconds until I determined that the last utterance was aimed at me. Confusedly, I turned and blinked in the general direction of the sound. "I'm sorry...?"
"Such a shine to your mane. Do you tell Grace your secrets?"
I was still scanning my immediate surroundings. Finally, I saw him... and he was a very old "him." Knobby knees acted as the joints to withered legs. A frail body shivered under a dull, red coat. A crooked neck leaned perpetually to the side with a gray mane dangling like a threadbare flag. The senior stallion's thin green eyes stared at me from beyond a patio railing.
"Cuz you always manage your hair nicely," he said. I felt as though he was only half-looking at me. Part of his gaze was stolen by the fading mists of the passing morning. "Must be dew from the pasture: dawns like these. Redtrot's always telling me to stop sight-seeing, or else I'll be the first to drop when an ambush hits."
I smiled helplessly. "Who's ambushing who, sir?"
"Shhh!" He brought a wrinkled forelimb to his lips and squinted. "Best to not ask. They can hear you from the trees. You think they're too big to hide in an oasis, but they're there. They took Blue Oats last week. He was always making noise. Dag blame'd fool. Shoulda listened to Redtrot. Redtrot knows his stuff."
"Uh huh..." I shifted nervously where I stood. "And is he around here?"
"Who?"
"Redtrot."
"Huh?" The stallion blinked dazedly. "I... I don't read you, missy. So cold these mornings. We haven't even set out yet. We haven't..."
Just then, a white shape emerged from the door to the patio beside him. It was a nurse, about four decades younger than him. She wore a white cap as she smiled and trotted up to the stallion. "There you are, Mr. Shuffle. I'm glad to see your legs so full of energy lately, but you gotta warn us before you start wandering away from breakfast so suddenly!"
"Breakfast? Huh? We've barely made camp! What...?" He turned and gazed at her with narrow eyes. "Who... Who are you?"
"Nurse Glass Shine--"
"Nurse? Why, I'm not wounded! Who are you really?"
The mare sighed and gave him a patient smile. "Come with me, Mr. Shuffle," she gently ushered him towards the heart of the building. "It's time for your daily vitamins."
"Did... Did Grace put you up to this?" He pointed a shaky hoof in my direction. "I was just telling Miss Smith about her hair. Must all fillies keep so many secrets to themselves?"
"Heheheh... It's our special gift, Mr. Shuffle. Right this way..."
"Where am I?"
"The breakfast hall. Your friends are there."
"Friends? Bah! Half of them don't know me and the other half wished they didn't!"
"Why, that's not true! I saw you laughing it up with Mr. Breeze and Golden Glance just yesterday afternoon!"
"I was? Well, they sound like good, honest ponies..."
"Mmmhmm. And they'd be happy to see you..."
By then, their "conversation" had faded into distant obscurity. It took them an exceedingly long time to walk back into the building, on account of the stallion's frailty. I glanced at the structure, a two-story building that I had always assumed was a hotel. It suddenly dawned upon me that this was Ponyville's seldom talked about retirement home. The town always seemed too full of young ponies to be reasonable, making me wonder where all the elders hung out. Suddenly, after a year of ignorance, I knew. It made sense in a way. Ponyville was the best, most tranquil of spots in Equestria to rest in, aside from Blue Valley of course. I'm sure my own cabin would make a wonderful summer home for senior visitors from distant Canterlot or Manehattan. That is, of course, assuming I ever have the pleasure of leasing the place out in the future.
I like to think that such random thoughts were the only reasons for why I lingered in the middle of the street. Truth is, it was something else. My mind remained locked on poor Mr. Shuffle, on the blank expressions that haunted his face, on the uneasy gait he took along with Nurse Glass Shine into the dining hall of his apparent home. I wondered briefly if Dr. Comethoof ever freed himself from his curse, and if he did--could he have met such a lonesome and undistinguished fate? If he did--curse or no curse--could it have been called "relaxing?"
I swallowed my courage to learn more, and instead trotted towards the center of town. Eventually, I arrived at Twilight Sparkle's library. As soon as the place opened, I went in and grabbed as many books as I could. I had no less than eight resource materials on Canterlot history laid down before me as I sat at a table for an entire day of reading.
Not a single page got perused. I rested there in perpetual silence and thought for several minutes. Something was gnawing at me, something lonesome and cold and pathetic. Eventually, I hoofed all the books back to Spike, and within an hour I was trotting back the way which I came.
I entered the Ponyville Retirement Home with no obstruction. Like most ponies, I grew up unfamiliar with such places. I imagined there would be several orderlies questioning my presence, glaring at me from beyond barricades. I don't know what it is that had always made retirement homes appear like prisons or asylums in my mind. Perhaps it was fear of the unknown--or better yet--fear of the inevitable that had made me so ignorant.
Several nurses and elder ponies smiled and gave proper greetings as I trotted through the halls. I didn't know what I was looking for exactly, until I strolled by a room along the north wing and heard a musical sample that hadn't graced my ears since my time in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
It was a relatively recent work of classical composition, a little more than half-a-century old. Sadly, I didn't know the name of the symphony, but I could distinguish the author from its stylistic motifs. It had to have been written by Garnet Haystrings, a famous composer who crafted music for the Equestrian military during the Zebraharan Conflict, the last major engagement since the griffon wars of the Middle Celestial Era. Just hearing it brought back images of paintings I had seen in secondary school textbooks, of brave soldiers marching to a distant land to protect our foreign allies from invaders.
Thus it was of little surprise that I found Mr. Shuffle sitting, asleep, in the room next to the record player from which the music wafted. Suddenly his cryptic comments concerning "ambushes" made sense in a very somber way. I stood in his doorway, feeling like an alien in a very ancient world. The room was downright claustrophobic. It would have felt like a cell if it weren't for the lavish decorations covering all of the walls around the hospital bed. I saw golden plaques, black and white photos of ponies garbed in yesteryear's fashion, newspaper clippings from decades ago, and several landscapes of pristine farm country. In the center of the room, beside the chair in which the old stallion slept, a chess table had been set up, complete with several black and white pieces forever lingering on the verge of a game that would never start. A gentle breeze wafted through the room, and I realized from the dancing curtains that the brightly-lit window to the quarters was wide open.
"Hmmph..." I murmured to myself. "At least it's comfortable."
"Gaaauchk!" The old stallion awoke with a hacking cough.
"Daah!" I jumped back, nearly colliding with the door-frame.
"Hnnkct... Nychkk! Mmmph..." He slowly leaned his jittery frame forward. His eyes opened through a mucous film before spotting me. "Hmmmm... Always rotten timing!"
"I'm..." I winced, trying not to stare at the crooked lean of his skull or the trembles in his limbs. "I'm so sorry for disturbing you. I'll just be on my way--"
"Why couldn't the road show have been in Stalliongrad?!" He growled. One of his eyes opened wider than the other. "Do you know 'Move Along, Daisy?'"
I blinked confusedly at him. "Huh?"
"Well, do you or don't you play the harp?!" He pointed across the room. "Don't tell me you're a singer! A singer never wears her mane like that!"
"Uhhh..." I blinked, then glanced at my golden cutie mark. "Oh! Uhm... Heh. Well, I play the lyre, but I guess that's not too far a stretch from the harp--"
"Blue Oats fancies himself good with the jaw harp," Mr. Shuffle rambled. "I keep telling him that earth ponies have no business playing the jaw harp. That's for unicorns to master. But he never listens! Never listens at all. That's why he's not around..." He stumbled on his own words, glancing off beyond the dancing sway of his curtains. "He wasn't around... He... He..."
There was a period of silence, at the end of which I gulped awkwardly. "I see you're a fan of Garnet Haystrings," I said as I pointed at his record. "He's a legend in Canterlot music halls. They still play his compositions at Wonderbolts shows."
"He's a pompous hay-hole who likes to serenade young colts to their deaths," Mr. Shuffle spat in sudden fury.
I jolted at that, gritting my teeth. "Uhhhh... well..." I leaned forward again. "Why--uhm--Why do you listen to him, then?"
"Because I like the beat," Mr. Shuffle said.
"Oh." I said. Silence filled the room again, save for the pumping melody. "Okay then--"
"Who are you, missy? Is it time for more vitamins?"
"Oh. No vitamins," I said, shaking my head. "My name's Lyra Heartstrings, and I was just passing through. I never really knew that this retirement home was here--"
"They play it up and down the river," he murmured. "Out of those speakers. They never come out of the boat. Nope. Not like us. We get to know what mud is like up close. Mud becomes our best friend. Even Redtrot can't keep his horseshoes clean to save his coat."
"You don't say?" I remarked. "Does that get him in trouble with... uh... his commanding officer?"
"He is the commanding officer?"
"Redtrot is?"
He shook his head dizzily and squinted my way. "Who?"
"Uhm... Redtrot. The stallion I'm assuming you were just talking about--"
"Who are you?"
"I..." I started, sighed, and hung my head. "I'm Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
"Mmph... Time for my vitamins again?"
"No, Mr. Shuffle," I impersonated a kind-faced nurse from earlier. "Just... Just rest easy. I'm sorry to have bothered you." I felt stupid. And when one feels stupid, the most relaxing thing to do is make an exit. So I turned around to do just that when--
"That's alright, Miss Smith. You always have important things to do."
I froze in my step. I turned around. "Huh?"
He leaned back in his chair, resting his frail bones beside the record player. "What, with running the farm and all. Apples are always your passion. Grace says you'd much rather go out with a tree than a fine, handsome stallion. But Grace is always going on and teasing you."
"I..." I trotted a few feet into the room. "Who did you just call me?"
"What, did you take on the Orange Family name?" He tried laughing, only for it to come out as a wheeze. "You said it yourself that you'd much rather be buried alive than spend one single day in Manehattan."
"What...?" I looked at him, and then I looked at myself: at my mint-green coat and dainty stature and lightly-colored mane hairs. Suddenly, a helpless chuckle escaped my lips. "Heh... Heheh... You think I'm--?" I stopped in mid-speech, cleared my throat, and stammered, "Uh... Well, things have changed, Mr. Shuffle. Manehattan isn't all that bad. In fact my... my granddaughter Applejack visited the place there herself when she was a filly. Didn't you know that?"
"Your... granddaughter...?" He gazed crookedly at me.
I winced. "D'uhm... what I mean to say is: if someday I have grandchildren, I would let them choose for themselves whether or not the city is a nice place to live in. We gotta let the young ones decide for themselves, right, Mr. Shuffle?"
"Please, Apple Smith," he chuckled lightly. "Call me Granite. You and Grace are just being coy when you call Stinkin' and I by our last names."
"Sure thing, Granite--" I had to stifle a gasp.
I was instantly flooded with a wall of realization. It wasn't enough that I had seen the name 'Granite Shuffle' on a gravestone earlier. But there was something insanely familiar about the name beyond that. It took only two or three glances at the rural landscapes and newspaper clippings along the wall to confirm my suspicion.
"You're... You're the Granite Shuffle! Co-Partner to Stinkin' Rich, father of Filthy Rich and owner of Rich's Barnyard Bargains!" I gazed out the window as I was afforded a brief flash of the village's color from beyond the dancing curtains. "You, Stinkin', and Granny Smith were almost entirely responsible for the founding of Ponyville several decades ago!" I shook my head with a warm grin, but soon that melted along with the shadows of that tiny room. I became aware of a sickly ambiance, of dozens upon dozens of muttering, coughing, and shuffling old ponies beyond the thin walls surrounding us. I gazed at him numbly and said, "What in Celestia's name is a stallion like you doing here?"
I regretted formulating that question as soon as it exited my lips. Thankfully, Granite Shuffle wasn't in the condition to register it. A cool breeze had flown through the window, and he took advantage of the situation by falling into a gentle slumber. The record player had hit the end of its track, and a repetitive clicking noise was skipping through the speakers. I reached out with a hoof and switched the thing off, all the while gazing at the elder stallion's features.
Life, it would have seemed, never stopped forgetting precious things. In a blur, I spun around and marched out of the room.
"Excuse me...?"
Nurse Glass Shine slowly turned around from her station and smiled at me. "Yes?"
"My name is Lyra," I said, trotting up to her. "Lyra Heartstrings. I'm... uhm..." I fidgeted for a brief moment, then smiled. "I'm interviewing senior citizens for a column in a local paper discussing Ponyville's foundation." I turned and pointed at the numbered door-frame to Mr. Shuffle's quarters. "Could you tell me who the resident is of Room Twenty-Seven?"
"Oh, why yes," the nurse said with a slight nod. "That's where Granite Shuffle has lived for the past eight years."
I almost reeled from that. "Eight... years?" I gulped. "How old is the gentlecolt, if I may ask?"
"Oh... uhmmm..." Nurse Shine bit her lip as her eyes swept across the ceiling. "Going on eighty-two. Possibly eighty-three. I doubt very much that he would be capable of helping you with any interview, Miss Heartstrings."
"Why's that?"
"Well, some ponies manage the golden years quite well. I'm sorry to say, though, that such is not the case with Mr. Shuffle. The last decade has taken quite a toll on his mind. He needs extra special attention from the staff and I."
"Yeah..." I exhaled, staring down the long, sterile hallway of doors. "Still, though." I swallowed and glanced back up at her. "His name is awfully familiar."
"Hmmm!" She nodded, her cheeks rosy. "As well it should be. Many ponies in this place know him quite well. He's had extensive influence throughout Ponyville. It's a shame that most villagers your age and mine don't have an actual idea."
"Yes. Yes it is," I said with a nod. "But, that's not all I recognize his name from. I was... uh... I was visiting the local cemetery earlier--as part of my project..."
"Uh huh...?"
"And I'm pretty sure I saw his name on one of the gravestones. I mean, it's probably just a coincidence, but the markings didn't have an end date."
"That's not all that odd, really, Miss Heartstrings," Nurse Glass Shine said. She hoofed a clipboard over to a passing nurse as she continued speaking, "Many ponies with a great deal of wealth attached to their names have their graves prepared well in advance. Mr. Shuffle--in particular--signed the deed to his plot over ten years ago, when he was in better control of his faculties. Since then, the grave has been paid for by his next of kin, who are also responsible for supporting his stay here."
"Where..." I quietly trotted closer to her and spoke in a low voice, "Where is his next of kin?"
"Mmmm... Living in Trottingham, I do believe. Let's see if I can remember correctly..." She tapped her chin. "One son, one daughter, and at least three godchildren."
"All wealthy?"
Nurse Shine chuckled. "Is this also part of your column for the paper, Miss Heartstrings?"
"Oh, this? No! Not at all. I just..." I clenched my teeth and ran a hoof through my mane as I glanced back at Room 27. "Do they ever visit him?"
Nurse Shine cleared her throat. "Not as often as they used to."
"Not often... or not at all?"
She said nothing.
I gulped and gazed somberly at her. "Isn't that awful, you think?"
She bore a very light yet sincere smile. "My concern--and the hope of the rest of my staff--is that ponies like Granite Shuffle experience peace and relaxation during the time they're here."
I exhaled long and hard with a sad nod. "Still... does he get any visitors? Any visitors whatsoever?"
Her eyes fell towards the floor as she slowly shook her head.
I gazed back at the room.
"Oh yes. The wildebeests are merciless," Granite Shuffle said. "If you took the upper body of a minotaur and made his lower half just as strong, it doesn't even compare to what's stalking you in the desert. The first day I killed one, it took all dang morning. This one company kept stabbing at us and cowering away for hours. Finally, we got them into a ravine and they couldn't run away anymore. They had no choice but to fight like us, with courage and honor. Redtrot took out four of those horned creeps. I only bagged myself one, and was he a toughie! Worth ten times the bunch that Redtrot speared. He was so close as we scuffled, I could smell the breakfast coming out of his mouth, the same disgusting crap they eat in that putrid land they marched from to attack the zebras' oases. Such selfish, deplorable creatures, them wildebeests. Who could mother such a thing? I don't want to know. Blue Oats thinks he knows, but he's an idiot. Why, this one time, he climbed a tree outside of camp to get a coconut. I told him 'This is the desert, you numbskull.' Before he fell down, he said to me--"
The words stopped. Granite Shuffle was blinking. He scanned the walls once, twice, and saw me as if I had appeared out of nowhere.
"What? What were we doing?"
"You were telling me about your service in the Zebraharan Conflict," I said with a gentle smile. "You marched alongside a Lieutenant named Redtrot for two years before he transferred you to a border camp--"
"Transferred?!" Granite spat, then frowned. "Why, he's waiting for me as we speak!" He shook and wobbled as he tried to get up. "I wouldn't be a good soldier if I didn't--"
I stood up from a chair beside the chessboard and eased him back down into his seat. "Redtrot understands that you're not feeling well. A soldier isn't useful if he's not in the best condition to serve, don't you think?"
"What? Why?" He blinked awkwardly my way. "Am I coming down with something?" He glanced past the dancing curtains and the multiple photographs along the wall. "Where's Grace? My leg feels better. I can leave Stalliongrad now. Miss Smith sent me five letters in the last year. I really, really wish to write back to her."
I leaned my chin on my hooves and smiled gently at him. "Miss Smith must mean an awful lot to you."
"Hmmph..." He smirked crookedly all of the sudden. "It's just that you've always had that way of struttin' your stuff."
I blinked, then bit my lip. "Erm. Mr. Shuffle, I'm not--"
"Even when sweating it to make all that zapapple jam, you look prettier than a Hearth's Warming sunrise. I'll never know the secrets you mares use to keep yourselves so gorgeous. Why, even Wish Step..." He stopped yet again in the middle of his speech.
I raised an eyebrow. "'Wish Step,' Mr. Shuffle...?"
"Said she'd stop by one of these days," he stammered, his eyes thin. "Business is always booming in Trottingham, she says. I know that Filthy and Junior have it in capable hooves. But the market lately: I haven't looked at it in ages. Today's newspaper's so hard to read. And in the mornings lately, it's so darn cold." He shivered and ran two hooves over his shoulders as he glanced at the chessboard from afar. "The desert these nights.... Blue Oats keeps whimpering in his sleep. I don't want Redtrot chewing him out. He's just a colt, really. If he knew I hushed him back to slumber in the middle of the night, I don't know what he'd... he'd..." He gulped as his eyes darted in brief fright across the ceiling of the tiny room. "I've... I've been someplace. I don't know for how long. They'll want to know before they discharge me, Miss Smith." She glanced at me. "Could you ask Grace how long it's been?"
I stared back at him, but I could hardly say anything. I glanced out the window. Night had fallen. I had been there all day, listening to him, navigating the complex and fragmented circles that remained of his life. After so many hours, I was no closer than he was to piecing the puzzle pieces altogether. What was worse, I felt I was the only one who knew that something wasn't whole.
"Hmmph..." His eyes hardened as he stared at the chessboard. "Such a smell to them," he grunted. "To think such animals could know a proper sport as chess. The zebras invented it, but wildebeests had to steal that too. I wonder if those horned menaces ever really have children, or just mold them out of the crap they find in the villages they take."
"I'm... uhm..." I chuckled helplessly. "I'm sure the wildebeests are more than capable of having families, like the ones we've made peace with thirty years ago, Mr. Shuffle."
He wasn't listening to me. Instead, he was being true to his name, getting up out of his plush chair and scooting on frail hooves towards the chessboard. Once he found his way to the stool opposite the table from me, he reached a hoof out and immediately moved a white pawn forward.
I looked at him. I looked at the board. I looked at him again.
He was still staring at the mahogany and marble pieces, teetering slightly with the day's exhaustion.
Whether or not that was an invitation, I suddenly knew the only way to respect my elder. "Okay..." I took a deep breath for courage and moved a black pawn to meet directly with his. "It's been a while for me. Though, I imagine it's been even longer for you--"
He moved another pawn without hesitation.
I blinked. "Well, alright." I moved a pawn of my own to block that piece.
In swift order, he brought his knight out and I met with a knight of my own. We faced off with pawns against pawns, bishops brushing paths with rooks, and aimlessly elusive queens. Our dialogue was replaced with sliding figures and the tiny taps of the wooden board. I wasn't sure how far this was going to go, and I was trying to think up an easy way to bow out of what seemed to be an inane exercise. Then, out of nowhere, his bishop slid out and eliminated my second pawn while immediately putting my king into danger.
I did a double-take. If I didn't move my king now, it'd be an instant checkmate, and even still, I suddenly realized that my most important chesspiece would be in danger from his knight and bishop for the next half-dozen moves. I fancied myself a relatively competent chess player. I had squashed other fillies in my dormitory at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. A part of me--I'm sure--felt that I could have humored Mr. Shuffle's senility, but I suddenly realized he was not one to be toyed with in this sport.
The next ten minutes consisted of the most stressful game of chess in my life. It was a match I knew from the start that I was going to lose. I only kept making moves in order to save what was left of my dignity. I didn't notice just how quiet things had become in that tiny room. What's more, I almost entirely forgot the nature of my visit. All that mattered was the game, the only game of chess in my whole life that had ever made me sweat. For the first time in months, I felt like putting my hoodie through the wash--
"Do you still call him Big Macintosh?"
"Uhhh--" I looked up from what was left of my massacred, black army. "I beg your pardon?"
"When your daughter-in-law gave birth, I could have sworn all of Ponyville shook from the foal's flank hitting the floor of the stable," Granite Shuffle said with a sly smirk. "You must have been scared out of your wits for her."
I raised an eyebrow. He was still only partially in this world, and yet there was a firmness to his voice that sounded more confident and secure than any other sentence he had uttered that entire day. I couldn't help but smile. "Well, he was named 'Big' for a reason, Granite. And he's kept true to that name all his life, except when it comes to his ego."
"Too bad he doesn't take advantage of his strength when push comes to shove," the old stallion murmured as he continued decimating me in chess. "If only he was more like that little spitfire. Y'know... the one with the freckles."
I giggled. The air felt warm and happy as I finally, utterly lost the game. "Yes, well, nopony's perfect. And I'm sure Applejack wouldn't be nearly as strong if she didn't have Big Mac to lean on."
"That's what family is for," Granite Shuffle murmured. He reset the board, and I was too slow to stop him from starting a new game. He moved his pieces forward and I scrambled to confront him. All the while, a dull exhaustion wafted through his vision. "Family sticks by you no matter what. It's not about money or earnings. It's about living, and living together, even when things get tough." He was losing pieces this time. I didn't revel in my victories. I paused as I saw him gazing into the shadows, though his voice was directed towards me. "I have always... admired the family you raised, Miss Smith."
I bit my lip before eventually asking, "Have you ever told me this before, Mr. Shuffle?"
His eyes slowly opened and closed. "Mmm... I don't... I don't know." He swallowed slowly and bowed his head. "But Grace... Grace says... says..."
His voice drifted off, soon to be replaced with a low snore. He sat on the stool, his head partially bowed.
I felt nervous and awkward again. I heard the shuffling of a nurse's hooves outside. Sparked by a slight panic, I decided that I had visited long enough. I left his home, but not without grabbing a blanket from the nearby chair and draping it over his frail shoulders.
I couldn't sleep that night. I had Comethoof's journal lying beside me, along with all the futile attempts at writing down the scattered notes to "Desolation's Elegy." However, I had hardly read a single page out of each. I lay there on the cot in the shadows of my cabin, staring at the ceiling.
Instead of thinking about the unsung realm or the burning ruins of Canterlot at the end of Shadow's Advent, I was engulfed in a cyclone of alien sensations. I saw deserts full of war-torn villages. I envisioned mobile hospitals outside of Stalliongrad where wounded soldiers were being treated by mares with old-fashioned manestyles. I saw jars full of zapapple jam being lined up on an antique market stand. I saw chess pieces gathering dust, just like the photographed faces of family members too rich and too distant to ever shake loose the sediment of so many neglectful years.
Somewhere in all of that haze, I hoped--I prayed--that there was something worth smiling about. And for a brief moment, there was. Did it really take playing the game of chess to bring it out of Mr. Shuffle? He's obviously had history with Granny Smith and her family. I knew it was none of my business... but...
Could he afford to make it any of his business either? Was such a pony any more or any less of the stallion he once was, without the memories that formed the pillars of his existence? What are any of us when we are stripped of all our yesteryears? Is the blank slate left over just as worthy of being respected? Don't we deserve to have our substance dredged up from the depths if it's something capable of being done?
I had a curse to cure. I have always had a curse to cure. It's the most essential conflict of my life.
But what of Granite Shuffle? The curse was his life, or at least what was left of it. I couldn't stop thinking about him, about his tiny room, about his dusty chess pieces. I couldn't stop wondering what his thoughts were when his eyes first opened in the morning, taking in a world more barren than any desert in history. Were his thoughts full of confusion and fear? Did he live each minute upon the crest of panicked gasps? Did he--like Comethoof--somehow find purpose in the middle of such a mental labyrinth, or was it all destined to melt into madness?
"They don't worship Luna or Celestia in Stalliongrad, Miss Smith," Granite said as he moved a black chess piece across the board in the morning light. "They worship the 'Queen of Stars'. It's the Stalliongrad ponies' fancy way of honoring both alicorn sisters under one temple roof. That's why Celestia hasn't raised the sun in that town in so many years. Stalliongrad equines expect both princesses to be together at all times. Since Luna became the Mare in the Moon--heh--that's been rather difficult."
"Mister Shuffle," I began, smiling across from him as I desperately attempted to defend my pieces against his. "Hear me out." When I first arrived, he started the game without saying anything. I don't know if that suggested some sort of familiarity or not, but I decided to play along. I hadn't the wherewithal to tell him that we were continuing our game with our pieces switched, on account of the stool he chose to sit on. Regardless, it took the elder very little time to dominate the game as if he owned those pieces from the get-go. "What if I told you that Princess Luna was freed from the heavens and is no longer Nightmare Moon?"
"Bah! Don't be making up stories about the holy sisters, Miss Smith!" Granite spat, though I detected the residual curve of his lips. "That's wildebeest talk! Only Grace would make a joke that rude!"
I giggled. "I bet Grace shocks the bridles off the ponies in Stalliongrad."
"Oh! All the time! She even makes the other nurses blush! Why, this one time, she was giving Redtrot a spongebath, and the lieutenant tried to make a pass at her. To this day, the soldiers think he got his shoulder dislocated in an ambush. Only Grace has told me different."
I chuckled. Just at that moment, Nurse Glass Shine shuffled past the room. Upon seeing me, she stopped with a jerk, and swiftly trotted in. "I'm sorry. You are...?"
I cleared my throat and ritualistically answered, "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
"I'm sorry, Miss Heartstrings. But this isn't visiting hours. Unless you're here on behalf of Mr. Shuffle's next of kin, I'm going to have to ask you to come by later--"
"Oh, but that's just the thing." I pointed out the door. "There was that note delivered by Mr. Shuffle's daughter, Wish Step, last night, announcing my arrival?"
"Note?" Nurse Shine's face scrunched up in confusion. "What note?"
"You didn't see it?" I pointed even further. "She left it at the nurse's station."
"Really? I'm going to have to go check that." She turned and marched away. "Wait right here."
"Heh. Will do." I gazed calmly as she walked five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet away. After a cold chill, I adjusted my hoodie and turned back to the chess game. "So, what do ponies in Stalliongrad do most of the time?"
"Mmmph..." Mr. Shuffle struggled to move his queen across the board. "They make gravel."
"Yeah? And what do they make with the gravel?"
"More gravel." His queen fell over. "Dag nabbit..."
"Oh... Uhm..." I smiled and politely lifted his black piece with my telekinesis. "Where to?"
He cleared his throat and sat back calmly in his stool. "C6 to C2."
I moved it for him, eliminating my own pawn. As I looked over my pieces, I murmured, "You know, I did some asking around town before coming here."
"Really, Miss Smith? Since when did you come to Stalliongrad?"
I gently danced my way around that detail. "And I heard all about this Grand Chess Champion, a legend in his time. He won the Equestrian Masters Division four times in a row. He made a record, and even played a game against Prince Blueblood the Second, a game that he won--for that matter. Can you imagine that? A simple earth pony businessstallion defeating an esteemed member of royalty?"
"Heh... I'll believe it when I see it," Mr. Shuffle grumbled. "Did he ever win himself some trophies?"
"Hmmm..." I glanced over his head. A dozen plaques hung on his wall. They glinted with gold letters and dates in the morning light. "A few," I said with a smile as I looked back at him. "I'm sure nopony has ever surpassed him."
"Quit stallin'. You gonna make a move or not?"
I chuckled and moved a knight to threaten his queen. "You're certainly in an impatient mood this morning."
"Can ya blame me?! Stinkin's late for the meeting! He's always late! I swear, he only gets a bigger share of the zapapple jam profits cuz his family lived here first. Not my fault I was born in Baltimare! If it wasn't for the war, I'd have settled in this here town ages ago. Heck, I could have gotten here before you, Miss Smith!"
"But then how would we have met, Mr. Shuffle?" I smiled his way. "And how would I have ever met Grace?"
"Grace goes where Grace chooses to go. You know I can't tell her what for."
"I do?"
"Hmmph... I would imagine you know enough, from how many times the two of you gab together and all." He pointed at one of his pawns. "B7 to B5."
I moved the piece for him, putting my knight in jeopardy. As I pondered the choice of killing his queen or saving my knight, I spoke, "Do you ever see us together at the same time?"
"Hmmm? Who?"
"Grace and Miss Smith--er, I mean..."
"Nopony!" He suddenly spat. "No mares for miles around! It's on account that Blue Oats was flirting a little too much the last time we were in Stalliongrad! Grace always knew to stay away from him. After what she said, I know why!"
"Heh... What is it with your fellow soldiers and the way they hit on the opposite sex?"
"Guess it comes natural to Blue Oats. Don't tell anypony..."
"Don't tell anypony what?"
He wheezed and bore a mischievous smile. "He used to be called 'Big Oats,' but then he got on the wrong side of this one recruitment officer. Lemme tell you, if you get bucked in the wrong place by an angry Cloudsdalian mare, you learn that the clouds aren't all that pegasi can drain!" He wheezed again, and I realized he was laughing heavily.
For a while I stared at him with a blank expression. Soon, though, I gave in, and chuckled ceaselessly--that is until a familiar body shuffled into the room.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Nurse Shine hovered over my shoulder. "But this isn't visiting hours. Unless you're here on behalf of Mr. Shuffle's next of kin, I'm going to have to ask you to come by later."
"Oh, but that's just the thing. Mr. Shuffle's daughter delivered a note that vouches for me. It should have been dropped off at the nurse's station."
"Oh? When was that?"
"Just last night. Why don't you go check?"
"Please wait right here." She trotted off.
I swiveled back to the game and resumed chuckling.
"Who was that?" Granite breathlessly asked.
"Who indeed." I cleared my throat. "So, tell me more about the desert."
"The sun sets, like it does now," Granite said with a distant glint in his eyes. "And the land catches ablaze with color. You realize it isn't all sand and dust and death. There are swirling bands in the rocks. They blend from red to orange to amber to brown."
We sat on a pair of rocking chairs on the edge of the retirement center's patio. I had my journal floating beside me, and I was scribbling lazily into the pages as I absorbed his words.
"These are colors that only the zebras have seen for centuries," he said. "And the wildebeests come to rip it all apart. And for what? For diamonds, rocks, a bunch of crap deep in the earth." He clenched his jaw and kneaded the wooden finish of the chair beneath him. "When I was first called into action, I wanted nothing to do with war. But now that I see what ugly creatures wish to do with beautiful things..." His eyes quivered and his lips tightened. He slowly, softly gazed my way. "Do you ever lose things that don't come back, Miss Smith?"
I paused in drawing a rough sketch of a sun melting over a sandy horizon. I gazed up at him. With a gentle exhale, I said, "More often than I would like, Mr. Shuffle."
Granite coughed, and coughed again. He leaned back in the chair and gazed sickly into the burning lengths of Ponyville. "'Move Along Daisy.'"
My ears twitched. I gave him a sideways glance. "I'm sorry?"
"You had chrysanthemums in your hair. I didn't know they grew flowers this far out. It was a slow shuffle, and I was tripping all over myself. But you didn't mind. You knew as well as I did that I was being shipped out the next day. You made the moment last forever. You and your silk mane. I closed my eyes, and suddenly the dance floor found me. It was like swimming in the river outside the house."
I smiled, a warm breath escaping me. "We must have had a grand 'ol time."
He chuckled. It was a sound laced with melancholy and love all at once. "Oh... Oh darling, not you. Your coltfriend would kill me, Miss Smith. He always thought me and Stinkin' were after more than zapapple jam. I don't rightly blame him. After all the sand and death I had seen, I must have looked so terribly lonesome."
"Then..." I gulped. "Who, Mr. Shuffle?"
"I..." He bit his lip, his face tensing as he gazed down at the patio floorboards below us. A gentle breeze kicked at his gray mane. "I didn't mean to scare Wish Step. Grace thinks I was too hard on her. Perhaps it's true. It's just that Junior's gone too far. I don't blame Wish Step for taking his side; they're brother and sister after all. But he's investing in all of that asparagus nonsense. He's gonna steer the family away from the Riches. I don't care what business there is in Trottingham. This town of ours is growing, and it needs ponies like us. It needs..." His face tensed again. He raised a hoof, and for a moment I thought he was going to teeter forward.
So, with a dash, I rushed in and supported him. He had no reservations against me accommodating his weight. He simply trembled--neither sitting nor standing--as the words dripped from his lips.
"How do you manage your children so well, Miss Smith? I wish mine would listen to me. I just don't want them going too far. I don't want them drifting like I did. If I had stayed in Baltimare, if I hadn't gone to Canterlot, I would have never been called to duty. I would have never joined the service. My parents never wanted it. Now I know why, and I don't want Junior and Wish Step knowing what it means... knowing the smell..." His teeth showed, yellow and grimacing as he gazed into an invisible abyss. "Grace hates it when I talk down the wildebeests. She just doesn't know. She hasn't seen their insides. Something that can come apart that easily can't possibly have a soul. It's... so ugly. So ugly, I..." His lips quivered. He gulped and looked partially in my direction. "Miss Smith?"
I stared closely at him. "Yes, Granite?"
He wheezed, winced, and said, "Make sure yours stay where they're at. Don't let them get too far away from the apples."
Slowly, I nodded and patted his hooves. "I will, Granite. I'll make sure of it."
He bit his lip and looked painfully towards the melting horizon.
I looked along with him. After a while, I built the courage to ask, "Do you still see the colors, Mister Shuffle?"
"I..." He breathed. "I don't know. Is... is the sun setting or rising?"
I fidgeted a little. Ultimately, I chuckled and said, "Does it matter?"
He blinked at me, and eventually smiled. I don't know if that put me or him more at ease, but the air grew warm for the briefest of moments.
"Tell Stinkin' for me," Granite said that evening as I gently ushered him through the dim hallways of the home and into his room. "Tell him that I won't be able to make it to next week's meeting."
"I'll see what I can do," I said, gently patting him as I led him by the hoof to his chair. A dim lamp hung in the corner of the wall, bathing his wrinkled red features in an orange glow. "I'm sure he will understand, regardless."
"He dang well better," Granite grunted. He hissed during the time it took to sit his weary self down into the plush chair. "I don't mean to brag, but I've been pulling the weight of this business by my shoulders for the last ten years."
"Somehow I don't doubt that," I said with a wink.
"Who are you to give me lip?!" he snapped, though he bore the slightest hint of a smile. "You and I have worked far longer together than with Stinkin'! What say we steal away a special stash of the zapapple jam and sell out of season?"
"Hmmmm..." I layed a blanket over his lower half where he sat. "I don't think Stinkin' would like that."
"Yeah? So? Serves him right!"
"But he owns so much as it is. What would he do if he found out? What would he do to you and Junior and Wish Step?"
"I'd get Redtrot to teach him a lesson or two," Granite said sharply. "I doubt Stinkin' could put up half a fight as a wildebeest!"
I grimaced slightly, but put on my best smile. "You're probably right."
"Of course I'm right. I'm always right. At least, more often than I'd ought to be." He squirmed in his chair as his body sunk even further with a sigh. He glanced at the plethora of photographs on his wall, but I doubt very much they registered any more than the fleeting thoughts in his mind. "Grace says I make a terrible soldier. I think too much. It's why Redtrot always keeps snapping me back in line. I was never made to march. But I do it anyways, because it needs to be done. The zapapples won't sell themselves. Junior doesn't know. He thinks... He thinks..."
I simply stood there, listening, waiting.
Granite coughed a few times and exhaled. After a pause, he murmured, "Wish Step wants me to stay put. She says it's for the best. She looks at me, and yet she doesn't. I know it's not her eyes. I know it's not..."
I blinked upon hearing that. Was something inside of him finally coming to the surface? I leaned forward and rested a hoof on his. "When was the last time she visited you, Mr. Shuffle?"
"Hmmm?" He looked at me, his eyes thin. "Who?"
"Your daughter. When was the last time--?"
"At the Summer Sun Celebration!" He chuckled, wheezed, and continued smiling in spite of himself. "Such a darling little filly. Freckles like her older brother. You should be proud of them, Miss Smith. They'll keep the apples shiny when they grow up."
"No, not my--" I shook my head, sighed, and spoke, "I'm not talking about Apple Smith's grandchildren. I'm talking about your daughter, Wish Step. When was the last time she visited you, Mister Granite?"
He gazed at me. His eyes blinked as if in slow motion. "F2 to E3."
I blinked. "Huh?"
"Shhh... But don't tell Blue Oats." He smiled tiredly. "He thinks that move would never work."
I glanced at the chess table, then back at him. "Granite, I--" I shuddered and ultimately closed my eyes. After a while, I squeezed his hoof once more. "I... I won't tell Blue Oats. Don't you worry."
"Not worried. No matter what Grace says," he murmured, his eyes on the edge of a night's slumbering darkness. The lantern's glow appeared to be drawing away from him as his head tilted towards his chair. "She wants me to stop fretting. Just like Stinkin' tells me to stop bothering with the numbers. He thinks I'm stepping on his hooves. You know how he is, Miss Smith. The only one who doesn't give me lip is Redtrot, but that's because he's too busy yelling at me. I never want to yell at the kids like him, no matter what good it would do them. They'd turn into Blue Oats otherwise. I wouldn't want that. Would you want that, Miss Smith?"
I opened my mouth to reply, but I lingered. Reluctantly, I said instead, "What is it that you want, Granite?"
"Me?" he stammered, his shoulders heaving with a deep breath.
I nodded.
He gazed through the floor. Something glinted in the lantern light. I spotted a tear rolling down his cheek as the stallion spoke in an otherworldly voice, "I just want to go h-home, Miss Smith."
I briefly held my tongue in place. I felt a soreness in my throat as I stroked his forelimb with two hooves and quietly said, "So do I, Granite. So do I."
Under the stars, I stood before the patio of my cabin. I held my lyre and was strumming notes at random. I didn't know what tunes I was making. I didn't care. "Twilight's Requiem" and "Desolation's Elegy" were phantoms of the path, ghosts that didn't belong to me, for suddenly all that was real was now.
All that will ever be real is now. What assurance do we have of anything more? The past is something painted in biased assumptions, the future in wishful pretense. When she sings reality into a different shape, she's merely retelling a story that has been just as sketchy before her chorus as it remains after. When I am dead and gone, the ponies left may never remember me. But will it matter? My hollow future is their distant now, and reality will be theirs to do with whatever they wish, regardless if I existed or not.
It's always been that way, hasn't it? If each and every life is so precious, then why haven't we erected a vast library for every soul that has ever existed? Sentiment is something that is scarcely afforded in this world, it would seem. Some lives are simply far easier to toss to the refuse of time than others. To believe otherwise is to make existence a chore, full of a mechanical regiment dedicated to the millions upon millions of bodies that are marching into death all around us.
Surely, though, we can afford to sacrifice ourselves to honor a fraction of the things that come and go, the ideas that mean the most to us, the places that hold the most value, and the ponies that have influenced our lives. But how many of us are truly that noble, truly that generous, truly that honorable to refuse attention to ourselves for the sake of tending to the passage of those who've come before? Life is our one opportunity to be individuals, to be expressive, to produce art. How can we do all of those things and yet absorb ourselves in the lives withering to ash at every turn, in the noble pursuit of bringing them the glory that they deserve but are too weak to afford on their own?
Somewhere, naturally, a balance must be found. It's only now that I've come to realize that I never achieved such an equilibrium. As a matter of fact, I never even tried. I recall lecturing to Fluttershy one time that I knew the name of my grandmother. That is hardly a laudable accomplishment on my behalf. The fact of the matter is, I only knew her in name, but not intimately, not closely enough to understand and respect the textures of her hopes and dreams.
When my grandmother died, I was in secondary school. I had plenty of scholarly endeavors to attend to, but not so much that my schedule was entirely consumed. Regardless, this did not stop me from refusing every chance I had to visit the family's matriarch when she stood upon death's door. My parents--ever loving to a coddling fault--allowed me the liberty of my own seclusion.
As a result, I wasn't there when she lingered in bed, day after day, slowly sinking into the depths of darkness. I didn't bother visiting her in those fitful few hours she had left to be lucid, to speak her peace to every soul that ever held a thread of meaning to her. The night she died, I heard about it later--in between meals--like any other passing conversation about weather or politics in the shadowed hallways of my home. From what I was told, her liver and pancreas had liquefied. She had essentially drowned in her own fluids, like a foal on the edge of a cold riverbank. The funeral that happened a month later could just as well have been an after-school dress rehearsal. I went on with my life, thinking of the future, untouched by the canned ashes that were eventually carried to the upper Canterlot Mausoleum, sealed behind opaque granite and a golden name-tag.
For years, as I grew into adulthood, I never once looked upon my apathetic absence from her passing with any shred of regret. That was well before I came to Ponyville, before I became a ghost, before I found out what it meant to be ignored, forgotten, and ultimately unloved. The world's a very warm place so long as you have the flimsy howbeit reliable assurance of other ponies knowing and saying your name. I didn't need her songs to freeze me to the bone. Simply being nameless is colder than the vacuum of space.
But what does it mean to be forgotten, and yet to forget the fact that you're forgotten? Does it make you blissfully unaware? Or does it make you confused, sad, and colder, like a pebble rattling forever in a can stabbed through with needles, trying to find its way out into the light...?
Trying to find its way home...?
I paused in my strumming and hugged the lyre to my chest. I clenched my eyes shut, or else the tears would begin as soon as I remembered that vacant look in Granite Shuffle's eyes. He couldn't find his way home. Neither could Doctor Comethoof. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I doubt that my grandmother herself ever did.
But I had the elegies. I had the notes of the unsung. I had a map. No matter how bleak, no matter how pitiful, I had a way to get home. What was I doing there? Why was I wasting my time?
Sniffling, I bore a frown and tore my way into the cabin. I gathered my saddlebag. I grabbed several sound stones. Finally, I scooped up a sheet of music, stuffed it into my journal, and carried it all with me as I trotted firmly towards the center of Ponyville under the shroud of midnight.
The town was asleep, dreamily dead all around me. I swear, there are times that I think that I could scream at the top of my lungs and still ponies would fail to hear me before they had the opportunity to forget I ever yelled. Often it can feel so important to be so unimportant.
I made it to the center of Ponyville, entering the space of town that was the warmest to me. That isn't saying much. I still shivered in my hoodie as I placed the sound stones in a circle and stood with my lyre. I rested in the very spot where Nightmare Moon had landed nearly fourteen months before. I wondered if Luna was ever stricken with grief during her thousand year banishment, or if the armor of Nightmare Moon had given her a blissful ignorance the whole time.
Soon I would know all things, or know nothing. It didn't matter so long as I had a transformation to undergo. Comethoof had transformed, for better or for worse. If he never finished solving the mystery, it's quite alright. I got to tackle it for a while. Somehow, it seems only fitting if another pony--no matter how unlucky--picked up the slack for the two of us in yet another thousand years. Anything would be appropriate, if only it meant spiting her and her song.
I paused briefly, serenaded by nothing but my cold and nervous breaths. I felt horribly exposed, no matter how dark or tranquil the Ponyvillean night. How many other ponies in the forgotten history of existence have been given the power that I wield, the opportunity to pierce reality in the sincere hope of changing the universe for the better?
And would it truly be for the better? The more that I learned, would it be something that I wished to learn about? What if I found out that I wasn't alone? What if there were other ponies cursed as horribly as me, always surrounding me, and yet I could never see them? What if there's a pony right here, right now, screaming in my face as I write this journal, and yet I've never had the good fortune of noticing him or her to begin with?
There was no more reason for delay. I was in place. I was ready. I had always been ready, even if the tears occasionally blinded me to my own purpose. I strummed my lyre. I played the first few notes to "Twilight's Requiem." The air of Ponyville filled with a haunting rhythm as only the stars were my audience. Nevertheless, with the grace and patience of a mausoleum statue, I finished playing the eighth elegy, and I sat quietly, waiting for illumination to come.
It didn't.
I shuddered. In a blur, I pulled my journal out. I re-read the pages that had changed once more. The magenta-glowing text was as bright and shimmering as ever. However, they were still the same words I had always read. They refused to change; they didn't tell me the reality of what had really happened when I wrote them.
I cursed under my breath. I didn't understand why nothing was happening. It worked for Comethoof. Why wasn't I learning the truth as well? Wasn't I brave enough? Wasn't I desperate enough?
Hastily, I played the Requiem again. It was an ugly performance, but a true performance. Every note was hit viciously, and when the number was done, I still stood as a clueless amnesiac before the dazzling array of my colored journal entries.
I sat in a slump, my mind vexed. I thought hard, scouring the depths of my logic for an explanation as to why I wasn't being inundated with a new wealth of knowledge.
Then, it occurred to me, and even the warmest spot in Ponyville couldn't have prevented my bones from freezing me inside out.
"I don't have the Nightbringer."
I ran a hoof over my forehead and all but collapsed in the middle of town.
"Blessed Celestia, I don't have what Comethoof had..."
The instrument--one of the last physical pieces of the holy song--had been in his possession last. He was the one unsung soul in all of Equestria with the ability to distinguish what was true from what was untrue, and yet he was the last and only pony to possess the ancient instrument.
And just what did I have?
Sighing, I closed my eyes and rested my chin in the grass. A part of me wanted to die there, even if the best I got was an unmarked gravestone.
Suddenly, the road home looked far, far longer than I had anticipated.
"B6 to G6."
I stared into the chessboard squares, my eyes awash in the black and white checks, as I wondered how lovely life could be if there was no longer any need for color.
"Do you have apple seeds in your ears?!" Granite Shuffle wheezed, coughed, and tapped his end of the table. "Move my rook to G6 already!"
"Oh... uhm..." I awoke to, fidgeting. "My apologies." I lifted his rook and telekinetically moved it to face off with my king and queen. "I was in another place."
"Better not be joining one of them armor-making factories. Your hooves are strong things, but they're best at pushing at soft dirt and not reshaping rough iron." Granite Shuffle teetered briefly in his seat. The afternoon light showed the hard lines in his wrinkled coat. "Mares should be as far away from the front as possible. It's enough that Grace works so close to the line. She's seen more blood than she needs to. Redtrot, for all his talk and shouting, is really just a coward compared to her."
"Yeah," I said, nodding dazedly. "The best of us are."
"Are you doing fine, Miss Smith? You look like you haven't slept much."
I sighed. I moved my queen to eliminate his rook, but in so doing, I exposed my king to an immediate checkmate under his bishop. The self-defeating move must have shocked him, for he gaped in a momentary silence. I figured that was the best opportunity to speak.
"Mr. Shuffle?"
"Huh? What?"
"I'm not Miss Smith."
He blinked at me. "You're not?"
I slowly shook my head. "My real name is Lyra Heartstrings. And I didn't come here just to play chess."
"Hah! Well I can see that!" He picked the bishop up and shakily attempted to take out my king to finish the game. "You're playin' like a fool! Just like that one time I tried my hoof against Blue Oats! Couldn't defend his pawns to save his life--" He dropped his bishop. "Blast it!"
I lifted it up for him. Instead of finishing his move, I levitated the piece between us, gazing at the shiny contours in the window-light. "Tell me, Mr. Shuffle, if you could go back to the way things were, and start life anew, would you?"
"Huh?" He blinked crookedly at me. "What are you getting at, Miss Smith? We're where we need to be, aren't we?"
"I'm not Miss Smith, Granite. And this isn't an apple orchard, or the Zebraharan desert, or the camp outside of Stalliongrad. This is Ponyville. This is your home."
"Ponyville? Home? Well, I worked long enough in that blasted place, didn't I? I'd go back there as soon as I had the chance, but--"
"What's stopping you?"
He froze where he sat.
I persisted. "What's stopping you from going to Ponyville, Mr. Shuffle?"
"Mmm..." He mumbled, his hooves brushing against his side of the chessboard. "The weather, those blasted pegasi, parasprites, a whole bunch of nonsense..."
"Is it a place where you don't want to live?"
He merely chewed on his upper lip.
I gently smiled. "Where would you rather be, Granite?"
"Hmmph..." He shifted in his seat, his wrinkled coat bunching up along his sides. "The dance floor. Just for a little while longer. I want to move before I am told to move, before I must see nothing but sand again."
My teeth showed in a grin as I reached into my saddlebag. "Somehow, I figured you would want to go there."
"You did?"
"Mmmhmmm." I pulled out my lyre. "Which is exactly why I visited the music history section of the town library today."
"They have a library in Stalliongrad? I thought the ponies here only read what they're told to."
I giggled. "Well, just for once, let's pretend like we can do what we want." I started strumming the lyre. "Tell me if this is something you remember, Mr. Shuffle."
"What? A song? My ears aren't what they used to--" He stopped in mid-speech as a gasp escaped his weathered lungs. His eyes narrowed as he stared through my vibrating strings. The song was a short one, and yet it pulled his spirit for several miles of meaning, judging by the mistiness that I saw forming in his eyes.
When I finished, I lowered the lyre by my side and smiled his way. "Well? Did you like what you just heard?"
"'Move Along Daisy,'" he stammered.
I chuckled. "It's a lot prettier than I imagined it would be. The book I found it written in was nearly torn apart with age. Funny, isn't it? The things that we almost completely forget manage to return with an unfathomable freshness."
He was staring blankly into space.
My smile left. I leaned forward and planted a hoof on his forelimb. "Mr Shuffle? Are you still with me?"
Clearly he wasn't. When he spoke next, it wasn't addressing me, and it certainly wasn't addressing Granny Smith. "Your mane was like silk," he murmured. "I asked how you managed it. You told me that you would show me when I came back from duty. I suddenly realized that you meant to show me more. How lucky could one colt be? The prettiest nurse in the whole camp, and she wants to spend time with me. I never thought I'd be handsome enough... happy enough... I..." His eyes swept past the room, and several black-and-white ghosts reflected off his moistening eyes. "I knew that I was fighting this blasted war for you. The bodies and the flames... I no longer saw them. Blue Oats died in my forelimbs, and I knew just how to hush his cries. You were there with me every step of the way, and somehow I knew you'd be gracious enough to live with me when I came back. So gracious..." His eyes twitched as a tear fell loose, sprung forth from the stabbing lengths of truth. "Grace..."
My brow furrowed in brief confusion, and then I felt my heart stop. I saw a cemetery. I saw many names. I saw Shuffle's slab, waiting for him. And then next to it--in perfect clarity--I once again saw, as he saw, a name that was waiting for him too. "Oh Granite..."
"Grace..." His face broke into a fractured wretch as he ran a hoof over his tears. "Grace, you're gone. You're gone and... and I don't know where our children are..."
I was hyperventilating. I threw myself on my knees and squatted before him. "Granite, please! I'm sorry! I should have known--"
"Nnngh!" The stallion flung his forelimb my way, and I was shown how real a soldier he still was. I fell on my back, stunned, as the dust of his crumbled life settled all around me. "Leave me alone! I loved her, Miss Smith! I loved her for as long as I cared to live! She only had eyes for me! And those eyes... oh sweet Celestia, those eyes..." He held his face in his hooves as he bitterly wept. "They won't open. They won't open. Call the doctor, Wish Step. Get Stinkin' and Filthy. She's not getting up. She's never... n-never..."
His sobs were hauntingly quiet. If I was just any stranger, they would have blended in with the muffled groans, wheezes, and murmurs of that home. But I wasn't a stranger, and that was my own fault. Marching away from him felt like tearing off one of my limbs, and I was just starting to wonder if I was willing to live with the pain with even a fraction of the courage that Granite had.
"And then he had the nerve to call me a bluebird!" Rainbow Dash ranted from where she settled down to a table at the far end of Sugarcube Corner. "I mean, doesn't he see these hooves?! It's not like I wanted to create a rain cloud over the cemetery this morning! I mean, seriously, who wants to hear Groundskeeper Whinny ramble on about how I look like ocean-colored albatrosses or falcons or any of that garbage?!"
"Heeheehee," Twilight Sparkle giggled as Rarity sat down beside the two with steaming cups of tea. "It's not garbage, Rainbow Dash! If you spent all of your old days shuffling dirt into graves, wouldn't you want something light-hearted to distract yourself too? It so happens that Groundskeeper Whinny takes up bird-watching as a hobby!"
"More like an obsession!" Rainbow Dash grunted. "I swear, he's got it in that goofy head of his that anything with feathers is a bird! I'm Rainbow Dash, for crying out loud! Chief weather flier of Ponyville! Winner of the Best Young Fliers Competition! You can't put a beak on that!"
"You certainly can while I'm here," Rarity said, daintily sipping from her cup. "I was hoping to discuss Canterlot fashion, not the ego of a brash pegasus or the delirious habits of Ponyville's sole undertaker."
"You haven't met him, Rarity!" Rainbow exclaimed. "He'd talk about how your mane looks like the tail-end of a peacock and then start sizing you for your casket five decades early!"
"Uh!" Rarity flinched from her. "Surely you jest! How could Ponyville employ such a senile stallion with the burial of our loved ones?"
"Because he's good at what he does!" Twilight exclaimed. "Groundskeeper Whinny may be a little bumpy around the edges, but his eccentricities are forgivable in light of his diligence. And besides..." Twilight sipped from her cup and added, "He stays to himself mostly, and he seems all the happier. Nopony's forcing any one of us to go out to the cemetery and talk to him."
"And why not? Afraid you might learn something you can't get from a book for a change?"
Twilight froze. She looked blankly at Rarity and Rainbow Dash, who were both likewise as stunned, for none of them had just spoken.
"Afraid that you'll discover that someday you too will be as old and forgotten as him, so that all of your beloved hobbies will be joked about at the tea parties of random strangers?"
Blinking, Twilight turned around in her chair. Her eyes swept the room full of nervous ponies, until she found one face with a frown. "I'm sorry...?"
"What are you sorry for?" I marched towards the table, fuming. "I mean what are you really sorry for?! You keep obsessing over hundreds upon thousands of books of knowledge, and yet history is waiting for you right in this town, just a conversation away. For a mare who's so concerned about never being forgotten, you seem to dismiss other ponies really easily."
"Hey!" Rainbow Dash frowned, hovering up out of her seat. "Who the hay are you?! You can't talk to my friend Twilight that way--!"
"And you!" I glared at her. "How long will you be slaving, grinding, aching to join the Wonderbolts?! Even you must know deep inside that achieving such a dream will only turn your entire life into a hollow façade, as you give up all the friends and family that you're loyal to just to become a smoke-trailing symbol in the sky!"
Rainbow's ruby eyes blinked. "I... uh... uh..."
I swiveled to face Rarity. "And is fashion really all there is to life?!"
"But of course! I--!"
"You have a sister who loves you! You have friends that want to spend more time with you! You have stallions begging, crawling on their knees to give you the most romantic evening imaginable! Are all of those opportunities worth giving up for the one vague dream that you might actually become famous? Haven't enough ponies given up everything to become household names, and yet no one knows a single thing about who and what they really are because all they've become is simply that: names?!"
As Rarity wilted with a wincing expression, Twilight leaned in with a confused scowl. "Ma'am, what are you trying to tell us?! What's the meaning of--?"
"Why does anypony need to be told anything?! Why doesn't anyone ever just look in front of them and see that the world isn't supposed to be learned; it's supposed to be felt!"
I was starting to pant. I hugged myself and sat on my haunches before them.
"You are all so beautiful," I said. "Each and every one of you. All of the joys in life, all of the things that are worth preserving: they are not coming tomorrow. They are not lost in the past. They are here, right in front of us. Everypony keeps pretending like there are more important things, that there are walls that should be built around us to protect stupid quests for stupid goals when the road to such imagined bliss only grows longer and longer. Why doesn't anypony just stop and cherish what they have and who they are? If I had what you had: the warmth and the joy and the laughter and the camaraderie."
I choked and ran a shaking hoof through my mane.
"If I could h-have such friendship, if I could afford to be remembered for a single day, I would grab the nearest pony to me and I would never let go. Because when all of this is gone, when there is no longer a now, there is nothing. There is nothing. Don't you understand? There is..."
I looked up at them, and I lost my breath. Rainbow Dash was wincing. Rarity trembled. Twilight Sparkle's jaw was agape. But the one thing their expressions were brandishing the most was confusion. They weren't the only ones. All of Sugarcube Corner had fallen silent, every occupant forming a ring of startled faces aimed at me, focused on the anomaly, on the curse. It was the first time since a maniac shouted through the streets of the Summer Sun Celebration that I had the attention of so many ponies, and I knew it would be gone in the next blink as it was in the blinks given over a year before.
And in that silence, I once again heard the tiny sound I had marched halfway across town to flee. My cowardice was of no service to me. Granite Shuffle's weeping voice still lingered in my ears. I clenched my eyes and held a hoof over my face as I trembled and buckled in a cyclone of cold.
I wanted to play him a song of joy, in order to bring him back to a place of that very same joy. But it's so easy to forget that joy is the same thing as pain, only on the other end of the scale, a scale that only measures the degree to which we register the absence of all things that dare to be. I experimented with a frail stallion at the crumbling borders of his life. For a unicorn so bent on becoming permanent, I never seem to learn from my mistakes, nor do I suffer for them.
"I'm so sorry," I whimpered.
"Ma'am, please," Twilight's voice said soothingly. It felt like venom. "Sit and talk with us. Tell us what's the matter--"
"I'm just... just..." I choked, spun about, and ran from her outstretched hoof. "I'm so s-sorry!" I galloped out of Sugarcube Corner and into a sea of tears.
I had lost track of the nights where I couldn't sleep. What was more, I was beginning to lose the desire to track them in the first place.
I lay in my cot that evening, staring up at the stars beyond the window. I wondered if the Cosmic Matriarch gazed upon the constellations with any comparable emotion. I wondered if she cherished everything she created, or if she simply made the things in this universe to find out what it meant to love and be loved.
It must be a curious thing to be a goddess, to be immortal, to attach oneself to things out of hobby instead of necessity. No wonder Princess Celestia is so close to Twilight Sparkle. To choose to have an apprentice, to purposefully value a single drop in the immense well of time, is a monumental exercise of love.
I truly, truly cherish the ponies in this town. I love them because I choose to. They forget me like the last minute's breaths, and yet that doesn't erase the need, the need to love and be loved, the need to acknowledge that each of us is here for more than the act of being here.
I love Twilight Sparkle. I love Rainbow Dash and Rarity. What's more, I love Granite Shuffle, and I mean the best for him. I want to be there for him in ways that I was never there for my grandmother, in ways that I was never even there for my parents, in all the ways that I still can't be there for them.
As the night wore on, I curled into myself and clenched my eyes shut. Just when I think that I've shed all the tears that this universe can contain, another day comes and I'm torn apart in a new realization. In spite of what a hysterical mare may have rambled about in Sugarcube Corner that day, it felt like things would have been a whole lot better if I had never discovered Granite Shuffle, if I had never tried to befriend him.
And just what did our "relationship" accomplish? I wasn't real to him. I was Granny Smith, or I was Blue Oats, or I was one of the nurses. I served nothing more than the medium through which he navigated the tempestuous currents of his fractured memories. Somehow I had hoped he would make a semblance of order out of it all, just as I had hoped the same for Doctor Comethoof. I could never commune with Alabaster, but I could commune with Granite. Was it really that simple, that selfish, that pathetic?
I played Granite a song, and he saw the light. Of course I should have known what would happen next. Life ends on a cold and bitter note for a reason. Eight decades is a long enough time to lose more than one gains. Ponies living in the shadows of their existences don't need to remember things. They just need peace, respect, and companionship. I should have left well enough alone, but I didn't. I played him "Move Along Daisy," and the resulting lucidity reacquainted him with what had consumed Grace, something that would only consume him as well. I suddenly and very passionately wished that I could take that tune I played and make it unsung.
A gasp escaped my lips. My eyes flew open and I shot into a sitting position. I wiped my eyes dry and gazed once more out the window.
The stars were bright, distant, and indefinably vast. It would be a disastrous, life-consuming task to attempt getting acquainted with them all. However, that didn't make the stars any less worth looking at. It would be very simple, very easy and convenient to just wipe the night's sky clean, so that all that was left was a blank space. But what would happen with all the beauty?
It was then that I realized the one, eternal flaw of the Cosmic Matriarch, the sin that would define all sins. When she made for her the unsung realm, when she buried her in between the Firmaments, it was not an act of courage, nor was it an act of nobility. It was simple cowardice. And if I left Granite Shuffle alone forever, like she left her alone forever, I would be the same coward she was, the same coward this young filly was when she let her grandmother drown in her own fluids.
For once, there were no more tears. I actually slept, only because I had to. How else was I to have the strength to make a visit in the morning?
When I slowly trotted into the tiny room, Mr. Shuffle was not in his chair. He was in bed, lying on his back. He was awake, for what it was worth. His lungs were pretending to breathe more than performing the actual act.
I've seen horrible things in this life. I've been to a place where lightning strikes from all angles and shackled ponies whimper and rattle in endless limbo. None of that demanded the courage I needed right then as I walked over and sat myself in the same room where I was told to leave the day before by a weeping stallion. There wasn't a snowflake's chance in Tartarus that Granite would remember me. But that's not what mattered. It's never about that. The fact of the matter is, I remember. I always remember.
"I know you're probably not expecting any visitors," I said. "But I wanted to stop by anyways. And if you want me to leave, I will. I just... I just really wanted to see you again."
"Again...?" His eyes slowly swam over the ceiling. He stirred under the covers, his wrinkled hooves squirming against his chest. "Have... Have you been here before?"
I blinked at that. He hadn't confused me with Applejack's grandmother. Had he changed? Was I speaking with the same Granite Shuffle? Was I ever speaking with the same stallion?
"Well?" He grumbled. The anger in his voice didn't bother me, for I was too relieved to hear the strength in it. "Are you still there, or did the cat get your tongue?"
My nostrils flared as a breathy chuckle escaped my lips. I leaned forward on the stool and rubbed my hooves beneath my chin as I gazed into his bed covers. After a while, I said, "Yeah, I've been here before. I've been here three days this week, in fact. Four, if you count today."
"Oh?" He coughed, wheezed, and relaxed with a long breath. "Visiting relatives?"
"Not... Not exactly..." I said. I glanced at him. His eyes were still plastered to the ceiling. Slowly, I spoke, "I made a friend this week, a friend I never expected to make. He's good at chess. I used to think I had some skills with pawns and bishops, but he taught me otherwise. He's a very tough fellow, and he's seen many sights in Equestria--both gorgeous and distressing. He's made many companions in his years, and... a-and he's lost many as well. Uhm..."
I cleared my throat and adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie. As I found the space in silence uninterrupted, I bravely spoke on.
"He has children, all as smart and as wealthy as he's become. And though they don't show up as often as they should, I know that he loves them... and that he wants the best for them. It's the same love he showed for his fellow comrades, for the souls he marched into the far reaches of the earth to save from pure evil. He's gone so far, and to such lengths, and yet... the road home seems to stretch on forever, no matter the extent of his journey. He told me himself that he wanted to go home, and that was when I knew he was more than a friend, he was..."
I bit my lip. I dried my eyes for his sake, even if he wasn't looking at me.
"He was just where I was," I said in a shuddering voice. "But he didn't know it. And I knew--no--I believed that he deserved to know it. I felt it was his right to become self-aware. I struggled to make him remember something cohesive, something that shaped his being instead of having painted his confused shell. I thought that if I could reach deep into his spirit, I might make a hole large enough for him to look into himself and... and to find something to be happy about. In spite of where he was, and in spite of what he no longer had, I just wanted him to have a happy thought, a single happy thought."
I shuddered, my eyes closing as I felt the shadows increasing around us.
"The thing is," I said "I thought I was doing all of this for him. But I was really just doing it all for myself. Because I wanted to know--and I still wish to know--that when all of this crazy world is no longer mine for the taking, that I too will settle into thoughts that are happy, that are sublime, that are tranquil and glorious. Because, in the end, all I will have... all we will ever have is our own thoughts. And shouldn't they be good and wholesome thoughts, so long as we can afford them?"
I fidgeted with my hooves as I sensed all the dust in the room. We were both fossils waiting for time to claim us. I knew he had fought the decay so courageously and for so long, that I wasn't about to stop myself either.
"Existence is special. It's something that makes sound, but not just any sound--a beautiful symphony. What's more, it's hardly a moving sound if it's made alone, even though there are so many gorgeous movements to be heard. You see, I don't know if my life will ever earn an encore. But, so help me Celestia, I want to be sure that my friend's does."
I looked his way. I wish that I hadn't. Granite Shuffle's face was as blank as ever. His eyes still swam uselessly over the ceiling's contours.
I felt a pit forming in the back of my throat. The next breath was a haggard thing, lifting me limply out of the stool. I leaned on his bed with the meager excuse to pat and squeeze one of his hooves.
"Well... I think I will visit him another time. Whether or not he can forgive me, I guess it really doesn't matter. I just want him to know that I enjoy his company, and that I'm... that I'm a better pony for having known the sound of his voice, even if he will never know mine."
I shuffled away from the bed, passing through the shadows to escape the confines of his room. By the time I reached the door, I heard a whispery noise. For a second there, I thought he was suffocating. Panicked, I spun to look Granite's way. It turns out he was humming, or trying to. I could barely make out the notes his wheezing breath was trying to make. Several seconds in, I realized what it was.
"'Move Along Daisy,'" I exclaimed.
He gulped and spoke from his bed, "Can't get it out of my head. I... I don't know why..."
I clenched my eyes shut and seethed through my teeth. "Granite, I'm sorry. I should never have--"
"Don't be sorry, Grace," he murmured. "That dance is the best thing that ever happened to me. It's made the desert cooler. I can barely hear Redtrot when he yells. And just yesterday--" His breath sucked in sharply.
I opened my eyes. I was shocked at what I saw.
Granite was neither grimacing nor smiling. His face bore the look of wonderment, like a foal experiencing Hearth's Warming for the first time. "The village was empty. There was nothing but death. We killed so many wildebeests. The sand turned red. Another soldier lost his lunch. I laughed at him. I wasn't trying to be cruel. It was all I could do to keep myself from sobbing. That, and I remembered 'Move Along Daisy.' I remembered your silken mane and the way we danced. And that's when my eyes saw the trap door. The handle was the color of your hair, Grace. I pointed it out to Redtrot. We moved in one at a time. The lieutenant hoisted the door open. I dashed into the entrance of the cellar with my spear, and... and..."
He started to breathe fitfully. I almost panicked, wondering if I should call a nurse. But then his lungs relaxed as the next voice whimpered from them.
"There were over a hundred of them, a huddling sea of stripes. Children and parents, entire families clinging to each other. They thought we were the wildebeests. They cried in their desert language. We opened the door even wider. They saw us and we saw them. We thought every zebra in the village was dead. But they were alive. They were as alive as the day they were all foaled and..."
Granite shuddered. He raised a hoof over his face as the tears came out, but it was different this time, so heavenly different. He was smiling.
"We let them out, and they didn't ask for food or drink. They just hugged us. They cried and they hugged and they even kissed us. And that's how I knew, Grace. That's how I knew that this was all worth it. This horrible war, the wildebeest's mayhem, Blue Oats' cries for his mother as I felt him leave my forelimbs. It was all worth finding that beauty, finding that life and freeing it once more. Nothing is meaningless. It's all worth it. And yet none of it is nearly as beautiful or as darling as how I feel when I think about you, Grace, and that someday I will be dancing with you again."
He was crying, a quiet little sound as always. But it was hardly a solo this time. I leaned weakly against the doorframe to his room, teary eyed, sharing his smile from miles away.
"You should find her, Granite," I said softly, my voice breaking. "You should go find her and dance with her."
"That's just it..." He said, and the wrinkles morphed into warm, moist dimples as his face practically lit up the room. "I think I already have. And what a fine dance it's been..."
I exhaled slowly, feeling as if all the weight in my lungs were gone. "How about I come visit you tomorrow, Mr. Shuffle, and you can tell me all about it?"
"Yes..." He nodded slowly, sniffling. "I... I think I would like that." He swallowed, and his eyes met me for the first time since I arrived there. "If... If you're not too busy visiting your friend here."
I blurted a tiny laugh, wiped my eyes dry, and smiled his way. "No. I won't be too busy. You have my word..."
He faced the heavens beyond the ceiling once more, his head rolling back and forth, his breath giving a whispery rendition of "Move Along Daisy." I did what the lyrics asked me to, and found myself embraced by toasty sunlight.
The next morning was brighter than normal, strangely devoid of the usual rolling mists. I had spent the whole night pouring over Comethoof's journal, comparing it to my own. I wondered--if Penumbra had lived longer--would Alabaster have ended in the same madness and despair? Was his insanity something that he willed upon himself? Could he have given me a much stronger map to follow if he had chosen to focus on the glorious song he and his wife made, instead of obsessing so much over the Nocturne?
I finally knew how to not end up like him. A life obsessed with the unsung realm only stands to become unsung itself. Her life is something that is soundless for the sake of soundlessness itself. I have the opportunity--the gift--to do otherwise. Blaming all of my sorrows on her curse is no excuse. After all, if Mr. Shuffle could find something to smile about, so could I.
With that thought, I trotted leisurely towards his home. I saw Carrot Top with her cart of things. I saw Miss Hooves flying by, entangled frustratedly with her mailbag. And then I saw something that made me freeze in my steps.
It was the window to Mr. Shuffle's room. From the outside, I could clearly see that the curtains were missing.
It had to have been no more than three blinks later: I had galloped into the building and skidded to a stop right at the entrance to his quarters. I stood there in a slump, my eyes scanning the walls. More and more shivers ran down my spine with the lengthening degrees of the place's blankness. I saw several boxes lying across an empty bed. They were full of plaques and picture frames and a folded chessboard.
The sound of hoofsteps shuffled to a stop behind me. "Can... Can I help you, miss?"
I spun around, breathless. Nurse Glass Shine looked worriedly at me. I saw something in the curvature to her eyelids, and somehow it spoke of the same emptiness as the room behind me. I glanced up at the number above the door, gulped, and then looked sadly at her.
"When did it happen?"
She glanced into the room, sighed quietly, then returned her gaze to mine. "Late yesterday afternoon. He had a stroke. It wasn't the first occasion he's suffered one, but this time it was in his sleep. I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Are you related to Mister Shuffle?"
"I..." My eyes swam over the room. I bit my lip and ran a hoof through my mane as I felt a wave of chills overtake me like an old embrace. "It's so empty now..."
Nurse Shine slowly nodded. "Room Twelve has been crowded for a long time now. The Shuffle Family contract no longer has claim to this part of the building. One of the tenants of Twelve will be moving in soon. He's waited a long time for such privacy, the poor dear. Just, up until now, nopony could afford these quarters but Shuffle's relatives."
"I... I see..."
She gave me a sympathetic look. "Is there anything I can do to help you, dear? Would you like to talk with the head facilitator?"
"No, thanks, I'm fine. I just..." I gulped. Then I blinked and turned to face her. "Uhm. Maybe there's one thing you could do."
"Hmmm? Yes?"
"Tell me... uhm..." I fidgeted. "What happens to him next?"
Two days later, I stood before his name. "Granite Shuffle" now had a complete set of numbers to it. Fresh flakes of chiseled marble still lingered on the engravings: "918 - 1001." Then, beneath that, scratched into the polished surface was a single, lonesome line: "Father, Soldier, Businesstallion."
I exhaled long and hard. I stood in Ponyville Cemetery, gazing at the fresh mound of dirt that covered the soul I had once played chess with. With a simple tilt of my head, I studied the grave next to his: "Gracious Silver - 922 - 988 - Wife, Mother, Nurse."
"Well, Mister Shuffle," I murmured. "It's almost like a dance," I said. "You're both close enough, after all."
A brief wind blew through the field. My mane billowed in the sunlight. The stones didn't move an inch. Celestia-willing, they never will.
I knew that there was an unsung realm. I knew that the Nightbringer existed somewhere. But finding more about all of that no longer mattered to me. I was alive. I had this insatiable urge to scour the landscape and find the bodies of Penumbra and Alabaster, if only to bury them in the same peace as Gracious and Granite before me.
"Oh!" A voice exclaimed behind me, breaking my solemn thoughts. "Leapin' Luna! I didn't see you there!" A stallion chuckled. "I'm sorry, is there a funeral after all?"
I turned and found myself looking at a dirt-stained old pony with a pair of shovels hanging off his saddlebag. He was rolling up a cart full of flowers when he stopped to gape at me before the grave with his dull, graying eyes.
"Groundskeeper Whinny?" I remarked.
"Why, yes! Heheh--That's my name!" He tilted a ridiculously large hat towards the edge of his brow and smiled. "Have we met before, dearie?"
"I..." I glanced at the grave, then at him. "Most likely not. Uhm..." I cleared my throat and asked, "Did I hear you right?"
"I dunno, didja?"
"There... There wasn't a funeral service?" I asked.
"None that I know about." He shrugged. "Buried the poor feller here m'self. Was light as a feather, even though the casket read he wasn't a pegasus and all. Heheheh--" His eyes widened as he held a soiled hoof over his mouth. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry! You came here to pay some respects, didn't ya? And here I am gabbin' like a chirpin' songbird--"
"No. No, Mister Whinny, it's quite alright," I said with a soft smile. "I'm not related. Still... I..." I bit my lip and looked painfully at the grave once again. "I did know him. And... And it pains me to no end to think that he didn't get a funeral."
"I find it plum confusin' myself! This here's a well-paid grave! Was this an important pony or somethin'?"
"More than important," I murmured. "He was priceless to Ponyville's foundation. He was a valiant soldier. He was--"
"Heh, sounds like they could have hired you to give a eulogy," Whinny said. "Uhm... Assumin' they had a funeral after-all."
I slowly gazed up at him and nodded gravely. "Yes. A eulogy."
"Would be rather appropriate, ya reckon?"
"I... I think I can do that," I murmured.
"Ahem." He stood tall and politely removed his hat.
I turned to face the grave straight on. I took a few seconds to compose myself. Then I said, "Granite Shuffle was a selfless stallion, a brave stallion. He set forth in life to find himself. What he found instead were unsightly horrors on the far edge of the globe. But he never let any of these things discourage them. He freed zebra strangers from pain and destruction. He met priceless companions whose impact would be evident in his complexion unto the end of his days. Souls like Apple Smith, Redtrot, Stinkin' Rich: he cherished each and every one of them as much as he loved his children, Wish Step and Granite Junior. And of all the ponies he had the grace to know, the most beloved was his wife, Gracious Silver. He kept a gentle place for Grace deep in his mind, quiet and untouched. When his existence became a complex tempest of conflicting notions, he held the memory of her closest, tending to it like he would tend to a garden--"
My breath cut off, for a sudden chill overwhelmed me. I saw my breath coming out in vapors, and a voice was whistling behind me, until it gave forth a startled gasp.
"Oh! Leapin' Luna, I didn't see ya there, missy!" Groundskeeper Whinny chuckled. "I'm sorry, did I catch you in the middle of something?"
I gazed at him. My lips quivered. I closed my eyes and swallowed a painful gulp. "I..." I sighed heavily and looked sorrowfully at the grave. "I was just wondering..."
"Wondering?" He scratched his head. "Wondering what, dearie?"
"What sound a stone makes," I murmured. I looked upon Granite's name for the last time, and swiveled to face Whinny. "This is a beautiful place," I said. "Be sure to k-keep it that way."
Whinny's eyes narrowed as he gave a placid smile. "Oh, you can count on it, darlin'. Don't you worry none."
"There's no point in worrying," I said. I gazed at the sky above the cemetery. Everything looked gray and dismal, like an endless realm full of thunder and rattling. "Sometimes, there's just no point whatsoever."
And I was gone.
The alley filled with the cacophony of crashing pins.
"Haaa ha ha!" Rainbow Dash pumped her forelimb. "Four strikes in a row!" She hovered upside down and flew backwards with her grin in Applejack's face. "What?! What?! What?!"
Applejack had to head-butt her to get a clear view of the lane. "Laugh it up, airhead! I'm gonna wipe the floor with that smirk of yours sooner than later."
"And then the floor will be all--" Rainbow Dash cupped her face in a pair of hooves and gawked, "'I just kissed Rainbow Dash! I might as well be the ceiling now!'"
"This game's just beginnin'!" Applejack grunted. "Ever heard of not countin' yer eggs before they done hatched?! I'll catch up to ya yet!"
"Oh, just like you totally didn't do last week?"
"Oh bite yer tongue!" Applejack pivoted, hissed, and kicked the ball down the lane. "Rrrrgh!"
"Easy there, Applejack darling," Rarity said from where she sat, filing one of her front limbs with a metal stick. "You'll strain one of your priceless farming legs at this rate of brutish showponyship."
"Like you're one to talk!" Twilight grumbled from her scoreboard. She folded her front limbs and cast Rarity a frown. "I can't believe it's the second week in a row that you refuse to bowl!"
"Excuse me, but I'm a lady and I can't throw caution to the wind like any ordinary ruffian!" Rarity shook her dainty hoof. "I'll be needing my precious dexterity to sew a gown for Sapphire Shores tomorrow morning. If I did something strenuous the night before to ruin my limbs of artistry, I'd never forgive myself!"
"It's okay, Rarity," Fluttershy said with a rosy-cheeked smile. "We're just happy that you're with us."
"Why thank you, Fluttershy," Rarity smiled with her eyes shut before tightening her lips in a haughty breath. "At least somepony understands the substance of these little get-togethers."
"Ungh!" Twilight quite literally dropped her face against the scoreboard. "I don't know why I keep opening a bowling slot for you, then..."
Pinkie Pie bounced into frame. "Couldn't we just get Applejack to bowl twice? That way she might catch up with Dashie!"
"Snnkkt--Hahahaha!" Rainbow Dash's laughter could be heard from overhead.
"Don't encourage her, Pinkie!" Applejack shouted. "I don't need help from nopony!"
"Tell that to the five pins you just failed to knock down, ya drawlin' bucket of hayseeds!"
"Why you..."
"Girls! We're supposed to be relaxing!" Twilight exclaimed. "Pinkie, why don't you bowl twice for the rest of the game? At least you're not tossing the ball at the arcade cabinets like last week."
"Oooh! I have an even better idea!" Pinkie's legs blurred as she bulleted across the alley and stood right in front of my table. "Hey you! How'd you like to join a wickedly awesome game of grunting noises and heavy balls?"
I was lost in my own silent world. I blinked and looked up at Pinkie from the journal I was only pretending to be reading. "Huh? Balls?"
"I promise it'll be totally fun!" Pinkie grinned with glinting teeth. "It's even got a pony in a hat who gets angry a lot!"
"The heck y'all goin' on about now?"
"Quiet, Applejack!" Pinkie barked back. "I'm trying to get a perfect stranger to join our slice-of-life scene!"
"Oh heavens, Pinkie..." Twilight was already face-hoofing while Rarity and Fluttershy lightly giggled at the fiasco.
"Thanks, but... uhm..." I fidgeted in my chair. "I can't really bowl. I was just here to..."
I stopped in mid-speech. The table in front of me had a glint to it, just as reflective as Granite's grave and just as cold. I began to wonder if I really knew what I was there for, or if I even had to know. I looked up, and Pinkie's blue eyes were full of life, full of warmth, and full of the ever-dancing "now." Beyond her, several colorful ponies looked my way. They were all young and beautiful and real. I felt for the briefest moment that I was being beckoned from long lost friends, and it was about time that I answered them.
"Actually, yes." I said with a gentle smile. "I... I think I would enjoy playing a game with you girls."
"Seriously?" Twilight Sparkle remarked with a cock-eyed expression.
"Woohoo!" Pinkie Pie's jumping figure took up my vision. "Guess what, girls! Our sundae just got a dash of mint! Come on down to the bowling bonanza!"
I did just that. As I marched into the ring of seats, I blushed slightly. I realized that I had never done this before. In over a year of floundering about the cold lengths of this tiny town, I had never once attempted being in the presence of Twilight and all of her close friends at the same time. It felt too warm to be real, precisely because it couldn't have been. But that didn't matter to me at that moment. All that mattered was the warmth, something that I was sharing--if even for the tiniest, most infinitesimal slice of time.
"Welcome to the party, sugarcube," Applejack said with a freckled smile.
"Yeah, but don't think that you can even remotely come close to beating me!" Rainbow Dash tossed my way with a lofty wink.
"I like your mane," Fluttershy softly said. "It's very shiny."
"Th-thank you," I nervously replied.
"But that ensemble of yours looks positively worn-in," Rarity added with a graceful grin. "Perhaps you could give a seamstress like me the pleasure of making you a new one."
"Uhm... I dunno. I didn't expect to be hanging out with anypony." I gulped and smiled. "I actually have this really fabulous red sweater back home..."
"You live here in Ponyville?" Twilight remarked with a shocked smile. "Wonderful! Have you ever been by the library?"
"Oh..." I chuckled airily and scratched my neck. "A few times..."
"I hope at least Spike was there to lend you some assistance. With the way things have been lately, I haven't afforded the time to be a full-time librarian like I originally wanted to."
"Yeah." I nodded. "It's been a really crazy year, hasn't it?"
"Uhhhh-huh!" All six of them chimed in at once, a perfectly-timed chorus. It was followed with a loud splash of giggles. I joined in with them. My voice felt out of tune, but it hardly mattered.
"Twilight, yer up!" Applejack gestured to her.
"Oh! Well... uhm... here goes!" She trotted towards the ball dispenser. "Can somepony keep score for me during my frame?"
"Pinkie?" Rarity asked.
"Mmmmfschlkkk!" Pinkie replied, her mouth full of popcorn. "Mmmflchk mmflckt mff mckktter!"
"Ew, mind your manners, darling!"
"Uhm..." I gulped and shuffled over to the scoreboard, taking a seat. "I'll do it, if nopony minds."
"You sure?" Fluttershy asked. "You're our guest."
"Believe me," I said, levitating the pencil off the table as I gazed down the list of numbered boxes. "It's my pleasure."
"Well, if ya insist," Applejack said, tilting the brim of her hat as Twilight tossed her ball down the lane. "Maybe when Pinkie's done gulpin' junk food down like a parasprite, she can share a few of those delicious salt-licks with ya."
"H-hey, maybe so..." I froze in place. I was hearing the Requiem in my ears, like a distant funeral dirge. "Huh..."
"Is everything okay?" Fluttershy asked.
"Uhm..." I looked down at the scoresheet. Off to the side, I swiftly scribbled the word "parasprite" down in pencil. As soon as I finished crafting the letters into existence, they shimmered with a deep magenta glow. "Yeah," I said with a curious breath. "Everything is just fine..." I looked up at them. I didn't feel the least bit cold. "Everything is perfect," I smiled.
"Well, glad to be of acquaintance, Miss..."
"Heartstrings," I said. I watched as Twilight bowled for a second time, finishing the last of the pins to earn herself a spare. "But you can call me Lyra."
"How long have you been living in Ponyville, Lyra?" Fluttershy asked.
"Oh... This isn't really my home," I said. I gazed at the word "parasprite" again. I didn't have the Nightbringer like Comethoof did. But having a key means nothing until you've discovered the door. "But, I'm beginning to think I'll be heading there soon."
Twilight trotted back, exhaling. "Whew! So... What's the score?"
I drew a line across her frame.
"Looks to me like somepony's catching up."
I've been so concerned for so long about earning myself an encore.
But you can't very well repeat something without a glorious sound to begin with.
Background Pony
XII - "What Sound a Stone Makes"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: theworstwriter, RazgrizS57, Props, theBrianJ, Warden
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XIII - Easier Than Feeling | Dear Journal,
How selfless can a pony be until that selflessness becomes something opposite to itself? Are we always noble creatures when we sacrifice everything in our lives for an idea? Curse or uncursed. We are on this earth for a limited time. Do we it owe it to ourselves to indulge a little? To allow ourselves pleasure so as to appreciate and understand pain more?
All my life, I've had a philosophical way of approaching things. This cannot be denied. Sometimes I even lose myself in spiraling patterns of analytical and presumptuous thought. However, there comes a time when philosophy no longer serves as an aid, but rather as a crutch.
Could it be possible that I've used philosophy as a way to distance myself from the things that truly hurt, that fill me with dread, that remind me of just how terribly lonely I am? After all, there are far better solutions to those ailments that go beyond the artifice of practiced words.
I suppose I've always had music to fall back on. Where words fail me, music picks up the slack. It does something for me that philosophy fails to, and for that I owe music all the more.
It gives me the license to feel.
Corridors of ice. Rows of ponies, marching and mournful. Twitching eyes of cornflower blue. There's a service today. There's always a service. Tears and poetry and letters unreceived. A ringing bell. A city covered in frost. It's not her war, but they are planting flowers in her shadow. I see nothing but thorns. There are screams between the spaces of unsung lyrics. Somewhere, I hear you sobbing. I must find you. I love you. I adore you. She adores her beloved. She adores her beloved. She adores her beloved.
Everywhere I turn, the war stabs at me. I slide underneath it on a current of freezing pebbles. I must make music where nopony can hear me, not even her. The black metal bites my skin. The strings won't break. My hooves are bleeding. My horn stopped resonating hours ago. Every time I pierce the barriers of magic, I see her eyes. She's catching up to me. I must find you first. I must find you before she does. Maybe I can distract her. Maybe if I found her beloved. Maybe if I held conference with the destroyer of worlds. Maybe he can help me with the elegy of Desolation. Maybe my horn will work for me by that time. I'm scared of it working for her instead.
The ice is everywhere. I'm losing hair. A gray trail falls behind me. There's an old stallion in the pond water looking back. Will I become him? I've always hated the light, and even now it betrays me, confuses me. Maybe if I close my eyes, you'll be there. I can slide up next to you and kiss your ears in the same way you've always loved to play with mine. I want you to hear this symphony when it is over. I will have discovered it when I have discovered you. Together we shall turn the Nocturne into something beautiful. We will find our beauty once again. She will not, but we will. For you are my beloved, and I will not abandon you like she abandoned hers.
More thorns. The strings won't break through them. Guards are screaming at me. Something about a "Solar Screening." All that is bright and glorious about this world is gone. All is darkness, save for the brief splash of flame. Sibling rivalry. Falling stars. They will destroy the stars with their righteous fury. Will she rise up in the absence and fill the night with chains? I must stop this. I must bring the dawn before the night. A paradox is an answer is a song. The strings still won't break. Blood on my hooves. I love you. Wait for me a little longer. Do not listen to her. She adores her beloved. She banished her beloved. She adores her beloved. She banished her beloved. She adores her beloved. She banished...
I couldn't help it; I stopped reading. I sighed deeply, squatting in the middle of my cot as the soft afternoon light wafted in through the cabin windows. I ran a hoof across my clenched eyes and rubbed them. That much blue text is utterly agonizing.
Over the latest session, I had committed myself to reading for barely an hour. As I went deeper and deeper into Doctor Comethoof's rambling text, it became progressively harder for me to focus on the magically glowing material. It certainly didn't help that the next four successive pages consisted of messily scribbled "She adores her beloved; she banished her beloved" over and over again. However, there were minor details woven in-between: a letter replaced with another here, a word rearranged or flung upside down there. It was a senseless pattern, but a pattern nonetheless, and it deserved my undivided attention. Over three-fourths of Comethoof's records were filled with nonsensical ramblings such as this, and it only got more disjointed as the blue text went on. I felt as though it was my duty to peruse the absurd lengths of it, for what else did I have to work with?
I was desperate to know whatever truth Comethoof may have seized throughout his maniacal endeavors. But no matter how deeply I read his cyclical text, I couldn't find the one word I was so frantically searching for. Not once did I see any mention of "parasprites." I had read every word that glowed before me in an unearthly magenta. As the colors faded, I performed the Requiem over and over again to maintain focus. Every time the one forbidden color popped up, it was merely in reference to one of four things: her, the "writing" of the Nocturne, the unsung realm, or the explosion that had supposedly taken place in Princess Celestia's meeting room right after Nightmare Moon's rise to power.
I like to think that it was perfectly natural of me to turn to Comethoof. His writings were, after all, my proverbial bible of the unsung. Because of his records, I knew about the "Nocturne of the Firmaments." I knew about the final two elegies--well, I knew more than I'd ever find out on my own. I also discovered the fate of the Nightbringer: it was in the possession of Doctor Comethoof unto his dying day. But what became of it after he was lost to the curse of time and neglect?
I wasn't sure that reading and re-reading Comethoof's text--no matter how thorough or diligent a job--would ever lend me truth regarding the Nightbringer's fate. I was just one pony, and hardly an expert at cracking insanely cryptic wordsmithery. I wondered if Comethoof had purposefully meant to disguise his records with obscure ramblings. If I was delusional enough to believe my spouse was still alive after personally witnessing her horrible demise, then perhaps I'd do something as brash as commit myself to guarding the fate and location of the Nightbringer for as long as I lived. With my luck, the timeless instrument was hidden somewhere in the depths of Canterlot, where it had eluded the eyes of dozens upon dozens of generations to follow. After all, just where else would Comethoof have taken the holy instrument except to the grave--and most likely an unmarked one at that?
It was easy to be dismayed. The Nightbringer was the only key I perceived to performing the Nocturne in full, and to unraveling the truth that was obscured even to me. It's hard to write in this journal, knowing that if I turn so little as ten pages back, I'll find glowing magenta text showing where I had essentially lied to myself to protect the unsung realm. I was dying to know what had actually happened to me the first night after I played the "Threnody of Night," or what had truly become of Princess Celestia's visit to Ponyville the week of the parasprite infestation.
Parasprites. Were they really something made up? Were they truly a fabrication? It was indescribably strange to contemplate this. It would have been like telling myself that squirrels never existed, or that there was no such place as Blue Valley, or that lungs weren't the organs that transferred oxygen into the bloodstream. Anything was now open to debate. With the knowledge that the unsung realm existed, I had to come to grips with the fact that just about anything in this world--in my existence on this plane--could very easily have been the concoction of a forsaken alicorn goddess. I found myself doing strange things--frighteningly silly things--things only Doctor Comethoof would do. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, perform "Twilight's Requiem," and then scribble random words onto paper, just to see if they glowed with a magenta highlight immediately after. As a matter of fact, this journal entry is taking twice as long to write because I keep stopping after each paragraph, habitually performing the same, paranoid scan.
What are parasprites? They're annoying little insects, and yet they couldn't possibly be insects. Insects are supposed to have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Parasprites consist of a head that simultaneously acts as the predominant feature of their bodies. They're essentially bulbous faces with wings attached. Just how does a pony fit something like that into taxonomy?
And yet, I've always remembered them. No. That's not true. I've always been aware of them, but I had never once seen a parasprite--not until that one horrible incident in Ponyville. And yet, looking back on my life--from when I was a little filly to adulthood--I was always aware of parasprites. Or, perhaps, I only thought that I had been aware of parasprites all that time? It's horrifying to think that a falsehood had been wired into my brain, and ever since then it had made me believe a complete fallacy about my past, or reality in general.
Certainly, I wasn't alone. Everypony in town believed in parasprites. There was even a phrase that was passed around, supposedly an old mare's expression: "don't feed the parasprites." That was a proverb as old as time... or was it? Had it actually been written down anywhere? Did ponies even know what it meant when they said it? Did something that felt older than I did actually exist no longer than a year on this earth? Furthermore, what purpose did parasprites have in obscuring the past?
My head hurts just contemplating it. It's getting difficult to write on the subject. I find myself getting distracted with something else that's happened recently, something that had also distracted me that one day in my cabin as I hovered over Comethoof's repetitious text.
It was a crunching noise. It came from just outside the front door to the cabin. The sound didn't startle me. As a matter of fact, my heartbeat increased and a foalish smile came to my face. In truth, I had heard the sound before. I leapt off the bed and scrambled into action. I grabbed a brown bag full of ground-up fish meat and poured a few bits into a wooden bowl. Then, stealthily, like a coyote stalking its prey, I slid up to the door. Licking my lips, I turned the knob and--with a gentle tug of telekinesis--slowly pulled the door open.
As soon as the afternoon light appeared beyond the frame, a tiny figure froze in place, staring at me with amber, slitted eyes. Its backhairs arched slightly as its tail curled down. After a few seconds, it calmed, and its orange fur seemed to deflate in the cool September breeze.
"Why, hello there, Al," I said with a gentle smile. Yes, that is what I decided to call him, after the late Doctor Comethoof himself. "You're hear early today. Is nocturnal living getting lonely? Hmm?"
The cat stared back at me, still as a statue, its ears flicking curiously. Most of the dish outside was empty, but that wasn't because he had eaten so much of it. I had only filled a little bit of it that morning; it was all part of the plan.
"I've got more where that came from, y'know," I said. I scooted forward and gently pushed the bowl towards the door-frame. "Should be just as... uh... meaty as the rest of the stuff," I remarked.
"Al" looked at my bowl, at me, then at the bowl again. After several pensive seconds, he returned to the dish that was already in front of him and resumed crunching the tiny morsels between his teeth.
I exhaled and slumped with my chin propped against my right hoof. "I've got a village full of ponies who love to chat their heads off when they see a perfect stranger like me, and yet you won't give me a single 'meow.' What's up with that?"
There's a reason why I haven't written much about Al. These last few weeks have been very trying, to say the least. Between learning the eighth elegy, journeying to the unsung realm, and reading Comethoof's journals, I've not had much room to focus on the less dramatic facets of my life. Perhaps spending an entire week with Mister Shuffle is what changed me, what made me sit back and reexamine what should or shouldn't enter these journal entries. There are few things in existence that I can afford, and even fewer that I can afford to write about, apparently.
Al first showed up around my cabin in July. This was shortly after my second Summer Sun Celebration in Ponyville. I don't know where he came from or if he had any previous owners. All I know is that I woke up one morning to an adorable orange tabby stalking around the outer frame of my cabin, foraging for mice and lizards. At first, I paid him no mind. He was an animal--yes--but still a living thing, and I didn't expect him to notice my existence any more than the ponies who live here. But though I paid him no mind, it was hard for my heart to ignore him.
So, it started with leaving little trays full of water. I'd go to town and come back to see the dish dried up well before the sun could have evaporated the liquid. I repeated the gesture and stayed at home one day to "stand guard." Sure enough, I witnessed the cat climbing out of a row of nearby hedges in the wee morning hours and lapping the water up thirstily. This repeated for the next few days, until I realized that maybe I should be a decent equine being and add some food to the mix. It took the tabby a little while to acclimate to the offering, but soon he crunched away at the morsels left for him.
This happened quite regularly. It occurred to me that nothing proved the cat had any recollection of me or the cabin. All the cat knew was that there was sustenance located at this edge of the forest. It kept coming back to be fed. That's all it was. Regardless, at least one soul was benefiting from these constant visits; that couldn't be denied.
"I don't suppose you ran into Applejack along the way here, huh?" I murmured in the cat's direction. I adjusted my hoodie's sleeves and sat on my haunches before the doorway as he crunched away. "She's been working around the clock to harvest her latest batch of apples. She kind of gets in a sour mood when she's rushing to meet a last second deadline. Still, she has a thing for animals, and I'm sure she'd cheer up if she ran into you." I smiled. "Heck, she might even want to give you a decent home. You wouldn't have to be a stray anymore; you could live at Sweet Apple Acres. How would you like that?"
Al didn't even look at me. He kept rummaging through the food dish, his tail dancing behind him in the sunlight like an orange comet trail.
"You live somewhere in the forest, right?" I further rambled as I stared at the thick woods behind him. "I don't suppose you've run into any parasprites, have you? They seem small enough, cute enough, and bouncy enough for a cat like you to mercilessly shred to ribbons. Ya think?"
Silence. The hum of bees and buzzing of cicadas wafted through the doorway.
I sighed and ran a hoof through my mane. "I don't know what to do, Al. Even if I found out the truth about parasprites, what would I be able to do? I don't have the Nightbringer. I don't even know the entire Nocturne." A chill billowed through my body. I hugged my forelimbs to me as my teeth chattered. "Nnngh... I guess... I guess I'm just afraid that if I study too hard, if I put all of my energy into the research, I'll drive myself mad... just like your namesake did."
I heard a clicking sound all of the sudden. Only, it wasn't a clicking sound. Then something warm brushed up against me.
Blinking, I glanced down. Al was purring. Furthermore, he was perched upon the concrete foundation of the cabin. He had crossed the threshold of the door. The dish outside was empty, and after rubbing briefly against my cutie mark, Al padded his way over to the other wooden bowl and sifted through the fresher bits of food inside.
I smiled, then bit my lip as I reached a nervous hoof out. As I gently made contact with Al's back, his fur twitched a bit, but he didn't scamper away. Slowly, I stroked his smooth orange coat. His tail curled around my limb and flicked in the air while I continued the gentle caress.
"Hmmm..." I exhaled with a slight rosiness to my cheeks upon making our first contact ever. "I guess losing my mind isn't too bad, so long as my heart's got an anchor, huh?"
The tiniest of trilling sounds came from deep inside his purring muscles. He continued eating, but he wasn't fleeing from this stranger. It was the simplest of gestures, but it made my whole week.
I felt my jaw clench as a renewed energy flew through my limbs. "What am I doing cooped up in here?"
"And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with bowling!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed loudly as Twilight Sparkle opened the door to her library. The two of them strolled into the spacious treehouse. "I'm up for it this weekend, but I don't want a lame repeat of last time! Not all of us are just casual bowlers, y'know!"
"I'm telling you, I have no idea what happened!" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed as she peeled out of her saddlebag and set it on a tabletop. "I'm usually a lot better at keeping score!"
"You lost half the frames, Twilight!" Rainbow Dash's brow furrowed. She hovered close to the ceiling, folding her forelimbs with an indignant glare. "The only thing I like more than winning is being able to shove it in Applejack's face as I do it! How could you have neglected a huge chunk of the scoreboard?!"
"I know! It's not like me!" Twilight sighed, her face hung in a worrisome slump. "Maybe I've had a lot on my mind. There's an essay I've been meaning to write to the Princess and--well--you know how easily I can get distracted." She shook her head and marched across the library. "I swear, it's as if the world likes to drop random stuff into my lap--" She bumped into my stool and stumbled back. "Oh..." Her eyes blinked cutely. "Uhm. Hello there."
"Back at you," I said with a smile. I glanced at her through my peripheral vision as my hoof ran down the pages of several scientific almanacs piled on the table before me. "Are you the head librarian?"
"Uhm... Oh. Yes. Ahem. Yes I am. And you are...?"
"Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
"Good afternoon, Miss Heartstrings. Uhm. Might I ask how you got in here--?"
"Your assistant, the whelpling," I remarked. "He's helping me with a research project. I can't believe he found all of these zoological texts so quickly! He's quite the amazing little assistant." I smiled towards the far side of the library where a baby dragon was carrying a stack of books from another room. "Isn't that right, handsome?"
"Hey! Dig the swell hoodie!"
I chuckled and smirked at Twilight. "He's so focused on his job too! It's like I'm not even here."
"I find that hard to believe," Rainbow Dash muttered.
Twilight glared up at her. "Rainbow..."
"Anyways, I got stuff to do." Rainbow Dash yawned and flew towards the doorway. "Go on and help Miss Talkative here. Just promise you'll be ready this weekend to keep score like you're usually awesome at doing."
"Don't worry, Rainbow," Twilight said with a playful wink. "Rest assured, whenever there's an occasion that you're steamrolling Applejack, you can expect me to be watching closely." Twilight blinked, then blushed slightly. "Wait... that didn't exactly come out ri--"
"Uh huh. See ya!" Rainbow was gone.
"So, you're the head librarian, right?" I uttered.
"Uhm..." Twilight snapped out of it and smiled politely my way. "Yes. That's right. Can I lend you a hoof? My afternoon's free at the moment."
"Well, to be Ponyville's chief of resource gathering, I imagine you must be well versed in biological sciences."
"Well, I'm versed enough. Magic and cosmology are more of my forte, but..."
"Tell me..." I swiveled in the stool to face her. "What do you know about parasprites?"
Twilight Sparkle blinked. It was obvious that she didn't expect to be questioned on that particular topic. "Well, uhm, we have a rather unfortunate history, to tell the truth."
"You don't say?"
"Yes." She shifted nervously, her eyes dancing between the wooden walls of the place. "Parasprites single-hoofedly consumed half of Ponyville several months ago during a week when Princess Celestia was scheduled to visit."
"Truly?" I leaned back against the table. "That must have been a horrible debacle."
"Oh, it was." She squinted at me. "You're not from around here, are you?"
I smiled. "I guess you could say that I'm visiting."
"Well, be happy to know that every shop, every house, every single building in this town owes its structural integrity to diligent, cooperating ponies," Twilight said. "If it weren't for the hard work of every able-bodied equine in town, the destructive effect of parasprites would be seen to this very day."
"It was that bad of an infestation, huh?"
She shuddered. "I still have a hard time thinking about it."
"Why?"
She blinked. "Well, because no matter how hard I tried to get the creatures out of town, they only multiplied more and more. They were this close to wreaking havoc on Princess Celestia herself. Thankfully, though, she canceled her visit at the last second to deal with business elsewhere in Equestria. Now that would have been a horrible disaster in the making."
"Did Princess Celestia ever find out about the infestation?"
"Well... erm..." Twilight shifted nervously where she stood. "No. I suppose she never learned about the damage they did to Ponyville..."
I raised an eyebrow. "The Goddess of the Sun, the providential alicorn ruler of all Equestria, never caught wind of the near-destruction of Ponyville"
"She had to have dealt with parasprites in some fashion!" Twilight exclaimed. "She specifically went to Fillydelphia to deal with an infestation there. Obviously nothing horrible must have come of that situation, because she returned to Canterlot without any problems." Twilight cleared her throat. "You... uhm... aren't here on a mission of royal correspondence, are you?"
"Heheheh..." I chuckled. "Relax, Miss Sparkle. I'm not some agent working for Princess Celestia."
"Then what are you here for?" Twilight raised an eyebrow. "What kind of research is worth putting into parasprites?"
"Take a moment, if you will, and think about the creatures, Miss Sparkle," I said while gesturing a hoof. "They almost destroyed half the town, yes?"
"Correct."
"What is it that empowered them to cause so much destruction?"
"Well..." Twilight Sparkle trotted over and sat on her haunches besides me and my stool. "They're voracious eaters, for one thing. And their diet allows them to eat just about any edible substance..." She gulped and blushed slightly. "...or inedible, given some minor, magical tweaking."
"Huh...?"
Twilight rubbed one hoof against another and avoided my gaze. "I may possibly have... augmented their food intake with an impulsive spell meant to discourage them from eating."
"So, we're talking about a diet of hay, oats, apples, and flowers?"
She bit her lip. "More like the desire to eat wood, metal frameworks, cloth, paper, written ink--"
"Written ink?!" I gave her a bizarre expression. "Miss Twilight Sparkle, are we talking about a scientifically plausible organism, or a bunch of gremlins?"
"I and several other ponies saw parasprites with our very own eyes!"
"And I'm not denying that. But think for a moment," I said with an emphatic wave of the hoof, "Does any of it make sense?"
"Uhhh..."
"How can a single tiny creature consume so many objects so much larger than its own size? Wouldn't the matter have to be transferred to something? It can't possibly go nowhere. You and I both know that's not how the universe works."
"Well, true," Twilight said with a nod. "It so happens that parasprites multiply at a rate directly proportional to how much matter they consume. After devouring sufficient mass, they regurgitate an organic substance that metamorphosizes into a new, healthy parasprite."
"So, the consumed matter is converted into a genetic double of itself?"
"I would hypothesize as much."
I squinted at her. "What remarkable and hitherto unprecedented series of microscopic organs inside such a tiny creature could possibly be capable of performing such a scientifically improbable feat?!"
"I..." Twilight fidgeted. "I'm not sure I understand the question--"
"To be able to transfer inert matter into living forms of matter at such an alarming rate so as to create a swarm capable of demolishing this town would require unfathomable metabolism, wouldn't you think?" I remarked. "And just what kind of a digestive system would make such a function work? Furthermore, how could it fit inside such a small insect-like being and somehow be able to do this?"
"Well, for one thing--"
I pointed at her. "Don't you dare say 'magic.'"
Twilight Sparkle giggled slightly. "Well, Miss Heartstrings, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine, is it? After all, Equestria has seen its fair share of windigoes, ursa majors, and timber wolves. There are many creatures that dwell upon a plane of existence so bizarre that it takes a far more complicated, metaphysical science to even begin grasping them. Equestria is, after all, a land that exists within a cosmic realm of chaos--if the most ancient and honored of texts are to believed. It isn't strange to imagine that creatures from the cosmos--beings determined by states of pure energy--are capable of settling upon this terrestrial landscape."
"You're saying that parasprites are innately unexplainable, then?" I remarked. "As a scientist, can you rest comfortably with that conclusion?"
"Well, to be honest," Twilight spoke, "I never had an opportunity to study any of them closely." She gulped. "Not that I wanted to. All I was concerned with at the time was getting the nasty little things out of the village so that they couldn't cause any more destruction."
"Did you ever succeed?"
"Well the village is standing today, isn't it?" She briefly giggled. "The last we ever saw them, they were escorted into the thick of the Everfree Forest."
"The Everfree Forest?"
"Yes."
"And they still had the ability to consume random things at large and multiply at an exponential rate?"
"I... I would suppose..."
I leaned forward. "Then what has kept them from shredding the entire forest to mulch by this point?"
Twilight blinked. Her gaze fell confusedly towards the floor. "Uhm..."
"From what you've described," I spoke, "They're virtually unstoppable. How come they haven't eaten the entire forest, the entire landscape--heck--the entire planet? From all observation, there's no reason to think that we shouldn't be sitting on a giant, coagulated ball of countless parasprites floating lonesomely through the cosmos."
"I don't... know what you want from me, Miss Heartstrings," Twilight said with a nervous shudder. "Since that one nightmarish week when we had to deal with the little bugs, I've not run into them."
"Not a single one?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Don't you find that a little odd, given their rate of multiplying and the damage they evidently cause--" I swallowed. "--For that matter, how come the infestation Celestia had to deal with elsewhere didn't cause any alarming damage?"
"Are you trying to say that there's something inconsistent about the nature of parasprites?"
"No, Miss Sparkle," I said, "I'm trying to suggest that it's an absurdity for parasprites to even exist in the first place. They are fundamentally, scientifically, and logically unreal."
"But..." Twilight smiled nervously. "That's impossible! My friends and I all saw them in person! We chased them out of town! We had to repair half of the village for heaven's sake!"
"I'm not trying to challenge your memories, Miss Sparkle," I said,"Merely the essence which your memories are centered upon."
"If you don't believe me, consult the zoological archives!" Twilight said, "Certainly you'll find some data on the creatures in them!"
"Actually, I did do just that," I said with a smirk. Motioning for her to look, I swiveled once more to the table full of research materials. "I've spent all day pouring over these books you have in your collection of Equestrian Insect Families. Not once are parasprites even mentioned in any of the volumes. So, branching out, I read through books written on cryptozoology, cosmic astrobiology, elemental intelligence, and magical summons."
"Any luck?"
I shook my head. "No. None of these books contain information on parasprites either." I glanced at her. "I don't suppose you're familiar with these books, any?"
"There are very few books in this library that I haven't at least skimmed through..."
"Do you recall ever reading about parasprites?"
"Well..."
"Think hard, Miss Sparkle," I remarked. "In all your years of reading, have you ever come across a textual mention of them?"
Her brow furrowed in thought, but she said nothing.
I looked at her. "Have you ever seen an illustration of them?"
She bit her lip.
"Heard of them?"
She looked up at me, gulped, and said, "Just because there's been no chronicled knowledge of a species doesn't mean they haven't shown up in Equestria before."
"Even if it's a creature whose only form of reproduction is to eat anything in sight and create a duplicate of itself at an alarming rate?" I remarked. "Miss Sparkle, what we're talking about here is an essential threat to functioning civilization."
"Well..." Twilight shrugged. "The only possible answer I can think of is that they came into being just... recently..."
I gently, fixedly smiled at her.
She blinked several times--dazedly--and then glanced at me. "But... but how could that be?"
I chuckled and slapped a book shut. "The question of the century... for the swarm of the century."
It was nighttime when I returned to my cabin. I had a few library books with me, but somehow I didn't expect to have much luck with them on my lonesome. I had spent the entire afternoon with Twilight Sparkle. Together we rummaged through several volumes of scientific journals, hunting for the most elusive prey. The only reason I finally left was because of a wave of chills that brought with it the forgetful strings of fate.
As I strolled into the door and lit a lantern with my telekinesis, I froze in my tracks. There was a familiar, orange figure seated in the center of my cot. It looked up at me with bright amber eyes that reflected the starry night outside. It did not look even remotely frightened.
I blinked at the cat. I glanced up at the walls of my cabin. I saw one of the windows which I had left cracked open to allow the cool air to breathe through my home while I was gone. With a knowing grin, I turned to look at the feline once more.
"Well, you certainly made yourself at home, didn't you, Al?"
The cat merely stared at me.
I eyed it cautiously, all the while closing the door to the cabin behind me. Once I had sealed us both in, it didn't make any attempt to scamper away.
"Hmm... Well, you're brave, I'll give you that." I started peeling off my saddlebag and satchel full of library books. "But you're in for a really boring time if you think you can stay here. I'm not sure you'd want to live with a pony stranger who will only become the same stranger to you over and over again every few hours."
The cat merely yawned and licked its shoulder a few times.
I placed my lyre down next to the cot, lingered briefly, and trotted over towards a bag of feed. I poured some of the fish product into a wooden bowl, shook it slightly, and pivoted around. Suddenly, Al was there, padding up to me and tilting his head towards the dish of food.
"Hmmm..." I smirked. "I see what it all boils down to. Thanks for giving me hope for the day that I settle down with a handsome stallion."
I placed the bowl down. Al lowered his whiskers into the bowl, burrowed his nose through the food, and began crunching away.
I trotted over to the cot, levitating the library books with me. The center of the bed was still warm from where Al had been curled up. It was a strangely happy sensation. Relaxing with a deep exhale, I sat on my haunches and glanced over at my sudden houseguest. I'm not sure what exactly inspired me to begin as I did. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I was studying an absurd subject all afternoon that I decided to do something just as silly.
"I visited Twilight Sparkle and forced her into a cram session," I told Al as he ate. "Between the two of us, we only found one mention of parasprites." I shuffled through the books in my grasp as I continued. "It was in a journal of Equestrian biological studies. Get this, though, it was printed no more than three months ago." I raised an eyebrow as I glanced back towards Al. "The only written detail about parasprites, and it was penned by a scientist several months after the creatures destroyed half of Ponyville."
Al continued munching away, his tail wagging towards me.
"Well, naturally, if this was indeed a brand new species of insect being discovered right now, it would make sense that something would be written about the bugs after the fact. Still, I just can't make myself believe that--in the entire library that Twilight Sparkle manages--there is only one instance of the existence of parasprites being acknowledged. For all I know, the pony who wrote the article was affected by her attempts to rewrite history just as much as myself, Celestia, and every other resident of this village. You know who I'm talking about when I say 'her,' right? She's only the otherworldly alicorn spirit who guards over the souls of limbo in the unsung realm between the firmaments. That... doesn't sound crazy, does it?"
Al licked his chops and gazed up at me from afar. His ears flicked.
I sighed. "Yeah... it sounds just as crazy as believing in parasprites that can eat a million times their own weight in food and multiply instantaneously," I muttered. I gazed across the lantern-lit cabin towards an ancient tome resting on a shelf. "It sounds just about as crazy as Doctor Comethoof's personal ramblings. But... But the unsung realm exists! She exists! I know it, I've seen it with my own eyes..." I grimaced as a chill swept my limbs into a shiver. I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie. "Now I'm beginning to sound like Twilight..."
Al stretched, shook his head, and stalked across the room. He came to a stop on the floor beside my bed and curled up in a lazy ball.
"Hmmm..." I smiled painfully at him. "Just what I need, a living thing to listen to me talk in circles out loud." With a sigh, I reached a hoof out and stroked his back. He didn't resist my gentle touch. "You poor fella," I murmured. "At least you're fed so long as you hang out here. That's what matters, right?"
The cat rested his head between his orange paws and closed his eyes as his side slowly rose and fell.
I sat up straight, taking a deep breath. "Perhaps the only way I can not feel insane is to interview as many ponies as I can find in town about the parasprites and see how much crazier they are for believing in something that they're forced to." I smiled and reached down to pet Al again. "Who knows? Maybe I can paint a picture from it all. So long as I have the forbidden knowledge of truth that she doesn't want me to know, I'll be able to read between the lines, right?"
"Parasprites? Ugh. Nasty little pests. They ate the front patio to my favorite cafe. I had to go for a week solid without being able to visit my favorite reading spot in town. Hmmm? Well, no, I don't think it's all that strange that we rebuilt all of the damaged places so quickly. This town's come together to accomplish remarkable things before. Were you around for the great storm of 992? Still, nothing compared to what the parasprites did to this place nearly a year ago--was it a year ago? So many strange things have happened in this village. Heck, we were just getting over the attack of a rampaging ursa minor barely a month before the bugs swarmed over everything."
"Yeah, I was there for when the ursa minor attacked. The giant bear smashed two apartments in the residential district, but that was it. Praise Celestia that it didn't cause even more destruction! Hmmm? Why didn't it do more damage? You mean you weren't here for it yourself? I saw it with my own eyes: Twilight Sparkle strolled up out of nowhere and calmed the beast before sending it on its merry way back to the Everfree Forest. I'm guessing she got something of a chip on her shoulder because of that, heh. Hmmm? Well, because she screwed things up when she came to save the day from the parasprites. She only made the infestation worse!"
"Shucks, it was a shock to all of us! Twilight Sparkle is the smartest, cleverest, most talented unicorn around these here parts. I've seen her turn rocks into hats, summon doors out of plum nowhere, and even plant magical mustaches on baby dragons! Heh... She's a sweet ol' back of tricks, our Twi. But she's more than just a silly trickster; she's the apprentice to Princess Celestia herself! I watched, dumbstruck, as she levitated a big ol' ursa minor out of town all on her lonesome. So, I reckon you can imagine how surprised we were when she messed up her fancy-schmancy spell to make the parasprites stop eatin' everythang. They only became more dangerous, and just about tore my family barn to dust! I could never find it in my heart to blame Twilight for all the damage them critters did to the village. I guess it's 'cuz to this day I still don't understand it, and I reckon she can't either. But them's the odds when yer dealing with things that just don't make sense, right? Hmmm? No, I never bothered lookin' for the varmints after they were driven out of town. Yer better off askin' the Mayor. She's been keepin' track of all the local rangerin' business!"
"I sent Miss Dash on several fly-by's of the Everfree Forest not long after the reconstruction of downtown Ponyville was complete. I figured that a pegasus with her degree of speed and agility would be capable of not only rooting out the horrible monsters but chasing them down. Unfortunately, after three solid days of scouring the dreadful woods, she turned up empty-hoofed. When Rainbow Dash is incapable of hunting something down, you know that it's a hopeless case. After that taxing month, we never tried searching for the creatures again. I hate to say that it's an example of 'out of sight, out of mind,' but there were just so many other pressing issues at the time that it wasn't worth the toil or the effort to pursue any further. What's more, it was out of my hooves, because an expedition to seek out the parasprites was up to the city council, and none of the ruling members of the board found it necessary to apply the time or funds to such a project. Parasprites were simply no longer an issue. To be honest, I... had somewhat forgotten about them until you mentioned them to me just now."
"It's curious, really. I haven't thought about those horrible winged brutes in so long. You think they'd be the forefront of my nightmares, considering what a horrible mess they had made of this Boutique. It's such a shame, really. I recall them being lovely and adorable creatures upon first glance. Why something so precious would end up such a menace is a bizarre fluke of nature, if you ask me. That's why I don't take to hiking that much. What lives in the Everfree Forest should stay in the Everfree Forest, and we're better off not getting our manes tangled in their business. Hmmm? Well, no, I don't know for sure if they came from the Everfree Forest or not. I only assumed that was the case, considering that the Horseshoe Hotel lies on the furthest edge of town that borders the Forest and it was the one structure that took the most damage."
"We had to rebuild the Horseshoe Hotel from the ground-up. Well, I say 'we' because I volunteered myself and Spike to be the foremen of the construction site. I... felt personally responsible for how dangerous those creatures turned out to be. Nopony was saying it to my face, but I think most of the villagers believed I owed the village too much to be put into words. Still, it was a stimulating experience. I think I'm innately gifted for being in a position of management, and I made sure that the hotel was reconstructed floor by floor, wall by wall, brick by brick, with absolute care and precision. No single piece of material was wasted. What was more, we made record time, and had the hotel back in order by the end of the month! True, it took far longer than the rest of Ponyville to rebuild, but that was only because it suffered more damage than any other place in town. What? Well, no, I suppose I don't know why the parasprites ate so much of the hotel's structure while leaving the other buildings nearby mostly untouched. Perhaps there was something in the materials in the original foundation that attracted them. They were hungry, after all. Somewhere in all of that chaos you must equate taste along with appetite. Also, the Horseshoe Hotel was the closest building to the edge of the Everfree Forest, and it's quite possible that the creatures tore it up on their way out of Ponyville. I wish I could explain just what made parasprites tick, but in all honesty I don't know. It wasn't as if I was the one pony that was around the creatures the most."
"Huh? Heck no! It wasn't me! I hated those creatures! I was sleeping on a cloud, minding my own business, when they were all like 'Hey, let's see how many of our brothers and sisters can cling to your coat!' And I was like 'That's not cool, dudes. Bad touch.' And then they were everywhere. I flew through them and it was like swimming through a foalday ballpit. Nnnngh... totally not cool, if you ask me. I don't know what Fluttershy ever saw in the little turds. Huh? Yeah, you heard me right. Fluttershy was just about ready to marry the dang things, she was cuddling them so much. How the heck would I know what she saw in them?! You should go ask her! She was the pony who discovered the parasprites in the first place! If anypony knows a thing or two about them, it'd be her!"
I knocked on the door to a cottage on the edge of the Everfree Forest. After several hours of talking to various ponies, my search had brought me here. A quiet, babbling brook glistened beneath me, and the cool September air hummed with butterflies, bees, and songbirds. I rather envied the quaint and beautiful place that Ponyville's resident animal tamer called "home." I took mental notes for gardening tricks that I would attempt once I had some free time at the cabin.
Heh... as if I actually had "free time" these days...
I realized that a solid minute had gone by, and Fluttershy hadn't answered my knock. So, I did it again, louder this time. I knew she was there. I saw her watering some flowers on the edge of the cottage when I first trotted up the long path. Had... had she fled at the sight of me?
Sighing, I knocked a third time. Finally, a fearful squeak emanated from inside the building.
"Wh-what do you want?"
I smiled pleasantly and spoke, "Miss Fluttershy, my name is Lyra Heartstrings. I'm interviewing residents of Ponyville for a research project, and I was wondering if you would be so gracious as to give me a few minutes of your time."
"Uhm... what k-kind of an interview are we talking about?"
"Well, you see, I'm performing a study on parasprites, and I heard that you were a first-hoof witness to the infestation that happened here several months ago--"
"Eeep! N-no! I don't know anything about parasprites! What would make you think that I know anything about parasprites?"
I blinked awkwardly. "Uhm.. some ponies mentioned that... th-that you were the first to discover them before they multiplied across the village--"
"I... I-I don't know what you're talking about! I wouldn't breed parasprites! Those little creatures are terribly frightening!"
"Miss Fluttershy, I'm not accusing you of anything!" I exclaimed nervously, "I just need to know more about the insects and you were the one pony who allegedly was around them the most--"
"I can't help you! I'm so sorry!"
"I only want to ask a few--"
"I'm so sorry! But I can't!"
The inside of the cottage fell silent. I stood there, my nostrils flaring briefly. I ran a hoof across my chin in thought. As I felt a chill overcome me, I turned completely around, and marched away from the house.
I knocked on the door to the cottage.
A voice squeaked from the other side. "Y-yes?"
"Miss Fluttershy? My name is Lyra. Your friend, Twilight Sparkle, told me that you were the resident expert on animals in Ponyville."
"Yes...?"
"I was wondering if I could ask a few questions that only a pony with your knowledge and expertise could assist me with."
"Do... Do you need help with any animal-related circumstances?"
"Yes. As a matter of fact, I do--" I leaned forward. "--But I'd have a much easier time asking questions if there wasn't a solid door in the way."
"I'm... I'm sorry, I'm terribly busy. I have many animals to take care of and feed. Is it an emergency?"
"Well, you're the only pony in this part of Equestria who knows a thing or two about the animals I've been sent to study."
"What kind of animals?"
"Oh..." I kicked at the sidewalk and gazed around the cottage lawn. "You know, the usual. Squirrels. Chipmunks. Blue jays"--I gulped--"Parasprites..."
"Parasprites?!"
"B-but mostly the squirrels! Could we just--?"
"No! I'm sorry!" the voice squeaked, "But I can't help you! You'll have to ask somepony else!"
I sighed. I turned around and trotted away.
I knocked on the door to the cottage.
A voice squeaked from the other side. "What do you want?"
"This is Captain Heartstrings of the Canterlot Animal Commission!" I said in a firm, authoritarian voice. "On behalf of Princess Celestia herself, I must have a word with Ponyville's resident animal-tamer at once! This is a matter of Equestrian National Security! Miss Fluttershy, I ask that you come out and speak with me!"
"I... I-I... I..."
"Miss Fluttershy?! Please open this door immediately! The fate of the nation depends on it!"
"C-Captain... Canterlot... Celestia... S-Security..." There was a prolonged moaning sound, then a soft thud just beyond the door.
I blinked. "Fluttershy?" I blinked again. "Fluttershy? Are..." I bit my lip. "Are y-you conscious?"
There was no reply.
I groaned. I gripped the door and smacked my head against it several times. With a sigh, I turned around, and trudged down the path in a slump.
I knocked on the door to the cottage.
"Nnngh... Uhm... H-hello...?" a voice tiredly exclaimed from the other side.
"Miss Fluttershy, are you alright?" I asked, leaning up against the door. "You don't sound well."
"Unngh... I... I don't know. I seem to have taken a long nap, but I don't remember falling asleep... much less on the fl-floor..." There was an awkward pause, then a squeak. "Uhm, who are you?"
"My name's Lyra Heartstrings. I just came from the library in Ponyville and I was wondering..."
"Yes...?"
I bit my lip and fidgeted. I gazed behind me--past the edge of the Everfree Forest--and towards the heart of town. I imagined a cabin on the opposite side of the village, where a lone figure waited with a dangle of his tail. Slowly, I smiled. Clearing my throat, I turned to face the cottage door once again.
"Well, I'm new to town. And... and I discovered this cat outside the cabin I moved into."
"A cat...?"
"Yeah, such a small little thing. Adorable as heck. But... uhm... I don't think it has a home. And, like, it's been hanging around my place, and I felt sorry for the poor thing. So, I started feeding it some stuff as the days went by. First it was water, then it was pieces of dry fish meal, and now it's gotten comfortable enough around my place that it's actually walked in on its own, as if it's making itself at home. And--well--I like having the little fella around, but I don't know if I'm doing everything right that I should be doing. So, this sweet librarian in the center of town--Twilight Sparkle is her name--she said that she's got a best friend named 'Fluttershy' who lives on the edge of Ponyville and that she--well--you were the greatest expert on animals and pets around these parts, and that if I wanted to know what to do next with the cat, then you'd be the best pony to talk to. So, I was wondering, could you help me out some?"
There was a brief moment of silence. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a latch unlocking within the cottage door. It opened, and a dainty pegasus peered out at me.
"What's his name?"
I smiled.
"Awwww..." Fluttershy cooed and knelt in the center of my cabin. "Come here, Al! You're a handsome little thing, aren't you?" With remarkable grace, she managed to coax the orange tabby into her hooves. She cuddled it to her chest, gently stroking the top of its head. "Oh! You're a purring machine, aren't you? And such a deliciously amber coat. Like living orange sherbet! Heehee!"
"How..." I squinted as I paced around her and the gawked at how easily she was holding the little thing. "How did you make him hop into your forelimbs so easily?"
"I didn't make him do anything! Al here is just naturally affectionate!" Fluttershy said as she cradled him in her forelegs. "You mean you never tried picking him up?"
"I... uhm..." I scratched the back of my neck. "I guess I just thought cats liked personal space or something. They're the opposite of dogs, right?"
"All animals are different, Miss Heartstrings," Fluttershy said, "Just like ponies. All it takes is getting to know them, and this little fella likes being friendly." She leaned in and rubbed noses with the petite feline. "Heehee. Oh yes, he's very affectionate. No doubt he feels comfortable here."
"Heh. Well, I tried."
"Mmmm..." Fluttershy motioned towards a rug beside my cot. "Maybe a little too comfortable..."
"Huh?" I glanced over and saw something that most certainly wasn't there when I left it. It certainly explained the sudden smell in the place. "Oh, for the love of Luna..." I grumbled, grabbed a dust-pan, and immediately took care of the mess. "I feel like an idiot."
"Don't. You've done a lot of good for this cat," Fluttershy said as she slowly ran a hoof over his fur and gave it a close examination. "His hair is looking healthy. Oftentimes, strays suffer from malnourishment, but it looks like your feeding has gone a long way."
"So he is a stray?" I remarked as I marched back from my job. "I mean... uhm... can you tell if he was born in the wild?"
"Oh, he's hardly feral," Fluttershy said, "He's too affectionate. Plus, he's been fixed."
I blinked. "He has? H-how can you tell?"
She merely gave me a soft, knowing smirk.
I blushed. "Heh. Well, I guess you became an animal expert by paying attention to the... ahem... tiny details of life."
"Most likely he belonged to the ponies who lived in this cabin before you," she said as she placed Al back on his paws and pet his back. "Do you know anything about the residents of this home before you?"
"Uhhhhhhh..."
"Or he could have wandered in from another home. As a matter of fact, there are several strays all across Ponyville. I thought I had rounded them all up and sent them away for adoption, but obviously I missed one."
"Not for long, you haven't," I said with a smile. "So, like, what could I do to make sure he's as healthy as possible?"
"Well, first and foremost..." Fluttershy looked up at me. "Fixed or not, there's no telling when was the last time he had shots, if ever."
"Oh, shoot!" I face-hoofed.
"It won't hurt him," Fluttershy said. The two of us sat at the edge of a sterile room while a Ponyville veterinarian administered the first of several shots to Al's jittery figure. "You don't have to be worried. This is only going to keep him--and yourself--safe in the long-term."
"Yeah..." I murmured back. My vision was affixed on Al's bright amber eyeslits from afar. "Wh-who's worried? I'm not worried..." I gulped. "Everything's gonna be just fine..."
Fluttershy giggled slightly. "I wish all villagers who saw a stray showed the same amount of care as you do. It's a shame that so many lost pets end up without a home."
"I just want to make sure he's taken care of. Is that so crazy?"
"Not at all, Miss Heartstrings"--Fluttershy gently patted my hoodie sleeve--"You don't have to be so nervous."
"It's not that..." I shook my head and looked at her. I was amazed at how swiftly our roles had reversed. I wondered if the same conversational skill would work on Applejack if I mentioned orchards or Twilight if I mentioned books or Rainbow if I mentioned... explosions? "There's... uhm..." I took a deep, courageous breath as I set out to mention the one thing that had begun this afternoon excursion to begin with. After all, there was no telling how soon our conversation would be cut short by a frosty wave of forgetfulness. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you. Something about... animals in general."
"Oh, why, that's only my most favorite topic of conversation," Fluttershy said.
"Heh..." I chuckled slightly. "I had no clue." I cleared my throat and tried to speak--
Only Fluttershy was talking ahead of me. "After all, the bond between ponies and animals is the most fundamental thing in Equestrian prosperity," she said, gazing over as the last shot was administered to Al. "At least, that's what I believe. We are the stewards of this world, after all. This goes beyond pegasi, of course. If we all don't take care of animals with utmost respect and gentleness, then we risk turning this into a torn world. Ponies are meant to commune with the land, not alter it. Otherwise, that would make us more like diamond dogs or minotaurs, and you know what their home-lands are like. There're hardly any forests or wildlife anywhere."
"Yeah, but--"
"I think the nature of Creation has a secret energy that keeps ponies wanting to be protectors of all that's precious," Fluttershy said with a tranquil, warm smile. "We are drawn to be kind and to do kind things to life all around us. It's a force that transcends normal communication."
"That's all very interesting, but I really need to ask you about--"
"Don't you think that relying on the written word only limits us?"
I gazed at her, my mouth agape. Slowly I rediscovered my breaths in time to say, "My entire existence is defined by feelings, Fluttershy. The more I read, the more I let myself get engulfed in words, the more I feel like I'm getting lost. Sometimes... sometimes I fear that I'll go mad with all of the information that surrounds me, both logical and not." I gulped and ran a hoof through my mane. "But... I've always been one to philosophize at random. Perhaps that's always been a fault of mine, to believe that words are so pointless and yet to use them so much to ramble..."
At that moment, the veterinarian walked over and deposited Al in my hooves. "There you go," she said with a sweet smile to Fluttershy and myself. "Good as new, and such an angel too. He didn't fidget in the very least."
"Will... uhm..." I petted him gently and gazed up at the mare. "Will he be okay for the rest of the day?"
"Heh... He may be a little bit dizzy, but just be sure to provide him the dietary supplement we wrote down, and he'll have a bounce back in his paws in two days tops."
"Okay. Much appreciated, doctor." I gazed down and tilted Al's whiskered face to look at me. "Well, you seem pretty cool with being poked so much with needles and all. You sure you're not a porcupine?"
Just then, Al meowed and nuzzled my hoof.
I blinked, my lips parting. "That... that's the first time he's made a sound to me ever!"
Fluttershy leaned in. "Tell me, Miss Heartstrings, did you understand him?"
"I-I..." I stammered. I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders the longer I stared at the little feline. I suddenly didn't know why I was feeling so worrisome or anxious about anything anymore. He purred, and nestled himself comfortably in my forelimbs as I cradled him. I had never felt something so warm, soft, and lovable in my life. "I think I'm starting to, Fluttershy," I eventually replied, my voice cracking through a fragile smile.
"So just any sand will do?" I asked.
Fluttershy walked with me to the front of my cabin in the amber glow of the sunset. "Since he's been outside for so long, you can fill the tray with sand from around the cabin. For good measure, I suggest you plant a few leaves and pine needles around the edges of the box, so that you make him more familiar with his surroundings. Who knows just how long he's been living on the edge of the woods, after all."
"Yeah..." I turned my head and smiled at where Al hung in the edge of my saddlebag, blinking dizzily from the effect of the veterinarian's administrations. "Then, like, after a few weeks I can try buying the stuff from the store?"
"So long as you do things gradually, you'll make sure he's most comfortable," Fluttershy said with a sweet smile. "I'm happy for you, Miss Heartstrings. That's the cutest little tabby I've seen in a long time."
"Heh.. yeah," I said. "Lucky me. Just how old do you think he is, anyway?"
"I'd have to agree with the vet. He seems about two years, or sixteen months at the youngest."
"Is it normal for him to be that small?"
"Assuming he hasn't had that much of a diet until he met you, it wouldn't surprise me."
"I'll be sure to feed him twice a day, just like you suggested."
"I would love to come and see him again in a month's time, Miss Heartstrings," Fluttershy said. "I can't wait to be surprised by how much healthier he'll be!"
"Heh..." I sweated nervously as I gazed off towards the woods. "You'd be surprised, alright."
"I... uhm..." Fluttershy suddenly fidgeted, avoiding my gaze. "I'm sorry if I came across as stand-offish when you first knocked on my door. If you ask my friends, they'll tell you that... uhm... I don't easily open up to strangers."
"Why not?" I asked, gazing sideways at her. "You have so many interesting things to talk about, Fluttershy. I think you and I have some common beliefs about communication."
"Obviously not," she said with a blush. "Or else I wouldn't have kept the door to my cottage closed for so long when you met me."
"Hey..." I walked over and planted a hoof on her shoulder, gently. "I respect what you said about the power of expressing feelings over words. But sometimes the structure of social etiquette--however daunting or awkward--is the very bridge to discovering more about each other. I mean... I like to think I met a new and dear friend today, a pony who helped me make my life--and Al's--a lot better." I giggled slightly. "Think about it. What would it hurt you to allow more new and exciting friends into your life?"
"I'm just... I'm just not like so many other p-ponies," Fluttershy said with a drooping of her figure. "I'm not brave or adventurous or bold..."
"You're different, Fluttershy," I said, "A very gentle, kind, thoughtful flavor of different. You add to the spice of life. If you were just like every other pony, what would it benefit us to get to know you?" I smiled. "I think what you did today in helping me was a lot braver than you give yourself credit for, and--if anything--you should see it as a stepping stone to stretching your hooves more, socially speaking."
"I... guess you're right, Miss Heartstrings," Fluttershy said. She smiled bashfully, and her wings flexed in a brief gesture of relief. "And you're a very smart, thought-provoking unicorn. I feel as if..."
"What?"
"Well, I don't know... but I feel as if you've been trying to ask me something all day, and I've not given you a chance to speak your mind..."
I stared directly at her with a blank expression. "I have no idea what you mean."
She shrugged. "I suppose it's just my imagination." She leaned in briefly and nuzzled Al with a warm smile. "I guess I'm not the only one easily distracted by adorable things."
Al meowed tiredly and tried to purr. It came across like a labored motorboat. The two of us giggled. I felt a coming chill, and knew that this was the best time to part ways.
"Well, I have to retire now. I have things to read up on."
"Are you in Ponyville to do research?" Fluttershy asked.
"Yeah..." I said, though I fumbled briefly on my own words. "Something... like that. I guess."
"Hmmm..." She winked at me. "I think somepony needs to get some shut-eye."
"You're right... as always, Fluttershy." I waved as she trotted off. "So long. And... thanks again..."
"Don't mention it," she said--but was suddenly overcome with a freezing spell. She shivered in place, her breath forming vapors in the air. Blinking curiously, she gazed around at her surroundings, shrugged, and made her way slowly towards the far end of the village.
I didn't dwell too much on the sight of her vanishing. I strolled back into my cabin, placed my saddlebag down, and planted Al's drowsy body on the center of the bed.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?" I remarked as I walked back and forth across my home, lighting lanterns and putting my things away. "We got you taken care of. We made up a nice plan to keep you fed and clean. We learned that you can't... uhm... make little Al's. But it's all good! I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship. Too bad I have to dig my nose through Comethoof again and learn of things less worth smiling about."
I stopped in my tracks, gazing curiously at the far corner of the bed. There was a stack of books beside my pillow, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how they had gotten there.
"Huh. That's weird." I shuffled over and picked up what turned out to be several collected journals on Equestrian zoology. "Where'd you come from? The library? I don't remember--"
Al was meowing.
I looked down at him.
The cat was looking up at me, purring. He was a lot more awake than I had given him credit. I wondered if it was animal cruelty to tie him to the bedpost at night so he wouldn't go trampling all over the stuff on my shelves. Whatever the case, there was something about what he was rubbing up against that caught my attention. Innocently, the purring beast was nuzzling my saddlebag, his whiskers brushing against the golden lyre pocketed within.
I squinted at the sight. I then looked at the books in my hooves. By the time Al began rubbing up against my legs, I was placing the journals down on the cot. I shuffled over and picked up the lyre. I gazed at it blankly. My bored face reflected against the golden surface.
"I..." I murmured. "I... was supposed to do something today..."
All was silent save for Al's purring and random meows. I turned and glanced at Doctor Comethoof's journal. I walked over and levitated the book open. I flipped through the pages. Every single word was in glowing blue text.
"That... doesn't look right," I murmured as if with a disembodied voice. The chills in the room doubled. I wasn't sure if Al could feel them, but I wasn't about to ask a feline out loud what I should have had the power to know on my own. "Where... where are...?"
Another chill struck me. I imagined the rattling of chains. My body went tight. There was only one thing to do--to relax, if nothing else. I raised the lyre higher in my telekinetic grasp. I didn't care if my new, amnesiac pet was there to listen. I had to play "Twilight's Requiem." I had to play it before the sudden, desperate urge to perform the piece was gone altogether from my consciousness.
The instrumental ended as swiftly as it began, or so it felt. But then I felt nothing but a bloodrush of head-splitting thoughts.
I stumbled, nearly dropping the lyre. Comethoof's journal blew in a magical wind. I gazed with twitching eyes as several of the words flickered from blue to a hot, levitating magenta. It was then that I remembered something that I hadn't realized I was on the verge of forgetting completely.
I fell to my knees, clutching my aching head as my horn glowed with each resonating wave of contemplation. I saw flittering wings, bulbous bodies, and a town being eaten apart by a horrible swarm of ravenous color.
"Parasprites," I hissed, practically gnashing my teeth. "Parasprites. Parasprites. Parasprites. I was supposed to ask Fluttershy about parasprites. But why didn't I? What stopped me? What...?"
I froze in place. With shaking hooves, I picked up Comethoof's journal and glanced at the refreshed words of magenta swimming just an inch off the page. Slowly, a diabolical snicker bled from my mouth as I shook my head and smiled.
"Ohhhhh-hooo no. Oh no you don't. You almost lost me, you emaciated waste of alicorn bones," I grunted. "You almost threw me completely off track. Well played, I must say. But I'm not going to be lost that easily. Not as long as I keep playing the Requiem. You're not throwing this unsung unicorn off your trail. It may have worked for Comethoof, but it's not going to work with me!"
I turned and smirked at Al.
"You think I'm half the idiot she suspects me to be?"
Al merely tilted his head and meowed.
"I didn't think so." I slapped the book shut, stood up straight, and marched across the cabin. "I know what I'm doing first thing in the morning, so help me Celestia."
I knocked heavily on the cottage door.
A voice squeaked from the other side. "What do you w--?"
"Hey, I was just walking up here..." I said, "And I was wondering if you knew that there's a dead furry creature on the sidewalk?"
"Oh my goodness!" A dainty pair of hooves fumbled over the door's locking mechanism. "Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!" The cottage door flew open and a panting Fluttershy dashed out in a blur. "Angel?! Mister Fuzz?! Elizabadger?! What happened--?"
"Oh, snap, my bad." I snickered and rolled my eyes. "Where are my prescription glasses today? I swear I'm losing my vision!" I kicked at a piece of lightly colored fluff on the ground. "It's just peat moss. Heh heh heh... Ohhhh... Ahem. I apologize."
"Oh... uhm..." Fluttershy gulped and shivered nervously. "It's... uh... quite alright, I guess--"
I stared directly into her eyes. "Parasprites."
She leaned back from me like a tilting mannequin. "I beg your pardon?"
"I'm here in town to do research on the colorful little bugs, and I was told you've had experience in dealing with them."
"I... erm..." She backtrotted away from me, her entire body drooping. "Uhm..."
"You're Ponyville's leading experts on animals, yes?"
"You m-might have better luck t-talking to the local veterinarian," Fluttershy stammered.
"The veterinarian has never dealt with parasprites first-hoof. I know because I've asked her." I stepped towards her, firmly. "However, you have interacted with them. I'd very much like to know about the creatures..."
"I really don't think that's a good idea," Fluttershy said. With a squeaking noise, she spun about and galloped back into her cottage. "I'm sorry, but you should try asking somepony else--"
"But I doubt anypony else can help me, Fluttershy!" I called after her. "Nopony else knows what it means to talk to animals, to take care of them, to commune with them simply through feeling, when words fail us..."
Fluttershy paused in her doorway. She bit her lip, blushed, and glanced back at me.
I trotted slowly towards her with a gentle smile. "A wise pony once told me that we were stewards of this earth, that Creation gave us the energy to seek out life and protect it. Do you believe you're a pony blessed with this task? Or is your urge to run away too great?"
Fluttershy fidgeted. She exhaled deeply and nodded towards me. "Would you like to step inside?"
"Twilight Sparkle has always felt guilty for what happened with the parasprites," Fluttershy said in a muttering voice. The two of us sat at a table in the foyer of the cottage, a steaming teaset situated between us. "But she's giving herself too much credit. After all, she wasn't the pony who introduced parasprites to Ponyville in the first place. She wasn't the one who kept several parasprites behind after the first attempt to corral them into Everfree Forest failed."
I nodded slowly. I had my lyre out and was strumming a quiet tune as we sat together. The music appeared to soothe Fluttershy and ease her into a gentle conversation. Little did she know that I was playing a subdued version of "Twilight's Requiem" over and over again, magically reinforcing my ability to retain memory of the discussion topic.
"I was just so overcome with how adorable and cute the insects were," Fluttershy said with a weathered smile. "I'd truly never seen anything like them before. It was hard to believe that something so adorable could be capable of so much destruction. They were enchanting, as if they came from a fairy tale..."
"You say that you only found one at first?" I asked, "There was only one parasprite, and then it multiplied into all the others that infested Ponyville, right?"
Fluttershy nodded. "I made the mistake of feeding it without thinking of the repercussions. On the way to the center of town to show it to my friends, it made two brand new parasprites. From then on, every new insect multiplied just as quickly, if not faster."
"You've seen them," I commented, leaning over the table as I strummed on the lyre. "You've felt them and you've held them in your hooves..."
"Yes...?"
"Did they ever strike you as incredibly bizarre?" I remarked. "Did the manner in which they ate and multiplied ever come across as unrealistic?"
"I..." She squinted at me. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean, Miss Heartstrings. They were as real as any other creature I've dealt with."
"You have an innate gift of taking care of animals," I said.
"Yes, but I wasn't able to with these creatures. They ignored me as if I wasn't there."
"Don't you think that's a little strange?" I remarked. "You're Ponyville's chief expert on animals. Your friend Twilight Sparkle once told me that you tamed a raging Manticore in the Everfree Forest, and that you've stared down a crimson dragon and a malevolent cockatrice in the span of a single year."
"Mmmm..." She blushed and avoided my gaze, rubbing her other hoof with a slight smile. "Yes. I did do those things..."
"And yet you weren't able to make tiny winged insects behave?"
She shuddered. "We all have our faults, Miss Heartstrings. They tend to show up at the most inopportune time."
"Fluttershy, I'm not attempting to expose some fault in your or anything," I said. "Don't you see what I'm getting at? I find it inherently absurd that the parasprites wouldn't do a single thing that you told them to. You have a way of dealing with animals that goes beyond words, that goes beyond simple logic. You have a heart of gold, and your ability to feel appeals to almost every creature. So why didn't it work with parasprites?"
"I"--She shivered slightly--"I don't know..."
"Maybe"--I squinted at her--"the parasprites existed to contradict reality, to clash with what should normally work. Maybe they simply don't function by the rules of this world."
"Uhm..."
"Think about it," I asked, "Does their diet, their rate of multiplication, and their rampant destruction make any sense whatsoever? Do they match anything else in your purview of animal knowledge?"
Fluttershy bit her lip. Her trembling stopped, as if she was swimming to the surface of a warm pool of awakening. "I've always wondered about it. It... just never made sense to me. Twilight Sparkle and I have dealt with our guilt over the parasprites for months, but I think even she believes that we should have gotten a hoof-hold of the situation. Her magic spell should have kept them from eating everything in town. My coaxing should have kept them from swarming the village in the first place."
"And what was it in the end that got them out of town?" I asked. "Did the parasprites just leave of their own volition once they had caused a great deal of destruction?"
"Not... exactly..."
"No?"
"Just before Princess Celestia arrived for her scheduled visit, the parasprites were finally corralled out of Ponyville," Fluttershy said.
"Oh really?" I remarked, "With what, torches?"
"Nuh uh, silly!" Pinkie Pie chirped, bouncing beside us. "With music!"
I nearly fell off my stool. I brought my lyre to my chest and stared at her, panting for breath. "What in the hay?!"
"If they had toes, parasprites would be tapping them to a wicked beat whenever it filled the air!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed with a bright giggle. She paused and scrunched her face. "Come to think of it, if we had toes, would we do the same?"
"How in the heck did you get in Fluttershy's cottage?!" I asked.
Pinkie Pie blinked. "This is Fluttershy's cottage?" She turned around. "Huh. Well, that explains why it smells like birdseed and ferret tails!"
"Gummy's in the kitchen, sleeping next to the stove, Pinkie," Fluttershy said with a gentle smile. "I have a batch of muffins heating up, and I knew he'd like being close to something so warm."
"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie Pie frolicked towards the kitchen beyond the foyer. "Thanks for looking after him while I was away at the paintball tournament!"
"Did your team win?"
"Nah. The Canterlot Eagle Eyes beat us again. Darn unicorns and their itchy trigger horns..."
"Hey, wait!" I called after Pinkie Pie. "About what you said earlier..."
"What, how Fluttershy's place smells like ferret tails? Heehee. That's a polite way to say it reeks of weasel a--"
"No, about parasprites and music," I remarked, "What did that have to do with getting them out of the village?"
"Uhm... duh!" Pinkie Pie gave me a rolling of her blue eyes before giggling. "Parasprites love music! A little too much, if you ask me! A one-pony-band is all it takes to turn them into a pastel parade of pests... pestiness... pestericity?" Her eyes briefly crossed. She shook her head and stared straight. "It's crazy! It's almost as if they're living music notes, only with the jagged, squiggly part on the top taken off. You know what I'm talking about, right?"
"Uhhh..."
"Anywho, thanks again, Fluttershy! Mind if I grab a muffin or two?"
"Help yourself, Pinkie."
"Thankies!" She bounded into the kitchen. "Hey! Gummy! Out of the dish washer! Bad gator! Chew on your own spatula!"
"Uhm..." I ran a hoof through my mane, glanced at my lyre, then back at Fluttershy. "I don't suppose you would be up for an afternoon stroll by chance?"
"I... I don't like this, Miss Heartstrings," Fluttershy said, trembling, as she trotted nervously beside me. "Just what are you hoping to achieve?"
"It's not 'what,'" I said, fighting a wave of cold. "It's more like 'who.'" The two of us were about ten minutes into piercing the Everfree Forest just beyond Fluttershy's cabin. It was still daylight out, so the shadows of the dense woods were only slightly obscured by the emerald foliage hanging above. "This is approximately where the parasprites were finally driven away, yes?"
"Mmmm..." She merely nodded with a frightful squeak. "To be perfectly honest, I always had the fear that they'd return, and then my cottage would be the first thing they'd consume."
I smiled, despite my chattering teeth. "And yet they never did. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"
"Well..."
"I mean, they devoured almost all of Ponyville in the span of two days. Just what kept them from eating up the forest, your cottage, and everything beyond?"
"I... I really don't know," Fluttershy stammered. "The more you make me think about it, Miss Heartstrings, the more bizarre the whole notion of parasprites sounds. I never felt it was worth thinking so much about before, but all of your questions are making perfect sense. What exactly are you trying to prove?"
"I don't know exactly, Fluttershy," I said. "But I think the answer may lie before us."
"How so?"
"I want to see a parasprite with my very own eyes."
"Wh-what?!" Fluttershy winced, trembling. "But... But why? That's only inviting danger!"
"It's also inviting truth," I murmured, gazing into every shadow and dark shape of the place. "I'm on a quest for understanding, Fluttershy. I fear that I won't have any answers until I have the real thing in my hooves."
"But... but that means going even deeper into the Everfree Forest..."
"I'm well aware of that," I said. "I'm not afraid, and neither should you be."
"Then why is it that you're shaking so badly?" Fluttershy remarked. "Uhm... if you don't mind me asking..."
"It's not fear, Fluttershy," I said, quivering. "It's the cold."
"The cold? Why, it's positively sweltering!"
"Trust me," I said, trying to ease my frigid spasms. I hadn't exactly planned for this. I had left my cloak and extra bundles back home. However, I wasn't about to leave Fluttershy and waste all of the progress we had made in conversation thus far. "This is the last place I wanna be right now. But if I want to learn anything, I can't do it by backing away after I've come so far."
"Your courage is inspiring, Miss Heartstrings."
"So is yours," I said with a soft smile. "I thank you for talking with a perfect stranger such as myself. I... I'm sorry that it took a nasty stunt to make you come out of the cottage in the first place."
"I'm just sorry that ponies have to resort to silly things to make me show my face at times," she said, digging her hooves in the soft earth. "I've never been the most social pegasus, but I know that a lot of that is my own fault. I have so many friends, and it's about time I learned to trust their sincere feelings rather than let myself be intimidated by my fears..."
"You're a sweet soul, Fluttershy," I said as I pierced the veritable jungle ahead of us. "Don't be so hard on yourself. Your gentleness and patience has helped you succeed in taming wildlife. I'm sure it's only helped you win the love and respect of your peers all the more." I stopped in my tracks, smiling in spite of my shivers at the clearing ahead of us. "Ah. That'll do."
"Uhm..." Fluttershy looked over my shoulders. "What will do?"
I turned towards her while pointing to a lone tree stump in the center of an open space of grass and shrubbery. "Trust me. I know a good stage when I see one." She accompanied me as I trotted over and seated myself on the stump as though it were a large stool. "Okay. So, quickly, could you describe to me the nature of the music that was played to draw the parasprites out of Ponyville?"
"Uhm..." Fluttershy fidgeted, gazing at the line of trees surrounding us. "Pinkie Pie performed a very upbeat number. It had a fast tempo and a repeating melody. However... uhm... she had several instruments with her. I doubt that your single lyre could mimic the tune."
"That's quite alright," I said as I levitated the lyre in front of me. "I think I have just the lively kind of tune to perform in its place."
"Oh?"
"Relax, Fluttershy," I remarked as I began plucking strings with my telekinesis. "Have a seat. You might as well enjoy the show while you're here too, huh?"
"Okay..."
I concentrated, closing my eyes and thinking beyond the waves of cold assaulting my figure. Soon, I was playing a very brisk rendition of "Sunset Bolero." The magical chords echoed across the wooden tree trunks. That niche in the forest turned out to have amazing acoustic qualities, and soon Everfree was resonating with a fast-paced symphony.
"Heeheehee..." Fluttershy uttered warmly. "This is a very fun tune. I don't know why, but it makes me feel all bubbly inside..."
"Shhh," I breathed, my eyes closed as I focused on the swift tempo. "I'm glad for that, Fluttershy," I whispered. "But I have to concentrate..."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," I murmured, then bit my lip as I performed the "Sunset Bolero" a second time, a third, and then a fourth. I made slight variations with each play-through, not for the sake of being artistic but rather to test if one version or another would be more capable of drawing out my "prey." As the instrumental continued, I felt my shivers subsiding, being replaced with a new cloud of worry. It didn't feel as if anything was working. I didn't hear any parasprites showing up, and soon all that mattered to me was the music itself. I feared that if I concentrated too hard on the symphony, she would make me forget the very reason why I came there. I was extremely tempted to switch from the Bolero to the Requiem in order to reinforce my memory of the absurd insects, when suddenly Fluttershy's voice peeped up--
"Psst! Miss Heartstrings!"
"Just let me just play the instrumental one more time--"
"No! Look!"
I opened my eyes. Through a blurry, freezing world, I saw a tiny purple dot floating like a dull ball of lightning. I blinked, and the pastel circle came more into focus. On twitching dragonfly wings, it hovered left and right, giving us a perpetual smile as its beady-bright eyes reflected the sunlight wafting down through the trees.
"Why, hello there," I murmured. I glanced at Fluttershy. She glanced at me. "That's the real deal, right?"
"You mean that after all this time, you've never seen one for yourself?" she whispered back.
I opened my mouth to speak, but lingered. I thought of the unsung realm, of Doctor Comethoof's writing, of so many crazy and unimaginable things that were so horrifically real. My mind tried going back to several months ago when the town got ravaged around me, and I was suddenly helpless to summon a single detail. Was the Requiem to blame for this clarity... or lack of clarity? "I... I guess I'm not sure..."
The parasprite let loose a tiny little chirp. It was ridiculously adorable. Still, it brought a shudder to my system that nearly made me drop my lyre. Somehow I felt like listening to the moans of shackled ponies in a submerged dimension rather than indulge this insect's vocalizing.
"They're very friendly," Fluttershy said hushedly. "If you walk up to it, it'll only want to get close to you, even if it means nesting in your mane." She turned to look at me. "What... uhm... what did you wish to do now that one's here?"
"Let's just see what we can do," I murmured as I kept my eyes glued on the living purple sphere across the way. "Here, hold this." I hoofed her the lyre.
Fluttershy gently took it.
I stripped of my saddlebag, all the while staring at the parasprite.
The parasprite stared back, endlessly grinning, endlessly happy.
"Okay..." I exhaled, trying to ease my shivers for what came next. "I'm going to need your help. Follow me..."
Fluttershy nervously nodded. She planted the lyre down on the tree stump and followed me as I shuffled slowly towards the creature, levitating the saddlebag in front of me. For what felt like a decade, we crept across the clearing, until we were finally within a breath's distance from the insect. I whispered over to Fluttershy, "See if you can befriend it." I opened the pouch of the saddlebag. "We're gonna coax it into this."
"Okay," she said with a nod. Trotting over, she reached a hoof out with a placating smile.
The parasprite hovered forward and nuzzled her forelimb. It let out another chirp, then bounced its way up her limb before rubbing against her face.
"Heeheehee..." Fluttershy remarked, her cheeks warm. "I almost forgot just how adorable these were up close..."
I cleared my throat. "Don't get entranced too quickly, Fluttershy." I gestured towards the open saddlebag before me.
"Ahem. Right..." She nuzzled the parasprite again and spoke, "We're not going to hurt you, little fella. We just want to get to know you better. Don't be scared of Miss Heartstrings. She's only curious, and she can't learn more about you if you're hiding deep in the forest, now can she?"
The parasprite merely squeaked and rolled its tongue. Wait, the insect had a tongue? This just kept getting weirder and weirder.
"Aaaaaand there we go," Fluttershy cooed as she deposited the little, bulbous thing into my saddlebag. "See? That wasn't so bad, little guy."
I closed the saddlebag and snapped it tightly shut. I clung to it, exhaling a deep breath. A goofy smile came to my face. "Wherever you are, Comethoof, I hope you're proud of me..."
"Huh?"
I cleared my throat and stood up with the saddlebag. "Don't mind me. I'm just happy that this actually worked."
"How do you wish to examine the creature now that you have it in the saddlebag?" Fluttershy asked. "Are you going to perform a magical scan with your horn?"
"No," I said. "I'm going to take it home and study it in the safety of my cellar."
"You're going to what?!" Fluttershy gasped wide. "But... But that means taking it back to the village!"
"Uh... Yeah. I guess..."
"That... That's incredibly dangerous!" Fluttershy exclaimed. "There's no telling what sort of damage it can do if it's brought back to where so much food and edible things are!"
"Trust me, Fluttershy," I said. "I have... many magical talents that will prevent history from repeating itself."
"But..."
"And I'm not going to hurt the little guy either. I just need more time and resources to understand these things and I can't do it out here in the middle of the forest." I turned around--
--only to have Fluttershy settling down with flapping wings to block me. "I... I'm sorry, Miss Heartstrings." She bit her lip in a feeble attempt at frowning. "But.. but I m-must put my hoof down."
"Huh?" I blinked at her.
"I can't let you leave the forest with that parasprite. It was because of my foolishness that the swarm ever demolished Ponyville to begin with. I've felt responsible since, and I'd feel responsible now. So... uhm..." She clenched her teeth, summoned the next breath like a cannonball, and ultimately squeaked forth, "PutthatsaddlebagbackdownbeforeImakeyou." She instantly wilted away from me, her eyes thin. "Uhm... don't hate me for being assertive, please."
I stared at her. A gentle sigh escaped my lips, and I smiled. "Nopony in the world could possibly hate you, Fluttershy. You're... only doing the right thing."
"Then..." She gulped. "Then you'll do what I told you to?"
"I'll simply study it here," I said. "I may not be able to learn as much as I want to, but maybe if I keep playing the music, I can keep the lil' fella in one place long enough for me to study it properly." I turned and pointed at the stump. "Would you mind grabbing my lyre for me? I can't properly make music without it..."
"Oh..." Fluttershy's wings flexed. She looked at the tree stump, then at me again. "Alright," she said with a smile. Swiftly, she trotted over to where my musical instrument was lying.
I stood in place, squinting at her as she walked ten feet away, twenty, thirty...
Fluttershy picked the lyre up. Before she could turn around, she froze in place. A breath of vapors blocked my vision of her, and then I witnessed her trembling in the center of the forest, glancing all around with a nervous stammer.
"What...? How...? What am I doing here...?"
I took a deep breath, stood up straight, and marched towards her. "Why, hello there!"
"Eeep!" she spun and jolted from me, nearly dropping the lyre. "Who is it?!"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," I said with a gasp. "I didn't mean to startle you, ma'am. I was just on my way to visit Zecora when I realized I dropped my lyre--" I glanced at her hooves and grinned wide. "Oh! Hey! You found it!"
"Uhm..." Fluttershy trembled slightly less, gazing at the golden instrument in her grasp. "I... I guess I did..."
"I can't thank you enough! You're so kind!" I rushed over and levitated the object into my telekinetic grasp. "I swear, I'd lose my horn if it wasn't attached to my head." I slid the lyre into the pouch of my saddlebag opposite to where a pocketed parasprite was bouncing around under the canvas surface. "So, what's a sweet young pony such as yourself doing on a fine day like today? Going out for a stroll?"
"I..." Fluttershy blushed deeply, gazing at the alien lengths of the Everfree Forest all around her. "I'm not entirely sure. I... I normally don't like walking into the forest..."
"Awww, that's too bad. You seem like a pony who'd get along with wildlife."
"Well, actually--"
"Hey, Zecora can wait a little while longer," I said with a smile, doing my best to hide my shivers. "How'd you like it if I walked you to the edge of the forest? I'm actually visiting from out of town, and I'd like to learn more about this place, unless you wanted to be alone--"
"No!" Fluttershy gasped, winced, and said more calmly. "What I mean is, I-I would love to talk and walk with somepony, if th-that's okay with you."
I giggled and ushered her in the direction of her house. "It's more than okay..."
With glowing telekinesis, I lowered the glass jar down onto a high shelf in the corner of my cabin. Inside, the twitchy parasprite smiled at the world beyond his translucent dome and flittered about in claustrophobic circles.
I stepped back with a sigh. I gazed down at Al, who was sitting in the center of the cabin, staring up at the jarred insect with an anxious twitch of his tail.
"Don't even think about knocking the jar over to get to the little bug," I said. Taking my saddlebag off, I placed my things in the corner of the room while murmuring, "I know it looks tasty to a feline like you, but I'd hate myself if the little thing ate you from the inside out."
Al made a little trilling sound and reached up towards the lower shelves of the bookcase, his amber eyes affixed to the jar.
I gently shoved him back into the middle of the cabin once again. "Of course, I kind of hate myself enough as it is." I squatted beside him and petted his fur affectionately, trying to make myself feel like I was a good, thoughtful pony once more. "Fluttershy's done nothing but selflessly help me lately, and the best I can do to thank her is lie to her?" I sighed again. "I know it's all for a grand purpose, but when do epic plans ever legitimize anything, no matter how unethical?"
Al had no words to give me. He was simply there, and he felt warm to the touch as he rubbed up against my flank and padded over towards the cot.
I remained squatting there, staring up at the jarred parasprite. "I like to tell myself, Al, that once I'm cured of this curse, then I'll finally have a chance to apologize to the likes of Twilight, Applejack, Morning Dew..." I gulped. "And now Fluttershy." I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie while shivering. "All I want from this whole fiasco is to make friends... permanently. But will they want to be my friends, knowing all of the things I did behind their amnesiac backs?"
There was a slight meowing sound from the bed. Al curled up into a ball, yawned, and nestled himself into the sheets.
I smiled his way. "Would you be my friend, once I make it so that I'm no longer an anmesiac shadow that feeds you on occasion? After all, it must be lonesome for a cat to be living in a cabin with a ghost."
Al said nothing. His orange body rose and fell as he quietly slid his way into slumber.
I muttered, "I've been a ghost for so long, I'm almost scared of what I might do to change things. Just thinking about it drives me mad." I looked at the jar once more. "Ohhhh... what would Comethoof do?"
"She loves her beloved. I'm a symphony away from you. Fires and sirens. The moon is gone and they're fighting for the cosmos. All is unsung and unspoken. Truth is in the womb of the Cosmic Matriarch. The cord is too severed to unravel. The world began with a song and it will end with a lament. The symphony is fractured. Desolation divides the music as it divides the firmaments. We live to begin nothing. Fight the alicorn. Restore beauty and love. I will find you, if it takes all of my breaths and breaking. I will suspend myself in the depths of darkness. The Nightbringer will be my anchor, and then I will sing us back into being. I will translate her song unto the ears of mortals. You always loved to scratch my ears. You wait for me and I will find you. She adored her beloved but she sang him away. I will not be like her. I will live under the shadow of her, but I will not be like her. I live, therefore I sing. Singing is existing is rejoicing is sobbing. The rapturous ballad becomes the mournful dirge becomes the rapturous ballad again. The universe fluctuates in a circle, orbiting chaos and blooming flowers. She adores her beloved but her beloved had to go. He will come back as I will come back only I am trying while he is dying. Know my song and become something. I will find you, beloved. I will find you. I will find you. I will find you..."
My eyes blinked hard. I rubbed a hoof over my eyes and groaned from where I squatted on the bed.
"So much for that." There was a toasty furball of warmth curled up against my side. I glanced over at Al in the flickering haze of the lit fireplace. I gestured towards the ancient journal resting before me. "Do you get any of this?"
Al said nothing. He twisted around, stretched, and then curled up against me once more.
I looked up at the parasprite still flitting about in the jar atop the high shelf. "I'm thinking that Comethoof took the idea of becoming a ghost a bit too literally. I wonder if perhaps that's what happened to her as well. Two pony spirits--one ethereal and the other mortal--both get caught up in the realm of the unsung, and they can't climb their way out of it because being unsung becomes all they know." I gulped. "That, and they mourn for lost loves that will never come back to them. Maybe I've benefited from being a single mare when I came here to Ponyville..."
There was a breath of silence, save for the crackle of burning embers beyond the hearth.
"Eh, who am I kidding?" I blurted. I turned and smiled warmly at the ball of fur sharing the bed with me. "Are you my beloved?" I leaned in and nuzzled him. He sniffed at me and tickled my muzzle with his whiskers before producing a meow of protest. I giggled and nuzzled him some more, before gazing again at the parasprite above. "'Desolation divides the music as it divides the firmaments...'" I said, quoting Comethoof.
Just then, my face scrunched up in thought.
"The music..." I murmured. I looked at the parasprite. I imagined its bright purple body bouncing to the uplifting beat of the Bolero. "The parasprites are drawn to song. Music is what drew them out of Ponyville to begin with. Even Pinkie Pie herself said it was like parasprites were living music notes..."
My eyes scanned the lengths of the firelit cabin as I talked to Al... or was I just talking to myself?
"When Comethoof went to Celestia, her violent, magical response to the Nocturne was unsung. History was altered to say that it was a sarosian bomb that destroyed a wing of the palace. But did she change the fabric of reality, or did Celestia--in order to protect the truth of the unsung realm?" I gulped and stared fixedly at the parasprite. "The alicorns are all parts of the same song that imbued the Cosmic Matriarch. The Matriarch was one alicorn. She sang creation into being, and then she broke the song into four parts: herself, Celestia, Luna, and her. After that, everything the alicorns have done for this world... has been through disassembling the Matriarch's song that empowers them."
I sat up straight in bed, careful not to disturb Al.
"Am I looking at a parasprite?" I asked the shadows. "Or am I looking at a song? And if that's the case... then whose song?"
"Well, Princess Celestia has lived for thousands upon thousands of years," Twilight Sparkle said, levitating a book over to a wooden table before us the next day. "Most of those millennia have been spent in Canterlot. It's only natural that she's produced several symphonies in that time."
"I need to look for a specific music piece," I exclaimed as I squatted on a stool beside her in the center of the library. "Just how many instrumentals do you suppose she wrote?"
"Ohhh... Not many." Twilight Sparkle shrugged, her eyes scanning the ceiling. "A few, here or there. I'm guessing maybe... five thousand?"
I exhaled with a shudder. "Well, it's a good thing my afternoon's free."
"Heeheehee. I'm intrigued by your avid interest in Her Majesty's symphonic background, Miss Heartstrings. Might I ask what's the occasion? An experiment? An extensive research project?"
"Let's just chalk it up to 'morbid curiosity' and leave it at that..."
Twilight scooted towards the table beside me with a bright smile. "Maybe I can even help you!" She winked. "I'm a marathon-runner when it comes to research."
"Heh. Don't I know it..."
"Huh?"
"Ahem." I looked at her. "Please, I couldn't possibly ask you to spend all of your time helping me with this gargantuan search."
"Well, give me some parameters of the search, and maybe I can lower it to moderately epic instead!"
I exhaled through my nostrils and muttered, "Bugs..."
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Bugs?"
"Cute, bouncing, hungry, stupidly adorable bugs," I said. "With bright eyes, dragonfly wings and..."
"Wow," Twilight remarked with a cock-eyed wink. "Are we describing a symphony or a lullaby?"
"Heh." I smirked. "As if Her Majesty ever wrote lullabies."
"Actually, she did."
I gazed awkwardly at her. "Huh?"
"There's an entire section containing them in this book!" She flipped through several pages of the tome lying before us. "Ages ago, almost all household lyrics sung to foals owed their origin to the Princess herself. Even today, a lot of them are merely derivative. Don't tell me you've never heard 'Hush Now, Quiet Now.'"
"It's... been a while..."
"Shhh..." Twilight glanced around the library, then leaned in with a smirk. "Don't tell my assistant, but I've sung it to Spike quite a few times..."
"Hey! Stop it!" A voice said from the distant edge of the library. "You're embarrassing me!"
"Heehee... Oh come on, Spike! It's not like Miss Heartstrings here is going to tell anypony we know!"
"Hey! Dig the swell hoodie--"
"Uh huh, thanks." I turned back to Twilight. "So, do any of the lullabies feature cute, bouncy insects?"
"Well, let's find out, shall we?"
Two hours later, the two of us were still rummaging through the lullabies section of the book containing Celestia's musical compositions. Twilight Sparkle was indeed proving to me just what a "marathon runner" she was in scanning pages upon pages of music sheets. As for myself, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep my eyes opened. I yawned a few times--unashamedly--and the only thing that kept me awake was the morbid fear that falling asleep might sever the connection I had between myself and a potential amnesiac.
Just as the shadows of the room became pathetically inviting to the insides of my eyelids, I felt a forelimb nudging my shoulder.
"Hey. Miss Heartstrings. I think I found something."
"Found... something...?" I remarked, blinking heavily.
"Right here," she said, pointing her lavender hoof towards an immensely short tune scrawled upon a dusty page towards the front end of the book. "It's one of the oldest songs ever attributed to Princess Celestia's composition."
"Let's see..." I scooted up and scanned the top of the sheet. "'Parade of the Pretty Sprites.' Well, if that isn't cute."
"Would you like to read it?"
"Don't mind if I do..."
Parade of the Pretty Sprites
in dedication to Star Bliss
Sleep now, my little bliss
From sundown to morning mist
And dream of all the games you'll play
While parades of pretty sprites
Twinkling with forest lights
Shall gobble all your troubles away
Rest now, my little bliss
There's nothing more serene than this
Winged helpers dance into the day
They eat all fears, shadows and ghosts
And all the things you hate the most
To make mornings free of dismay
I love you, my little bliss
And hope that you'll never miss
The pretty sprites' cheerful display
And someday you'll tell your foals
About these enchanted forest souls
That clean our world while in bed we lay
"What do you think?" Twilight Sparkle remarked. "Is that what you were looking for?"
"Well..." I took a deep breath. "It's certainly very... repetitive."
She giggled again. "It's not exactly Marezart, Miss Heartstrings. Though I'd say the style is no fault of Celestia's. It's all about the intended audience."
"I suppose so," I said. My eyes squinted once more at the dedication. "Who's 'Star Bliss?'"
"Oh..." Twilight's smile became a calm, solemn thing. "He was one of Princess Celestia's oldest apprentices. Eons ago, well before the Rise of Discord--much less Shadow's Advent--Princess Celestia not only mentored her magical apprentices, she adopted them. Even Starswirl the Bearded was like a child to her. And, well, like most mothers, Princess Celestia looked after her foals with love and devotion. She wrote a lullaby for each separate adoptee."
"Hence why there are so many of them."
"Yes."
"I wonder how many threnodies there are..."
To that, Twilight Sparkle said nothing.
I cleared my throat. "So, let me ask you, Miss Sparkle." I pointed at the lullaby. "Does this song in particular remind you of anything?"
"Well..." She gazed at the piece. "Come to think of it..." Her eyes blinked. "Huh. No, it couldn't be..."
"I'm all ears."
She shook her head. "It's too much of a stretch. Besides..." She stifled a giggle. "The first time they ever appeared was about a year ago, and they certainly didn't 'eat troubles away,' they gobbled up half the town. Heh. Were you there for that, Miss Heartstrings?"
I shuddered. "In body, though evidently not in mind."
"Huh?"
"Tell me..." I turned and smiled politely at her. "Would it be too much trouble for me to check this out for... I dunno... a week?"
I had the book of Celestia's song sitting on the cot beside Comethoof's journal. I stood a few feet away from my bed. The setting sun was melting through the windows, bathing my cabin with a crimson haze. Al was padding about in circles, electrified by the tension and anxiety in the room. He meowed my way a few times, but I didn't answer him.
I sat on my haunches, holding a hoof over my mouth as I gazed at the books, saturated with contemplation. Every now and then, I'd dart my eyes from the bookmark that placed Celestia's lullaby to the jarred parasprite seated on a shelf high above me. This exchange continued for a prolonged period, a silent space that was occasionally punctuated by Al's lonesome meows.
Eventually, I uttered, "The Requiem is a buffer... a means of reminding ponies of what's real versus what's unsung," I said. "It helped Comethoof remember the performance of the Nocturne. It helped me remember parasprites." I swallowed hard and looked fixedly at the imprisoned insect. "I don't have the Nightbringer, but I have a piece of the Matriarch's song nonetheless. It just doesn't know what it is yet. But maybe if I reminded it as well..."
Al rubbed up against me. He had been fed. His box had been cleaned. There was nothing else that he could possibly have wanted, and yet he rubbed up against me, purring and vocalizing.
I gazed down at him. I ran a hoof along his head, then scratched his ears. A bitter chuckle left my lips. "Heh. She always loved to play with his ears..." I sighed. "I think his madness began when he refused to give up something he loved, something that could no longer love him back..."
A pit formed in the back of my throat. I suddenly could not look at Al anymore without tearing up. I turned my head to the ceiling, shuddered, and spoke in a low voice.
"I can't stay here like this. I have to keep going forward. I have to..."
I left the cabin. I had my saddlebag full of things. I felt the weight of my lyre, and I felt the rattling of the jar in a side pocket as the parasprite playfully bounced around inside.
Before leaving, I paused right there on the porch. My hooves squirmed in the advent of twilight. With a somber breath, I turned around and left the door to my home cracked open. There was now a risk of Al getting loose, perhaps even running away. I understood that.
Quietly, somberly, I trotted around the cabin and approached the cellar. Instead of marching straight down, I paused briefly. I gazed into the woods, into the dark bodies obscuring the starlight even further. I remembered waking up there in the middle of the night after first playing the Threnody. I was cold, wet, shivering, and drowned in horror. Yet, looking back in the journals, I knew that what I remembered of that frightful night wasn't all that there was to remember. Her unsung voice had clouded my grasp of reality, and when I went to the realm between the firmaments, I finally discovered what horrible truth she had meant to hide from a mortal such as me.
I couldn't help but wonder, would the truth that Celestia's song covered be just as horrifying? Would it drive me mad like Comethoof had been driven? Would it ever get me home, whereas Comethoof never achieved such freedom?
I glanced back at the cabin. I thought one last time about Al's gorgeous orange fur, about his warmth and companionship that accompanied me into sleep, like a gracious lullaby.
There was no point in waiting. I proceeded down the cellar steps, lighting my way with a lantern until I was once again in the small dugout, sliding a stool before the metal stand. I placed my lyre upon it, and then placed a new music sheet beneath that. By that time, I had memorized every elegy I knew of the Nocturne. But that wasn't exactly what I was there to perform. Princess Celestia's "Parade of the Pretty Sprites" rested before me in the dance of the lanternlight. It was time to put my theory to the test, and apply it to living vessels of absurdity.
First, I grasped the jar. I gazed at the parasprite inside and he gazed back, smiling and twitching his wings with infinite joy. It was like a child--in a way--perpetually locked in a frozen moment of wonder and contentment. I would expect no less from a living lullaby.
I next did the unthinkable. I unscrewed the lid to the jar and let the parasprite free. The little insect flitted about the room, chirping and making happy noises as it did loopty-loops around my lantern before settling for a playful hover in front of me.
I kept my eyes affixed to the unnatural thing. Reaching into my saddlebag, I pulled out the first of several apples I had acquired from Ponyville's town market. With a swing of my hoof, I rolled the glistening fruit so that it rested in the center of the cellar. I watched for what would happen next.
It didn't take much waiting. The parasprite spun circles in the room, cyclonically lowering its hungry self to the red body of the apple. As soon as it touched down, its jaws opened ridiculously wide, and it devoured the fruit with an obnoxious buzzing noise. Not even the core or stem were left afterwards. A bit more plump than before, the parasprite hovered up into the room with a happy lift of its dragonfly wings.
I merely squinted at the creature, quiet, waiting.
It suddenly lurched in mid-air. Its eyes squinted, as if with concentration. The bulbous body of the purple thing fluctuated, and suddenly it was coughing and hacking. A globule of vomit flew from its mouth. But unlike most vomitous discharges, the coagulated mush remained levitating in mid-air. Not a second later, the brown shell shattered as a pair of wings broke through. Suddenly there was a second parasprite--a bright green thing--and it hovered happily beside its sibling.
Slowly, I reached once more into my saddlebag. I rolled two new apples out. I watched silently as the two insects descended on the fruit. They swallowed the morsels whole, lifted upwards, and began lurching once again. The cellar echoed with their sputtering noises as they vomited two fresh globules. Suddenly the duo had turned into a quartet, with each new parasprite sporting an exoskeleton painted with a fresher color of the spectrum.
There were more apples left to go; I rolled them forward at a brisk pace. They barely lasted seconds before the growing swarm devoured them, then doubled, then tripled. Soon, it didn't take feeding them whatsoever. The parasprites multiplied on their own, fueled by the sheer volume of the sustenance that their forebears had consumed. As the cellar turned into a gigantic pin for this flittering flock, I scooted over to my lyre and began telekinetically strumming the opening bars to "Twilight's Requiem."
The song formed an eerie soundtrack to the growing cloud of insects. Their flitting wings became unwitting percussion, morphing into a hushed noise as an unnatural breeze kicked up all around me. They circled my body, chirping occasionally, smiling at the grim lengths of the cellar as if it was just as beautiful as a summer's day. As the Requiem went through its motions, their cyclonic fight formed a pattern, swaying and dancing with the chords that I introduced to the underground sound booth. Their eyes brightened, as if electrified by the lengths of the forsaken elegy.
I knew that I had my audience. It was time to teach them something that they had forgotten, something that held the key to their unnatural essence. As the strings of my lyre still vibrated with the magical sounds of the Requiem, I scanned the music sheet in front of me and dove into Celestia's "Parade of the Pretty Sprites." The tempo was slow, the rhythm intoxicatingly simple, and I could feel the song's ancient call to slumber tugging at the edges of my soul.
The moment that the parasprites stopped circling me was when I realized that the music was achieving its purpose. The insects hovered in place, their eyes the widest I had ever seen. Their wings appeared to beat in a sluggish movement, coordinated and hypnotized. I realized that all of my research was leading me somewhere, and it was almost frightening.
I didn't even have to sing the lyrics. The melody itself was enough to captivate them. Its cords lifted through the air, merging with the magical effects of "Twilight's Requiem." It was affecting the parasprites, merging them into a singular cloud of recognition. While I played the lullaby, I watched nervously as their hovering formation stretched into a veritable net around me, each parasprite hovering equidistant from its other siblings.
The song was being rejoined.
"You are not real," I murmured beneath the ceiling of sound. "You only think that you are."
The eyes of the many insects became thin. Whatever vestiges of a soul they each shared was dwindling. Their wings were slowing down, and yet a magical wind was picking up, blowing at my mane and making it hard to read what I was trying to play.
"Your very existence is madness," I said. "Look into your memories and see how ridiculous it all is. You were created to be an absurdity, to cover a very real truth."
My breath left me, for I noticed a bright glow emanating from each of the parasprites. The room began to hum with a haunting tone, like the roar of waves crashing in the distance and coming closer. Soon, a bright magenta color was shining from each parasprite's eyes. Even this phenomenon formed a pattern, swirling around me like a strobe. With each successive wipe of the magenta horizon, I saw the net of hovering parasprites dissolving before my very eyes. Their exoskeletons were growing translucent, and through the pastel shells I was seeing a sea of criss-crossing musical notes, of words, of forgotten voices--all laced with a hot glowing purple.
I was sweating. My eyes grew moist as I struggled to speak above the rising tumult.
"Sing her song!" I shouted. "Sing her song and become nothing!"
They answered. They exploded. I shrieked and fell off the stool, clutching myself as a splashing wave of music notes wafted over me, followed by a noise--the loudest of all noise--a noise as grand and holy as Creation itself. Before my ears could bleed, the screaming sound dwindled to a low hiss. I opened my eyes to see that the parasprites were gone, and their essence had coated the walls of the cellar beyond me. Only, they weren't walls, but translucent sheets of unearthly glass beyond which I saw a spinning canopy of stars, complete with glowing nebulae and galaxies and swirling clouds of cosmic gas.
I stood up, and yet I was floating. I was adrift in the cosmos, surrounded by a vacuum, shivering from the effects of absolute zero. I shouldn't have been alive. Had I ever been alive?
I tried to speak, but there was no sound. There was no sound because sound hadn't been invented yet. Peering over my shoulder, I saw the reason why. A grand equine shape--as majestic and beautiful as the constellations themselves--was galloping across the starry plains of the universe. She came upon a miasma of chaos, spread her wings, and opened her mouth. The Cosmic Matriarch gave birth to the song, and the song became everything.
A flash of light exploded across the glass windows of the cellar. I covered my eyes and spun backwards from the blow. I was sailing through the firmaments, gliding over seas and oceans and lightning. Equestria sprouted upwards from the fertile womb of Creation, and I was growing and dying with it.
I was everywhere and everything. I was Princess Celestia and Luna. I was the Sun and Moon. I was a third alicorn, disappearing upon the edge of night. I was immortality and mortality all at once. I was Celestia singing to a foal and I was Star Bliss listening to her. I was the song, and the song carried me down the tributaries of Creation, skirting down each winding branch as the Matriarch's chorus broke into brittle, beautiful pieces. Discord came to ravage the world and disappeared. Canterlot was built in a second, only to burn twice as fast as Nightmare Moon screamed upon the landscape. An age of shadows clouded my vision, and suddenly there was a bright flash of light as the Elements of Harmony were rediscovered. Somewhere, in the grand valley of Equestria, a tiny village sat in perfect tranquility. The cellar sailed towards it like a meteorite, and I was its hapless occupant, clinging to the walls in desperation.
Then I heard a voice: my voice. Only, my mouth wasn't open. I gasped as my eyes flew open. I was in a hotel lobby. Banners were hanging everywhere in honor of Princess Celestia's visit. There were nervous ponies craning their necks to see something. I heard a commotion. I gazed past several armored pegasi, and I saw a raving lunatic wearing a stone-gray hoodie, struggling in the forelimbs of several guards.
"No, please!" Lyra shrieked. "You have to listen! I beg of you! If you send me away, I may never get another chance!"
"That's as far as you go, ma'am!" a guard grunted.
"Right this way! Nopony intrudes upon the Princess!" another added.
"Don't! Please!" Lyra sobbed and bucked and struggled. "She has to hear this! Only she can help lift this curse from me!"
They were halfway to the door, dragging her in their armored grasp, when a majestic voice danced across the room.
"Wait." A hoof was raised, adorned in a golden slipper. Princess Celestia trotted forward from the banquet table and stood past her gawking guests. "Don't take her away. Let her speak..."
"But your majesty--"
"I care for all of my royal subjects," the Alicorn of the Sun said. "If it is within my power to rid her of her distress, then such is my divine duty."
The guards exchanged glances. They swiftly obeyed. Lyra slumped forward as soon as she was free of their grip. She crawled like an infant towards Celestia, sobbing with joy. "Oh bless you. Bless you, your Majesty. You have no idea what I've been through..."
"Shhh..." Celestia reached forward. I watched as her wings enfolded around the petite unicorn in a motherly gesture. The Princess' voice came out of her like a lullaby. "Be calm. It's okay. Catch your breath, my little pony, and tell me what troubles you."
Lyra sniffled and gazed up at her. Tears streamed down her face as she stammered, "It's not enough that I tell you. I must show you. I must let you hear the music, or else it may be too late. Even you could forget me before this conversation is over..."
"But... But I don't understand," Celestia said. "How could I possibly forget--?"
"Please, your Majesty, I beg of you." Lyra stood up and levitated a musical instrument in her grasp. "Just listen. It's three short elegies, but hopefully they'll be enough to help you remember, and maybe then you can help me."
Several of the hotel guests gazed at each other, murmuring worriedly about the crazed unicorn in their midst. The guards stood in a cautious circle, ready to pounce on the stranger at a moment's notice.
Eventually, Celestia merely bowed her head and said, "Very well. If you insist. Play your music, young one, if you think it will help."
"Oh thank you. I promise, everything will make sense to you in the end!" Lyra stood up straight and started plucking the strings.
I leaned forward, breathless, gazing at the scene beyond the glass walls of the cellar. But, instead of music, I heard the rustling of chains.
"Huh?"
Just then, a rusted lash of metal came up from behind and wrapped around me.
"What?!"
I was being yanked backwards, and yet I was standing perfectly in place. I gazed in horror as the scene before me lurched, froze, and then spun backwards. Celestia hugged Lyra again, then Lyra crawled in reverse, and then the guards were grasping her like they did before.
"No..."
Lyra was bursting backwards out of the lobby, and then the entire sight of the hotel zoomed away.
"No!" I gnashed my teeth and fought against the chains like a shadow of my past self had struggled with the guards. "No--Blast it! I was so close! I was about to perform the song! I was about to--" I growled and yanked and tugged at the chains. "What in heaven's name is happening to me?!"
The images around the cellar blurred, flickering bright and black with the shutter-frame dance of countless days. Finally, everything streaked to a hazy stop as I was dangled by the chains above Lyra in the middle of Ponyville. It was night. The Mare in the Moon vanished, and she reappeared before Lyra--leering--in midnight armor.
"Nightmare Moon..." I whimpered in place of the collapsed, shivering unicorn. "...the curse begins--"
Nightmare Moon's eyes flickered from underneath her helm. Just as she breathed, the chains yanked again. I was flung to the opposite side of the cellar as time sped in the opposite direction, flinging me forward. I shrieked as the hotel blurred by, along with Celestia and a terribly bright explosion.
"No! Take me back! Take me back! Where are you--?!"
The sights of Ponyville over the past year streaked by like comets, slowing down one sunset after another until I saw a lonesome Lyra trotting down into a familiar cellar and placing a music sheet onto the stand beneath her musical instrument. I instantly recognized the name of the elegy.
"'The Threnody of Night'," I murmured, shivering under the chains. I then realized where--or more appropriately when I was. "Oh dear goddess..."
Lyra finished the song. She fell back into the waters. Lightning and thunder splashed around her, and soon I too was soaked. A world that was colder than cold chilled me to the bone as Lyra and myself--the both of us, past and present--were flung upon the rusted iron platforms twirling in the unsung nether. I rolled over, wincing as the chains wrapped around me. I no longer felt the glass floor of the cellar. The metal felt real and frigid to my touch. When I opened my eyes, past Lyra was gone, for I had taken her place. I was surrounded by moaning, shackled ponies. They all bowed in unison as a great shadow loomed above us.
I gazed up through the sundered world between firmaments, and I saw her. Or, rather, I saw where she lived, where she sat and served as steward over the unliving. A gigantic sphere of metal bathed in ancient runes hovered high above the platforms. Its many layers of porous iron spun around each other as it spat lightning and fueled the ancient machines that fed off the wailing souls bound to it. Suddenly, the unsung world was no longer cold, for a rising heat was billowing within me, an anger that could incinerate the strongest barriers of time.
"You!" I hissed. I rose up and fought against the lengths of chains surrounding me, surrounding my past self, surrounding my future self. "Curse you! I was this close! I almost knew the truth, but you just couldn't have that, could you?!" I snarled, wincing as the chains snaked up my body and quadrupled around my neck. "Hnkkkt..." I spat as I glared up at her sphere and roared against the thunder. "What is worth protecting so much that you must suck beauty from life?! What did the Cosmic Matriarch ever do to you?! Was it worth choking so many ponies of freedom, including your beloved?! Did you ever truly love him?! Speak to me!"
The globes within globes hovered at a distance above. A hum resonated through the chaos, and the shackled ponies all around me moaned a woeful chorus in response.
"No more singing!" I shouted. "Speak to me! Speak to me now--"
A bolt of lightning shot from the sphere. I heard my past self shrieking, and the voice caught up to my own throat. I gazed with twitching eyes as the lightning shot again and again, forking towards me in a deadly sweep. The frigid air smelled of smoke and death. The wail of the unsung ponies grew louder, lamenting the newest member to their herd. I could barely breathe from the chains holding me in the path of the the oncoming horror. She was about to add me to her fold, and I would forever remain the ghost that had claimed me for over a year. I thought of Twilight. I thought of my parents. I thought of Al...
Just then, one of the shackled ponies shot straight up. To my shock, it galloped straight towards me and produced a bright burst of light. I didn't even get a chance to see its face, for I was too overwhelmed by the chains breaking all around. Past Lyra slumped to the floor beneath me, and the pony instantly grabbed her hoof. I trailed after her like a comet's tail as the three of us flew out from the path of lightning. Together, we swam past shrieking ponies, outrunning the spinning globes and her furious anger. I stammered incoherently. When my words formed, they joined with my past self:
"Who... Who are you?!" Lyra squeaked and I gasped. "What is this place?! Please, I'm so scared--"
The pony said nothing. There were no chains anchoring it to the platforms, instead it wore a large cloak soaked with the tears of the firmaments. The pony was unsung, and yet it wasn't. As it reached the edge of the platform and gripped Lyra with two hooves, I glanced under its billowing cloak and saw a series of onyx strings attached to an unmistakable instrument of black metal.
"The Nightbringer?" I said, for my past self couldn't. "Blessed Celestia, are you--?"
He tossed Lyra into the madness. As he did so, he opened his mouth and produced a song. Lyra fell through, as did I. The frost and lightning and madness of the unsung realm melted away. She fell into a forest under the stars of night. As she landed, I was being flung forward, free of chains, free of my past self, free of everything but screams. The walls around me flickered as I crawled through the madness of time, desperate to get away from it all, my brain bleeding through my horn as I whimpered one name over and over again.
"Alabaster... Alabaster, why didn't you tell me...?"
The glass shattered. Walls of dirt and earth were surging past me. I was clawing myself upwards somewhere on all hooves. I heard nothing but sobs and crickets as the constellations became clear up above.
"Alabaster... Alabaster, please..."
I felt a warm tongue licking my face.
My eyes flew open with a gasp.
Al's amber eyes stared at me. The cat leaned forward and nuzzled my face before licking me again. I was outside the entrance to my cellar. It was night on the edge of the woods. My cabin was sitting quietly a few feet away, and I had left the door cracked open.
I was sweating, panting, soaked in the floodwaters of the firmaments. Had she actually dragged me back? Or had Comethoof? I turned and looked down the steps leading into the cellar. I could only see the gentle sway of lanternlight. All of the parasprites were gone. After all, they were never here to begin with.
"Alabaster, did you save me?" I gulped and shuddered. "Twice?" I heard a meow. I looked over at the cat, sniffled and scooped him up in my arms. "Third's the charm..." I said in a wavering voice.
Al meowed again and purred lightly in my embrace.
I choked on a sob and nuzzled him close. His bright orange fur caught my tears. "I don't care that you'll only f-forget me. I don't c-care that all I am to you is magically appearing food. I want you to know that I love you." I sniffed and scratched his ears lovingly. "I love you so much, and I want you to know that. Right here. Right now..."
If Al wanted to protest, he didn't show it. He was perfectly warm, happy, and content in this sobbing unicorn's limbs. It was exactly what I needed at that moment in time. And that's hardly a curse.
I couldn't sleep. I can never sleep after these highly dangerous instrumentals.
I sat in the middle of the bed with Al by my side. Petting him, I gazed quietly out the window as dawn rose with its gentle, warm hues. A quiet breath swam through me. My eyes rose along with the hovering mists beyond the window.
"He must have known that he couldn't find a solution on his own," I murmured. "Even amidst his mounting madness, Alabaster must have finally grasped his situation. With Celestia and Luna both unreachable, even his knowledge of the Nocturne wasn't enough to break the curse. He was forever two elegies shy of the key to freedom, and his only alternatives were to die..." I gulped. "Or become unsung."
Al stirred beside me, turning over and inviting a belly rub.
I smiled and humored him. "And so," I continued, "He chose what only a mad pony would do. Comethoof neither died nor became unsung. He went to her realm in secret. Somehow, he went there and stayed there, and he's remained hidden among her forgotten subjects for a thousand years. But to what end?"
I gazed over at his journal lying on a table. It sat next to my lyre and countless sheets written with the elegies of the Nocturne.
"But of course..." I murmured. "...Princess Luna would return. On the longest day of the thousandth year moon, the stars would aid in her escape from the Moon. She would return to earth, and she would carry with her the essence of the unsung that gave birth to Nightmare Moon in the first place." After another cold breath, I uttered, "And then that would give birth to a cursed pony like me. If Comethoof couldn't unravel all the elegies, it's possible that other cursed ponies might."
The light outside grew brighter. Still, the world didn't feel any warmer as I watched the glow intensify beyond the window.
"If only he had all of his faculties during Shadow's Advent," I said in a low voice. "If only Alabaster wasn't so fixated on Penumbra, in spite of her death, then maybe he would have had the wherewithal to figure out the last two elegies and save himself. Then he wouldn't have to rely on a pony like me so many centuries later to finish the same puzzle. But, still, if it wasn't for him..."
I stopped petting Al. I gazed down at the furry little thing. I felt my heart beating heavily.
"If I don't do what is required of me with the utmost attention and dedication..." I muttered. "..If I don't put all of my energy into freeing this curse, what will happen to me? Will I end up as lost as him? She had her beloved. Alabaster had Penumbra. What do I have?" I gulped. "What could I have?"
Al purred, producing the slightest of trilling noises as he realized he wasn't being petted.
I felt a pit forming in the back of my throat. "This journey of mine is only going to become more and more perilous." My voice cracked slightly. "What kind of a living is that for anything, much less a gh-ghost?"
I knocked on the wooden door to the cottage.
Fluttershy's voice squeaked from the other side. "Y-yes? Who is it?"
"Are you Fluttershy? The local animal caretaker?"
"Erm... Yes. I do believe that's what the locals have decided..."
"I was wondering if you could take care of something that I've found..."
There was a slight pause. Eventually, the pegasus fumbled over the lock. The door opened and she peered through.
I stood before her. Something was shifting about inside my saddlebag. Before Fluttershy's vision, an adorable cat poked its head out and meowed into the noonday haze.
"He's absolutely adorable," Fluttershy said, kneeling beside the wandering cat in the center of her foyer. "And you've been taking care of him for how long?"
"For most of last week," I said, standing at a cold distance along the edge of the room. "But, before then, I'd been feeding him on and off for two or three months. I saw him wandering around the woods on the edge of town and... and my heart j-just went out to him, y'know?"
"I can see why." Fluttershy smiled and leaned down to nuzzle the feline. Al returned the attention in a way he had done so often with a mint-coated ghost, whether or not he realized it. "He's remarkably affectionate! I can tell he's been a house cat before. Most strays aren't this comfortable with ponies. But, of course..." She giggled slightly. "Perhaps we have you to thank for that."
I shrugged. "I tried the best I could. A very helpful pony gave me some much-needed advice. I figured out how to re-train him to use the litter box. I found out the best stuff to feed him. I even got him some fresh shots."
"And after all this..." Fluttershy gazed up at me. "...you sure you don't want to take care of him?"
"It's not a matter of what I want..." I heard myself saying, like a shade of my past self beyond the cellar walls. "I... I'm really entangled with a lot of... erm... complicated b-business at the moment and..." I coughed briefly, shuddering from a wave of cold. "It's... It's just not the right time to have a pet... or anything else f-for that matter. I... uh..." I gazed off into the corner of the cottage and bit my lip before saying, "I think he deserves a safe, loving h-home, is all."
"Well, I will most certainly find him one," Fluttershy said. "You can count on me."
"Yes..." I said with a smile, forcing a dry chuckle. "Your friends have told me that you have a way with animals and--"
"I believe that a bond between a pony and an animal is the fundamental nature of how all things relate with one another," Fluttershy said. "It's something that can't be put in words..."
"...but it comes with feeling," I murmured. "It's imbued with us all since the dawn of Creation."
She stood up and gazed at me with a surprised expression. "Why, yes. That's a very poetic way to put it."
I nodded slowly.
"Does he have a name?"
"Huh?"
She giggled and pointed at the orange thing. "The cat you found. Did you bother to call him anything?"
I shrugged. "What's in a name? He was... just an animal in need that I found. Someone who was lost, and needed to g-get home somewhere." I swallowed. "He... he sleeps around a lot, and protests a bit when you nuzzle him too closely. And... and he loves having h-his ears scratched..." My voice gave out and I couldn't stop a tear from running down my cheek.
"Miss Heartstrings?" Fluttershy looked at me. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah. Uhm..." I sniffed and wiped my cheek clean, trying to catch an even breath. "It's just that... that..." I looked at her, composed myself, and breathed, "Do you ever wonder if we forget things because... there are things in the past that are so sad, that it'd be better if they didn't exist at all? That life would be nobler, stronger, and more promising if we simply... marched past it and pretended that history was different?"
Fluttershy merely blinked at me. Her wings twitched, and soon all she could say was, "I don't know. But I must say, you're quite the philosopher, aren't you?"
"Hah... heheh, yeah well..." I chuckled, gazing past Al as my eyes dried up. "It's easier than feeling," I blurted.
Fluttershy trotted over and placed a gentle hoof on my shoulder. "Don't you worry, Miss Heartstrings. I will look after him as if he was one of my foals. He'll have a good home. I promise you. So don't you worry."
I wanted to reply to that. I wanted to say it to Al, but I realized I was once again in the realm of keeping my thoughts to myself. If I was to speak aloud, maybe the truth would have been a lot easier to release, something that would make me feel mad, but slightly more at ease.
And the truth was that I was starting to forget what it meant to feel worried.
That very afternoon, I sat in my cabin, filing together the written elegies I had accumulated of the Nocturne. To write that it felt empty in my home would have been an understatement. However, the absence of a companion suddenly resembled the absence of parasprites. It may have been a lonelier world, but it was a truer one, and I was once again a cursed pony on a mission older than recorded time.
I worked in absolute silence. It's strange to think that I had always been so quiet in my studies. I felt that I could at least afford a breath of fresh air. I needed to scour through Comethoof's journal and see if there was any reference to his entry into the realm of the unsung. If I had some sunshine, at least, then perhaps I could concentrate better on his glowing blue text.
So, depositing his journal into my saddlebag along with my lyre, I stood up, swiveled about, and approached the front of my cabin. As soon as I opened the door, I jumped. Something orange was darting in past me.
I turned around, blinking.
The cat made a bee-line for the bed, hopped onto the covers, and made himself at home. He sat there, licking himself, purring as if there was no tomorrow--or yesterday for that matter.
I blinked. I turned and looked out the door. After a breath, I slowly trotted over to the bed. I put my saddlebag down and sat next to him, gazing silently.
The daylight wafted through the doorway, illuminating the shiny amber of his eyes. He switched from licking one leg to polishing the other. He bit at his claws slightly, then settled even deeper into the covers.
My cabin was on the opposite side of Ponyville from Fluttershy's cabin. It was a distance of over a mile, easily, with several countless buildings, streams, and wooden thickets in the way. And in less than four hours...
I reached a hoof over experimentally.
Al lifted his whiskers, sniffed my forelimb only once, and immediately nuzzled me as he always had. A tiny meow came from his mouth, and he rolled over in bed.
I smiled, a very painful thing. I felt the tears in my eyes and no longer tried to hide them. Leaning over, I scratched his ears and nuzzled him dearly. He didn't move from that spot even once.
"Maybe animals aren't affected by the curse," I murmured out loud. "Maybe felines have an extra sense that her song cannot cover. Maybe your kind just isn't considered dangerous enough to breach the secret of the unsung realm."
That evening, the two of us sat with Comethoof's journal in the center of the bed. A warm fire was burning in the fireplace. Everything was toasty. I didn't even need to wear my hoodie, a very rare things. Al's soft fur was ticklish and comforting to the touch as he sat next to my flank.
"Whatever the case," I said with a smile directed his way. "This mad, rambling philosopher is glad to have you around to help me study." I nuzzled him again and stifled a flighty giggle. "Maybe you'd like me to sing lullabies like Twilight does to Spike?"
Al meowed sharply.
"Heh. Didn't think so," I said. I reveled in his company. With a warm breath, I poured once more through the blue text. "I may not know exactly what the parasprites hid that one day with Princess Celestia in the hotel, but at least I now know Comethoof's out there, and he has the Nightbringer. That's good, right? I mean... what is that old mare's expression about a gift horse?"
In a cursed life, I'd be a fool to turn away any blessings, no matter how small.
Background Pony
XIII - "Easier Than Feeling"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Warden, theworstwriter, Props, RazgrizS57, TheBrianJ, and Demetrius
Cover pic by Spotlight
Be sure to check out the talented Belgerum's personal rendition of the Nocturne of the Firmaments
(Belgerum's Youtube Page)
Also check out needthistool's audio read of Background Pony Chapter 1: Melodious
(Needthistool's Deviantart Page and Youtube Page) |
Background Pony | XIV - The Curse of the Ninth | Dear journal,
Is this my journey and my journey alone? When I defeat this curse, will I be the only pony to have achieved salvation? Has it only been a practical lie to have viewed this entire debacle as a lonely exercise all along?
I realize now, more than ever, that the sum of my experiences, the total encompassing of my hopes and dreams, are not only defined by suffering and learning, but by the souls before me, by ponies who may not have had it within themselves to become free from her insatiable dominance. Nevertheless, these souls have lent me the keys to freedom that they otherwise could have used for themselves.
Perhaps that is the biggest lesson I have learned so far; I am not half the heroine as I am the damsel to be rescued from this crazy predicament. Up until now, I assumed that all of the ponies I had to thank for guiding me along this journey were completely unreachable. However--as the fickle winds of fate have so taught me--I can reach further than ever before. I can reach so far that not even she has a chance of stopping me.
And now, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps she's not there only to stop me; she's there to help me...
An eerie silence hovered above the small meeting room, with the four ponies frozen at their respective seats around the table, blinking in contemplation at the question that had been asked. As the candlelight of the ceiling lamp flickered above, they exchanged cold glances, as if challenging each other to speak. Finally, with a defeated sigh, one of them leaned forward.
"Well, 'tis a good question," Octavia said. She adjusted her bowtie and rested her smokey gray forelimbs atop the oak table. "Does music indeed hold a divine power? I have always assumed so, though I must declare such an assumption to be purely subjective. I would not know about the experience of each and every pony in this room, but for my part, music has been a means by which I have shared the consciousness of all who would give audience to me. I find music to be a bridge for souls, as t'were."
"I agree with you, Miss Octavia," said Melodia Braids. The young pegasus sat at the other end of the table, running a nervous hoof through the emerald locks of her mane. She bit her lip and fidgeted before speaking, "Uhm... I shudder to think what kind of a pony I would be if I never even went to music school in the first place. It's--like--I've been able to take apart my spirit and put it back together delicately while sharing it with everypony. I don't think there's a finer form of expression."
"I'm rather particular to dancin' myself," said a stallion opposite to her.
Melodia squinted across the table at him. "So music is your second favorite gift, Mr. Bard?"
"Heck, no!" Mr. Bard spat. "I'm just sayin' that I don't subscribe too much to that there 'bridge for souls' mumbo jumbo. Ya fancy the notion of gettin' to know other ponies? Find yer place in a square dance and go to town!" The bearded earth pony had his chair leaning against the wall of the room. In it, he slouched and balanced a guitar across two folded lower limbs while strumming a lazy tune with his hooves. "If y'all ask me, music's job is to help us get more friendly with nature. There's a heapin' lot of wilderness out there, and it's a cryin' shame to keep all our singin' locked up in record stores and sound booths when the Cosmic Momma herself gave us all the stages we've ever needed!"
Octavia nodded. "Well, you're onto something, Jumpin' Ray Bard--"
"Land's sakes, pretty filly!" Mr. Bard kicked himself upright and fiddled with the brim of his cowboy hat. "Just call me 'Mr. Bard' like Missy Green-Hair over there! Only former members of my band get permission to call me 'J.R. Bard' proper!"
"My deepest apologies, Mr. Bard, sir," Octavia said with a slight smile. "I only meant to point out the fact that you mentioned the Cosmic Matriarch, albeit in your own colorful manner."
"Yup?" He leaned back again. "What about 'er?"
"Well, legend has it that she created the world with a song, yes?" Octavia's eyes darted across the faces of the other three. "And then--presumably--that very same song was broken down and disseminated throughout the world, so that it became the various separate spheres that make up reality today. So, in a manner of speaking, the nature that you're so avidly fond of, Mr. Bard, 'tis but an extension of the omnipresent song of the Cosmic Matriarch. Would you agree, then, that under such an assumption, we are all participants of one melodious chorus?"
"I'm sorry, darlin', but you lost me at 'deepest apologies.'"
While Octavia dragged a hoof across her face in annoyance, Melodia Braids leaned forward with a smile. "Well, I think the power of music--divine or not--can be interpreted in many ways. Ms. Octavia sees it as a way of connecting to others. Jumpin' Ray--er--Mr. Bard sees it as a way of connecting with nature." She blushed as her wings twitched demurely. "I... uhm... see it as a way of getting in touch with myself. I imagine Ms. Scratch must see it as a way of experimenting with expression! Isn't that right, Vinyl?"
The room fell utterly silent.
"Uhm..." Melodia fidgeted and glanced aside. "Ms. Scratch?"
A white unicorn with a blue mane was collapsed across her end of the table, snoring limply into her own drool.
"Hey!" Mr. Bard grunted. "Sunshine! Up and at 'em!" He swung a lower hoof out and kicked the chair underneath her.
"Snkkt--Gaah!" Vinyl Scratch shot up, a pair of shades hanging crookedly off her magenta eyes. "I took care of it! I flushed the stuff! It's all gone!" She froze in place, blinking. "Huh...?" Vinyl stared dazedly across the room. "Oh. This thing. I remember this thing."
"I believe Ms. Braids was asking you what purpose music had in your life," Octavia remarked. "Divine or otherwise."
"Jee, I dunno." Vinyl shrugged. "Stuff." She yawned and leaned forward across the table. "I don't see what the big deal is. I just slap records around until something sexy comes out of the speakers." She smirked. "Heh. It's a lot like this one weekend I had in a resort after an Orlandoats gig. Only instead of records, there were these two tight-flanked brothers from Stalliongrad and I was slapping around their--"
Melodia cleared her throat, hiding her beet-red face behind a hoof. "I believe we should stay on topic."
"I second the lady's motion," Mr. Bard grunted, casting the unicorn a wary glance. "I don't see what buckin' the proverbial apple tree in an overpriced hotel room has to do with what we're gabbin' about."
"Pffft. Fine, buzzkills." Vinyl Scratch leaned back, rested her forelimbs behind her head, and yawned towards the ceiling. "Just what the hay are we talking about anyways?"
"Well..." Melodia opened her mouth, paused, and bit her lip. "You know, that is a very good question."
"Reckon I can't possibly be sittin' in the same room as three mares with goldfish memories," Mr. Bard drawled. "We're here to talk about magic in music, ain't we?"
"Well, sure. But something's gnawing at me." Melodia gazed across the table with nervous eyes. "I can't explain why, but the topic of the power of music is very important to me. In a way, I feel as though it's always been something dear to my heart. I guess I just never thought much about it until now."
"Well, if I may say so, it has always been immeasurably relevant to my career," Octavia declared. "Both inside the concert hall and outside, music has erected for me more than just a legacy of concert performances."
"Hahah!" Vinyl's teeth showed through a bleary smile. "She said 'erected.'"
Octavia briefly frowned at her, then continued. "As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the mystical qualities of music, I do not think I would have overcome numerous odds in my life in order to be here, speaking to you presently."
"I reckon there's a mighty big bush yer beatin' around," Mr. Bard said. "Perhaps it might suit ya to hop over it, little lady."
Octavia slowly nodded, then leaned forward to address the entire table. "Perchance you fine ponies have heard of something called 'The Curse of the Ninth?'"
"Ooooh..." Melodia's ears twitched. "Why, yes! I've heard of that!"
"The Curse of the What-now?" Mr. Bard made a face.
"Sounds like a wicked case of Maretezuma's Revenge," Vinyl slurred. Under the glare of three sets of eyes, she shrugged wildly. "Oh, what?! Like you rich, string-pluckin' yahoos have never sampled absinthe down in Mexicolt!"
"What I'm referring to, Ms. Scratch, is a legend among the musical elite of Canterlot," Octavia explained. "'Tis a childish case of superstition, granted, but its age and its recognition throughout the centuries have given the notion something akin to noble antiquity. It is nothing other than the belief that a successful musician can only perform nine epic movements during one's career--nay, one's life. To go any further, to attempt a tenth movement is to tempt fate, and perhaps even invite death or a far more alarming fate."
"Hmmm... It's startin' to sound familiar," Mr. Bard remarked as he paused in strumming his guitar. "Is this anythang like that so-called 'Twenty-Seven Club?'"
"Oh! Oh! Dude!" Vinyl suddenly pounded the table and pointed at him. "That's, like, the crap that took out Jimmy Haydrix and Colt Kurbain!"
"I wouldn't know about that," Melodia said pensively. "But I-I am familiar with the Curse of the Ninth. Historically, it consumed the likes of Doctor Hoofstone, Ponyderecki, and Green Sound. They were all young, up-and-coming composers. They wrote many symphonies, but when they each finished their ninth, fate somehow tragically kept them from performing any further, either through death, retirement or both. The most famous case, of course is... erm... Neightoven."
"Oh! Right! Neightoven! Heh..." Mr. Bard nodded with a smirk. "I reckon that's why his Ninth Symphony is so darn famous. It's on account of it bein' the last one he ever did."
"Yeah, I once remixed his crud at a club in Seaddle," Vinyl said with a wicked grin. "It hit this really awesome part with kaizo reverb and--pffftch--the bass speakers just about killed themselves. There was glass everywhere, dude. You should have seen it. The dance floor was full of flanksters slipping on puddles cuz they were wetting themselves so friggin' much."
Octavia frowned across the table. "Neightoven's Ninth Symphony is more than just a public sample of music that can be put to trivial purposes through rampant... deejaying." She cleared her throat and spoke with greater eloquence, "It is a testament to the fragile nature of a pony's musical career, and how it can come to a bitter end at any given moment."
"But I thought ya weren't a writer like Miss Braids here!" Mr. Bard pointed across the table. "I figured you just played the music of other ponies before the audiences in Canterlot and made it sound all angelic-like."
"Yes, that is true," Octavia replied with a nod. "For all of my pomp and fame, I am but a humble cellist who bowed her way to the top. Still, I have immeasurable respect for the classics. It goes beyond the simple fact that I made performing them the very cornerstone of my career. In truth, I started out relatively naïve and ignorant of works of musical antiquity. When I was young, I was still attempting to find my spotlight on the grand stage. After graduating from the Canterlot Music Academy, I sought a means to express my talents. This brought me to a relatively unassuming establishment in the less-than-affluent western district of Trottingham, where I discovered for myself the true nature of the Curse of the Ninth."
"Ughhh..." Vinyl raised her shades and rubbed a hoof over her clenched eyelids. "Is this going where I think it's going?"
"Would it kill ya to be polite for a spell?" Mr. Bard grumbled.
"Please, we're all ears," Melodia said with a smile as she leaned forward and gazed at Octavia. "What happened to you in Trottingham?"
"You must understand," Octavia said. "My career had barely just begun. I was a veritable no-name, a mere background pony, as t'were. My fundamental grasp of music was based on the rigid material impressed upon me me through scholastic knowledge and basic teaching programs. I hadn't yet gone out into the world to feel the music scene on my own, to understand what it meant to form a bridge with the souls of one's audience. Being an artist was something mysterious and daunting at the time, but that was not without its sense of adventure...
The place in Trottingham where I was to perform was called the Anvil Rust Theatre. Calling it a "theatre," though, was more than a grandiose stretch. It was more akin to a halfway house for up-and-coming musicians to find their calling, and those who attended the place paid very little to get a seat. Upon trotting into the establishment, I felt my expectations crumbling into dust. The interior appeared barely capable of seating more than a hundred ponies. Looking back, I somewhat admire the intimacy and the microcosmic atmosphere that the hall produced. At the time, however, I was younger and far more ambitious. I had hopes and aspirations of performing before hundreds upon hundreds--if not thousands--of eager listeners at once. And though such wishes would be fulfilled eventually, I was too blind and full of ennui to see that at the time.
Nevertheless, I pressed onward, even when I was ushered to my new living quarters: a tiny flat built into the fourth level of the building within which the Anvil Rust Theatre was housed. I must admit, I was part of a unique program at the time. I was still subsisting off of the stipend that had carried me through the Canterlot Music Academy, and there in Trottingham I was to live and breathe off the very stage itself, performing on a regular basis: every two nights, and sometimes every single evening. I felt blessed, but such enthusiasm only lasted into the first week.
It is quite easy to be fooled by the exquisite and genteel exteriors of the Trottingham populace. Quite truthfully, they are a ruthless and scathingly critical lot beneath an eloquent façade, and this was no more evident than in the alleyways and slums of the smoggy city's western district, which was to be my humble home for the next two years.
On my first night of performing Marezart before the Anvil Rust audience, I was immediately booed off stage. I refused to move a single hoof at first, because I had barely gone beyond the first few bars of the instrumental, and I imagined that the crowd was being cruel simply for the sake of disparaging my novice performance. Soon, however, I could no longer remain on stage, for I was too overcome with tears to remain focused on my instrumentation.
Those nights in Trottingham taught me volumes about the true nature of equine cruelty. As it so happened, regardless of my talent or lack thereof, I simply could not keep the audience's attention. I realized that it was a matter of popularity, for every nightly session was shared by another mare of similar talents who had the benefit of a prestigious history of accomplishments. The plebeian listeners of Trottingham were simply too impatient to sit through the opening act, which was my task to bear. They only wanted to hear those with whom they were closely familiar. They had already formed a bridge with the soul of their favored performer, you see, and I was not a part of that equation.
To say the least, I was terribly discouraged from continuing with my tenure there. And yet, as the months went on, I endured. The ponies did--as a matter of fact--cease treating me like utter rubbish. However, I still could not charm or woo them with my talents in the manner in which I so greatly desired. It was as though there was an invisible wall that kept our spirits from commingling across the waves of melody I produced every night.
I then began to question my talents and ambitions. Was I truly performing as well as I could have been? Or perhaps I was expecting too much when I went on stage every night? Were my youth and foalish dreams making me work too hard for such little reward? Was I ever destined to be as great as I felt in my heart I could be?
And then, one month amidst the bleary cold of the Trottingham winter, I found out that the popular mare whose act constantly outshone mine was retiring. A selfish part of me was happy to see my competition depart from the premises, and yet I was dismayed to spot a look of lethargy and sorrow gracing her expression. On her last day, I stumbled upon her as she was packing her things in her apartment room above the theatre. I momentarily discarded my envious feelings so that I could speak with her in dearest sincerity.
She told me that I had a dismal, cloudy future ahead. She insisted that if I had any hope for my own music career, that I was to depart from the premises of the Anvil Rust Theatre and go as far away as I possibly could. When I asked her why, she broke into tears and lamented openly, telling me that she had performed at that very establishment for a miserable twenty years, and that her desperation to impress the crowd was what kept her so unsuccessful in the music scene for so long.
I asked if there was a reason why she didn't retire or seek an audience elsewhere long before that moment. She told me that something had long compelled her to stay. She implied that there was a mystical spirit, an accursed atmosphere of tragedy that clung to that very site, that made the audience so bitter and her own self so eager to experience their apathy on a regular basis.
It occurred to me that she was not speaking complete nonsense, for I had felt such accursed sensations myself. Every evening, I could barely sleep. I would wake up fitfully in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, as if a terrible heat had threatened to burn me under my covers. On occasion, I felt like I could smell a whiff of acrid smoke bleeding through the walls of the tiny apartment surrounding me.
I do not know where I summoned the courage to do it, but I asked her if she experienced the same throes of mystical insomnia. To such an inquisition, the mare paled, and she spat out something terse and cryptic: a single date. Then, in a trancelike fashion, she stuffed all of her remaining things into her luggage and left in a furious gallop. I never saw or heard from that musician again.
But it was obvious that she was onto something, though the frightened soul trapped behind her twitching eyes refused to put the information into proper words. So, on the first occasion I could, I made a trip to the local library. I scoured the Trottingham records for events that transpired on the date that the mare had stammered unto me. It was then that I made a ghastly discovery.
It so happened that a horrible catastrophe had once transpired at the Anvil Rust Theatre. As a few of you may know, the city of Trottingham is very old. There are streets there that have been around since the dark days of Shadow's Advent. Seven hundred years ago, not long after the very opening of the theatre and its surrounding establishments, the world-renown composer Green Sound was about to give her last performance. She was rather young for such sudden retirement, but the mare had just foaled and she wished to live among her own family for the next decade or two.
So, she decided to perform her latest and final composition at the newly opened Anvil Rust Theatre. As you may already be suspecting, there's a great deal of irony to be had here. This was to be Green Sound's Tenth Symphony. The previous nine had made her famous all across Equestria, and she had single-hoofedly introduced new and far more optimistic motifs into a music scene that had been dominated by melancholic ballads and mournful elegies for the better part of three centuries.
This was to be a very subtle, intimate, and unassumingly small performance. The Anvil Rust Theatre, after all, could only house so few ponies. Despite the sincere gesture on Green Sound's part, this meant that only a small, elite group of Trottingham residents could afford to be seated for her final bow. Needless to say, there were many critics within the music scene who were understandably enraged by this turn of events. Sadly, it would seem that one or two of them took their zealous hatred to a degree of... sociopathic quality.
On the night that Green Sound went on stage to perform her final and Tenth composition, an arsonist had set fire to the foundation of the building. A terrible inferno consumed the Anvil Rust Theatre, and over one hundred and twenty ponies were caught in the terrible conflagration. Among the dead was Green Sound, her horribly charred remains still clutching her violin. She left behind a widower and a lonesome pair of motherless twins. The ponies of Trottingham gave her an epic funeral, and there was even a city holiday in her honor that lasted for several centuries.
In the days that I performed at the theatre, speaking the name of Green Sound had become something of a taboo, a subject that denoted fear and tragedy and superstition. After my studies in the local library, I asked several of my fellow musicians and tenants about her legacy in the Anvil Rust Theatre. Most of my questions were met with silence, dismissal, and even anger. But the one common thread that possessed all ponies I asked about Green Sound was a deep-seated fear. It filled them with a nervousness that gave their trotting hooves a shivering quality, as if the walls of the building would catch fire yet again and collapse on them at any moment.
It was around that time I realized I too was suffering from a deep-seated paranoia. There was a reason for why I constantly woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. I began to suspect that the ethereal scent of smoke meant more than what my base senses could tell me. Perhaps the mare who had left before me knew a great deal more than she was willing to divulge. Whatever the case, I felt that I was learning more and more with each passing evening. There was a reason for why the audience of the Anvil Rust Theatre subjected me and other musicians to such hatred and apathy. The very building upon which we stood had been drenched with a spirit of tragedy and suffering. Suddenly, my young mind contemplated a reason for the disconnect between me and the Trottingham ponies I was attempting to woo with my music.
Alas, can you imagine such brazen arrogance on my part? If I was a sensible young pony, I would have blamed the disinterest of my audience on my feeble performance, or my loose grip on the fine rhythm of the classics. However, I was not willing to settle for a reality in which my lackluster career was defined exclusively by my blemished locale. I knew in my heart and mind that I was destined for great things, and as an artist who saw an imperfection standing in her way, I made it my goal to eliminate it so that my "voice" could be heard clearly.
I spent an entire day exploring the deepest archives in the Trottingham Library. For a while, I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for. How does one scrounge a forsaken symphony from the depths of yesteryear? A pony would have far richer luck finding a single ash of purpose from the graves of those who came and went before us. However, desperate to cleanse the horrible spirit from my place of performance, and emboldened by a deep desire to bring justice to the legacy of Green Sound, I pressed on. After much restless research and struggle, I finally discovered what I was looking for. It was a single sheet, hidden in an ancient tome coated in soot and timeless embers, as if the very spirit of my musical haunt had deposited it from a burning cloud for me to find. I was too overwhelmed with the joy of victory to be frightened; I now had in my very hooves the hitherto forgotten magnum opus of Green Sound, her Tenth Symphony. If the future was to be exorcised of ill-spirit, then I had to assault the roots of such darkness in the past.
I waited for a special holiday--a night when there would be no scheduled performances in the Theatre. As much as I disliked doing so, I settled for Hearth's Warming Eve that very year. While ponies were singing carols and playing with snow in the streets of Trottingham, I had stealthily positioned myself within the very shadows of the Anvil Rust Theatre. I waited patiently for the ushers and managers to close the establishment. Once the Theatre had been completely emptied of ponies, I made my way onto the darkened stage to begin my clandestine performance.
I felt incredibly nervous all of the sudden. My limbs were shaking and I could barely hold onto the cello in my grasp. I felt as if there were hundreds of shadowed limbs reaching out to me from the empty seats, attempting to drag me down into a time-forgotten inferno that had consumed so many shrieking, sobbing ponies in that very building centuries prior. I realized that whatever spirits haunted that place, they were without peace, without resolution, without a soft and melodious denouement to carry them out of the tempestuous rhythm of the waking world.
I knew right then that only the finest musician could soothe the anguish of phantoms. And I knew that such a fine musician was me.
So, without any further hesitation, I closed my eyes and performed Green Sound's Tenth Symphony from memory. It was such a heavenly piece, that instrumental, full of rising and falling crests in gentle defiance of the established melody of its time. It was so brazenly cheerful, that a part of me openly wept for the ponies whose lives were snuffed out violently before they could have had their ears blessed with the blissful harmony of an affirmative movement written by a mare who only wanted to be the mother that her two foals innocently deserved.
Perhaps it was my quiet sobs that they listened to more, as if it was an added percussion to the symphony as a whole. Whether my voice was the solution, or the Tenth Symphony itself, I felt as though my performance had accomplished something. By the time I had finished, I felt an incredible weight being lifted from my shoulders. It was the happiest and most liberating sensation I had felt since my days in the Musical Academy. I felt a tickle in my ears, as if several hooves were applauding. When I opened my eyes, my vision was obscured but a part of me could have sworn I saw a phalanx of pale, smiling faces from the first few rows of seats. In a blink, I saw nothing, and I only smiled all the more, for they were gone.
They were gone. And what was more, I knew that they were gone. Whatever cloud of pain and hatred had infested the Anvil Rust Theatre had dissolved, and in its place was an empty sphere of promise, opportunity, and silence: the perfect vessel for a young artist such as me to express herself. I had performed the entire Tenth Symphony of Green Sound in that place for the first time, and there was no need for any spirit of anguish to linger there any longer. So I thanked the emptiness by bowing to it.
"I know it may make me sound like a mad pony," Octavia continued from where she sat at the table. "To speak of ghouls and haunted spirits and other such fantastical things. But regardless of the nature of my mystical assumptions, things changed for the Theatre--and for myself in turn. When I performed next on the evening of the New Year, I actually received applause. I swear, it was not due to my own input. My performance was as consistent as ever with my prior cello playing. It would appear as though--indeed--the audience was simply that much more receptive to my talent."
The other three ponies watched as Octavia smiled gently, her hoof trailing circles along the top of the table in a foalish manner.
"I was not alone in this," she said. "Several other young musicians were getting standing ovations when beforehand nopony in the audience would even bat an eye. Instantly, all of my fears and self-doubt flew out the proverbial window, for I had discovered the potency of my talents once more.
Word of my musical skills spread throughout Trottingham, and soon ponies were coming from all corners of Equestria to visit the Anvil Rust Theatre, which had literally become a source of culture and reinvigorating classicism overnight. Then, one week, Fancy Pants himself attended. He spread word of my performance among the elite population of Canterlot. Fatefully, that same year, when Princess Celestia visited Trottingham for the Summer Sun Celebration, she made a stop by the theatre. I performed for Her Majesty in person, and she commended me. My title officially became a household name, and I've been maintaining such esteemed notoriety to the best of my ability ever since."
"Wow..." Melodia Braids smiled, her wings fluttering at the end of Octavia's speech. "That's simply incredible. You mean playing Green Sound's final song really cured the Curse of the Ninth?"
"If you wish to gain such meaning from my tale, then I would not fault you," Octavia replied.
"Seems like a lot of superstitious hooey to me," Mr. Bard grumbled.
"Mr. Bard!" Melodia frowned his way. "I'd like to see you disprove her!"
"What use would it make?" He produced a bearded frown. "She done told us about somethang she experienced and experienced alone. Don't make a lick of sense tryin' to disprove it. Still don't mean I have to be believin' it, though."
"I kind of digged the part about the zombie ghosts," Vinyl Scratch muttered. She raised her shades and blinked her bleary eyes at the rest of the group. "Did anyone else like the zombie ghosts?"
"Mister Bard, you need not blindly accept the suspension of disbelief that makes my recollection remotely palatable," Octavia said. "I would only hope that you gain from it an acknowledgment that there is more to music than sheer performance. I quite literally had a blockade with my attempts to connect to the souls of my audience in that Theatre. For it to have dissolved overnight is more than mere coincidence; wouldn't you agree?"
"'Cuz I liked the zombie ghosts..."
"I think that when pony folks are dealin' with pony folks, then nothang is predictable," Mr. Bard said, clutching his guitar. He bounced his body repeatedly off the table with his lower hoof while murmuring, "Music shouldn't just be corralled into the industry of entertainment and stage performances. I mean--shucks--I reckon I sound mighty hypocritical, what with me bein' a bang-up country music singer and all. But there's a reason for why I haven't gone on tour in ages. I don't write music to become popular like you, Missy. I do it because I'm drawn towards it. I feel it every time I go out for a stroll in nature. I swear, it's like the land speaks to me n'stuff. The world's older than recorded time, and so is music. Them's siblings by rote, if ya know what I mean."
"Zombie ghosts are cool..."
"Shhh!" J.R. Bard frowned at Vinyl before strumming at his guitar once more. "Wait yer own turn, ya pointy-headed snowpony! Dog gone it, where was I? Oh, yes!"
He played a few notes on his instrument, as though he were dishing out a folk tune.
Instead, he orated, "I guess y'all could say that I settled for early retirement. I was fine with makin' records and writin' music with the best of them. But when mad pony fans started clamorin' over me like they was in a stampede, that's when I backed off. No sense in havin' all that mess in my beard, if ya feel me. So I said 'so long' to my agents, packed up my guitar, and set off for Goddess-knows-where. Come to think of it, it woulda helped at the time to know whereabouts I was headed. But it so happens that I saw a fancy shmancy poster at a local train department. It spoke of this place that the local folks were headin' out to colonize. They were gonna call the community 'Appleloosa.' I plum thought it was the dumbest thang I ever heard. But it was out in the desert and there was few ponies makin' the trip. So, on a whim, I said 'sign me up,' and away I went...
Little did I know that when we finally got all our wagons to that place, it was barely nothin' more than a regular hole in the ground. We was sandwiched between the high walls of a mighty steep canyon. What was more, there was a whole load of mean-spirited buffalo roamin' 'round them parts. I didn't quite take a likin' to the spirit of adventure that invigorated so many of my fellow... nnngh... Appleloosans, but I simply shrugged it off and decided to play along. After all, we had a lot of crazy work ahead of us. And if there's anythang that makes me think and get in touch with myself, it's good, hard work.
The first thang we did was lay down tracks to form the railroad comin' down from the north. Boy, was that some mighty sweatin' and heavin'. Still, t'ain't nothin' to have been frettin' about. We got the job done because we had to. The sun was hot when it wanted to be, and the wind was soothin' when it felt like it. We didn't really have any control over the way things were in the desert. We just made the best of it, like good, hard-workin' earth ponies have been doin' since the beginnin' of time. Needless to say, I was feelin' it. Whatever that "it" was, I'll leave it to y'all to guess.
For me, everythang was perfect. I was right where I was supposed to be. When the sun set, the western horizon caught ablaze with all these pretty hues of red and orange. It was like the Cosmic Momma herself was paintin' a masterpiece all across the roof of the world, cascadin' trails of crimson and pink over the tips of the mesas and mountain cliffs. The air was dry, just in the sort of way that empties yer nostrils and makes a clean path to yer lungs. You could scream a mighty ballad into them hills, and I did just that on a few occasions. I swear, I could have heard those mountains echoin' back to me. We were like lovers callin' to each other across a stone ocean of nothin'. I felt like I was gettin' in touch with a part of myself that I had long left buried in all them months of self-glorifyin' music tours and record signin'. I had become a new stallion in the town of Appleloosa, even in spite of the goddessawful name. Heh.
But the other ponies--the ones colonizin' that valley all around me? Heck, I wish I could say that they was feelin' half as tranquil-like as yers truly. Every day that we spent layin' tracks and plantin' apple seeds into them fields, my neighbors were always trottin' around with a horrible stoop to their shoulders. They seemed awfully skittish, and even when I asked what was eatin' at them, they had very little to say: only that they were hankerin' to get the job done for the day so that they could gallop back home and shut themselves off from the desert.
Could you imagine that? What a cryin' shame! Why do you move your little keister on over to the middle of the desert unless you want to be one with the land?! Bah! I said they was morons! They just looked at me funny and asked, "Do you hear that?"
And I'd say "Hear what? The wind? The gentle hush of the desert?"
Then they'd inch away from me as if I had the pony pox or somethin'. Months later when I finally got a few of 'em to open up, they all said the same dang thing. They kept hearing a sound. A "hum" was what they called it. Yes, a "hum." A bunc o'them ponies were hearin' this constant tone, as if it was comin' off the dirt walls of the canyons surroundin' us. It must have spooked them somethin' terrible, cuz a bunch of those yellow-bellied rapscallions tore off for distant civilization. They just up and left Appleloosa, even after comin' all the way to settle in a place with such a dumb name to begin with.
Naturally, I thought they was all dreamin' the stuff up--just like I feel about you and that whole nonsense about the Theatre, Miss Octavia. Ponies are creatures of mind over matter, and more often than not we simply imagine the strange hooey that performs magic tricks before our eyes. That's how music mystifies us, ya see. T'ain't no such thing as ghosts or hauntin's, far as I'm concerned. But when music moves us, we're liable to believe anythang. The only musician that matters in the grand history of time is the greatest musician of all, and she done left Equestria ages ago. But when she did, she left us all pieces of her glorious song. And the only artist with the authority to sing that 'ol ditty is nature itself.
So what if there really was a "hum" to them hills? Goddess knows I hung out on the side of town, my ears tilted towards the heavens, listenin' to the earth, the sky, and the dag blame'd cacti from sunup to sundown. I couldn't make out a darn thang. But apparently every other pony could, considerin' how bad the apple orchards were doin'.
Yup. That's right. The apple trees--the very thang we came all the way to that valley to plant--were startin' to croak on us left and right. You see, long before the local buffalo gave us grief over our plantin' in their stampedin' grounds, the desert itself was bein' real stubborn-like. We had ourselves a famine, to put it lightly, and not a single apple tree wanted to sprout. Even the grown trees we replanted were startin' to wither and die.
At first, I wasn't willin' to buy that the earth was bein' so plum mean to us. It had to have been the workers, the planters, the crazy city ponies donnin' boots and work duds, thinkin' that they had what it took to make somethin' grow out of nothin'. I'm not exactly Mr. Green Hoof myself, but I know a thang or two about irrigation, and I knew that these nincompoops I was livin' with were losin' their good sense, all on account of their terrible superstition about that infuratin' "hum."
So, I tried showin' them how to do it proper, but none of them would pay me no mind. They was all reelin', stumblin', swayin' about as if afflicted with a terrible spell of sickness. The "hum" was all that they could think about, as if they all had become the poor audience to a giant music concert that only they could hear.
Just what was goin' on in that town? Was there a true curse underhoof? Was the valley actually tryin' to get us to pack up and return to mainland Equestria?
I wasn't about to buy it. Nope, not this stallion. I came out to that place to rediscover myself and I would be a dag-blame'd fool if I got all shiverin' in my horseshoes like them nervous pony folk I had become neighbors with. I had the wilderness starin' me down on all sides, and I was ready to have myself a heart-to-heart conversation with it.
What y'all gotta understand is that I hadn't played a lick of music since I got there. I spent the time mostly silent, for I was tryin' to look deep inside myself and figure out the stallion first and the musician second. But on account of this stupid "hum" and all, I figured that my best weapon was my guitar. So I hoisted the thing over my shoulder, filled my saddlebag with oats and canteens of water, and made my way west and didn't stop for nothin' until the sun had set. Then, in the middle of the night, I climbed up a steep mesa all on my lonesome. I don't tell y'all this to convince you that I was some macho thoroughbred or nothin'. I was simply tired of dancin' around the issue of what cursed that valley, and the only way to confront nature was to get my limbs dirtied up to the elbows.
So, I reached the summit. The sun rose, and the heat that came with it was unbearable. The only thing I could do there was sit and squint across the landscape. Oh, and play some of my music, of course. Thing is, I didn't bring a single music sheet with me, and I wasn't prepared to revisit my career after takin' a leave of absence from the industry so soon. So, I simply strummed whatever came to my head, figurin' that if there was anyone or anything that could hear me, I'd have an audience pretty darn soon or else I'd never have one at all.
I gotta tell ya, it felt plum silly to be sittin' there all alone on the roof of the desert, strummin' a guitar tune to the lone winds of a desolate world. Everythang's subjective, right Miss Octavia? Shucks, perhaps all them Appleloosa folks were the only ones with a lick of sense after all. That'd make me the one sap who had lost all his marbles. Heh. I mean, after all, the colony was sufferin' illness and famine, and instead of tendin' to them dyin' apple orchards like a true hero, there I was playin' solo guitar atop a giant table of rock in the middle of nowhere.
And I was there for an awful long time too. Remember that hot sunrise I talked about? Well, the sun fell like it always did, and it rose several hours later like it always did too. What wasn't so natural was the fact that I had stayed awake for the whole dang thing. I don't know if y'all can call it insomnia, or any other sort of affliction. But I was determined to stay there, wide awake and stubborn as a mule, until I could figure out just what that sound was that was spookin' all my fellow ponies somethin' awful.
It was hardly a vacation; that's for sure. My water had run out. My oats were startin' to spoil. I was smellin' terrible from sweatin' like an unwashed pig. I was beginnin' to go mad, in a way, or else I had been mad from the very get-go. What else could possibly have made me climb up to that there stage of stone?
Eventually, my senses came to me, and I started to fear for my miserable life. I was just about to climb my tremblin' way down the summit, when I heard it. I finally, finally heard it...
Was it a hum? No, I reckon that wouldn't have been a proper name for it. Was it some spirit talkin' to me from the foundations of the earth? Heck, I ain't no philosopher. I was just a mad pony with a guitar, challengin' nature to do its worst... and boy, did nature deliver.
I started gettin' these fancy tunes in my head. It was some real purdy inspiration, the type of undammed rapids of infernal thoughts that I hadn't been struck with since the early days when I first strutted my awkward way onstage. I just couldn't believe the crazy amount of stuff fillin' my noggin'. I felt like I was an entire band full of ponies fresh out of secondary school--y'know--when everythang is just fresh and creative and right. I started thinkin' up songs that would never have come to me hadn't I made that trip to that rock to begin with.
And it started makin' a little bit of sense to me, even the senseless parts. I mean, I wasn't actually writin' anythang, even if my mind was fillin' with these brand new melodies. In truth, it was nature teachin' the stuff to me. You heard me right. The land was speakin' to me. Whatever it was, it had frightened the other Appleloosans. But me? I understood the tongue. I felt the rhythm and I could tap my hoof to the beat. I wonder sometimes if the earth is always tryin' to tell us things in the same way in which I was hearin' it then. The Creator of Equestria left when she needed to, but she didn't take all things with her, after all. We have the Princesses, we have the land, and we have our ears. Somewhere between all of that, somethin' special is born, over and over again, or else why would we ever have the need for encores, ya reckon?
So, I sat on the edge of the valley, and I translated whatever the valley had to tell me. I strummed my guitar, for it had become a funnel through which a heap o'music notes were being tossed and born and tossed again. And when everythang was finished, and when the earth had wrung out all the secrets it had stored so lonesomely for so long, I took the music with me. I carried it in my head down the mesa, across the field, until I collapsed on the edge of town a total of three days after I had first set out.
Three days. I had been sittin' on that lone peak for three sunrises and three sunsets, bein' drained of all moisture and roasted to a livin' raisin in the Appleloosan heat. The ponies who dragged me into the local hospital and fixed me up thought I had plum died. But soon, my eyes opened, and the first thing I reached for was my guitar--not a glass of water. I sat up in my bed as tons of mares and stallions stood gawkin' around me. We had ourselves a lil' concert right there in that hospital, the first performance of the sort I had given since--well--since I up and packed for that stupidly-named place to begin with.
And you know what? It accomplished something. The Appleloosans began smilin'. They began dancin'. Somehow, all of their fears and anxieties went the way of the tumbleweed, and the next day they took on the task of tendin' to the orchards with extra care.
Was there really ever a famine? By the beginnin' of the next month, nopony had an inch of proof. Them apple trees blossomed like none had before, and we had enough fruit for a mighty harvest--the first harvest of Appleloosa. It was a purdy spectacle to be sure. All thangs bein' subjective and all, I guess you had to have been there. But trust me when I say that the entire town changed, and all 'cuz one pony decided to listen a little closer where so many other souls were too dang afraid to challenge the very nature of sound.
"Not to toot my own horn or nothin'," Mr. Bard added as he finished strumming and glanced calmly at the other three. "I can't pretend to take all the credit for what happened in that village. The 'famine' was the least of Appleloosa's problems, after all. We later had worse things to overcome, like them angry, headbuttin' buffalo. But we managed to solve that with the power of friendship... or some crap. Whatever. The point is..."
He leaned forward, resting his guitar against the wall as he gestured his hooves above the table between the four ponies.
"I couldn't connect one bit to them Appleloosan numskulls around me. But the power of song was there nonetheless. It may not have given me any answers to how the earth ticked, but it got me in touch with nature nonetheless. And it's not like I changed the world any. I only learned from it. In the end, I was able to get a bunch of ponies to calm down and relax. That's the whole point of music to begin with, don't ya think? It's not really about mysticism and magic and all that nonsense. It's all about what's in the mind. Not like I'm tryin' to talk down what you've experience or wutnot, Miss Octavia--"
"Let me ask you just one thing, Mr. Bard," she interjected.
"Shoot."
She leaned forward. "I am not entirely unfamiliar with your music career. As a matter of fact, I've sampled some of your music before."
"Heh, fancy that."
"I could go on and on about how 'charmingly rustic' your ensembles have sounded, but that's not the point. If you would be so kind, would you inform the other ponies here just how many albums you had published before you began your soul-searching trip to the town whose name you refuse to cherish?"
"Why, I done recorded about... ohhhh..." He leaned back, stroking his beard with a sandy hoof. "Hmmm... Seven? Eight albums?"
"Nine!" Melodia Braids gasped, her eyes wide. "I remember now!" She pointed. "Jumpin' Ray Bard! You signed up for a total of nine albums under Wagon Wheel Records! Heehee!" Her cheeks went rosy as she clapped her hooves together. "Isn't that just spectacular?"
Octavia merely smiled, a very subtle gesture.
Mr. Bard blinked, his features paling somewhat. "Land's sakes..." He pulled his hat off and fanned a balding mane. "That's pretty darn creepy, if ya look at it from that angle. I can't say you have yerself a convert, Miss Octavia, but that's somethin' worth thinkin' about."
"And that's all that I hope for in this discussion," Octavia said. "A second thought."
"Hmm. Reckon so." Mr. Bard planted his hat back on and looked around. "Anypony else can relate to that?"
"Oh! Oh!" Vinyl Scratch slapped the tabletop with both hooves and stood up, sneering devilishly at the crowd. "This... this one time? Okay? This one time while I was performing for the wedding of Trot Cruise and Nicolt Kidmare, right? And I had been spinnin' the turntables for--like--three friggin' hours straight? Right? So--like--I got up to visit the little filly's room and take a piss and... do other stuff. Y'know, my nose was itching. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Anyways, I came back, and guess what I saw?"
The three other ponies stared in muted wonder.
Vinyl Scratch's teeth glinted with a wicked smile. "There was puke all over my equipment!"
They blinked lethargically at her.
"And... And..." She sweat openly, gazing down at the three. "...like, that was mad crazy, right? Cuz it was the wedding of Trot Cruise and Nicolt Kidmare. Right? They didn't serve any food for a pony to upchuck, on account of trying to not look fat. I mean, they were Saddletologists, and they had to--I dunno--keep their public image clean and stuff or else nopony in their right mind would hoof them bits for the honeymoon, never mind the fact that I played nothing but friggin' remixes of Saturday Neigh Live all dang evening."
Octavia stared intently at the tabletop. Mr. Bard was glaring. Melodia Braids fidgeted in her seat and spoke up, "Well, I think--"
"So where did all the puke come from?!" Vinyl Scratch hissed.
Melodia winced, gulped, and boldly kept talking. "I-I think I have a similar story of my own to tell. Well... uhm... it's not exactly a similar story, but... but it does kind of relate to all this..."
"Do tell us, dear," Octavia said.
Vinyl grunted and slumped down in her chair, folding her arms. "Pfft. Bunch of stuck-up Katrot Holmes fans, I swear to Goddess..."
"Simmer down, Sally," Mr. Bard grumbled, then smirked Melodia's way. "Care to continue, darlin'?"
"Mmmm... Okay." The pegasus played with her long green mane as she wrestled for the strength to continue. "So, uhm, as you ponies may or may not know, I'm something of a... erm... famous composer. Well, more like a lyricist, I guess. I'm no Oscar Haymerstein or anything." She giggled. "But I've been known to write songs for very famous ponies throughout all of Equestria. It's... It's how I've made a living for myself, and I like to think I've done nicely, considering... well..."
"Hmm?" Octavia leaned her head to the side.
Melodia Braids bit her lip. "It's not like I've ever put my hoof to a musical instrument. But, when you hear many famous ponies singing, it's my words that they're broadcasting. I mean, that counts for something, doesn't it? Even if I'm employing all my talent in putting pen to paper, it's still expressing myself musically, even if it's a vicarious thing, don't you think?"
"Shucks." Mr. Bard leaned back and pulled the brim of his hat down over his smiling face. "I've done plenty of covers in my day. I'm always plum grateful to the writer who lent me their words. You ain't got nothin' to feel bad about, Missy."
"Yes, most assuredly," Octavia uttered with a nod. "Whether or not you wield the instrument, you are still a most prolific artist, at least in my esteemed opinion."
"And that means a lot to me," Melodia said with a nod. "And... uhm... though I can't say much about having to deal with cursed theatres or... or famine-stricken colonies, I really do have an experience to share about the Curse of the Ninth. I... I guess I never really thought about it much until having this conversation with you three. But it was a very important thing that happened to me. Well, maybe the word 'important' isn't the best way to describe. But, I went through something... something that changed me. And, as fate would have it, it was immediately after a song that I had written reached the top of the charts for the ninth time in all my years of composition...
I was born and raised in Cloudsdale, but I knew pretty early on that it wasn't the place to exercise my super special talent. Most pegasi, after all, would rather kick clouds, spawn tornadoes, or become guard ponies. I guess I just... didn't have a flying warrior's blood in my veins. I wanted to play music, and the upper troposphere has terrible acoustics. You really have no idea. I mean, I doubt you ever would, at least.
Anyways, I moved out to Los Pegasus. I didn't live in the clouds, though, but rather I made a home for myself on the land below, in the streets and avenues of Hollywhinny. It's a place that's both charming and... well, eheh... cutthroat. No sooner had I graduated from the local university in music theory when I found myself having to compete with just about every other pony that wanted to transcribe lyrics onto paper.
I don't think I had ever properly prepared myself--you know--for the life of an artist. I mean, it makes absolute sense when you're measured for your ability to pull plows, grind oats, lick stamps, or any other blue bridle job out there. But trying to compete with other ponies on the basis of sheer creativity? That just isn't something that can be fairly determined, at least in my opinion. I mean... I'm not trying to downplay the potential of one's talent in the music industry; more often than not it comes down to a matter of luck. Take yourself for instance, Ms. Octavia. I mean: I know for a fact that you are so incredibly, amazingly talented. But would any of that have mattered hadn't Fancy Pants have written about you to many of his Canterlot companions in the first place? It led to Princess Celestia attending one of your performances in Trottingham, after all. I guess the rest is history, as they say.
Well, I knew from very early on that my chances of making a living off of what I enjoyed doing would have been slim at best. It didn't help that I was--and had always been--something of a weak pegasus. I truly mean it. Ponies laugh at me when I tell them that I was born among the surly, brutish pegasi of Cloudsdale. Part of it is that I was born with several inherited health problems. Another part of it is... well... I'm not so good around crowds. Can you imagine me, then? Try and picture a lone pegasus in Hollywhinny, freshly graduated, struggling to get her name and lyrics known in the most heated crucible in all of the entertainment industry...
I was out of my element, and I had barely taken the initial plunge in. It's a sheer miracle that I didn't drown in depression from the beginning. As fate would have it, I stumbled into a struggling singer named Lavender Lakes who was in need of a songwriter. When she turned to an obvious no-name like me, we both knew that she was desperate. In addition to that, Lavender Lakes was a frazzled mess of a pony who was limping in and out of nightclubs, growing more and more poor with each attempt to fetch herself a main event. And it wasn't like she lacked talent. She had a wonderful voice; she just didn't have any words to sing with it.
So, I signed on with her and I gave her lyrics. I guess I... pitied her at the time. And I'm telling you right here and now, nopony in the business ever makes it big by choosing partners out of sympathy. At least, that's not how it's supposed to work. What happened next was pure fate, I suppose, and my life would never be the same.
A famous photographer was visiting a nightclub when Lavender Lakes happened to be performing in downtown Aneighheim. You should all know her: Photo Finish? Anyways, Photo took a liking to the song--my song--and most especially the way in which Lavender Lakes sung it. After the show, she took Lavender Lakes aside and gave her a really long pep talk. I wasn't privy to it, of course, but Lavender filled me in later, and she was downright ecstatic. Apparently Photo Finish had some major connections, and she was going to hook Lavender up with a famous, successful agent that she knew of. Lavender begged that I join her for the initial interview near Hollywhinny Boulevard. I agreed, though I wasn't expecting much at the time. We were two young mares who could barely live off the modest income we had. It seemed too early and too miraculous for any kind of a break, big or not.
But the agent we met with turned out to be a real genius: Irvine Coltsein. He saw something in Lavender Lakes that nopony else did, and he told me to my face that my music had this wonderful hook to it. It was all a bunch of lavish flattery, of course, but he obviously meant it... because he signed us up with a record deal under Silver Spins Publishing. There were two stipulations: I would attempt to write the lyrics to three new songs, which I was completely happy to do, and Lavender Lakes would change both her stage appearance and name. At first, Lavender was hesitant, but I talked her into it. It was all for the best, because Irvine absolutely knew what he was doing. Soon, Lavender became the mare known as Sapphire Shores, and... heehee... I guess you saw that coming there, didn't you?
Anyways, I suddenly had a platform upon which to share my writing with the world, and nopony was more endowed with a fantastic voice to broadcast it than Lav--er... I mean Sapphire. I did write those three songs, after all, and imagine my joy when two of them became instant hits. Sapphire Shores had become an overnight sensation. The two of us were flabbergasted. It was so, so very easy to let fame get to our heads, but we promised ourselves that we wouldn't let that happen. And, to this day, I like to think we've stayed committed to the ideals we had from the get-go. We visit on a regular basis even today, just like any regular marefriends do, even when she's got that busy touring schedule of hers. And, honestly, it's not like I envy her place in the spotlight or whatnot. I've never been happy with having my face known to everypony, so I was perfectly, utterly fine with the way things turned out.
And when they asked me to write more songs, I did so, continuously amazed at just how... at h-how well the music was being received. I mean, I'm not trying to downplay my own wordsmithery or anything, but--as you all well know--the popularity of Sapphire Shores has been an utter phenomenon. I still can't believe how lucky I am to have started out at the beginning of my career with two hits, and then to add another under my saddle... and then another... and then yet another...
And it's not like I wrote entirely for Sapphire Shores. I made several songs for other artists in Silver Spins Publishing. But my biggest hits--the ones that have mattered and always will--were made exclusively for her. The years rolled by. I grew more and more confident in my abilities. I started working on longer, more complex, more artistic compositions that I still hope to someday throw upon a gracious orchestra. When Sapphire Shores won her awards at events all across Equestria, I made sure to attend each and every one of them... all except for one.
And it was because that year, I had fallen terribly, terribly ill. It fell right on the tail of the latest hit Sapphire had sung--her ninth, ironically--a quaint little ballad I had written called "Remember You Softly." It was an appropriate title, in some grim fashion, because I could feel my sickness coming on, and I knew that it wasn't just any other ailment of mine that was going to blow over. You recall how I said that I suffered from a lot of hereditary problems? Well, it felt as though they had finally caught up with me. My lungs got infected, and I was in the hospital for the better part of a year.
Not many ponies in the entertainment industry know just how sick I had gotten. All they know is that Sapphire Shores' tour to The Griffon Lands was canceled that year. That's because she decided to come visit her dying friend.
And make no mistake, I was dying. I could barely move; most of my body had become paralyzed. Every time I breathed, it felt as though pins and needles were being shoved down into my chest. I... I really hope that none of you ponies will ever have to relate to such a sensation, to be in a cold place so low and tiresome that you almost wish for your eyes to shut and never reopen again.
And the fact of the matter is: I only got worse. What could possibly be lower than perpetual agony and paralysis, you ask? Well, I've been there. It is--at the risk of sounding cliche--an out of body experience. When one becomes so sick that the very act of thinking becomes akin to bumping into occasional wooden poles in the dead thick of night, one starts to question the fabric of reality. Why are we all here? What is the purpose to anything? Did I really spend all the waking hours of my so-called existence writing lyrics for a pop-singer to shout toward droves of rabid teenage fans? I should have been tending to the weather like my pegasi brothers and sisters. I should have been reflecting on nature. I should have been doing something--anything--to make my hoofprint on this speck in the cosmos all the more permanent and...
Oh. Oh dear, I... I sort of went off in a whole strange direction, didn't I? Heehee... Uhm. Sorry about that. I... I don't really get a chance to share this experience with other ponies, including Sapphire. I don't really think she can understand. At least, I don't want her to understand, as much as she loves and respects me. She's very happy and famous; she doesn't need to be weighed down with... well... with the true essence of darkness.
There is no sound down there, down to where I sank, down to the depths of whatever I once thought was myself, that which was merely a shivering sliver of warmth hanging in infinite nothingness. Numbers made no sense in the crest of that oblivion, and yet I was still counting for some reason. I was counting backwards, from the number nine to the number one, retracing the rosy scars I had made upon this world, wondering if they held any true weight or if the mere thought of them was the only thing anchoring me to life anymore.
Maybe it was a faint trace of self-recognition that brought me back. Maybe it was the fear that I would have become like so many young and tragic musicians before me, cursed to never make a tenth work of art that would surpass all the nine previous. But something pulled me once again to the surface, to the light, to the brightness that dissolved around the shape of Sapphire's tearful smile as she nuzzled me back to sanity.
I was numb for a while, but it was a very real, very warm, very lively kind of "numb." I had trotted the glossy dark plains of death. I had graced the naked blackness with my own eyes, and I had returned from that grisly preview of what's to come. To say that it changed me would be an understatement... I guess. But... But I-I wasn't depressed. Not really, no. I was just a lot calmer, if that can be believed. It's even still affecting me right now, right here, as I tell you all about this.
The initial month of recovery went by. I had plenty of flowers and gifts to gush over, on behalf of Sapphire and the publishing company. Then the second month went by, and there were less flowers. Then the third month blurred on, then the fourth. By month number five, I was receiving a great deal of articulately written letters from my agent, trying in his own, masterfully tactful way to ask if I was ready to write again. As it so happened, the tour was growing stagnant. Sapphire Shores was running out of material, and no other lyricist in the company had a tune that could compare to my preexisting repertoire. So, they were all turning to me, desperate and pleading, but all the while afraid of triggering me into a relapse... or something. I don't know, really.
But poor Sapphire: she never mentioned a single word about the tour in all her visits. She respected me so much. However, I could see it in her face. She was worried, frightened even. And I felt horrible, because since my ordeal in the hospital I hadn't tried to write a single word. Every time I searched my mind for lyrics, I saw the same darkness that nearly consumed me in its frigid black jaws. I couldn't simply sit there and hoof something to paper. I had to get out. I had to feel warm.
So, I went out for walks. I trotted around Hollywhinny Boulevard. I... I shopped a lot. Heehee. Yes, I know that's not exactly inspiring, but it helps a mare think, y'know? And... something started happening to me. I knew it was happening because I wasn't asking it to. That... probably doesn't make any sense, but there's no better way to describe it.
I... I saw words. Words were coming at me, bleeding from the sidewalks, falling from the theatre marquis signs, screaming at me from passing stagecoaches. I'd splash my hoof in a puddle, and it would produce a melody. I'd brush my elbow into the sand of a beach, and I suddenly had the bridge to a song. It... It's beyond sane description to try and relate just how deliciously rich and crazily random all of these epiphanies were.
So, I wrote down everything in the order in which they jumped out at me. To do this, I had to carry notepads wherever I went. At first, nothing ever made sense. The words were so random that you had to be a total flankster wannabe to possibly make a song out of it. But, as I collected a mess of bizarre ideas, and I scanned the words on my lonesome with studious eyes, patterns emerged, and the words appeared to... just connect to each other on their own. Can you believe that?
I guess... I g-guess what I'm trying to say is that when I came back from the depths of nothingness, something had followed me back to the land of the living. It was a talent of sorts. It was an insane talent, and like any normal pony I should probably have ignored it. But, Sapphire Shores needed me, so instead of disregarding what I had jotted down, I embraced it. I wove them into songs and lyrics. Then, like a truly mad pony, I bundled it all up in a neat little package and delivered it to my publishing company the next day.
I was contacted at the doorstep to my very apartment the following morning. I thought that they had sent agents to my home to fire me in person. Instead, it was Irvine Colstein himself. And he was in tears. He called the songs "beautiful," "magnificent," and "heartfelt." I thought he was pulling my tail. But, sure enough, we gave a hooffull of the songs to the studio. Sapphire Shores had her way with them, and not only did we have a tenth hit on our hands... but an eleventh. Then a twelfth. Then a thirteenth.
In the end, we crafted an entire album out of the compilation, mostly consisting of the epiphanous pile of lyrics I had so accumulated. It swiftly became the best selling record in Equestrian Entertainment history: "The Numbers That Bring You Back." Just yesterday, as a matter of fact, I heard two songs playing at the doctor's office as I had my latest examination. For the first time in two years, I was given a clean bill of health. To tell the truth, I had hardly paid attention to my well-being since I was last sick, on account of the wellspring of creativity that had been occupying the forefront of my mind ever since.
Sapphire's been so happy for me. I'm just glad that she's in a better mood. I... I really hated pulling her down, because I most certainly was for a while there. Most popular ponies practice an aloofness or have an ingrained haughtiness that makes them care little for other ponies, but not my dear Lavender. Whatever the name, whatever the manestyle, whatever suit that she wears on stage--she will still always be to me the frazzled, desperate mare who needed a songwriter and--most importantly--a friend...
"Maybe that's what brought me back, after all, and not my focus on the nine hits that I had made with her," Melodia Braids said with a bashful smile. "I knew that Sapphire Shores, in spite of her popularity, would be utterly lonesome without me. I don't think there are that many partnerships in Hollywhinny that enjoy such a level of... sincerity, I guess you could say. But, whatever the case, I had to overcome death itself to get back to this world, to get back to her, to get back to doing what I loved best. And the one thing that tugged at me was the need to produce a tenth hit. And once I did just that, nothing--yes--absolutely nothing could stop me." She giggled and hugged herself at her edge of the table. "I never thought I could possess such great, boundless confidence, and yet here I am."
"So, then, I guess you could say that the concept of the Ninth Movement transformed you," Octavia said with a smile. "Still, my dear, that was completely an accomplishment on behalf of your sheer strength and mental will alone."
"Takes an awful lot of guts to saunter on back to... the land of guts," Mr. Bard said with a chuckle. "Y'see? This is why yer an award winnin' lyricist and I'm just a guitar plucker."
"Hmmm..." Melodia blushed deeply. "I'm just happy to be here still, to do what I enjoy doing, until I have... well... until we all have to end up going where we need to go." She gulped and glanced at the other three. "Why else are we here other than to enjoy the time that we have?"
"Ugh, gag me..." Vinyl Scratch banged her head against the table and threw a bored gaze across the room. "Cursed theatres, humming valleys, and Miss Sunshine's recitation of Coltrad's Hay of Darkness... Is all that you dudes ever think about is grim wonkiness and pretentious morality?!"
Octavia produced a rigid frown. "Well, Ms. Scratch, they do measure up considerably against your trite anecdote of rich celebrities and copious amounts of vomit."
"Hey!" Vinyl pointed. "As much as I love these Canter Boring Tales like the next pony, ya morons ain't heard nothing yet! Curse of the Ninth, my sweet, delicious, buttery flank! Hah! You wanna hear about a real doozie of a friggin' episode in music-go-fart land?!"
"No, I reckon not," Mr. Bard muttered.
"Hey! You shut your beard!" Vinyl sneered before illuminating her shades with her horn. She twirled the article around her hoof like a glowstick while slathering the group with her slick magenta gaze. "This little story's gonna knock the socks off you self-inflated, overcultured rhythmtards! And then you're gonna ask yourselves 'Why the heck was I wearing socks in the first place--cuz that's totally last year's overused joke, and besides, ew!'"
"Uhm..." Melodia raised a hoof, chewing on her lip. "I kind of like wearing socks--"
"So!" Vinyl Scratch stood up, wildly waving her shades in a hoof while barking, "There I was, setting up all my equipment for a long night of record-scratching in the hallowed halls of the downtown Mareami Discotheque, when suddenly my big fat roadie waddles up to me and is all like...
"Yo, DJ-P0N3, I blew it, man. I totally don't have that soundstone for you."
And I was like, "What? Lame sauce, maaaan. Why don't you totally have that soundstone for me? I'm, like, gonna be on in twelve friggin' minutes and I'm this close to using your eyesocket for a pencil sharpener."
And he was all, "Well, we got this backup soundstone from the last DJ who was here. It looks kinda beat up, and the enchantment's kind of worn out, but I bet you could breathe life back into it with your filthy sick bass drops."
And so I said, "Well if you really think there's still some crap to be oozed out of this stupid thing then hoof it over to me and let's see."
And so he did hoof it over, and the thing looked really cruddy. I mean, it looked like it got spat out by Diamond Dogs, and I don't mean their front end. So I banged the thing a few times against a nearby table, and it kind of made a sound, but then again that could have been just the table. I mean, it was there, and yet it wasn't. You know what I mean, Octavia? Shut up.
Anywho, the dance hall was filling up with college colts and fillies at this point. That many sleepy-eyed gazes and that little music is a recipe for total snooze-ville, if you catch my drift. So, like, there was no time to friggin' wait.
"There's no time to friggin' wait!" I said, or at least I think I did. I dunno. My head was in the clouds at that time, maaaan. I jammed that little bugger into the mana-housing of the turntable and flung the lever, but nothing happened. So I flicked the nozzle over and over again like I was shaking the hoof of a catatonic filly-of-the-night. My roadie was all up in stitches, the blubbery wuss.
"What are you doing?!" he shrieked so hard, I swear he was gonna bleed out through all his joy holes. "That crud could still be hot! Don't overload the thingabob with the whatchamacallit!"
And how do you respond to that? I told the jerk, "You're a jerk, and I--like--totally know what I'm doing. I was spinning tables while you were still making love to Rammstallion/Nightwhinny mash-ups."
He must have been screaming at me. I couldn't tell, cuz he was suddenly flying into the ceiling. Perhaps he was a pegasus, or maybe my eyes were just rolling back in my shades. It's hard to recall. Dang Mareami humidity, am I right? No? Go suck on a mailbox flag. Where was I? Oh right.
"Just hold on, fillies and gentlecolts!" I knew it wasn't my pre-recorded voice because the fat roadie forgot to turn on the speakers, and besides, the voice was giggling like it was a weekend at Huntrot S. Thompony's. "We're about to raise the roof in this mother-hoofin' shack-o-glass and Celestia's shanks I could totally scarf down a bucket full of sunflowers right about now, never mind the goddess-forsaken seeds! What in the name of Caribou Algebra is wrong with this pathetic little crystal?! Did Princess Cadenzenzenzenza get tired of you after wasting away spring break in Blue Valley?! Talk to me, you flaming piece of overpriced dragon phlegm!"
So I looked at the thing, and my reflection looked back, only there was a pathetic number "9" in the way. And I remember saying oh hey look at tha--whoops, I guess I was supposed to be speaking there. Ahem.
"Oh, hey, look at that!" I shouted. "It says '9!' But when I turn it upside down, it becomes the number of inches my horn stretches on a cold afternoon. But then if I spin it once more--holy crap! It's a '9' again! Hey, everypony! Come check this crap out! Also, is there a mid-tier sorceress in a house? I need to be lit up. Er... I'm talking about this soundstone here!"
Suddenly, everypony in the dance hall was laughing. I couldn't figure out why until I retraced the last couple of seconds and realized that I had just done what any self-respecting, experimental artist would do with a half-energized, seemingly redundant chunk of celestial material in her hooves. I had shoved it up my nose.
And that's when things got kind of funky. I dunno what you non-magical ponies know about leylines, but they kind of like to make love with one another when they come into close proximity, weak or not. So, like, whatever invisible wormy lines of mystical fluff may have been sleeping inside of that nugget, they came to life, and they suddenly had an electrifying new home inside my left nostril. A few milliseconds later, the synapses in my brain went "Hey, somepony's getting frisky!" And they totally copped a feel on that flank, and my consciousness was taken along for the ride.
And, whew, maaaan. You ever jumped off the edge of the Canterlot bluffs into the lakes of the crystal forest below? Well, after going through what I did, I doubt you'll ever need to. What a goddess-dang rush. I saw things that weren't supposed to be seen, mysterious things that wore--like--giant overcoats full of stars as they trotted up to self-respecting galaxies pushing their babies in strollers around the park before totally flashing them. And then comets came wearing police helmets and blowing whistles that spat out gamma ray bursts and stripped the mysterious things to their bare, cosmic bones of audiopheliac effluence.
Ha! Nah. Naaaah, I'm just kidding. I, like, landed on this hallucinogenic plain full of cool, glowy blue lines and surrounded by thunder and lightning and crap. And then this pony strolled forward all decked up in black latex or whatcrap and he totally looked like Bruce Boxleitneigh.
"Whoah!" I gasped. "You totally look like Bruce Boxleitneigh!"
"Ninety-nine nights of nay a hoof to hold." His eyes became hard as diamonds as he floated down towards me and whispered. "Vinyl, it's okay if you want to kiss fillies."
"Buh?"
Just then, nine ponies in glowing red armor appeared around us.
"Behold!" Bruce snarled and hoisted me up to my hooves. "Nine ponies in glowing red armor!"
"Yeah, man! We should totally record them for vocal samples!"
"Not enough time!" He shouted and yanked a giant glowing horseshoe off his back and began smacking them into glassy, rattling kibbles. "Quick! Open the door!"
"On it!" And, of course, the only proper thing to do was pull my mouth wide open and rip my tongue out. I slammed it on the ground and yanked at the doorknob. On the other side was my mother, and she had a hammer in her grasp. "Hey, I need to borrow that!" I said, grabbing it from her. I'm not sure how I could still make words, maaaaan. Maybe it was my tail vibrating them out. "Oh, by the way, I totally forgive you for crashing my first date naked with a pair of pliers!" And so I slammed the door on her and spun around. "What now?!"
"Nine times around the circumference of your fears!" Bruce shouted. It was hard to hear him above all the blips, bloops, and other sick Royksaddle noises echoing above his glowing two-wheeled stagecoach thingy. If I could accurately put it into words, I'd barf up rainbow bunny rabbits. "Do not hesitate!"
"Goddess, you're hotter than a grown dragon's adam's apple!" I screamed and began slamming my horn repeatedly with the hammer. After the ninth throw, I got bored, and just split my skull open with two hooves. A bunch of butterflies soared out, or at least I thought they were butterflies at first. I was a little bit of a mad pony at the time. Then the butterflies' rotations turned out to be a bunch of nines and sixes dancing around with one another. By that time, all I could do was laugh. Or maybe scream. Screaming's cool too. "Raaaaaaugh! It's like my veins are full of strawberries and they're all voting republicanter!"
"Good!" Bruce screamed above his wheels and lights and flinging data horseshoes and crap. "Now toss yourself into the heart of the Mare Concert Program!"
"I am electric!" And I galloped over the edge of the plateau and jumped straight through the tall column of glowing vertical rotoscope effects. My own laughter was catching up to me, and I wanted to lick her sweet lips so that she too could remember how delicious pony tarts taste at morning breakfast before you grow past foalhood and your mouth gets really snarky and flanksterific, having to search endlessly for newer, sicker sounds in order to eke a modicum of artistic enjoyment from the starving depths of the bleak musicscape. And suddenly I realized why there was a beat going on in my head, cuz Bruce had kicked me down the crest of the ninth soundstone's glowing awesomeness, and suddenly I was standing--naked--above my roaring turntable in the Mareami discotheque, realizing for the first time in my life that I've always been naked...
"And that..." Vinyl Scratch punctuated her story with a vicious slap to the tabletop. "...is how I almost got 'em!" She leaned back with a proud smile, then scrunched her face up at her own words. "Oh. Wait." She blinked dazedly. "What were we talking about, dudes?"
"Poetically hyperbolic nuances aside..." Octavia glanced at the other two, rubbing her hooves together. "It does seem as though we all have something in common."
"Do we?" Melodia Braids remarked, grimacing towards Vinyl.
"What Missy Octavia is trying to say, darlin', is that we appear to have all dealt with the curse of the nines," Mr. Bard said.
"And yet, we have all surpassed them, have we not?" Octavia added.
"Heh... heheh..." Vinyl smiled into her shades before slapping them upside-down on her head. "Ever taken the first four letters out of 'surpassed?' Snkt--hahahaha! Maaaaan..."
Octavia sighed. "Most... of us, at least."
"Then why do I get the feeling that we're right back where we started this conversation?" Melodia remarked, pouting. "I mean... just what does it have to do with everything?"
"You askin' me, darlin'?" Mr. Bard shrugged and pointed Octavia's way. "Direct your inquiry over yonder."
"Hmmm?" Octavia made a face. "Me?"
"Yer the one who started this half-flanked conversation! Reckon you had a point in drawin' all of us to share what we knew about the Curse of the Ninth."
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," Octavia said, pointing at herself. "I assure you, I was simply reflecting on the topic at hoof. I must admit, it was of extreme interest to me from the beginning, but I surely wasn't the one who proposed the subject matter."
"But..." Melodia blinked confusedly, gnawing on her lip. "If you didn't start this conversation..."
"Oh come off it, Miss Bow Tie!" Vinyl Scratch exclaimed, rolling her eyes beneath her lopsided shades. "Trust a pony who's had her mind blown. It's dirty cruel to mess with a mare's head. Just why did you start this conversation to begin with? Running low on autographs, Madame Canterlot?"
"She didn't begin this discussion," I said. "I did."
All four ponies spun at the table to face me.
I sat in the corner of the room on a stool, smiling. My saddle bag sat by my side as I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie and spoke to the group, "And I must say, I'm rather proud of how easily you all carried on the conversation without my direction. You four really are the finest group of like-minded musical talent this age has to offer."
"Uhhhh..." Melodia shivered nervously.
Octavia was speechless while Mr. Bard scratched his balding head under his hat.
"Yeah, uhm, okay." Vinyl Scratch squinted my way, positioning her shades upright. "Who invited the talking lime in a jacket?"
I giggled. "You have it the other way around. You see..." I gestured towards the table with my forelimbs outstretched. "I invited all of you. And you most certainly did not disappoint."
"I don't understand. This is the first time we've ever seen you, Miss..." Octavia squinted at me.
"Heartstrings," I replied, trying to retain my bubbly emotions in the presence of her. "Lyra Heartstrings. And I've been listening happily to your conversation this whole time."
"Yeah! Heh!" Vinyl cackled with a wicked sneer. "And I'm a goddess-dang vampire!"
"Hold on, darlin'," Mr. Bard said as he leaned forward, staring at me suspiciously. "How could a fine filly like you expect us to believe that you've been here the whole time and yet we've not heard a peep or seen an inch of you until this very dag-blame'd second?"
"I can't rightly expect you to believe anything, Mr. Bard." I said softly, smiling. "And, no, I don't consider it ignorance on your part. You're a very down-to-earth pony, and you need firsthoof proof to understand the nature of things, whether or not they're potentially magical. To explain myself, my condition, who and what I am--well--it would require several devices and feats that I just don't possess in their entirety at the moment. But that's not really the point of the matter. What does matter is that you've all proven something to me." I turned to smile at the group as a whole. "You've proven to me that you're all more than capable of going beyond the boundaries of your own doubt in order to assist me with the most prodigious musical project of our time."
"Wh-What kind of project?" Melodia said, cowering slightly from my strange gaze.
"Something that would benefit greatly from your mastery of the lyrics held within the equine heart," I said to her. I turned to look at Octavia. "Something that would be made exquisite by your ambition and perfect execution." My smile then moved back to Mr. Bard. "Something that depends on your respect for the land between the Firmaments and beyond." I lastly gazed at DJ P0N3. "Something that... heehee... could be exemplified by a grasp of reality that's tenuous at best."
"Uhhh..." Vinyl stared blankly at me. "Cool?"
"Whether or not you're aware of it, you four represent the best talent that Equestria's musical scene has to offer. Now, I humbly ask that you assist me in transcribing a song--not just any song, but an untamed elegy lost between the foundations of time, thrown beyond the boundaries of consciousness by magic that's darker than night, but was always meant to be rediscovered and broadcasted back into the insufferable nether from which it arose. It should come as no surprise to you that your joint commonality has a part to play in this ambitious endeavor, for this is the ninth elegy in a forsaken symphony, a nebulous, penultimate movement that serves as the final, irrevocable barrier between where I stand and the Nocturne to end all Nocturnes."
"You... You speak of something so grand, so vague, and so frightening..." Melodia began.
Octavia finished for her. "But we don't know a single thing about you. Even if we wanted to, what would give us the reason to partner with a nameless, faceless unicorn that we've never met before?"
"Reckon you could give us more to chew on, darlin'?" Mr. Bard added.
"There is very little worth being learned about me," I said. "At least, not until I can afford to express myself fully, dearly, permanently--which is the eventual purpose of this entire symphony."
"Just how do you transcribe a symphony that you apparently already know about?"
"Because it's been bequeathed to me in pieces, sporadic and chaotic, as if purposefully designed to shatter upon the comprehension of a mortal mind. I was not the first to stumble upon it. There was a pony who discovered it before me, and in his lonely attempts to decipher it, he encountered a roadblock that ripped his sanity asunder, so that he fell into obscurity, reduced to a mad pony who was the only soul blessed--or cursed--to forever know a history that was pertinent to his tortured memories and his alone. Now the ninth movement is mine to bear, but I cannot transcribe it alone. I am but one mortal soul, a learned one--yes--but scarcely capable of grasping the elegy on her lonesome. That's why I brought you all here: from Los Pegasus to Canterlot, and from Orlandoats to Appleloosa. You have the talent to help me, to bless me where I have faltered. Together, we just may be able to finish the Elegy #9, 'Desolation's Elegy.' Then, maybe--just maybe--I can take the lonely, arduous, yet fateful journey in reaching the tenth movement, and transforming myself forever."
"Yeah, okay!" Vinyl Scratch chuckled madly, waving a hoof. "Now I know that this is some crazy episode of Canter Camera. Seriously, what kind of a lame joke is this?!"
"It... brings up a point." Octavia looked towards the stallion in the room. "Mr. Bard, if I'm not mistaken, you are still retired. Shouldn't you be in Appleloosa at this very moment in time?"
"No! Don't answer her!" Vinyl growled. "Don't feed this puke-green parasprite! I want a real explanation to all this unsexy brouhaha!"
"Well, then you can provide an explanation to yourself!" I said pleasantly. "Does anypony remember exactly how they got here?"
"Pffft, of course! Why, I..." Vinyl Scratch's words trailed off. Her shaded gaze drifted across the ceiling.
Octavia suddenly gawked at the wooden table in front of her.
Mr. Bard stood up, knocking his chair over in the process. He gulped and stared up at the flickering lamp overhead.
Melodia Braids was hugging herself, shivering, staring frightfully at all of the walls of the place.
"I'll make things a bit simpler for you," I said gently. "You're in Ponyville. You're in my hometown, so to speak."
"Pony... ville?" Octavia danced the name off the tip of her tongue.
"I've toured there once..." Mr. Bard grunted, still lingering above his overturned chair. "This... does smell a bit like that place..."
"Wait, Ponyville?" Melodia blinked, and all the fear was drained from her eyes as her wings fluttered. "Why, I-I have a cousin who lives there!"
"You do not," Vinyl grunted before turning to look at me, dragging the shades towards the bridge of her nose and exposing a pair of glazed magenta eyes. She shrugged and shrugged again. "How." Her forelimbs dropped limply at her sides. "How the heck?!"
"Simple," I said. "I utilized a piece of magic--a piece of a song, the song, the song that has defined the world and all that lives within it since the beginning of time. And then I discovered more songs, many of which have freed me, and many more that have shackled me. But in the confusing thick of it, I found a tune that could bring you all here, that could help me solve the biggest riddle in my journey of transformation yet."
"What, pray tell, would that tune be?" Octavia asked with a sincerely curious gaze.
I cleared my throat. "Why, the 'Song of Gathering,' of course."
"Snkkkt!" Vinyl spat. "And I thought I was wasted!"
"The 'S-Song of Gathering?'"
"My dear, that is a stretch even to bourgeoisie contemplation," Octavia remarked with a cool expression. "No mortal could possess the magical wherewithal to perform such a sacred instrumental."
"Not even the alicorn sisters have had the ability to play that number!" Mr. Bard exclaimed, propping his chair up and leaning against it. "For nearly a thousand years, they haven't had a lick of power to muster it! Especially since they plum lost the holy relic that made performin' that thang possible in the first place--"
In a single breath, I opened my saddlebag and lifted something out of it. I hoisted a glittering object, stepped forward, and plopped it onto the edge of the table with a pronounced, metallic ring. The entire room lit up with golden effluence, and every breath that was in the place was sucked out.
"Blessed Celestia..." Octavia stammered.
Melodia hovered instinctively in midair. "It... It can't be..."
"My stars..." Mr. Bard knocked over his chair again. He gulped. "The Nightbringer..."
"The lost piece of the Cosmic Matriarch's holy song," Octavia practically whimpered.
Vinyl Scratch's eyes twitched. She looked at everypony, at me, then at the table. She placed her hoof over the edge and banged it hard--twice--with the other. Instantly wincing, she waved her forelimb and hissed. "Oh yeah, that's pain. This is real, alright. Real as spit."
I stared at the lot of them, my eyes firm. There was a tiny hum in the room--a hum that had always been there--but only now could the ponies recognize it, for they saw the longest string of the Nightbringer vibrating endlessly beneath my grasp. My body lit up with each inch that my hooves gently stroked down the curved contours of the immaculate instrument.
"Yes, this is a piece of the Cosmic Matriarch's song, her very own breath. And, yes, the Nightbringer was lost. But it is no more. It has been found. I've used it to bring you here. And now, with your assistance, I shall use it to piece together the Ninth Elegy, and bring substance to desolation."
They remained slumped in their awestruck postures. I could feel Octavia's heartbeat through the table as she leaned against the wooden surface for support. To my left, Melodia hovered down to her hooves, cleared her throat, and gave me a foalish look of deep curiosity.
"How..." She whimpered. "H-How did you find this? Nopony has known of its whereabouts for centuries... eons..."
I looked at her. I smiled. "It was given to me."
"By who?!" Mr. Bard stammered. "No one just trots on by and hoofs you history's most forsaken, most holy, most-dang-near-all-powerful relic!"
"He does when he's held onto it for so long that he knows that it's time to pass the torch to another soul, a soul who's defined by the same curse, but a great deal better equipped to pull herself out of the mess." I clutched the Nightbringer firmly as I spoke over its massive frame. "And just like the four of you, he made his connection--through time and space and firmaments--with a song. A song that he wrote, but--much like those tunes of an unsung realm--it was something I came to discover with much dedication and commitment. You see, I too have a story...
It started over a year ago, but what's relevant to this meeting began only recently. I had been struggling for months to decipher a secret Symphony, a Nocturne hidden from the annals of history for the sole purpose of remaining concealed as well as keeping a spirit of unknown horror locked within. Of the total ten movements, it wasn't until mastering the seventh that I was given a chance to see the truth with my own eyes. The eighth elegy was something that finally gave me the power to grasp and understand that truth. I found that by retracing my steps and playing the eighth elegy over and over again, I could learn truths of my past that had been rewritten, down to the very fabric of reality itself.
Needless to say, this unveiling terrified me. Still, as alone and forsaken as I was, I needed to learn more, so that I might approach the ninth elegy and confront that which I feared the most, and still do in many ways.
What I discovered from the practice of the eighth elegy was that I wasn't the only mortal pony who had attempted to uncover the Nocturne. I had in my possession a book, and within that book the lonely words of a victim to time became clear to me as the magical melody played its way through my mind. In attempting to bring my experiences into clarity as he had been forced to face his, I was inadvertently hoisted from this realm into that of the unsung. It is a most terrible place, the grandest secrets of all secrets, something each of you will forget before leaving this room--and rightfully so. For I am now convinced that it hides something that was never meant for mortal eyes, or even immortal. The fact that I know of it and can still speak of it is an accursed anomaly, and something that I am endeavoring to fix.
Still, I somehow ended back in that realm of nightmares, a place of lost souls and tortured choruses. I saw the ruler of the realm as she spotted me from her throne on high. As she began to throw me in binds, who would come to my rescue but my pen pal from the distant past. When he rescued me, he flung me out of the land beyond firmaments. And when he did, he did so with a song.
As soon as I returned to the safety of the mortal realm--suspended once again in my cursed existence as a pariah--I was too grateful for my life to think properly. Only with careful thought and lengthy contemplation did I realize that he had used a song to return me to my home. It wasn't just any song either, but something familiar, a haunting work of art, a carefully laid out mosaic of all the tunes that had plagued and cursed us both on opposite ends of a damnable millennium.
I don't know how he did it, but my friend from the past had taken pieces of the Nocturne, he had ripped out slices of the accursed symphony, and he had pieced the key parts of them together in such a way in order to form a bridge between his world and mine. Whatever movements of the song that were missing, he formed the bridges with pieces of his very own being, fused together by the memories of a soul for whom he had long given his mind, his body, and his spirit, all faithfully. This song, he named "Penumbra's Echo."
I did not discover the Echo immediately. This took many grueling nights of intense reading and study, following my friend's hoofprints, tracing artistically woven words that meandered at random throughout the insane drivel that composed the magically highlighted journal that he had unwittingly bequeathed me.
Or, perhaps, it wasn't quite so unwitting? With his song, with the Echo, I now realized that my friend had formed a bridge between us, a pathway that forever defied time and space, a bridge that could only be formed by a genius mind that was fortunately equipped with the holiest instrument this mortal plane has ever known. It's the same instrument that--by sheer possession--had kept that shell of a unicorn alive long enough to save me that one fated day in the unsung realm.
I had a duty, not just to myself, but to my friend. He had laid the bridge for me. It was now my time to cross it, to meet him in the middle, to perform the quietest and most precious of secret conversations in the yawning abyss between firmaments. To do that, I had to transcribe his song as he had once transcribed the tunes that had mutually cursed us. With careful use of the eighth elegy, and with a mindful eye for the patterns he had left for me and me alone, I discovered it. I unearthed the key to "Penumbra's Echo."
What followed next was a moment of great tension. I knew going into the instrumental that I was performing a concert that could never be repeated. I knew that I was venturing into realms not meant for my eyes. My friend had been there, stuck in limbo, for Celestia-knows how long. How would I fare--even on the edge of it--for so much as a few ghastly minutes?
From the clues he had left me, I knew that there was only one way to go through this, and then I would never hear from him ever again. I descended into a cellar behind my home--a concealed studio of sorts where I venture to perform symphonies not meant for mortal hooves. Once there, I propped up my lyre, and then I went about stripping the pages from his journal. For the next two hours, I plastered the pages in key spots and at key angles around the earthen walls of my basement niche. Eventually, the entire room was plastered with the sheets that belonged to my time-forgotten companion. I dimmed the lights, sat down to my instrument, and knew that it was time.
I played the eighth elegy, this time in earnest. I repeated it ad nauseum, all the while staring at the pages of his hoofwork that were surrounding me. A rusted scent filled the air, like that of sunken metal platforms, and I knew that I was making progress. The hoof-written words of my friend lit up across the pages in vibrant blue, like they always did. But there was a pattern now, something that gave method to the mad pony who had seemingly rambled for journal entries upon journal entries of cyclical text in the journal that was given to me.
Now I could see words connecting from page to page, from sheet to sheet, in ways which they never would have branched together before. The blue text blurred together, forming bands, swirling with coils of effluent structure, and soon I was surrounded by a sphere of twirling letters that morphed into solid rings and encompassed what I had once thought to be a cellar in complete darkness. There, in that celestial sound booth of insanity, I repositioned my grip of the lyre and started playing the song that all of the blackened edges of the sphere were whispering to me: "Penumbra's Echo."
I was entering the vessel of a mad pony who had escaped the clutches of time and space. To venture there was akin to a madness in and of itself, and yet I didn't look back. It took the Curse of the Ninth to consume my friend's mind. Luckily, for me, overcoming that same Curse is just what I needed to do in order to surpass that which had reduced him to a jaded, weathered husk.
I sat there, in the pit of blackness, strumming my lyre. I could see nothing, not even an inch in front of my face. I felt the cold vapors of my breath wafting out of me, but I could not detect their substance. All I heard was the gentle lull of the notes that he had produced for me, as I drew myself towards the end of the song. And when the melody was over, I didn't hear applause. Instead, I heard chains.
The rattling came closer and closer. Across the darkness, the chains slithered their way towards me. My eyes were wide open, but only the very edge of oblivion awaited. Beyond the impermeable wall, the noise drew closer, sliding up within unseen inches of my muzzle. I felt the vapor of frigid breaths yet again, but this time they were not mine. I was no longer alone.
Gulping, I played the Echo again, softly this time, and my trembling voice struggled to speak above it. "I know what she has taken from you," I whimpered, trying to maintain my courage. "I know what time in the unsung realm has drained from your body. So when I ask you a question, I only want one of two answers. If you wish to answer 'yes,' give me a high note. If you wish to answer 'no,' give me a low note." I took a deep breath, and whispered unto the darkness. "Alabaster Comethoof, is that you?"
All was silent, dead and dry as bone, until the vapors parted before me and a single sound hummed through the desolation.
A high note.
I shuddered. I struggled to sit upright. My hooves were shaking as I continued the song, his song, their song. "Alabaster," I stammered. "Did you save me the last time I was in her realm?"
A high note, with no hesitance.
I bit my lip. Bravely, I asked, "Can you save yourself? Can you join me here in the mortal realm?"
There was a pause, then a low tone followed, shaking the ribs that framed my lungs.
I winced, feeling my eyes grow moist. I couldn't let myself lose control. Not there. Not in front of him. "Did you play 'Shadow's Advent?' Did you ever finish the 'Nocturne of the Firmaments?'"
Again, a pause, then another low note, woeful and prolonged like a dying animal.
I clenched my eyes shut. I asked the next question, though I knew ahead of time that there was no point.
"Can... Can you teach me the Ninth Elegy? 'Desolation's Elegy?'"
The low tone came violently this time, terse and almost angry. I shivered heavily upon hearing it.
"I'm... I'm sorry, I just..." I bit my lip. I didn't know when this would end, or how swiftly the sphere would collapse and cut me off from the spirit of my friend forever. I had no choice but to be direct, to be selfish. "Do... Do you have anything to give me, Alabaster?"
I expected utter silence. But the epiphany struck me just as his response hit my ears, piercingly high, like the cackle of a flighty ghost.
And just then, something large and metallic was thrust into my grasp. I shrieked from the sudden, cold sensation, until I was overcome by the weight of the object in my trembling limbs. I knew upon feeling it--upon experiencing every cell in my body leaping in shock--exactly what it was.
"Alabaster! This is..." I bit my tongue. I was so shocked, so confused, so mad with all of the otherworldly mayhem surrounding me, surrounding us, a first and final embrace upon the shattered fringes of reality. "Can I do anything for you? Can I pull you out of the unsung realm, so that you can be free as well?"
The low note that replied was emotionless, without sorrow and without regret. It resonated off the strings of the holy instrument in my grasp, and then I felt his magical grip release, as he finally relinquished the relic to my hold.
And yet, my voice choked as I spoke across the shadows. "Alabaster, she loved you. Up until the very end. I wish... I wish that you could believe that, somehow..."
The sphere surged, as if a huge breath was being sucked towards the opposite end of the universe, melting away all the cold vapors of space, and what swung back was a single sound, as high as any pitch that had ever graced the apex of equine hearing.
"Yes."
And the note shattered the sphere, tore the journal pages to shreds, and knocked me on my back in the middle of the candlelit floor of my cellar, where I found myself clutching a beautiful, golden instrument with all fours while the ashes of my friend's legacy settled like snow around me.
"You see, I am not simply here for myself," I said as I leaned against the shimmering Nightbringer in the center of the wooden meeting room. Octavia, Melodia, Mr. Bard, and Vinyl stared steadily at me as I spoke before them. "It is his legacy that is at stake here, his story that remains unfinished. And, I suspect, the story of countless other ponies who are lost forever to the accursed abyss of the unsung realm beyond the firmaments. If I take advantage of the gifts given to me, of the musical road map at hoof, of the holy instrument I now have in my possession--as he did--then I have the personal responsibility--the undeniable duty of surpassing the Ninth Elegy, and even the Tenth. With your help, I can get halfway to that final, elusive movement. I can come out of this, enlightened and enriched. And maybe, just maybe, that will be the day when I get to speak with all of you again, as dear friends, and I can tell you how the story ends."
The room was dead silent: the signature of a stunned audience. But, for this concert, there was no curtain, and hardly any more time to spare.
So I smiled at them, and I gently implored, "Would you help me, my dear colleagues and geniuses? Would you help me piece together the broken slivers of the Ninth Elegy?"
All they had to do was exchange glances once. And suddenly, they were all up, marching, galloping, fluttering towards me, awaiting their directions, their stations, their chairs--as it were.
"I'm going to need something to write with," Melodia Braids said.
"Reckon I could take a gander at them too," Mr. Bard added.
"Uhhm... eheh..." Vinyl Scratch nervously scratched her neck. "If I'm going to be any sort of frickin' help, I gotta hear how the stuff we have to work with sounds."
"Which means, one of us will have the daunting task of actually holding the Nightbringer," Octavia said, and already her eyes were nervously meeting mine.
I chuckled. Sliding the holy relic across the table, I said to the world renown cellist something I had only fantasized about for years. "Here ya go, 'Tavi. Knock yourself out."
We weren't five ponies. We were suddenly one equine being gifted with five hemispheres of a single brain. We thought alike and we spoke alike, for we carried within us the same dream, the same ambition. The "Song of Gathering" had not failed me. I had been joined with four spirits who understood everything I did, who valued everything I did, who masterfully hid the same degree of genius and love for music behind separate and vibrant personalities. Our one common denominator, the same skin that defined us all, was the insatiable love for music, for making beauty out of noise, for creating a symphony when beforehand there was nothing.
Melodia Braids was the backbone upon which the operation played itself out. She selected key pieces of the Ninth Elegy that had fragmentally crossed my mind. She even divided the written melodies apart further, creating new and far more exciting structures that I would never have even come close to figuring out on my own.
Once each sample was scribbled down, it was up to Octavia to play them. She did so with such elegance and poise that I nearly wept to see it, much less hear it. Even with the instrument of the goddesses in her embrace, she looked like an absolute natural. She strummed the unbreakable strings with utmost authority, covering the walls with a kaleidoscope of golden bands.
Upon hearing each sample coming from Octavia's performance, Vinyl provided a curt yet poignant piece of commentary. She had a masterful ear, and she told Melodia which of Octavia's performances blended in well with the rest of the samples and which didn't. Thanks to the unorthodox deejay's input, the indecipherable song of the Nocturne became something real, something concrete.
And then it was up to Jumpin' Ray Bard to piece it all together. He spoke in a low voice the entire time. His beard hung off his murmuring lips as he tapped into a sphere of meaning lying deep beneath the outer layers of the holy harmony we were making. Like a continent molding together over time, he grabbed the samples that Vinyl Scratch had highlighted and morphed them into one another with simple patience and sincere attention.
And then it was up to me to write the final product that we had dredged from the depths of oblivion. I gave Octavia the honors, and she started playing the Ninth Elegy. Halfway through, though, she stopped and looked at the others. Melodia was the first to acknowledge the glint in her eyes. She turned to me and asked if there was another instrument in my possession.
Thankfully, I also had my lyre with me. Not realizing the dream I was about to live out until it happened, I stood beside Octavia and waited for her signal. The other three watched as the two of us performed the Elegy together. Somewhere in the ocean of gorgeous sound we were both making, with sweeping melodies weaving over and under one another, we finished the movement--the actual movement--in its undeniable entirety, and that was when everything made sense, with a clarity so crisp that I almost wished I could perform "Penumbra's Echo" one last time to kiss Alabaster myself.
"So it's not 'Desolation's Elegy,'" I remarked with a weathered smile as I stared into the golden surface of the Nightbringer. "It's 'Desolation's Duet.'"
"It was never meant for just one pony to play," Melodia remarked. "For the melody to stay intact, it has to have two souls and two instruments."
Mr. Bard nodded. "You reckon that's why it took you so plum long to figure out even half of it?" he asked my way.
"You have no idea how much this helps me," I said softly to the group, stopping to pat their shoulders as I trotted past them. "I swear, as dark as everything gets, it's almost like I can see my way home more and more clearly."
"Heh, a musician with her head clear," Vinyl said with a dizzy grin. "I ought to try that crud someday."
"But, are you certain you must be so optimistic?" Octavia gave me a sad look as she placed the Nightbringer atop the table, letting go of it finally with a twinge of regret. "Your chances of communicating with your friend have been obliterated. When all is said and done, you're now more alone than ever before."
"Only now, you have a duet you have to perform somehow," Melodia said with a long face. "Just who are you going to get to play this along with you?"
"It never made sense to me before today," I murmured. I knelt down and slid my lyre into my saddlebag. In its place, I pulled out a canteen of water and began unscrewing it. "But now..." A shudder escaped my dry throat as I stared off into the corner of the room. "I'm beginning to have a good idea just whom I need to ask."
"It's a cryin' shame that we can't be around to witness it," Mr. Bard said with a calm grin. "That must be a concert worthy of splittin' the heavens apart."
"Heh, you couldn't be any closer to the truth."
"You will tell us about it, someday, though?" Melodia said with a gentle, hopeful smile. "When this whole 'curse' of yours is done with, won't you come and see us, Miss Heartstrings?"
"Hmmm, believe me..." I gazed at the four of them as they looked back at me. I lifted the canteen to my lips and closed my eyes. If my voice had a low tone to it, there was nothing I could do to stop it at the time. "I wouldn't even think of disappointing you."
I sipped a gulp of water. From the far end of the room, the last string of the Nightbringer finally stopped vibrating. My ears twitched. I finished my drink, exhaled, and opened my eyes. Everypony was gone.
Calmly, I screwed the canteen shut, hoisted the saddlebag over my shoulder, and trotted to the far end of the empty table. I lifted the Nightbringer, slid it into a velvet-lined pouch, and tightened the bag so as to hide the relic's golden shimmer. Then, extinguishing the lamp overhead with a touch of magic, I exited the door and abandoned the room to its shadows.
I marched down a series of winding wooden steps, humming a tune to myself: a new and frightfully beautiful tune that I was bound never to forget. When I reached the first floor of the library, Spike turned, saw me, and did a double-take, nearly dropping the huge stack of books he was carrying across the bands of sunlight from the Ponyville afternoon.
"Whoah! Uh... Hello there--uh--Miss! Uhm..." He squinted at me, then up at the stairs, then at me again. "Did... Were you in the upstairs study chamber?"
"Yes. Oh, I'm terribly sorry," I stood before him with a guilty expression. "Is that room reserve only?"
"Well, yes. I mean... I-I guess it's not a hugely big deal, seeing how we're not so busy and all..."
"Well, I apologize. I'll... try to remember the next time I stop on by here."
"Yeah, that's okay. By the way..." He smiled and pointed at me. "Dig the swell hoodie."
"Mmmhmmm. But enough of that." I smiled at him. "Got any books on feline diet? I've got a kitty cat at home with a touch of a stomach ache and I wanna be sure I give him the right stuff to eat."
"Awwww... Yeah, I got just the thing! Hang on!" He waddled off to the opposite end of the room. I shuffled along to make sure he didn't get too far out of reach. "Don't worry, it won't take long! I know you're eager to get home!"
"Hmmm..." I nodded with a gentle grin. "Now, more than ever."
Life's too bleak to be just a solo. Even when I'm entirely alone, I can still hear the band playing on.
Background Pony
XIV - "The Curse of the Ninth"
Special Thanks to Warden, theworstwriter, RazgrizS57, theBrianJ, Props, and Melodia
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XV - Being There | Dear journal,
How does a pony affect the world around her? Does she play an active part in the community? Does she work closely with individuals, or does she work from the shadows, pulling strings from a distance?
What if she can do neither of these things? What if she still wishes to make the world a better place for everypony she knows and loves? What if those whom she cares about could never know a single thing she's done, good or bad, to properly thank her for the motivation to begin with?
I'm rediscovering a truth. In this village that serves as my prison, and on the fringes of a haunted landscape between the firmaments, I'm starting to grasp something that was taught to me long ago, but only now makes sense.
Improving the world is not always about adding things to it, or removing important factors. Construction and destruction are simply means of shifting around the elements that are at our disposal. It's far too easy to forget that we ourselves are factors that mold and shape this universe, and oftentimes the best way to solve a problem--or at least understand it--is by simply being there.
It is suddenly storming. I don't think I will make it home in time to stay dry. I'm running and running as fast as I can. Gaaah! Slippery puddles! Gotta be careful. Mommy's gonna be mad at me for ruining my mane. Of all the worst times to go outside...
There's a flash of lightning. I hear myself shriek and I gallop faster through the rain-slicked streets of Canterlot. I can see my apartment up ahead. Oh sweet Celestia, I am so soaked!
I come to a stop in the stairwell to my home, skidding into the shadows. I bump into a wall and wince. I don't realize how cold I am until right now. I shiver in the crook of the alcove, watching as streams of rain trickle down from the overhang above. The planted trees and flower gardens along the sidewalk are being flooded in the ugly, gray weather.
"Ohhhhhh..." I moan. I look at the candied cone levitating in my telekinesis and pout at the sight of all the ice cream having washed away. "Unnnngh!" I moan again, stamping a green hoof. "And I just gave away my only two bits!"
I turn the cone over and over in my magical grasp. There's another boom of thunder, but it no longer frightens me. With a dull spirit, I lean forward and lightly nibble on the edge of the cone. It's soaked and soggy and thoroughly ruined by rainwater, but a tiny piece beneath it all is still sweet. I suckle on the sensation, hoping it will prepare me for the tongue lashing I'm about to get from Mommy. With a heavy sigh, I trudge up the steps of the stairwell towards my apartment door on the second story.
I hear something. It's different from the rain and my hoofsteps and the thunder. I stop in my tracks, feeling thunder again, this time in my chest, for I realize that the odd sound is coming from directly beneath me. Slowly, I squat down and peer through the gap between the steps, curious as to the source of the labored whimpers and sobs.
It is then that I see her, curled up in the corner, shadowed from the rain and lightning. She's small, about my age, only tinier than me. She doesn't have a cutie mark either. I can't see her face from all of the red and violet tangles of wet mane hair muffling her cries.
For some reason, I'm not afraid. I swallow the cone whole and nearly gag. "Bleachk... Tastes like cardboard!"
I giggle at myself, but the filly doesn't laugh one bit. She's too busy crying. It's like she doesn't even know that I'm here.
"Hello?" I march quietly down the steps and move towards her, smiling. "Did you get caught in the rain too? It's all because of those lazy pegasi! Ugh! I wonder if this happens everyday in Cloudsdale. Heehee! What do you think?"
She says nothing. She shivers, hugging herself and curling even further into the deepest part of the corner. She's wetter than I am. How long has she been out in the rain?
"Hey, are you okay?" I say as I squat down in front of her. "Are you sad because you got your mane all wet? Well, don't worry. I'm sure it's very pretty. You have some nice colors. Me?" I smile and toss my head left and right, allowing the gray and turquoise strands to whip about. "I could blend in at a greenhouse. Heeheehe! That's such a funny word, 'greenhouse!' It's not even green until you walk inside!"
She still doesn't say anything, but I think she's noticing me. She lowers her forelimbs and tilts her face up. I see a pair of eyes. One's violet. The other one's violet and... blue? No, wait... what's wrong with her face?
"What's wrong with your face?" I ask. I then bite my lip, blushing. "Erm, I mean... did you hurt yourself?"
She gulps, trembling as a flash of lightning catches a bruise on her cheek. "I..." She speaks, and it is a very gentle sound, like icicles snapping. "I b-bumped into something trying to get out of the st-storm," she says.
I make a face. "Bumped into something? You're a unicorn, not some bumbling earth pony!"
"I'm... v-very clumsy," she stammers.
I think that's very silly, but it doesn't matter. It's been a lonely weekend, and she looks like she could use a friend. "My name is Lyra," I introduce myself properly, as Mommy always tells me to. "Lyra Heartstrings. What's your name?"
She looks at me, and for a moment her trembles stop. "Uhm..." She bites her lip before ultimately confessing, "Moondancer. My name is Moondancer."
I took several heavy breaths, finding my center, steeling myself for the freezing waves to come. When they finally hit, I was ready for them, but it didn't make the experience any less excruciating. As soon as "Twilight's Requiem" was finished, I tilted my head back and clung tighter to the Nightbringer. When my hooves landed on the rusted platform, it was like touching death itself. A bitter shiver ran up my spine, culminating in my skull as my eyes were forced open in a determined glare.
Before me, the unsung realm billowed with lightning and twirling tendrils of water. Constellations of rusted chains undulated towards and away from my body as the platform I stood on spun perpetually in the chaotic nether. As soon as I breathed, and my vaporous exhales lit the cold hellscape, shackled ponies crawled like spiders out of their metallic holes, shuffling blindly towards me on the lengths of their rattling fetters.
I did not fear them. After all, Alabaster was gone, and they weren't the ones I journeyed here to speak with. Gripping the Nightbringer tighter, I ran a hoof along its onyx strings. A high tone lit the tempestuous air, and a sphere of golden energy encased me. The unsung ponies trotted as far as they could, ultimately colliding with the translucent barrier and banging their tormented limbs against it. I stared past them, shouting into the thunderous, cyclonic heavens.
"Do not hide from me!" I exclaimed, my voice echoing above the anguished moans and ringing of metal. "You are a goddess! I am a but a mortal, equipped with a piece of the same song that bound you here! Show yourself! Show yourself and be my audience!"
Only thunder and turbulence answered me. I felt a gale of wind surging across the platform. Several unsung equines flew off into the nether while the Nightbringer's barrier fluctuated, but I did not budge an inch.
"I am not leaving until I see you!" I bellowed bravely, gnashing my teeth into the frigid winds and moisture. I held tight to the Nightbringer's golden body as if it was a lost child. Its ancient energy and presence served as my anchor while I clung to the bones of forgotten chaos. "Do not... nnngh--" I hissed and summoned an angry vibration from the center of my being. "--do not confuse this with a request! Show yourself! Now!"
Just then, the heavens parted. A surging arch of water dissipated with a blast, like a bomb going off beneath the surface of a gigantic ocean. The moans around me doubled, quadrupled, as the shackled ponies prostrated themselves across the platform and moaned into their twitching limbs. I looked straight up in time to have my vision devoured by runes.
There it was, her home, her floating fortress on high. The spheres within spheres rotated towards me, like a globe of spiraling menace. Runes blurred over one another as the round sarcophagus loomed closer overhead, brimming with violet beams of pulsating energy. I heard deep bass noises, and soon sharp salvos of unbridled sound reverberated off the archaic throne, sending rivulets of energy barreling through the cloud of moisture above the platform.
The squirming ponies all around me mimicked her epic cry with moans. I broke through the chorus with a snarling voice, "No! I will not sing your song!" There were two more claps of thunder, but I sensed it was her this time and not the realm. "I will not become nothing!"
Then she fired the first volley. A bolt of lightning rocketed towards me, sending a wall of sparks surging along the platform. The equine bodies caught flame in a screaming second. When the energy reached me, it splashed off the Nightbringer's shield with the sound of dying bells.
I gritted my teeth and held my ground. "Join me!" I strummed a few strings and strengthened the shield against her furious discharge. "I've learned the ninth elegy! I've memorized 'Desolation's Duet!' You know this!"
The spheres spun faster. Twin bolts of lightning flew my way.
The golden shield pulsed around me, staving off the white hot energy blasts as the platform started to melt from the heat. "Join me in the instrumental!" I shrieked against her fury. The spherical fortress was starting to float away, and my voice cracked in desperation as I implored her, "How many times do I have to tell you?! I don't care about this realm! I don't care about this secret! We can finish the Nocturne together, and I can move on! Release me from this curse, and I won't bother you ever again! Please, help me! I must learn 'Dawn's Advent!'"
The spheres within spheres were indiscernible now; ll I could see was smoke and rain. The alicorn goddess was gone.
"I must learn it..." I whimpered, hanging my head. I was alone, now more than ever. "I m-must get home."
All traces of her were gone. Even the thunder had dwindled. I started to hear the whimpers of the unsung ponies stirring up again. I knew better than to wait for another appearance. With a sigh, I regripped the Nightbringer and telekinetically played a new tune. "Penumbra's Echo" lit the purgatorial realm with its heavenly notes, and soon everything was blurring away as if a cosmic hoof was wiping a chalkboard clean. The moans flew into obscurity, as did the moisture, the lightning, the chains, and the bone-chilling cold. The world settled into a gentle amber kiss, and I was once again sitting on my stool in the bottom of a cellar, surrounded by dirt walls and lanternlight.
The Nightbringer hung in my grasp. I looked at my moist hooves as I cradled it. Not a single limb of mine was shivering; it made very little difference. With a defeated moan, I closed my eyes.
"Ten times, Al," I said, squatting in the center of the cabin as I tossed another wooden log into the fireplace. "I've played the first eight elegies and taken myself to the unsung realm ten times in a single week, and still I can't get her to show herself." I threw in another log, sighing as it suffered a crackling fate amidst the burning embers. In a lethargic slump, I stretched my wet limbs towards the center of the tranquil furnace and warmed myself. "Just what am I doing wrong? I mean, I have the Nightbringer; I have a piece of the same song that created her. Why can't she recognize that? Why can't she face me like a responsible goddess so I can simply end this?"
Behind me was the sweetest sound in the whole world. A tiny orange thing was purring, his rumbling sounds punctuated by the crackling of dry food between his jaws as he patiently ate from his freshly filled bowl beside my cot. Tilting his head up, Al glanced at me with calm, amber eyeslits before returning to his food. The tabby's ears pricked at attention, as if knowing I was only going to ramble on. Smart cat.
"Maybe that's just it. Maybe she's just mad at me for having received the Nightbringer from [color=cornflowerblue=]Alabaster right under her nose." I sighed as I gazed up at the cool October evening from beyond the windows of my home. "Maybe she's always been mad at the Cosmic Matriarch, and now that I've gotten a piece of her voice, she won't even give me the light of day..." I chuckled bitterly. "Or of chaotic day. Seriously, that stupid place could use a flashlight." I gave Al a goofy smile.
The cat merely stared back at me, his whiskers twitching.
I winced. "Yeah, okay, that was lame." With a groan, I stood up and marched my rain-slicked self towards the far side of the cabin. "Still, ten times in a row? And it's not like she's completely ignoring me. I mean, she appears in her huge spheroid throne every time to try and scare me away. Just what is that thing, anyways? Was it a means of transportation for alicorns upon the dawn of creation? That would make some sense, right? I mean, she had to have been around as long as the Cosmic Matriarch was here on this planet, right? She couldn't be any older than Celestia, at the very least..."
I levitated a towel from a shelf and dried my mane vigorously with it. As I dragged the rag to my wet shoulders and spine, repeating the motions I had gotten far too used to over the past week, I paused. I dropped the towel around me and looked Al's way through a disheveled mane.
"What if... What if that structure is part of the unsung prison?" I gulped and gazed out the window yet again. "And maybe... maybe the sphere does the same thing to her as the curse does to me. Maybe she's powerless to remember anything but her song." A shudder ran through me upon contemplating that. "Blessed Luna, do I even have a chance of reaching her?"
Al's answer was to hop onto the cot, curl in the dead center, and proceed to lick himself.
I exhaled. I dried the rest of my body before tossing the towel into a nearby hamper. "Well," I murmured as I trotted across the light of the fireplace, "perhaps what I need to do is more studying. I sure have enough books checked out from Twilight's. Heh..." I chuckled as I looked upon a huge stack of research manuscripts lying beside Al's food dish. "At this rate, she and Spike will think that Diamond Dogs raided their archives overnight. I should return these soon. But still..."
I pivoted and stared at the source of an immense golden glow in my cabin. The Nightbringer stood on an end table, blessing this mortal equine with its timeless presence. It was a little bit alarming how easily I had gotten used to seeing the holy artifact with my naked eyes.
"There are bigger things at stake here," I murmured. A frail smile crossed my lips. "What do you think it'll be like, Al, the day I finally get her to play the duet with me? The day I finally end this curse?" I turned and gazed softly towards him. "Would Celestia and Luna be grateful to have me return their holy instrument to them?"
Al looked towards me, blinking sleepily. His ears twitched, and he shook his head into one of those prolonged, devilishly freakish yawns that only felines can pull off.
"Hmmm..." I gazed at the floor as I trotted towards the bed. "Curious thought..." I murmured aloud as I levitated a brush and comb over to myself along with one of the library books. "The curse couldn't possibly be affecting her. I mean, she reached out to her sister when Luna osmotically learned about the 'Nocturne of Firmaments' and transformed into Nightmare Moon those many years ago."
I squatted in the crater of blankets beside Al while brushing the tangles out of my mane. I flipped the page open and looked over several historical documents detailing Canterlot music tradition.
"Also, there is her beloved. For Alabaster to have learned about the topic, she had to have been missing him, and thus had to be retaining memory of her beloved's banishment." I frowned slightly as I levitated another book towards me, then another. My amber eyes danced across the many pages in search of an answer. "So I can't really imagine that she is forgetting me each time I visit the realm, but instead she's just flat-out ignoring me. But why? Does she think it's her job? Does she just want to break contact with any pony who's not willing to become her shackled slave?"
I felt a soft, furry body of warmth. I glanced down to see Al curling up against me, raising two playful paws to bat at the many floating objects.
Blankly, I stared at the books, books, books, brush, comb, and other objects crowded around my side of the room. With a nervous chuckle, I lowered everything in place except for one book which I propped up beside myself and Al.
"Thanks. I know, I know. I'm starting to overdo it again." A sigh escaped my lips as I looked up from the pages and once again graced the Nightbringer's golden brilliance. "Seems like I've gotten stronger overnight. I think whatever it was that kept Alabaster alive for so long is happening to me. I mean, I don't know about having long life, but I certainly feel stronger." I gulped nervously. "And... And I know I wouldn't have lasted a second against her if I didn't have a piece of the holy song with me in the unsung realm." I squatted down and nuzzled Al closely. "But still," I murmured. "I'd gladly give up all the strength in the world if it just means learning 'Dawn's Advent,' if it just means finishing this blasted symphony."
The cabin was silent, save for the crackling of embers in the fireplace. I felt warm, toasty, safe, anything but free.
"The powers of a goddess at my hooves..." I muttered, "And I can't get a single alicorn to listen to me." I sighed and buried my face into the blankets. "Mmmmff... How will I ever receive an audience?"
Al mewed and rubbed up against me, purring.
Limply, I smiled and nudged him back. "I know, I know. But of course, I already got you, ya fuzzhead!" I giggled lightly and relished in his affectionate purr. "I promise, if there's an encore, you're the first one who's gonna hear it." I stared calmly into the haze at the far ends of the room. The sunset fell outside the windows, and the hush of evening lulled me into a reflective trance.
"Could you repeat that, dearie?" Mommy asks with a gentle look of concern across her face. I don't know what her problem is. We're both absolutely fine.
"Mmm..." My new friend treads at the floor with her hooves. She avoids my parents' gaze. I don't understand why she's so shy. She's no more wet than I am. The storm is still brewing outside our Canterlot apartmet. Maybe she's frightened by it? I don't know. I step through the puddle and stand in front of her, smiling.
"She bumped into something along the way here!" I say with a proud smile. "She might be clumsy, but I think she's okay! Isn't her mane pretty? I mean, I know it's tangled and all now, but just wait until it gets dry! She was telling me earlier how much she loves going to the salon with her mom! Can I go with them sometime? It's just a block away! They don't live that far away from us! Heehee! We've been neighbors and we didn't even know it!"
"Is that so?" Daddy remarks. He glances across the way at Mommy.
Mommy is already stepping forward. She gently pats my shoulder and makes me step aside as she kneels down in front of my brand new friend. "Moondancer, was it...?"
She slowly nods her head. Why's she so shy in front of them? She was chatting like crazy a second ago. She likes banana splits and practical jokes and sunny days at the beach and--
"Let me see your face, darling," Mommy says softly. She isn't angry at us. That's a relief. Why's she so curious about Moondancer's face? "You don't have to be afraid, dear. I won't hurt you, I promise."
Moondancer takes a deep breath. Her face is wet, even though we marched in from the rain minutes ago. She tilts her horn up and allows Mommy to see her twitching eye.
"My, that's quite a nasty bruise you got there," Mommy coos. She presses the side of Moondancer's face. The blueness on my new friend's skin is slightly larger than Mommy's hoof. "Mmmm... Sweet Celestia..." She turns and gives Daddy a pointed look.
He's nodding for some reason. Grabbing a coat and an umbrella, he marches towards the door, passing just beside Mommy to whisper something into her ear. She nods and murmurs something back. I eventually hear: "Don't go alone. Get Dusk to go with you. He should be home; I saw his and Stellar's son, Shining Armor, playing in the courtyard this morning."
"Yes, I believe Dusk has dealt with Nightrot before. Don't worry, honey. We'll have the Guard with us this time," Daddy says quietly. He casts me and Moondancer a brief smile. For some reason, it makes me feel nervous. He opens the door, shoots the umbrella open, and is gone in the storm. Before I can gaze out the window after him, Mommy is standing before us, and she also has that strange-looking smile.
"Moondancer, we're so glad to have you here to visit. It's a nasty storm outside, so we're going to let you stay here for the night."
"I, uhm... I..." Moondancer's eyes flicker with bright violet, then blink. She fidgets, backtrotting and lowering her head as if part of the ceiling might fall on her. "I... I don't think my dad will like that..."
"Shhh..." Mommy talks to Moondancer in a gentle voice. It's like how she used to talk to me when I was just a little, itty bitty foal. "We won't tell your dad unless you want us to." Her yes are trained on Moondancer.
Just like that Moondancer responds, "Uhm... You... You can tell my Mom."
Mommy slowly nods. "Your mother, hmm?"
"Mmmmhmmm." Moondancer nods back, and she's trembling again, only this time her eyes are bright and happy. "Could... Could she stay the night too?"
Mommy smiles gently. "Don't you worry. Your mother can come here and stay as long as she likes as well..."
"Woohoo!" I jump, gasping for joy. "Slumber party! I've always wanted to have one! Oooh! Oooh! I can show you my room! Daddy bought me all of these amazing musical instruments! I'm gonna be in a band someday!"
"Lyra, dear," Mommy chides gently. "Moondancer needs some time to rest and relax. Calm down some--"
"I... I uhm..." Moondancer bites her lip and squirms where she stands. "I don't mind. I like Lyra. She's fun."
"See, Mommy?" I hop in place, beaming. "She likes me! She's my new best friend and we're gonna do fun stuff together!"
Mommy takes a breath before saying with a warm smile, "Okay. Go on and show her your room. Just don't get too rowdy. It'll be bedtime soon."
"Okay! We won't be too loud, I promise!" I tug Moondancer by the hoof and all but drag her into my room. "Come on! Come on! You gotta see all the cool things I got for Hearth's Warming!"
Moondancer giggles. She makes such sweet sounds. I bet she's also going to have a talent in music. How lucky could we be? Maybe we'll both get matching cutie marks. I hear of ponies who get their cutie marks at the same time. Maybe she can join my band when I grow up?
"Lookie! Lookie!" I bounce around my room, showing off my xylophone, my flute, my drumset. "Isn't it neato? I can't figure out which I'm best at. I'm guessing it's the stuff that my parents yell at me less for. Heehee!"
"Your... Your parents yell at you?" Moondancer murmurs.
"Pffttt! Only when I make too much noise. But, y'know, they got me these! So they must have wanted me to make some noise! Heehee!"
"Heh... Heeheehee..." Moondancer laughs until she's red in the face. "I guess I never thought of that..."
"I bet you'd be good at the trumpet!"
"Oh, I'm good at the trumpet alright," she says as an evil smirk crosses her lips, "after I've eaten a whole bunch of Mexicanter fried beans!"
"Ah!" I shriek, bouncing away from her and hiding behind a stuffed animal. "Moondancer! How unladylike!"
She giggles and bounces toward me, waving her horn around. "En guarde, magical musician!"
"Oh no!" I feign horror and trot around the far lengths of my bedroom. "She's an evil unicorn witch come to steal my super special talent! Help! Help!"
"Hehehe!" She giggles and chases me for a while.
I'm still running in circles until I realize that I'm the only filly giggling. I stop and turn, panting. I see her staring at a wall full of pictures taken of me and my mom and dad. I trot over, smiling. "Moondancer? What is it?"
Her smile is gone. Well, no, it's there, but it's a different kind of smile. She sniffles, but it doesn't look like she's crying. "Your... your house..."
"What about it?"
She gulps. "It's really warm," she says.
I blink at her. A rumble of thunder echoes outside the window, and I shudder under the refracted light of rain water. "Well... Well of course it is, Moondancer!" I grin nervously. "Why wouldn't it be?"
She stares into the shadows briefly, her eyes fluttering. Suddenly, just as quickly as she had stopped, she turns and charges at me, horn-first while grinning. "En guarde! Arrrrgh!"
"Ack! Heehee! No fair! You cheated! Cheating cheater!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not--"
My eyes fluttered open. I shot up with a sharp breath, staring at the lonely lengths of my cabin. The fireplace had long died out. Al was lying asleep, curled up at my side, his soft orange body rising and falling. The world was black outside, but the faintest hint of dawn was creeping over the distant, forested horizon.
It wasn't until the waves of cold assaulted my figure that I was finally brought back to the cursed present. I rubbed my forelimbs over each other, my teeth chattering. I realized it was a long time since warmth was anything but an illusion in my life. Lethargically, I gazed down at a book lying open before me, speaking endless drivel of forgotten Canterlot songs into the dim air of the cabin.
"Nnngh... The first day I'm no longer cursed, I'm taking the longest nap in recorded history." I muttered as I daintily climbed over Al and crawled out of bed. "Because it will be recorded, dang it!"
With a brief hiss, I slithered into my stone-gray hoodie. Feeling comfortable enough, I reached for my lyre, slid it into my saddlebag, and strapped the thing to my shoulders. I made for the exit, but not without pausing. With a groan, I turned around and marched back towards the golden body of the Nightbringer.
"If I have the literal song of the Cosmic Matriarch in my possession, I might as well exercise her responsibilities."
Al gave no response to my muttering voice. He slept soundly as I went through my new habitual task. I wrapped the priceless instrument in a pouch of regal velvet that I had Rarity produce for me at the cost of an entire bag of bits. Then, after rolling up a round carpet, I telekinetically pulled at a latch, opening the floor of the cabin to a rectangular enclosure I had carved out of the floor with magic the week before. Gently, I lowered the shrouded Nightbringer within, closed the trap door, and rolled the rug back over it.
Finally, I was ready. Marching towards the cabin exit, I shifted the weight of my lyre across my back and pointed at Al. "Don't you get any thieving ideas, ya little scamp."
The tabby yawned, rolled over, and purred towards the ceiling. With a creak of the front door I was gone, marching out to greet the coming dawn with my thoughts.
The brightness of morning accompanied my labored thoughts. Autumn was in full effect, and I could feel it in my bones. The arrival of October chased the residual heat of summer away. The dew on the blades of grass bending beneath me was positively freezing. In truth, I wasn't looking to feel comfortable. I needed to exercise the restless energy of my mind, and every jolt and chill of the autumnal morning assisted me in such a venture.
The nature of my curse would make me a regular insomniac, somepony would think. The fact of the matter is I hadn't had trouble sleeping until just recently. Having unlocked the structure of the ninth elegy, I had every reason to feel proud of myself: as if I had made some priceless progress in my pursuit of freedom. Things couldn't be further from the truth.
I was at an impasse. The ninth elegy turned out to be a duet, and there was only one soul in the history of everything that was eligible to carry me musically into the final, redeeming instrumental of the Nocturne.
How did I come to realize this? Twilight Sparkle knew nothing of "Dawn's Advent." None of Alabaster's journals described the true nature of the song. Nowhere in the entire archives of Ponyville library did I find a single listing of that title. As an experiment, I had several ponies perform "Desolation's Duet" along with me, including Applejack with her fiddle and Pinkie Pie with her accordion. Nothing worked to get me any closer to my goal, and I was starting to understand why.
The purpose of the "Nocturne of the Firmaments" was to seal an alicorn goddess away from the rest of reality. Who but the alicorn herself could possibly have been a better candidate to usher such a lonely prisoner through her unsung realm and back into the dimension of the living?
I couldn't stop thinking about the spherical structure within which her spirit was housed. When I first entered the realm--when it was up to Alabaster to save my amnesiac self--she had approached me from up high, summoning her bolts of diabolical energy, as if I was any other lost soul flung into her domain. On the second visit, when I played the Threnody with a protection shield and entered her realm lucidly, she had approached me in person. I must have been an anomaly to her, having visited for a second time to grace her plane. Perhaps that was the first time she saw me as a threat, and for that reason she had to tell me to my face that I needed to sing her song and become nothing.
But now that I've returned, now that I have the Nightbringer, now that I am strong and virtually untouchable in her domain, she keeps herself at a distance. She purposefully avoids coming into close contact with me. Do I frighten her? Does the fact that I know her secret and still walk this globe give her a sense of unease? What could one unicorn mortal have in her possession that could intimidate an undead alicorn lost unto time? Is it all the Nightbringer? Or is it something else?
This is why I can't sleep. I don't know what's worse, knowing that I was helpless from the beginning, or knowing that I've made so much progress only to become twice as helpless as when I first started. There was a time when playing music relaxed me. I've been trying to remember that, to incorporate that back into my life. These days, all I find myself doing is playing the one tune that has brought me more joy and ease than any other tune in the grand history of my existence.
"Penumbra's Echo:" I played it over and over again from where I sat on the edge of a meadow beside a long brown path. I was close to the west edge of Ponyville. The sun was just then coming over the horizon. The birds sounded across the treetops, and their chirps got lost in the gentle melodies wafting off from my vibrating strings.
I tried to imagine, if even for a brief moment, that I was just like any other pony living in that town. It must be a delightful feeling: to not be a ghost, to not have to worry about disappearing, to know that there're voices left on this earth that will say your name out loud. I don't even want to be popular. I don't even care if I have no more than five, four, or even two friends. I want my name to be spoken, whispered, laughed, sung, and even grumbled.
With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and played the song at a slower tempo, allowing my heart to beat in between each plucked string, as if I was playing the fated duet with myself.
It seems a bitter twist of irony that out of all the instrumentals of the Nocturne, the most important tune is the only one I absolutely can't perform alone. After all, the tough part isn't performing the song. The challenge is to get her to agree to doing it with me. But how does one appeal to a timeless spirit imprisoned by oblivion? Who am I? I'm no goddess. I'm no--
"Oh, my! A lyre! That's such beautiful music! Are... Are you from Canterlot?"
I fluttered my eyes open. Before me stood several bright blurs in the dawn light: a ruby coat, a fuchsia mane, and eyes of forest emerald. A smile broke out that could illuminate the dew-laden world twice over.
"Oh please, oh please tell me you're from Canterlot!"
"I... might be," I stammered under a breath of confusion. Clearing my throat, I nevertheless sat up from under the tree and smiled her way. "Miss Cheerilee, I presume."
"Oh! I knew it!" She hopped in place, nearly dropping a saddlebag full of graded papers. "You came after all! And they claimed that you were too sick to show up this week! Oh, I was so afraid of letting the students down!"
"I... uh..." I chuckled nervously and stood up, shaking the morning moisture off my mane. "I-I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage." Gulping, I leaned forward with a suspicious breath. "Were... Were you expecting me?"
Before she answered, I already knew that it was too good to be true. "You... You are from Canterlot, aren't you?" Cheerilee was nervously biting her lip. It was devastating to see the enthusiasm draining from her face. I've enjoyed several conversations with Ponyville's resident schoolteacher, and it's hard to come across another pony in all of Equestria who contains that much joy and yet so little annoyance. "Oh dear, I hope I haven't jumped to conclusions. You see, I've been in constant communication with Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and Professor Blue Noise of the Music Department was hoping to assist me in setting up a music program for the little foals of Ponyville."
"Hey! Professor Blue Noise!" I grinned wide. "I know him! He taught me in my senior year--uhm..." I winced, already realizing that my excitement had forced me to say too much. "What I mean is--"
"So you're the one he sent?" Cheerilee beamed, nearly leaning off her hooves. "He had promised that one of his best pupils would arrive to give my students a dissertation on musical history, but the last letter said that you had fallen terribly ill and had to make a stop at Trottingham to recuperate. I figured that I would have to change this week's study topic back to basic geometry yet again."
"Heh. Yes, well, math is math, I guess." I gulped, feeling my insides curling up, and not in the good way. It isn't often that I fall into these bizarre niches of happenstance. But when they do happen, they're hardly anything but awkward occasions. "Miss Cheerilee, I do happen to have quite a bit of musical expertise. But I fear that there's been a horrible misunderstanding..."
"Oh?" She tilted her head aside, blinking innocently. I was intrigued at how naïve an instructor of foals could be. I suppose the world can never be too innocent. My heart went out to her, especially as she murmured, "You're... not the pupil of Professor Blue Noise after all? The one sent from Canterlot?"
"Well, I am from Canterlot, but..." I winced at myself. What was I doing? I shouldn't have even been tempting the notion. Somewhere, someplace, some poor sap from my home town was coughing his or her lungs out and the last thing I should have been doing was contemplating taking the pony's place. Just because I was a ghost didn't give me license to play with false identity, but...
What else would I have been doing that morning? Sitting down? Moping? Philosophizing? True, if I tried to pass myself off as a history teacher to a bunch of Ponyvillean children, it would hardly have made a difference. They'd completely forget everything I told them by the time they got home. I would have essentially robbed Cheerilee and her classroom of an entire day's worth of studying far more important and permanent things. So what if I could have possibly informed, enlightened, and even brought a few smiles to a bunch of foals for one day and one day only?
But, then I realized: the moment I skip out on any opportunity--no matter how insignificant--to bring happiness to other ponies' lives, then that means I would have given in to my curse. I would have let the likes of her win. And I don't care how many bleak circumstances I have to deal with in my pariah state; I'm not here in this town to watch the world crumble into misery. If I have a chance to spread sunshine, for even just a blink, then--darn it--sign me up.
However impulsive the notion, it made me smile, and I found myself standing up to look at Cheerilee eye to eye. "You know what? There's no point in hiding it anymore. Professor Blue Noise promised to have those kids learn a thing or two, and who am I to let a silly case of the sniffles stop me from making that dream come true?"
"You... You mean you're up for it?" Cheerilee held back her smile as her cheeks burned upon the precipice of ecstasy. "You're not too ill after all?"
I took a deep breath, sucking the autumnal crispness of early October in through my nostrils and exhaling it out through a wide grin. "That's the thing about this town. Just one morning walk can clear the body and the spirits. You know what I mean?"
"Heeheehee! And how!" If Cheerilee suddenly sprouted pegasus wings and floated around me, I wouldn't have been too shocked. "Oh, the kids are absolutely going to love this! I've been prepping them on basic Equestrian music theory for a week! Any knowledge you have to share concerning the pre-modern royal ballads would be absolutely stellar!"
"Oh, well..." I ran a hoof through my mane before trotting down the morning-lit path alongside her. "I might know one or two... heh..."
"And the charade didn't stop until I finally got a chance to pull her foster mother, Milky White aside and tell her about the whole issue," Cheerilee said as we strode up to the schoolyard in the early morning light. The sounds of giggling children and pattering hooves lit our ears. "The three of us had a sit-down together, and the little darling got several things off her chest. Ever since then, Scootaloo's been a great deal more well-adjusted, and she's started forming close friendships with the other children. Why, she and two other foals are practically inseparable now!"
"Wow..." I shook my head in awe and smiled her way. "I can't imagine how stressful that must have been. You mean you actually let the little pegasus convince the entire class that you were her older sister?"
"Mmmhmmm." Cheerilee nodded with a smile. "For a little while, at least. I later explained it off as Scootaloo practicing for a local play and needing my help for acting lessons. Our 'sisters' charade was a fabrication of a fabrication, if you think about it. Heehee! The little dear is dead-set on performing on stage when she grows up, after all. In the end, I was able to give the filly a chance to exercise her emotional needs without suffering the ridicule of peers who wouldn't understand what she'd been through before moving here."
"Whew! It's a good thing I'm just a guest speaker for the day," I said with a nervous chuckle. "I guess I never really imagined what teachers like you must deal with on a regular basis. But, seriously, that was a genius move on your part. Ever thought of getting into psychiatry on the side, Miss Cheerilee?"
"Oh ho ho ho, Miss Heartstrings," Cheerilee uttered with a giggle and a wave of her hoof. "Please, you flatter me! Besides, I have too much of an affinity for gardening as it is."
"Why does that not surprise me?" I replied with a smirk as we came upon the yard. "Whoah, hello there..." I froze in place, blinking at a big red sight.
A familiar stallion paced to a stop in the middle of the schoolyard, having given several giggling fillies and colts a bareback ride. Upon seeing Cheerilee, Big Mac smiled and lowered to his knees, letting the various foals descend onto the lawn, upon which they proceeded to scamper up to Miss Cheerilee and dance in gay little circles around the teacher.
"Good morning, Miss Cheerilee!"
"Big Mac gave us a ride around the school building!"
"I wanna be as big and strong as him someday!"
"Oh yeah? My big brother is even larger than he is!"
"Hey! T'ain't true! Big Mac is the biggest and strongest there ever was!"
"Nuh uh, Apple Bloom!"
"Yuh huh!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Yuh huh!"
"Children! Children!" Cheerilee knelt down and parted Apple Bloom from a colt giving her a raspberry. "It's true. Big Macintosh is strong and dependable, but you think he got that way by spending all his time bickering and fighting with other ponies his age? Not at all! He spent his foalhood exercising and working hard to get to where he is now! Now why don't you take his example and be nice to one another, because if you waste all your time with frowning, how will you be there for little foals when you're as old as he is?"
"You're riiiiiight, Miss Cheerilee. Apple Bloom, I'm sorry for being mean."
"Heehee! It's okay, Spring Gaze! I ain't mad at ya! You're not mad at him either, are ya, Big Mac?"
"Nope," the stallion said with a definitive shake of his head.
The children giggled, then gazed up at me. Several of them gasped, and soon I found a veritable train swarming around me as if I was a Hearth's Warming tree.
"Oooh! Oooh! A musician!"
"Look at her cutie mark!"
"Are you from Canterlot?"
"Are we gonna learn about old songs and stuff?"
"Do all unicorns from the Princess' city wear clothes like that?"
"I..." I fiddled where I stood, biting my lip. "I seem to have gotten celebrity status already... eheheh..."
"Students, this is Miss Heartstrings," Cheerilee said to the fillies and colts gathered around us. Half of the schoolyard's crowd had formed a thick cluster of eager, bright, blinking faces. It was like a living lake of adorableness. I tried not to develop cavities from the sheer sight of it. "And you're right! She's here to teach us a thing or two about the history of Equestrian musical development! I'd say we're in for a treat, so say hello to our special guest!"
"Hello. Miss. Heartstriiiiiings." The chant was positively electric.
"Heh..." I waved back, feeling butterflies in my stomach. The cold tendrils of my curse were continents away all of the sudden. "Back at ya, kiddies."
In the meantime, Cheerilee was turning to smile at Big Mac. "Thank you so much, Macintosh, for playing chaperone for me this morning. I had to stop by the post office along the way here; you have no idea how much of a blessing this was to me. By the way, did you restock the firewood in the back?"
"Eeyup."
"Wonderful!" Cheerilee beamed, her cheeks red again; I wondered if she had a condition. "That will come in handy during the winter to come. I can't thank your family enough."
"Yeah, I've... uh... only been in this town for a little while," I said with a smirk aimed Big Mac's way. "And I already get the feeling that Ponyville wouldn't survive long without the shoulders of the Apple family to lean on."
"Eeee-nope," Big Mac said with a teeth-glinting smirk.
Cheerilee giggled again. "Well, you can go on your merry way, Macintosh. I know you have a great deal of farmwork to do. Alright, students! Just ten minutes until class begins! Then Miss Heartstrings and I will be--" She turned and gazed across the schoolyard, and instantly her smile waned. "Oh, heaven help me, not again," she muttered with a rolling of her eyes.
I blinked curiously at that. But then I heard a squealing voice, followed by two grunting laughs. Turning, I looked over at the swing set to see two young unicorns on either side of a familiar, gray pegasus. The petite, winged colt was bouncing up and down, trying desperately to grab a ball being bounced out of his reach between the two bullies.
"I mean it, guys! Give it back!" Rumble squeaked. He seemed no bigger than the day I saved him and Morning Dew from an imploding hotel building. His cheeks were red as he huffed, puffed, and blurred his wings in desperation for the lift that could help him grab the ball from his peers. "This isn't funny!"
"I dunno, I can't stop chuckling!" A stout young unicorn rasped. His rough turquoise coat clashed with a scraggy orange mane and thick brown eyebrows as he headbutted the ball over Rumble's head and towards his lanky partner. "Heheheh--What about you, Snails?"
"Yeah, Snips! Hahahah!" A ridiculously tall colt with a tan coat and lime green mane hair guffawed as he balanced the ball on several limbs and passed it back to Snips. "This is funnier than that one time you called Rumble a 'penguin' and he cried 'cuz penguins smell!"
"Yeah, you remember that time, Rumble?" Snips snickered and spun the ball on the tip of his horn. "Which was funnier? That or this? Heheheh!"
"I don't care!" Rumble stomped his hooves and pouted. "Just give it back!"
"Why do you want this stupid ball so much anyway?" Snips grunted.
"It's not my ball! Now give it back!" Rumble said, shifting nervously. It was then that I spotted a silky white filly crouched shyly behind a sandbox a few trots away.
"Uhm... It's okay, Rumble," Sweetie Belle said, her cheeks red and her eyes moist. "I don't want it back that badly..."
"But it isn't fair!" Rumble growled. "They should give it back!"
"Awwww! What a knight in shining armor!" Snips hissed forth a raspy laugh as he dribbled the ball between his forelimbs. "Is this your wedding gift for when you marry her? Huh? Heheh..."
"Uhhhhhh..." Rumble backtrotted, red as a beet. He looked over his shoulder; Sweetie Belle was hiding her identically inflamed face. "Uhhhhh... uhhhh..."
"Heheheh..." Snails rolled his eyes, grinning loosely. "It's funny because they both look like marshmallows!"
"We do not!" Rumble and Sweetie Belle simultaneously chirped.
"Pfft! If you want to give her the ball so badly, here!" Snips gave the thing a vicious buck. "Catch!"
The sphere bounced roughly off Rumble's pale forehead. "Ow!"
"Hahahahah!" Snips and Snails leaned into each other, cackling wildly. Just then, the shadow of Cheerilee hovered over them. They looked up and instantly paled. "Aw snap."
"Snips! Snails!" Cheerilee's eyes were hard enough to cut glass, and they burrowed their way into the colts' guilty brows. "When will you leave Rumble alone already?! What has he ever done to you?"
"Hey! We were j-just playing a little game!" Snips said. After a beat, he bumped Snails in the side.
"Ohhhh! Uhhhhh..." Snails' mouth hung open. Before he could drool, he instead managed, "Yeah! We were playing 'bounce the ball!'"
Snips looked Rumble's way. It came across as a vicious glare. "Isn't that right, Rumble?"
Rumble shyly dug his hoof into the ground while Sweetie Belle murmured something under her breath.
"Don't try fooling me!" Cheerilee exclaimed, frowning even harder than before. "This is the second time this week I've had to stop you from giving other classmates a hard time! Did you forget that talk that we had last month? Do I need to speak to your parents again?"
"Our parents?" Snails blinked, as if the concept was new to him.
Snips, however, was suddenly lucid. All traces of a mischievous frown left his body as he cleared his throat and shook his head. "No, Miss Cheerilee, ma'am. You don't have to talk to our parents or nothin'."
"Uhhhh... Yeah!" Snails nodded, osmotically following his companion's example. "We'll be good!"
"You'd better! We have a guest speaker from Canterlot here today, and I expect you two to be on your best behavior. Now sit on the bench here for the rest of pre-school recess! I don't want to see you on the playground for the rest of the morning!"
"Awwwwwwwwww..."
"Don't give me that tone! You're lucky I don't have you cleaning the blackboard again! One of these days, I'm finally going to teach you two some manners!" She turned and trotted past me, heading straight for the school building. "I do love my job," she said in a low voice, winking with a subtle smile. "But it helps to be firm every once and a while."
"Heh, yeah..." I nodded and gave the two sullen colts a lasting glance before staying in close proximity to the schoolteacher. "I'd hate to see 'soft.'"
"And that's how the Great General Chucolt single-hoofedly defended the entire city of Old Trottingham from an army of one hundred thousand Lunar Imperialists without brandishing a single weapon!" I said with a smile at the culmination of the tale. "Unless--heheh--you count a lute as a weapon."
The entire classroom full of bright eyes cooed in wonderment.
"Any questions?" I asked from where I squatted on a stool with my lyre.
A filly raised her forelimb.
"Yes. You with the glasses."
"That wath tho thpetacular! Did the General of the Tholar Monarchy actually thcare off an entire army with a thingle thong?"
I did my best to not collapse into giggles. Darn, if she wasn't the cutest thing alive. "Ahem. Yes, Miss..." I glanced Cheerilee's way.
Cheerilee winked from her desk and mouthed a name.
"Miss Twist!" I said, smiling in the filly's direction. "You see, Chucolt was a famous strategist, a master of his craft. The leader of the Lunar army had battled with him on several occasions. So, when Chucolt found himself and his meager allotment of forces surrounded in Trottingham, he resorted to using history's most infamous bluff to save the entire population he was sent there to defend. In a way, you can say it was all a matter of his reputation..." I managed a wink. "But I still chalk it up to the power of music."
"Oooh! Ooooh!" Sweetie Belle raised her hoof wildly.
"Yes, you, with the lavender mane."
Sweetie Belle blushed and squirmed her front hooves together as she shyly asked, "Wh-what song did Chucolt play when the enemy came into Trottingham?"
"Why, funny you should ask that. He chose a folk tune from the sarosians who used to live in the Shadow District of Canterlot."
"Sarosians?" Sweetie Belle made a face.
Cheerilee spoke up, "They are a race of nocturnal ponies, predominantly pegasi, with leather wings and powers of echolocation: meaning they can hear things very easily in the dark so that they can fly around at night. They served as Princess Luna's royal night guard before the Civil War with Nightmare Moon began a thousand years ago."
"Plus," I said with a warm chuckle. "They have the most adorable ears."
The classroom laughed lightly, all except for a pair of groaning colts.
"Could you play us the tune?" Silver Spoon asked. "Erm... if that's okay, Miss Heartstrings."
"Why, I would love to!" I said with a smile and levitated the lyre in front of me. "Forgive me if I'm a little bit rusty..."
The children sat on the edges of their seats. I closed my eyes, summoned the tune from memory, and played it as gently and calmly as I could. Ancient sarosian tunes, as it so happens, are typically fast in tempo and a little grating to most ponies' ears. After all, it was made to be listened to by the likes of Alabaster and his fellow kin. Still, I think I managed to produce a tranquil interpretation of it. I marveled at how easy it was for me to translate the tune from the deep past of university study.
I don't know if it was the act of performing the Requiem so much each passing day, or if my constant use of the Nightbringer had heightened my senses, but I felt like my musical skill had increased exponentially in the span of a few weeks. I was no longer just any amateur musician; I was a unicorn blessed with the physically manifested song of the Cosmic Matriarch, and there I was sharing such enhanced gifts with a bunch of children. It felt... right, in a way, as if I was doing something I was meant to do.
When the tune ended, half of the group looked hypnotized, and the other half looked ready to bounce out of their desks. Like good little foals, though, they waited for Cheerilee's own outburst:
"Now wasn't that spectacular? Let's give Miss Heartstrings a round of applause for such a wonderful rendition of an old classic!"
The children cheered and clapped their hooves together. I smiled warmly, hugging the lyre to my chest. Perhaps all of this adulation and learning would only last for a few minutes, or a few hours at most, but somehow it didn't matter. I was feeling a piece of what I was struggling for: recognition. One of these days--I promised myself--I would volunteer to teach ponies like these and they would remember me forever, so that these smiles could resurface on their faces. One of these days...
Around that time, an excited Rumble spoke up, "That was very pretty! I liked it!"
"Pfft!" The voice of Snips grunted. "Of course you'd like it, ya fruitcake."
"Hahahah!" Snails slapped his desktop and chuckled. "He called him a cake of fruit!"
"Why don't you serenade Sweetie Belle with that, casaneighva! Hahah!"
Rumbles bit his lip, his ears drooping above a shy face. A unicorn filly two chairs from him was hiding her blushing cheeks.
"Snips! Snails!" Cheerilee stood up, practically growling.
"Wh-what?! Snails and I like fruit! Isn't that right, Snails--?"
"Don't play dumb! That was very rude, to both Miss Heartstrings and Rumble!" Cheerilee pointed. "Snips, I expect an apology! This instant!"
"Hrmmf..." Snips folded his forelimbs, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "Iapologizeforsayingthat," he muttered.
Cheerilee glared. "That didn't sound very sincere."
"What? I said I was sorry!"
"Uh huh..." Cheerilee motioned towards the far end of the classroom. "Over in the corner, Snips. Right now."
"Awww... I hate the corner!"
"You heard me, young stallion! You've been given enough warnings today!"
"Ughhh..." He lurched limply towards a stool in the far edge of the room.
"Snails, the other corner. No dragging your hooves."
"Weee!" The colt bounded towards the side of the classroom opposite of Snips. "I love dust!"
A few young ponies chuckled at the two colts' expense. Cheerilee sat back at her desk, rubbing a sore head with her hoof. She looked towards me and managed a weak smile. "Do continue, Miss Heartstrings. I apologize sincerely for the interruption."
"H-hey! Don't feel bad!" I said with a nervous grin as I looked at the two delinquents with their flanks to me. "What's a proper concert without its intermissions?"
More chuckles lit the room.
"Now..." I cleared my throat and raised the lyre higher. "Who would like to learn about the song written by Starswirl the Bearded to pacify the armada of evil sea serpents in the Age of Tempests?"
"Oooh! Oooh!"
"Tell us!"
"Yeth! Thea Therpentth are thuper awethome!"
"Heheh..." I concentrated as I strummed the strings of the lyre and prepared another melody. "Remind me: are there any small rodents in the forest directly outside? This has been known to cause stampedes..."
"That was absolutely marvelous, Miss Heartstrings," Cheerilee said in the afternoon air of the schoolyard.
"I couldn't agree more," I said with a breath of relief. Obviously, she was referring to the lessons I had given the youngsters. Little did she know that I was simply thankful to still be having a sane conversation with her. How many hours had I been there? I couldn't tell anymore, but I had somehow managed to spend an entire session at the school without her forgetting about me. The chill of my curse was still there, and I witnessed at least a dozen foals giving me perplexed expressions. However, their teacher hadn't lost comprehension of me, and for that I was insanely thankful. It the was best possible day I couldn't have asked for. "I just wish that they'd remember all of these lessons in the future."
"Oh don't be so modest!" Cheerilee stifled a giggle. "You're positively unforgettable, Miss Heartstrings. Professor Blue Noise should be proud of your talents."
"Eh heh heh... Y-yeah," I stammered before gulping. "Still, I kind of envy your job. Well... most of it, at least."
"Yes, yes." Cheerilee rolled her eyes slightly. Still, her smile came back as the two of us looked across the schoolyard. Several parents arrived in groups to walk their children home. We waved at Big Mac as he trotted off with Apple Bloom. Thunderlane flew skyward with his little brother Rumble on his back. Milky White escorted Scootaloo down the path, along with Sweetie Belle--Rarity must have been busy with some project or another that afternoon. "I do apologize for the actions of a few less-than-polite characters."
"Hey, we've all been there," I said in a dull tone before winking her way. "Most of us."
"Don't tell me you were a problem filly when you were young!"
"Heh. Not exactly." I fiddled with the sleeves of my hoodie. "But I definitely grew up with one who became a spitfire when she hit her teen years."
"Hmmm... You make it sound like they were sweet memories."
"A little jarring in places, but ultimately happy," I said with a nod. "We are the sum of our parts, for better or for worse," I added in a low tone. I thought of Alabaster, of her, of all the elements--both horrifying and glorious--that had brought me to such a place of understanding and comprehension that day. "I'm learning to accept the bumps of the past for smoothing out the future." There was still a Duet to perform, one last hurdle. Was I prepared for all the challenges that entailed? "I can't be too harsh on other ponies for figuring out their own places, no matter how clumsily."
"Well, some of us have to be stern in order to help them in the process," Cheerilee said. She shifted on her hooves and began walking away. "If you would excuse me, Miss Heartstrings, there's a pony I've been meaning to talk to."
"Uhhh... Sure." I said, blinking. I watched as she approached a tall, rugged stallion. He was a unicorn, pale in complexion, with a tangled brown mane and a five o'clock shadow around his muzzle. The stallion was well built, brandishing a jackhammer for a cutie mark, and I could see the stains of sweat and dust on his forelimbs, indicative of a hard day's work. I guessed that he must have been a construction pony, or perhaps a paver of sidewalks. "Must be a blue bridle job," I muttered to myself with a smirk. I contemplated walking over to join him when a tiny shape wandered into my cloud of thought.
"Hmmph... Dumb colt," Snips grumbled, his eyes trained on the grassy floor of the schoolyard as he waddled in my general direction. "Go home by yourself, Snails. Try and have fun on your lonesome. See if I care." Blindly, he bumped into my side and fell on his haunches. "Ooof! Unngh..." He rubbed his horn and squinted up at me. "Oh. Sorry about that."
"Hey!" I remarked with a proud grin. "Looks like you're not without manners after all!"
"Uhhh..." He blinked, his face blank. "Do I know you, Miss?"
"Oh. Uhm..." I fidgeted, shifting the weight of the lyre in my saddlebag. "I... I guess you don't."
"Ah. You're not Snails' mom, are you?"
"No," I said in a calm voice. "I assure you, I am definitely not Snails' mother."
"Cuz he went home without telling me. Pfft. Stupid colt. His life is dull as mud without me. Heh."
"Fascinating," I muttered. I hesitated briefly, cleared my throat, and squinted down at him. "Could I ask you something?"
He shrugged. "Sure. I'm not afraid of strangers."
"Cute." I smiled gently. "Why are you so...?"
"So what?"
I just spat it out: "Why are you so mean to other kids your age?"
"Mean?"
"Y'know, calling Snails' 'stupid.' Saying that Rumble is a 'fruitcake.' Stealing Sweetie Belle's toy ball."
"Hahaha!" Snips kicked at the ground, waving his messy orange mane. "You saw that?! Ohhhh, she was practically whimpered for that silly thing back!"
"You... enjoy being cruel?"
"Oh please." Snips rolled his eyes, and it was then that I noticed something curious about his face. "It's their fault that they're such wusses! They could definitely learn a thing or two from me! Heheh!"
"Uh huh..." I was staring at him.
He gave me a weird face. "What are ya lookin' at?"
"How..." I leaned my gaze aside. "How did your eye end up like that?"
"Uhhh..." The gruff exterior to the colt melted in an instant. He tilted his head in a way that's instinctual for unicorns such as ourselves. He must have thought that the shadow of his horn would hide the blue discoloration around his left eye. He was wrong. "I... I bumped into something today at recess."
I gazed fixedly at him. Eventually, I muttered, "You don't say."
"Hmmph..." He shrugged, picking at the grass with his hooves. "It's no big deal."
"You sure?" I remarked softly, reaching a gentle hoof towards his skull. "It looks like it must sting--"
"I'm fine, okay?!" he suddenly snarled, batting my hoof away. His teeth showed as he squawked, "Snails is a big clumsy moron and he runs into me a lot! That's all!"
Just then, a deep voice resonated from across the schoolyard: "Snips? C'mere, son."
Snips instantly paled. His eyes twitched and he stood tall. "Uhm... G-Gotta go," he remarked hoarsely. He trotted off, but not without adding, "S-sorry to have bothered you, Miss."
"It's fine," I stammered, gazing curiously as he trotted off. The schoolyard had almost entirely emptied of students. There was nopony in his way as he shuffled limply towards the tall shadow of a stallion looming before him. After a few seconds of staring, I realized that it was the unicorn adult with whom Cheerilee trotted off to speak to a few moments ago.
The young and old ponies were too far away for me to hear them, but I could tell it wasn't a pleasant conversation that they were having, at least where Snips was concerned. The stout colt had his head bowed, at least until a stomping of his father's hoof forced the young one to look up, trembling. My eyes wandered up to the stallion's grizzled face. The unicorn was frowning. It was a very stern expression, but I couldn't help but detect something akin to a dizzied weariness to the glare in his eyes. Suddenly, his horn was glowing. I couldn't tell why at first, but then I looked down to see Snips standing up on his hindquarters.
Only... Snips wasn't standing. I saw his forward limbs twitching and curling awkwardly in the air. His weight wobbled precariously on his haunches. I was shocked that he wasn't toppling over within the first ten seconds, until I saw how hard his nostrils were flaring. For a moment there, it looked as though his face was taking on a blue complexion. With a jerk, he was suddenly standing on all fours yet again, panting heavily. My eyes traveled up to see that the stallion's horn was no longer glowing. Frowning, Snips' father stomped down the path, motioning firmly for the colt to follow him. Limply, Snips obeyed.
My lips pursed. I was about to say something out loud when Cheerilee's smiling face was suddenly occupying my vision.
"Oh! Hello, Miss! Are you looking for somepony?"
"Did..." I squinted past her and pointed at the two figures trotting away. "Did you just see that?"
"Hmm?" She blinked quizzically at me. "See what, ma'am?"
"That. Just now. Between Snips and that stallion..."
Cheerilee glanced over her shoulder, only barely catching a glimpse of the two figures marching off. "Huh?" She looked back towards me. "Are you a member of the Edge family?"
"Is that the stallion's surname? Cheerilee, I think that--" I froze. I looked at her.
She gave me an innocent smile. "I'm sorry. Have we met?"
I took a deep breath. I gazed over at the distant curve of the path. "If you'll... uh... excuse me..."
I trotted slowly, quietly through the heart of town. My hooves moved like water, following the wake of the two ponies ahead of me. With calm breaths, I trailed Snips and the older unicorn. I passed by familiar sights and sounds. I heard Rarity's airy voice as she chatted with Fluttershy. I smelled the burning embers of Spike's flaming breath. I heard music wafting out of Sugarcube Corner and tasted the scent of baked candies from Bon Bon's house.
I ignored all of these sensations of Ponyville, instead honing my vision on the father and colt ahead of me. Their march was a somber thing, like a funeral procession for a dead pony that no one knew about. They moved in a sluggish fashion, the elder swaying a little bit, grumbling indiscernible things to himself. Snips made no attempt to branch off from the path, and instead he paced like a melting glacier after the unicorn, his head bowed, his breaths even. All of the spunk and vigor of the young schoolyard bully was gone. If I didn't know better, I would have imagined the little creature incapable of smiling.
Eventually, they made it to the heart of Ponyville. A series of two-story condominiums lingered two blocks away from downtown. The gardens and lawns were colorful and well kept, all except for one. To the front door of this house, the stallion trudged. He fumbled magically with a set of keys and eventually opened the door. With a dull grunt, he turned and glared at Snips. The colt's limbs sprung into action, and he bolted out of his lethargic slump, desperate to enter the household as swiftly as possible. From a far glance, two mares could be seen inside, and they looked just as dead and unenthusiastic as Snips did that very moment. Then, everything disappeared as the stallion stomped into the house, wiped his hooves on the mat, and slammed the door shut behind him.
I was standing behind a tree on the opposite end of the street. I made sure nopony was looking before resuming my constant study of the household before me. For several minutes I sat there, looking for anything. The place was eerily still. The sun was beginning to set. With a weary breath, I finally tore my gaze from the house, turned around, and carried myself towards the north edge of town.
Then there was a rattling sound, followed by what sounded like a muffled yell.
I spun around. I looked at the house, my eyes squinting at the windows. A light remained on for the space of ten seconds, and then went out. Everything was still once again.
All I could feel was the steady thuds of my heart beating heavily. Gulping a dry lump down my throat, I hesitantly turned from the sight and headed for the cabin.
It's dark, and I'm so very thirsty. Why does it have to be so hot this time of year? This isn't Dream Valley. Canterlot is up in the mountains. Can't the Princess make things cooler? She's in charge of the sun, after all.
Ugh. Thirstyyyy.
I kick the covers off of me. Yawning, rubbing my eyes, I slide out of bed. I gently step over Moondancer's cot. After two weeks, I've gotten used to her lying in the middle of the room. I don't know how she can sleep so soundly. Every night, I'm tossing and turning, and yet she's still as a rock. Maybe she wears herself out in the daytime. She's very good at playing hide and seek. She can outrace me, and I've seen her float three feet off the ground with magic. I'd never tell her, but I'm super crazy jealous of her talents.
Anyways. Water. Water water water waterrrrr.
I open the door to my room and walk out into the dimly lit hallways of the apartment. I can't stop yawning. Why is it that as soon as I'm out of bed is when I start wanting to go back under the covers? Sleep is so weird. I haven't had any cool dreams since Moondancer showed up. Maybe that's why she's sleeping so well; she stole all the dreams. I wouldn't put it past her. Heehee. I swear, she's like a wolf in pony's clothing--uuuhh...
What's going on here?
I see a bunch of ponies in the living room. There's Mommy and Daddy. And there's Moondancer's mom. Isn't she supposed to be asleep on the couch? How can she get any shuteye with so many ponies sitting around: and just who are they? Wait, I recognize two of them. I think their names are Dusk and Stellar. They live across the street with two kids. One's an egghead who never shows her face. The other's a blue-haired colt that Moondancer always blushes upon seeing.
What are they talking about anyways?
"...just glad that I can enjoy nights without having to worry about Moondancer's safety. I can't thank you enough for everything. If only I had done something sooner."
"Don't blame yourself, Satine. You've dealt with so much as it is."
"What's important is that you've told the Guard the truth. They have what they need now to put Nightrot where he belongs."
"I... I just feel so horrible. I feel like I should have reached out to him sooner."
"Hey. Satine, look at us. Don't sympathize with him. He's been feeding you lies all this time, taking advantage of your good nature."
"And besides, there's no helping ponies who refuse to help themselves."
"I can't believe that it came to this. He... He was so happy when we met. So peaceful. What happened to him? I wish I could put my hoof on it, but every time I think about it... I can only remember how far I dragged Moondancer with me. Oh, sweet Celestia, what have I done?"
"Shhh. Satine, what's important is that you've let us help you now. You're safe, and so is Moondancer."
"And now all I'm doing is taking up space in this house and... and..."
"Hey, our house is your house. We're going to see you through this. And when the Court is done analyzing the situation, we'll fight for your own property back."
"But... But Nightrot--"
"It's your house, Satine. Yours and Moondancer's. You've earned it. Not him. Don't even doubt that for a second..."
Blearily, I blink and shuffle into the living room. "I don't get it. Is it Moondancer's birthday or something? Is she getting a new house?"
All of the adult faces swivel to face me. Mom speaks, and it's really stern. "Lyra! Lyra Heartstrings, what are you doing out of bed?"
"Uhh... I-I was thirsty..." I look nervously at all of the ponies. "Is something wrong?" I turn and look at Moondancer's mom. "Mrs. Satine? Why are you crying?"
Mommy hugs the old mare as she takes a deep breath and smiles calmly at me. "We're having a little talk, Lyra, darling. Between grownups." She looks at Daddy. "Honey, would you...?"
Daddy is already standing up, shuffling towards me. "Come along, princess. It's not time for walking around the house."
"But... B-But I just wanted--"
"I've got you some water right here." He levitates a cup across the nearby kitchen, fills it, and hands it to me. As I take a sip, he kneels down in front of me and places two hooves on my shoulder. "You know that Moondancer and her mom are staying with us for a while, right?"
"Mmmhmmm..." I nod. I feel nervous. My eyes are staring at the carpet.
"Well, they need our help right now. Mommy and I are doing our best to take care of Mrs. Satine. In the meantime, you keep taking care of Moondancer. Huh? Whaddya say...?"
"She's not a doll, daddy," I say with a pout. "How am I taking care of her?"
"You're being her friend, darling."
"But I like being her friend!"
He smiles gently. "That's what makes it so wonderful. She needs you right now, and we all know how much you like hanging out with her. Just keep being a sweet, good filly to her. Mrs. Satine is telling me how happy Moondancer is now that she's got you to share time with."
"Really?"
"You bet, princess. Done with your water?"
"Uh huh."
He smiles and runs a hoof through my mane. "Think you can sleep now?"
I smile softly. "Mmmhmmm..."
He leans over and kisses my forehead. "There's a good girl. You need your rest for school tomorrow."
I frown. "We're going to learn about frogs."
"Well, how better to avoid warts?"
"Heehee..."
He swivels me around to face my bedroom door and gives me a final pat on my head. "I'll see you in the morning."
"Goodnight, daddy."
"Goodnight, Lyra."
I enter my room and close the door behind me. I trot towards my bed. I stop in my tracks, blinking.
Something is wrong.
The cot is empty. What's more, I hear a quiet sound from the far edge of the room.
Curious, I crane my head to see. It's coming from the closet. I shuffle over and slide the door open. Moondancer's inside, squatting in the middle of my stuffed animals. She's hugging herself.
"Moondancer?" I squint at her. "Are you crying?"
She says nothing. She usually isn't like this. The last time I saw her shed tears was back when she first showed up at my apartment stairwell in the rain.
"Moondancer, what's wrong?" I sit down and look at her closely. "You're my friend. You should be happy."
She sniffles. She peeks up at me from beyond her forelimbs and murmurs. "I don't want to go away..."
"Huh?" My face scrunches up. "Go away?"
She shudders, gulps, and stammers, "They're talking about leaving, aren't they? They want Mommy and me to leave! I don't want to leave!"
I smile. "Moondancer, you aren't leaving! You're staying here even longer!"
She sniffles and squints mistily at me. "We are?"
"Mmmhmmm." I nod. "I just heard them," I say in a hushed tone, leaning forward. "My Mom and Dad want you to stay. So do Mr. Dusk and Mrs. Stellar from across the street. You're not going anywhere."
Moondancer nods slowly, her breath coming out in tiny little gasps.
I squirm where I sit. My eyes fall to the floor between us. "Uhm... was it a bad dream?"
She shakes her head, the tears still falling. "No," she says.
I don't know what to say.
"But..." She sniffles again and looks at me. "If I said that it was... would you stay here with me?"
I blink. I slowly smile. "Daddy says that I'm supposed to be your friend."
"He... He does?"
"Yeah. It's kind of funny, cuz I already like being your friend so much already."
She giggles slightly, her face cracking a smile. "Okay..."
I look at her. I don't know why, but I feel like I've found my special talent. I slide over and hug her. I don't care if it's silly for two little fillies to be hiding in a closet. I don't want her to be alone.
"Don't worry," I say as I nuzzle her. "You don't have to worry about bad dreams around me, Moondancer."
She whimpers something and leans into me. Her limbs feel cold. I feel bad for her, and yet happy that she's here all the same.
"I'm glad that I met you, Lyra," she says.
"Mmm... I'm glad that you met me too."
And we both giggle. Her sobs eventually stop. One of us falls asleep before the other. I can't tell who.
I sat on the edge of my cot, restless, petting Al's purring body as he lay curled in my lap. His fur was the only source of warmth in a grand ocean of cold. I took a deep breath and gazed up out the windows. The morning sun was rising again. Another October night, and I had barely slept a wink.
With a deep breath, I stared at the contents of the cabin. I looked at the mountains of books pilfered from Ponyville Library. I glanced at the dozens upon dozens of tomes still left for me to read and peruse in my endless quest of pursuing a duet with the unsung goddess. I turned and gazed at the golden brilliance of the Nightbringer, a little piece of Creation standing within the confines of my mortal abode.
There were so many roads to freedom, all of them twisting and turning crazily into one another, forming a labyrinth of frigid madness and desperation. Half of the time, I wonder what's the biggest thing to solve: the problem that brought me there, or the problems that only a ghost like me is capable of seeing in the first place.
With a deep sigh, I moved Al to the center of the cot, stood up, and reached for my hoodie.
"We have a special guest for you today, students!" Cheerilee beamed as she paced before the classroom of gawking, blinking foals. "As it turns out, our speaker from Canterlot showed up after all! I know you've all been eager to learn about Equestrian music history! So give a warm welcome to Professor Blue Noise's prized student, Miss Lyra Heartstrings!"
The crowd of youths politely applauded and stomped their hooves as I took center stage and sat on the stool. "Well, hello there. Feels like only yesterday that I was sharing my knowledge with an eager group of youngsters just like yourselves! And believe you me... heheh... it only gets more and more special every time."
"What is that?" Diamond Tiara asked, squinting at my golden instrument.
"This..." I said while levitating it for all to see. "Is a lyre. It's one of the oldest instruments in Equestrian civilization. In fact, many scholars believe that the holy Nightbringer itself was likenened unto a lyre or a harp." I smiled Cheerilee's way.
The teacher winked and spoke to the class, "Remember our lesson on the Creation Tale two weeks ago?"
The foals murmured and nodded in understanding.
"The world began with a song," I said, breathing evenly as I presented a variation of the previous day's lecture. "Because of that, whenever we sing, or express ourselves musically, we are--in essence--getting in touch with Creation itself. It's not enough to acknowledge the rhythm of our heartbeats. No, my little ponies." I smiled. "There are songs older than time, for they define the ages; they define us. What's more, we discover the lost parts of ourselves as we explore the creative spaces available to equine expression. It's worked for Equestrian culture over the grand course of history--as I shall demonstrate to you--and it can very well work for our futures. Each and every one of you has a fantastic destiny to fulfill, and I would like to show you how to get in touch with it. Like everything, it starts in the past..."
"Heh..." Snips grumbled as he leaned his chin against a bored hoof. "History through music. This will be as thrilling as watching paint dry."
"Hahahah!" Snails laughed, as did a few other students.
Cheerilee frowned. She looked ready to stand up and snap at Snips--
"Well, why don't you share with us your favorite kind of music, Snips!" I interjected. "Surely it can't all be boring!"
He blinked, as if caught in an enormous spotlight. "You... You know my name?"
Cheerilee was squinting at me. "You know his name?"
I merely chuckled and continued, "Don't be shy, Snips. Tell us all your favorite kind of music. You might not think it's relevant, but I'll show you that it is."
"Uhhh..." He fidgeted slightly, tapping his hooves at the end of his desk. "I... I always liked Pony Punk, I guess..."
A couple of ponies cheered. Scootaloo smirked. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon rolled their eyes. Sweetie Belle merely blinked.
"Hmmm... Pony Punk... Pony Punk..." I tongued the inside of my cheek, thinking hard. "Ah! I think I know something close to it!" I cracked my limbs, flexed my telekinetic "muscle," and strummed the lyre with golden flashes of energy. The air filled with heavy thrashing, melodic and chaotic all at once. Several ponies' jaws dropped, the most dramatic of which was Snips'.
When the swift, psychotic, and altogether vicious tune was over, I sat back on my stool in a slump, as if trying to catch my breath.
"Whew! And I thought I was out of practice!"
"That..." Scootaloo stammered. "I-I had no idea you could do that with a harp..."
"Lyre!" Apple Bloom corrected with a hiss.
"Whatever."
"Well... uhm..." Cheerilee shuffled nervously at her desk. "That was certainly the... uhm... most interesting rendition of the Griffon National Anthem I've ever heard..."
"Way to go!" I grinned at Cheerilee and nodded. "It most certainly was the Griffon National Anthem, albeit it's not the type you'll likely hear at the next Equestrian Olympics. Heheh..." I turned and grinned at the crowd. "You see, there's been a counter culture movement in the Griffon Kingdom as of late. With shifting power structures between the old religious oligarchy and the new democratic union, several younger generations of griffons have sought an outlet to express themselves. Thus, they took many classical songs and turned them into harsh, passionate renditions with fast tempo and heavy percussion. Thus began 'punk,' a griffon invention. This movement has been very popular over the last thirty years or so, and its influence has spread to Equestria where several famous artists have developed..." I smiled. "'Pony punk,' which is a slight variation" I turned to look at Snips. "I assume you've heard of Filly Talent?"
Several colts snickered and nodded among themselves. Snips, his jaw still agape, produced a bright smile. "Heheheh. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard of them."
Cheerilee looked at the class, at me, and at the class again.
I smiled, leaning back. "Now, go back in time to several hundreds of years ago, and there were similar movements in Equestria at the time of the great civil war between the Lunar Empire and the Celestial Monarchy. Granted, they didn't produce something like 'Pony Punk,' but the symphonies born from such turbulent periods were considered fresh and shocking for their time. How would you like to learn some of these tunes? It'll be like time travel! Imagine if a few centuries from now, ponies decide to perform 'Pony Punk?' Wouldn't they be getting in touch with our generation? Music is very much a part of us, you see. It's a part of who we are, who we've been, and who we will be. As we explore songs, we explore ourselves. How can it be anything but fun?"
Several of the ponies were on the edge of their seats at this moment. Many murmured with excitement. Others squirmed in anticipation. All the while, I had Snips' avid attention.
And he had mine.
"Well, for starters..." I licked my hoof and strummed a few melodic strings of the lyre. "Let's learn a little something about a stallion from olden times named Voltrot..."
I stood on the edge of the playground, a few feet away from Cheerilee. I was strumming on my lyre while the foals ran in circles, enjoying the warm noon sun as recess occupied the middle of the October day.
"Slow down, Twist!" Cheerilee called out from where she was grading papers at a picnic table. "Remember how you sprained your ankle last month! You promised your parents you'd take it easy on the jungle gym!"
A lisping voice acknowledged Cheerilee's warning, and the giggles from the playground doubled.
Cheerilee smiled, scribbled a few marks on a sheet with red pen, and looked my way. "I can't thank you enough for showing up this morning, Miss Heartstrings. I had expected a simple review of musical history, but today you had the entire classroom riveted. You should take up teaching more often!"
"Yes, well..." I murmured in mid-strum. "I guess you could say I had some practice for today's lesson." I winked her way. "Expect nothing less from one of Professor Blue Noise's own, huh?"
"Heehee! Absolutely!" Cheerilee crossed her forelimbs and smiled. "The Equestrian education system could use more ponies with your ability to approach the foals' level of thinking and expression." She bore a bashful grin as she graded another sheet. "I've always been told that I carry the permanent personality of a young filly. I figured it was my special talent's way of allowing me to relate with those who are blooming in the discovery of life, learning, and everything in between. I find that happiness is just as infectious as knowledge."
"Heh... Yeah. I think I get it." I plucked a few more strings and glanced at her. "That reminds me. About the foals here..."
"Yes?"
"I've been meaning to ask you something--" My voice lingered as I blinked at a sight waddling up towards us. "Oh. Hello there, Snips. How can I help you?"
"Uhhh... Hi there, Miss Heartstrings, ma'am."
I blinked, smiling curiously. "You remember my name?"
"But of course he does!" Cheerilee remarked, giving him an appreciative wink. "He knows a thing or two about being polite. Ahem. Isn't that right, Snips?"
"Er... Yes. Yes, ma'am."
I glanced at the playground. Snails was on the far side of the schoolyard, playing a game of four-square with Scootaloo, Rumble, and Featherweight. It occurred to me that Snips must have not left my proximity for the last two hours at least. Something must have been distracting him. In a way, it felt like part of my "mission" had been accomplished.
"Is there something on your mind, young sir?" I asked, using the pretentious "Canterlot voice" with which I had addressed the schoolroom for most of the day's lecture.
"The way you played Pony Punk earlier on that lyre thingamajig was really awesome!" Snips said with a joyful hop. "I never expected to hear that at school! Much less in Ponyville at all!"
"Heh, yes, well..." Cheerilee interjected with a playful wink. "Don't get used to it, Snips. You can listen to that at home, but from now on, expect to hear classical music or easy listening tapes at best. I don't think the Ponyville Education Headmaster would appreciate heavy griffon thrashing on a regular basis."
"I..." Snips bit his lip and dug a hoof through the grass. "I don't think I'll ever hear any of that at home..."
I stared carefully at him. The bruise around his eye had mostly faded. This time, I couldn't help but notice what looked to be a nasty bump on his skull, just to the left of his scraggy orange mane. Ignoring the heavy spike in my heartbeat, I asked, "Does your family not like music, Snips?"
"Mmm... I wouldn't know."
"Oh?" I remarked.
"Nah..." He shook his head, his eyes gazing with a blank expression towards the woods bordering the schoolyard.
I tilted my head to the side. "You trotted all the way here just to say 'Nah?'" I took a deep breath. "Snips, is there something you would like to tell us?"
"Uhm..." He squirmed slightly. His head lifted up. "Y-yeah. Sure..."
My ears twitched. "What is it, young sir?"
He blinked, then smiled. "That's some really pretty music you're playing, Miss Heartstrings."
My spirit plummeted and rejoiced all at once. With a gentle sigh I grinned his way and nodded. "I'm a major fan of it myself. I play it all the time when I can. Would you like to give it a listen?"
"Uh. Sure."
"It's not Pony Punk, though..."
"Heheheh," he chuckled and sat on his portly haunches. "I don't mind! I'd like to hear it."
"Very well then. Here goes..." I played the tune in full. It had a delightful melody, sweet and lulling and altogether devoid of sharp tempo shifts. There was a melancholic tone to the ballad, but the passionate edge in the plucked strings made the entire piece undeniably triumphant. When I finished, even Cheerilee was wowed. I heard her hooves clapping lightly at the picnic table beside me.
"Bravo! Bravo!" She managed a sight chuckle. "That was absolutely splendid. May I ask what it's called?"
I took a deep breath and said, "'Penumbra's Echo.' And it's a tune that is near and dear to my heart. Whenever I feel down, or whenever my life is at a confusing crossroads, I know I can play this song and make everything feel all right again."
"It certainly is..." Snips murmured, his eyes blinking as if they were receding downhill from the two adults above him. "...relaxing."
I looked calmly at him, my hooves gently gripping the lyre. "Do you feel as though your life could use more relaxation, Snips?"
His nostrils flared. With a brief creasing of his brow, he stood up straight and mumbled, "Nah. I just..." He shuddered and turned to leave. "I was just bored, I guess..."
"It helps me when I'm bored too," I said. I watched as Snips froze in place. I continued, "Or when I'm sad, or dull, or tired. It doesn't matter what words I use to describe it. All I know is: music makes me feel better. It's a part of who we all are, just like I said earlier today. And if there's one immortal truth to ponies, Snips, it's that we all deserve to be happy. We shouldn't let anypony tell us different, no matter how big or important they might seem in our lives."
Slowly, he turned around. He looked up at me with a vulnerable expression. "You... You really think so?"
I nodded. "I know so."
He seemed ready to say something, but his jaw clenched tight at the last second. He fidgeted, stuck between staying and going. After a few seconds went by, we both heard Cheerilee's happy voice:
"You've been a very polite young colt today, Snips," she said. "I didn't have to stop you from bothering Rumble or any of the other ponies. Not even once! I'm proud of you."
"Uhhhh..." He smiled nervously, his stubby little tail flicking. "Okay."
"Keep it up, and I'm sure your parents will be proud of you too."
His smile waned, but he gave us a calm nod regardless. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thanks for the song, Miss Heartstrings."
"Don't mention it."
Snips trotted off. A slight chill filled the air, and I shuddered to think that I might never get a chance to reach that vulnerable side of him ever again.
"I wasn't just blowing hot air, you know," Cheerilee said.
"Oh, perish the thought!" I smirked.
"He's been quite the hoof-full since he transferred here," she continued. "His heart is brimming with excitement and yearning and curiosity, and yet it's prone to mischief and trouble-making all the same. Snips can be endearing when he wants to be, but more often than not the colt is a little sadist, and I'm constantly having to keep him and his buddy Snails in check, or else they might hurt the feelings of the schoolfillies around them or even worse."
"Seems like there're always bad apples in a bushel," I muttered.
"It presents a challenge, for sure," Cheerilee said with a nod. "But I won't let these youths go sour so long as I'm watching over them. I just wish Snips wouldn't pick on Rumble so much. Snails doesn't know any better; he just thinks it's a big game."
"You suppose Snips thinks it's a big game too?" I said, looking towards her. "As in... a way to distract himself from things he'd rather not think about?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well..." I took a deep breath, looking towards where the stout unicorn had walked off. "I can't be the only one who's noticed somewhat... glaring injuries on his person."
Cheerilee nodded. "He and Snails live quite the rough and tumble lifestyle, Miss Heartstrings."
"Oh, no doubt." I looked at her. "Colts will be colts. But what if it's more?"
Cheerilee took a deep breath, and for once her smile was lacking. "You mean to suppose that there's another reason for the occasional bruise he shows up to class with?"
"Wouldn't you think as much?" I asked. "I mean, I'm not around kids as often as you are. But the little dude's rough around the edges. He picks on other classmates. He gets all shy when he tries to express the tiniest of sincere emotions about music." I leaned towards her and asked in a quiet voice, "What if things aren't so peaceful around his home? Maybe the reason he doesn't get along with other students is that he can't form a connection with his folks?"
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't think that myself," Cheerilee said in a calm voice. "But teachers twice my age with well established careers have had their jobs stripped from them for acting on such assumptions, only to be completely incorrect."
"Oh. Well. Uhm..." I blushed, fidgeting where I stood. "Yeesh. That's gotta be a tough call to make."
"I care for all of my students, from the bottom of my heart," Cheerilee said. "Taking care of so many of them at once is indeed quite the juggling act. It's easy to read too much in between the lines," she remarked. This was followed by a nervous gulp. "Or too little..."
"You know anything about Snips' parents?"
"I've met his father on a few occasions."
"Oh yeah?" I looked towards her, my ears twitching. "What's he like?"
"Mr. Straight Edge is his name," Cheerilee remarked. "He works in construction around Ponyville. He's a model citizen, if you ask me."
"Does that come with a model personality?"
Cheerilee chewed on the corner of her mouth. I stared at her patiently.
She sighed and gave me a tired smile. "There's a reason why I went into teaching and not into psychiatry, besides the fact that a cutie mark of smiling, blooming flowers goes horribly with ink blots. Eheheh..."
"I think you're a decent enough judge of character. What's your opinion of him?"
"He's worked all his life doing rough, menial labor," she said. "And, as a result, he strikes me as a simple, rough stallion who's more equipped for dealing with machinery than with anything else."
"And how does he deal with the fact that his own son is quite often a delinquent in school?" I asked, thinking about the little "meeting" Cheerilee had with the stallion the previous day. "Surely you've talked to him about it?"
"He... deals as calmly and dispassionately as most stallions do with such information," Cheerilee said.
"And Snips' mother?" I asked. "Or does she never show up for any parent-teacher conferences?"
Cheerilee slowly shook her head. "No. I can't say that I've ever had the grace of seeing her since the family first showed up in town."
"Don't you find that a little strange?"
"Heheh... What intrigues me, Miss Heartstrings," Cheerilee remarked, "Is your avid interest in the matter. Is there something you know that I don't? Because, by all means, if there's a chance to get in better touch with Snips' parents, I would be happy to do so."
"Actually..." I put my lyre away in my saddlebag and turned to look directly at her. I was hoping that a moment like this would present itself. As a matter of fact, an entire day's worth of planning was about to go into the next few seconds. "It's funny that you should ask that. When Professor Blue Noise sent me here to be a guest speaker, I decided to stay with the distant cousin of a friend of mine. She owns a condominium bordering downtown Ponyville."
"Oh, I'm quite familiar with the district."
"Well, I've had the hardest time sleeping since I came here."
"Oh?"
"Yes..." I took a deep breath. "I could have sworn I heard noises. Like..." My eyes traced the edges of their sockets as I recalled the sound from Snips' family household the previous day. "Like muffled shouts through the walls. I've lived in apartments before, Miss Cheerilee. I think I know the telltale sign of domestic troubles when I hear it. Well, when I left the condominium this morning, I saw a colt marching out of the dwelling beside where I had stayed." I simply looked at her.
Cheerilee slowly nodded. "No wonder you've endeavored to reach out to Snips. That must have weighed heavily on you all day."
"I believe things are anything but peaceful at his home," I said. For once, it was the honest-to-Celestia truth. "I'm... not quite sure what to do about it."
"Well, in all fairness, Miss Heartstrings, I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it either."
My heart sank. "You really feel that way?"
"It's not about feeling so much as it is about thinking..." She folded shut her notebook full of half-graded papers. "We have to keep in mind that any terrible supposition is unsubstantiated unless provided with a modicum of decent evidence."
I winced visibly. "Yeah. And I'm the last unicorn who would want to endanger your job here at the school..."
"Oh, absolutely. I would never suspect you of anything. However..." She gave what appeared to be a mischievous smile. "What a terrible teacher I would be if I allowed a piece of my students' personal property go to waste without doing anything about it!"
I blinked awkwardly upon hearing that. "Uhhh... What?"
"Why..." Cheerilee put on a mock gasp. "Snips' umbrella! The poor little fellow forgot to take it home! What a good deed it would be to personally bring it by his family's household so that it won't get devoured by moths in its neglect!"
"But, he didn't bring an umbrella at all with him this morning! There's not even a cloud in the sky! It--" I froze in mid-speech, blinking. "Wait..." I turned and squinted at her. "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"
Cheerilee replied with an innocent smile. "Tell me, Miss Heartstrings, are you in a hurry to get back to Canterlot this afternoon?"
I looked at her, then grinned. "I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere, ever."
Cheerilee rang the doorbell to the Straight Edge family household. A dog barked two condos down. Birds chirped and flapped about in the reddening sunlight above.
"I've done this two or three times before," Cheerilee murmured aside, balancing the umbrella in her saddlebag. "I used to teach in Fillydelphia, you see."
"Were there a lot of troubled households in Fillydelphia?" I asked her just as quietly.
She merely looked at me.
"Oh. Heh. Right. 'City of Brotherly Shove,'" I said with a slight chuckle. "How stupid of me."
"Shhh. Somepony's coming."
I nodded and let Cheerilee take the spotlight.
There was a fumbling noise from just beyond the door. Soon, the entrance opened, and my heart stopped at the sight of a tall, pale unicorn with a brown mane and even browner stubble. His eyes squinted at us with a cold, bored expression.
"Oh, hello there, Mr. Straight Edge!" Cheerilee said... cheerfully. "I do apologize for bothering you, but I think your son Snips left his umbrella at the school today!"
"Hmmm... You don't say..." Straight Edge mumbled, his dull eyes flitting towards me. "Who's this?"
I fumbled for words, feeling the urge to shiver... and not from the cold.
Thankfully, Cheerilee spoke up for the two of us. "Oh, this is Miss Heartstrings. She visited from Canterlot today to give the students a speech on music history. Snips seemed very pleased to learn about the topic, and he even asked a few exciting questions that the entire class was happy to have answered. Heheheh--But I digress. The umbrella." She raised it before the stallion's grasp. "I'd hate for it to collect dust at the classroom."
"Mrmmfff..." He telekinetically snatched it from her grasp and levitated it around before his eyes. "Can't say I've ever seen it before." His tone was dull, unmelodious, like a ringing of metal against metal. "You sure it doesn't belong to another one of your students?"
"Oh. Oh dear... I could have sworn he brought it to school this morning." Cheerilee smiled and gave an awkward laugh. "I've been grading so many papers lately, I could very well have been mistaken! Heheh..."
"Hmmph. No harm, no foul," he muttered.
"Exactly! Your house was on my way home from the school building, and I thought I'd return the item just in case."
"Well, thank you for the thought, Miss Cheerilee." He gave the umbrella back. "But I'm afraid it's not ours--"
"My, you do have such a lovely home!" Cheerilee said. "Has anypony told you that?"
Straight Edge glanced lethargically at the sparse garden flanking the prettier ones of the neighbors. "Really?"
"Oh, it's such a tranquil side of town. I almost wished I lived here instead of the edge of Ponyville. I'm sure you and your family have some amazing stories to tell," she said, laying the charm and friendliness extra thick. She smiled his way. "Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had a chance to sit down with you and Mrs. Edge for a personal conference between parents and teacher."
"Why...?" His eyes narrowed like dagger tips. "Has Snips been acting up again?"
I bit my lip and looked Cheerilee's way.
She was already smiling and saying, "As a matter of fact, he's been on his best behavior as of late! If you allow me, I'd gladly fill you in on it!"
He stared at Cheerilee, then at me, then at Cheerilee again. "Hmmph..." His nostrils flared. "Sure, why not?" His voice was neither angry nor optimistic; he snorted like he was marching through a cloud of fumes. Pivoting, Straight Edge marched into the household. The two of us didn't realize it was an invitation until we heard his bass voice shouting through the atrium ahead, "Autumn! Snips! Windsong! We've got company!"
Cheerilee trotted ahead. I followed her, hesitant at first. I telekinetically closed the door behind me, becoming engulfed in the scents of the household. The air was sour and unpleasant. I couldn't tell if that was the condominium being rank or just my forlorn imagination telling me that it was supposed to smell bad. I always feel a certain disconnect from myself when I walk into a stranger's household.
Everything appeared normal as we walked into the living room. Photographs of colorful, happy ponies lined the walls. I saw a kitchen with a refrigerator full of bright, foalish sketches. The dish cabinet was fully adorned with pretty, antique saucers and silverware. If I blinked my eyes, the snapshot I'd receive would look no different from the inside of the houses that my aunt and grandmother used to own. The whole place was... normal, peaceful looking. What was I expecting from Snips' household? Was I letting my assumptions get the better of me?
For a moment, I felt fearful for Cheerilee, but she looked like she was on top of the world. She smiled and sat on a sofa across from a mare who was... suddenly there. A yellow unicorn with a long red mane sat with a folded book before her forelimbs. From the way she was parked on the furniture, I could only assume she had been sitting there for the majority of the sunlit day. She smiled and shared a few words with Cheerilee before giving me a polite nod. Her smile was as fragile as porcelain, and there was a slightly hollow look to her eyes. I felt my nervousness rising again, but I said nothing.
There was another pony in the room, a filly. The little unicorn was perhaps three or four years younger than Snips. At a glance, I wouldn't have imagined the two ponies were related. She hardly took notice of Cheerilee and myself when we walked into the room. She busied herself with a series of crayons that she was sketching along a white sheet of paper. I saw gentle, colorful strokes that illustrated houses, castles, dragons, and other fantastic Equestrian sights.
"Snips?!" Straight Edge was uttering again, louder this time. "Where are you, son?!"
"Oh, you don't have to summon him," Cheerilee said. "I already told him how proud I was of his behavior as of late. His grades have been improving too since the school year began. Do you know that he scored the second highest in our pop quiz on paleo-Equestrian biology? He has an avid fascination with leviathans and sea serpents. I sometimes wonder if his cutie mark suggests an innate desire to dissect old fossils! Heheh!"
The mare on the sofa beside her chuckled as well. "Oh, that's such a joy to hear," she said. "There are times when I think Snips forgets that he's earned his cutie mark."
"Sometimes, I think he just forgets to care," Straight Edge added.
"Mmmm..." The mare took a deep breath, fiddling with her book as her eyes fell to the sofa's hoofrest. "It's taken a bit of coaxing, but I can vouch for the fact that he's paying more attention to his studies. I imagine it hasn't been easy for him, what with my disability lately..."
"Oh, I remember hearing about that!" Cheerilee remarked with a concerned look on her face. She leaned over and placed a gentle hoof on the mare's forelimb. "Just how is your horn faring, Mrs. Autumn?"
"It aches less these days, Miss Cheerilee," Snips' mother replied with a calm smile. "With therapy, I've managed to have less and less seizures. The doctor says I've been making a great deal of progress."
"This ain't a medical checkup, honey," Straight Edge uttered from the kitchen. Through my peripheral vision, I saw several containers stacked on top of one another. When I turned to look, the grizzled stallion was standing there behind the counter, staring unemotionally towards us. The containers were gone. "Miss Cheerilee is giving us her sweet time to talk about our son's learning."
"Mmm... But of course." Autumn swallowed and looked towards us with sleepy eyes. "I'm sorry if he's giving you more trouble--!"
"Nothing of the sort!" Cheerilee said happily. "As a matter of fact, I figured I'd drop word of how good his behavior has been as of late! On the side of scoring well on pop quizzes, he's displayed a vast improvement in civility! Why, just the other day, Miss Smith showed up to deliver some lunch for her granddaughter Apple Bloom. On the way out of the schoolbuilding, the old mare stumbled and fell. Snips was the first and only colt to walk over and help her up. I thought it was the most charming gesture I'd seen all week!"
"Ohhhhhh..." Autumn smiled gently. "That does sound awfully sweet."
"Heh..." Straight Edge marched over towards the center of the room. "You're just making that up."
"Hardly!" Cheerilee shook her head. "Snips is a great deal more mature than the other colts his age, he just hasn't chosen to show signs of it until recently. Would you like to hear some more?"
Straight Edge merely exhaled. His wife, Autumn, leaned forward and said, "I would love to."
As Cheerilee continued, I stood by her side, trying my best not to look nervous. I glanced up a flight of stairs to see a tiny, portly figure staring down from a thin bedroom door. As soon as my eyes reached the second floor, the coltish face disappeared. Curious, I glanced down at the filly, who I presumed to be the one named "Windsong." The longer the conversation lasted, the tighter and tighter she curled up to the sheets of paper she was drawing on. I saw her shoulders bunching together, and I couldn't help but notice how close Straight Edge was standing to her the entire time.
I took a deep breath and tried to relax. It was not my place to come to wild conclusions. After all, Cheerilee was doing more in a single breath than I could ever hope to accomplish in an entire day's worth of rambling speech. I listened as she expertly plugged little details--both accurate and exaggerated--about Snips' behavior as of late. She found tiny moments to summon a word or two from his parents, and I could see how she was structurally turning the "conference" into something akin to an unofficial interview.
What was more, with each passing minute, the portrait of the household was becoming blander and blander. Eventually, the dialogue digressed into Straight Edge's line of work, the homemaker hobbies that Mrs Autumn engaged in, the friends Windsong had been making next door, and other subjects of everyday conversation. Admittedly, I was starting to feel more at ease. However, each time I glanced up at the second floor, I could make out no sign of Snips, and a part of my heart kept beating at a tense, steady tempo.
"Well," Cheerilee said as the door to the Straight Edge household closed behind us. The sun was halfway through setting, and the two of us trotted out of the yard and towards the sidewalk bordering the adjacent street. "That went awfully well, wouldn't you think?"
"I didn't realize Snips' mother was dealing with so many health issues," I remarked dully. I was staring at my hooves as we trotted along.
"It was a detail I almost completely forgot about until I saw her again. If I recall correctly, Snips' family came to Ponyville because Nurse Redheart and several of her colleagues at the local hospital had experience in the field of leyline therapy." She turned and smiled at me. "I don't suppose any unicorns in your family have suffered from Acute Magical Disconnect? It can be terribly troublesome to the nervous system."
"I've... heard stories," I murmured. "It's very painful, and it takes years to recover from."
"And I can't think of anything more distracting than having one's mother suffering and not being able to do anything about it." Cheerilee paused to turn and rest a hoof on my shoulder. "Miss Heartstrings, I greatly appreciate your initiative in bringing your concerns about Snips to me. But what I think we have here is a case of a young and growing colt feeling anguish over his mother's health. With the inability to express himself, it's not uncommon for a young male pony to exert his frustrations through senseless outlets. However, all is not lost." She leaned back and smiled. "Mrs. Autumn, as it turns out, is getting better. And now, thanks to our little 'conference,' I think I know what to talk to Snips about the next time he acts mean to one of his fellow students."
"Yeah, I guess so..." I took a deep breath. "Still, isn't it strange that he didn't show up the entire time that we chatted with his parents? Not even once?"
"Heeheehee. Shyness shows up in the most unlikely of places, Miss Heartstrings. Don't let Snips' rough exterior fool you. He's a darling at heart, and I think there's still hope of reaching out to him."
"Yeah..." I nodded, smiling gently. "I guess you're right."
"Well, I have to go home and get caught up on grading," Cheerilee said. "Miss Heartstrings, I can't thank you enough for all the contributions you've made today. This goes above and beyond what I requested of Professor Blue Noise." She smiled sweetly, her eyes sparkling. "Is it possible that you might bless the school with your presence again sometime before the year's over? Perhaps you would like to chaperone for the upcoming field trip to the Canterlot Gardens!"
"Eh heh heh heh..." I chuckled nervously, avoiding her gaze. "Well..." I gulped and gave her a weak smile. "I'll definitely consider it. One thing's for certain. I will never forget what happened this day."
"Then perhaps my students aren't the only ones who learned something," she said with a wink, shuffling the umbrella in her saddlebag. "Have a happy evening!"
"Yeah. Sure thing." I turned and trotted away. "You too."
"Uhhh... Miss Heartstrings?"
I turned and looked at her. "Yes?"
She blushed slightly, blinking in a confused manner. "Where are you off to? I thought you were staying at your friend's relative's house next door to the Edge family."
"Oh. Uhm..." I smiled awkwardly. "I... enjoy going for walks. And Ponyville is a pleasant town for a stroll!"
"Heeheehee... Isn't it, though?" She waved and trotted off. "Toodaloo!"
"Yeah. Uh. Bye." I waved back, limply. I took advantage of the fact that her back was to me and stood there, watching her bright figure walk away until it became one with the crimson advent of evening. A sigh escaped my lips and I looked with exasperation towards the unkempt lawn of the Edge family household.
I could only blame my analytical self. I could only blame the ponderer, the scavenger, and the pillager of forsaken songs within this weathered unicorn soul for such pathetic awkwardness. Had I changed so much over the past year that I was bound to forever see things between the lines that weren't really there to begin with? I was no schoolteacher, nor was I a psychiatrist. Cheerilee was inifnitely more qualified for both of those things than I ever could be. Who was I to assume so much about Snips without seeing it with my own naked eyes?
Colts will be colts, and cursed ponies will be cursed ponies.
With a shrug of my shoulders, I turned to trot towards my distant cabin to the north of town... when I heard a noise. It was more pronounced than the muffled shout that I thought I had heard the previous day. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn I detected something breaking.
I almost ignored it. I almost kept moving. But a part of me that was still lonesomely cognizant, the part of me that shivered from the throes of her unsung touch, forced my hooves to swivel around. I turned and glared at the front of the house. There was another sound, louder than the first, and this time I could have sworn I saw the windows to the front of the house shaking.
I peered down the sidewalk. Cheerilee was a distant speck. I looked towards the other end of the path. Ponies were going about their daily lives, returning home, engaged in conversation: not a single one was looking my way.
In a single breath, I strolled back towards the house, snuck past the gate, and slid up to the condominium until my ear was almost pressed up against the building face. I took a deep breath and listened. Beyond the punctuated thuds of my heart, I heard voices from within. In perfect clarity, Straight Edge's growling breath was the loudest of all:
"I had to lie through my teeth for you, boy! To think of all the slack I give you--Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
"But I don't understand! What did I--?"
"You were out stealing random crap from the ponies around town! How many times have I told you to quit snatching whatever you can get your grubby little hooves on?!"
"What?! Dad, I wasn't--"
"Don't talk back! She told me you left an umbrella at school today! We never bought you an umbrella! So how did you end up with one, huh?"
"Umbrellas?! Pfft! Who cares about umbrellas anyway--?"
Snips' voice was cut off by what could only be described as a clap of thunder. I felt a bone-chilling thump, and some female voice gasped amidst the echoes of it.
"I won't stand to have thieving ponies in my very own house!" Straight Edge's rumbling voice resumed. "We stand to lose enough as it is by moving to this stinkin' town!"
"Straight! Honey, for Celestia's sake! Can't you see he doesn't know a thing about the umbrella--?"
"And you! What in the hay was that all about just now?! Nopony outside the household needs to get an earful about your sickness! Certainly not Miss Cheerilee! Next thing you know, they'll think we're begging for bits out on the street!"
"I was only making polite conversation! There's no need to take this out on our son--!"
"If he wasn't such a brat to begin with, his teacher wouldn't have to be poking her head around! And she certainly wouldn't have to pick up the slack for the crap he's stolen!"
"I didn't... nnngh... t-take nopony's umbrella--"
"Shut up and go to your room because I'm sick to death of you sassin' me."
"I'm telling you, I didn't--Ulp!"
"Something wrong with your ears, boy? Go to your room and do your homework. Nnngh! I swear to Luna! Is it enough that I work my spine off for your ungrateful hide?! Or do you wanna go back to Manehattan? Cuz I can pack up our stuff and take the whole family tonight! How long you think your mom's gonna last back in our old home town, you selfish little turd?!"
"No... I-I don't want that..."
"Huh?"
"Erm... N-no sir."
"Now scram. All I wanted was to have a peaceful, quiet evening, but you've screwed that up... again!"
All this time, there was a sobbing voice, rising in pitch and volume; that is until Straight Edge snarled once more.
"Dammit, Windsong, shut up and go back to drawing! You're almost as bad as your worthless brother. Heck, you're already twice as brainless."
"Straight Edge--"
"I don't wanna hear it, Autumn. Bits are thin enough without me having to pay for another one of your damn seizures. So just can it."
The house was gravely silent, save for the tell-tale thumps of Snips' hooves limping--not walking--up the stairs to his lonely room. I could barely stand straight at that point, for I was trembling too much. Gulping, I turned, looked down the sidewalk, and scampered in the direction Cheerilee had trotted off to.
In less than two minutes, I caught up to her. "Cheerilee!" I galloped to a stop, panting. "Quick! You gotta come back!"
"Huh?" she turned around, blinking at me.
"I was right all along!" I exclaimed. "As soon as we left, there were noises coming from the house! I listened in, and--as Celestia is my witness--I heard Straight Edge shouting at his family! I think he may have even hurt--"
"I'm sorry... uhm..." Cheerilee squinted at me. "What's all this about? You know Snips' father?"
"I..." I paused, blinking stupidly. I felt the chills catching up to my sweaty body. "Yes. Yes, Snips' father. We... You just finished having a conference with him and his spouse."
"Huh... Straight Edge... Autumn..." Cheerilee's eyes scanned the horizon. She reeled, as if dealing with a wave of dizziness. "I think I met with them when they first came to Ponyville." She smiled thinly at me. "Why, is something the matter with them? I teach for their son at my school in the west side of town."
I blinked at her. I groaned, running a hoof over my face. "I was there. Of course, I was there with you the whole time. That's why. For the love of Celestia. Isn't it enough that ponies just forget about me and me alone?"
"Huh?" She made a strange face. "I.. I-I'm afraid I don't understand. Somepony's forgotten you? Are you looking for somepony in Ponyville that you know?"
I chewed my lip. Shivering, I looked back towards the house. As the sun melted beneath the west horizon, a foreboding shadow loomed over the building, obscuring the dull surfaces like a worn gravestone.
"Ma'am?" Cheerilee blinked.
Without saying a word, I turned and trotted away from her... and swiftly abandoned the condominiums altogether.
I breathed evenly, peacefully. I was in control of myself. Every inhale was calm and every exhale was precise. Clutching the Nightbringer, I tilted my head up and looked beyond the tempestuous fountains and chains of the unsung realm.
High above the metal fields of moaning prisoners, her sphere loomed. The object spun circles within itself, brimming with lightning.
I stood where I was on the rusted platform with the chaotic cosmos churning all around me. I didn't say a word. I simply played "Twilight's Requiem" over and over again, staring at the levitating throne of an aloof goddess, my eternally stubborn music partner.
With quiet patience, I had hoped to coax her out of hiding. I sat there for the space of an hour, the longest time I had ever spent in the dimension beyond the firmaments. Nothing happened. She didn't approach me. Her sphere didn't even float a single inch closer.
I was the only mortal creature in eons to have entered the realm of the unsung, and in spite of all my power and abilities and knowledge, I couldn't do a single thing about it but sit there and soak in the annihilation. At least if I was a shackled pony, I might have had purpose there. As the tempests consumed the heavens and echoed thunder across the Firmaments, I felt like I could just as easily have been watching a picture show of a faraway, fantastical place, rather than actually being there. All the fear was gone, and so was the charisma to surpass any of it.
I exhaled a defeated breath and hung my head. Gently, I played "Penumbra's Echo," and departed from the unsung realm, as if I hadn't even been there to begin with.
I sat on the cot in the middle of my cabin, surrounded by books. I swear that I read the same dozen pages over and over again, and on each perusal I failed to take in a single paragraph to memory. Night lingered outside. Al was playing with a ball of string in the corner. The fireplace crackled, and its amber light glinted off the brilliant body of the Nightbringer atop a nearby end table.
After several minutes, I groaned and rubbed a hoof over my face. I had spent an hour in the unsung realm. I had spent twice as much time pouring through ancient books on Canterlot music. Still, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the shouting tone of Straight Edge out of my head. Autumn's murmuring voice lingered along the corners of my memory. With each heartbeat, I felt the thump of Snips' landing body, and then the whimpering sounds of Windsong stabbed at my consciousness.
On top of that, I still couldn't sleep. The crazed enthusiasm that had made me visit Cheerilee's school two days in a row was fading. What lay beneath was a manic unicorn, somepony I hadn't associated with for months, when madness was something fresh and alarming instead of enlightening.
"I don't know what to do, Al," I muttered. "I'm in the right place and the right time, but what does it matter? Even if I intervene, what impact will I have? It's the same as it was with Morning Dew, and with Twilight Sparkle and Moondancer. Heck, the only reason I ever saved Scootaloo's life was because she saved mine." I chuckled bitterly. "It seems as if this curse has me making better use out of my uselessness..."
Al rolled over the string, paused to catch his breath, and gazed innocently my way with a flick of his tail.
"I should stop thinking so much about it," I muttered. "I've not been to every single household in Ponyville. For all I know, horrible things happen in this town on a daily basis. I should just..." I fidgeted. "I should just focus on the goal that I have, cuz it's the only thing I have in my power to fix, so long as I get her to help me and... and..."
Something inside me twitched. The room felt colder, even with the embers of the fire dancing brightly just a stretch away.
I bit my lip. "It's... it's easier just to finish this damnable Nocturne. It's..." I stifled a whimper, as my insides knotted up. Shivering, I looked over towards the orange tabby on the floor. "Al, could it be possible that... th-that I'm less afraid in the unsung realm than I am in this town? Have I grown that distant?" I gulped. "That aloof? Just like she is?"
Al barely moved. He didn't even purr.
My nostrils flared. I turned towards the Nightbringer once more. It was momentarily blinding to my weak eyes. "The power of a goddess in my hooves..." I murmured, frowning. "And I ran like a filly... a cowardly little filly from Snips' house."
I sighed hard. The walls of the room started to bend and buckle. In order to not collapse, I forced my eyes shut and drifted.
"And then he said, 'Why, of course, Miss Moondancer, I would be more than happy to carry those bags for you!'"
I nearly choke on the glass of water. I slap the container down onto the table in the school courtyard and gaze in shock her way. "Moondancer! I don't believe it! You mean to say that--?"
"Yup!" She smiles devilishly, her pale features shining in the sunlight beneath flowing locks of red and pink mane hair. "Shining Armor carried all four suitcases for me! He was really sweaty by the time we got to my room on the fourth room of the hotel at the Equestrian Embassy!"
I squint curiously at her. "Just how 'sweaty' are we talking about?"
"Ohhhhh girl..." She fans herself with her notebook full of homework. "Not sweaty enough!"
"Ack! Moondancer!"
"Heeheehee!"
"This is... This is Twilight's older brother we're talking about!" I say, nearly shrieking. Still, I'm having a hard time containing my giggles. "For goodness sake! Isn't it enough that he agreed to act as bodyguard during your study program in the Dragonlands?! You and the other students owe him your lives!"
"Oh Lyra, sweetcakes, don't get your bridle in a tangle!" She waves a dainty hoof and shuffles through a few notes. "It was all in good fun. Besides, we were hardly in any danger. The Dragonlands is about as dramatic as a Saturday night in Trottingham, which is the least I can say about their lame excuse for an education system." She rolls her eyes before leaning forward and smirking at me. "Besides, Twilight's 'Big Beau, Best Flank Forever' was just showing off an extraordinary amount of silly machismo. It's his first year into being a guard, and already he thinks he can flex his horn and get us unicorn schoolfillies to melt! Ha! Well, I made him deflate big time! That's for sure!"
"Moondancer..." I stammer, my eyes staring wide at her. "Did you...?" I gulp dryly. "You didn't let him in the hotel room, did you?"
"Mmmm... Nope." She smiles and sips at her own glass of water. "But I sure made him wish he was."
"Ugh. You are so evil. Twilight's gonna kill you."
"Not if she keeps being Princess Celestia's third hemisphere, she won't."
"Hey! She's more than just an errand pony for Her Majesty! She's being trained to be a high ranking sorceress!"
"She's ranking with something alright. Have you visited her room in the palace? Whew! Place smells like dust, old books, and backsweat! And I don't mean the sexy, Shining Armor kind! I swear, that filly's gotten nowhere with being the Princess' apprentice! She's still a sad little egghead who refuses to see sunlight!"
"Well, I still think she needs our support in everything she puts her heart and horn to," I say. "She's been there for us in the past, Moondancer. Celestia knows her parents have as well."
"Yeah, yeah." She places her glass down and gives me a bored glance. "So, how's plucking the proverbial string treating ya?"
I give her a smug grin. "My musical education is going well, Moondancer. How's your quest to become a teacher?"
"Eh. It's alright."
"'Alright?'"
"Yup."
"Since you came back from the Dragonlands, I thought you had a newer, tougher curriculum to undergo."
"Oh, you mean Advanced Unicorn Sociology?"
"Yeah, that. Isn't that your minor?"
"Eh. I dunno. I'm thinking of changing it."
"Really? What to?"
"Kiss My Flank 101."
"Seriously..."
"I mean it," Moondancer grumbles. "All the ponies in my class are total snobs. Cream of the crappy crop of Canterlot, if you catch my drift."
"Have they been giving you a lot of sass?"
"Well, if they weren't a week ago, they certainly are now!" She smiles with a wag of her eyebrows. "On account that they lost all their tail hairs yesterday."
"Uhhh..." I squint curiously at her. "I... don't read you."
"Somepony might know somepony who might know another pony who laced their luxury seats at the rear of the class with superglue." She sips from her glass again and blushes slightly. "And that somepony might be me."
I blink, staring at her breathlessly. "You're... You're serious?!"
"Well, I'm certainly not cinnamon!"
"Moondancer!" I squawk loudly, summoning several curious glances from the ponies surrounding us in the courtyard. "How... How could you?! What is this, Magic Kindergarten?! You're nineteen, for Luna's sake! What makes you think that you can do that kind of crap and get away with it still?!"
"Uhhhh... The fact that I did get away with it and those bratty, upstart snobs are now forced to walk the halls with their bare tails between their legs?!" She giggles wildly. "They all made up a story about a bunch of diamond dogs sneaking into their dorm at night and slicing their hair off to sell to the Zebra black market in Los Pegasus!"
"Oh jeez! That... That almost makes it worth it!" I clutch a hoof to my forehead and laugh until tears line my eyes. "Ohhhh Moondancer, when will you ever learn?!"
"Hahahaha... Ohhhhh... 'Learning...'" She chuckles, her face red. "If only I could sleep half as well..."
"I dunno! Heehee! You seem to have all your charm and spunk, as usual!"
"Heheheh... Heh... But no, really..." She continues to chuckle, but her laughter has become increasingly hollow, labored even. "I've been bunking at Canterlot Heights."
I chuckle a few more times. Catching my breath, I look at her and blink. "You... You mean the hotel?"
"I certainly don't mean the asylum, though I wouldn't mind that one bit at this point."
"Wow. Why... uh... Why aren't you staying at home? Ever since you quit dorm life, I thought you decided to stick around the house."
"Heheheh... Because... Heh..." Her laughter dropped off the edge of a limp smile. "Because he's back."
I stare at her. Slowly, my face grimaces. "He...? You mean...?"
She sips calmly at her glass.
My brow furrows. I squirm nervously where I stand. "But... But that's..." I shake my head and squint at her. "He moved to Baltimare. He has a business there now."
"That was just an excuse." Moondancer is mumbling now. I don't know what's more alarming: the news she has just told me or how rapidly she can switch from euphoric to deadpan. "The world's full of them, Lyra. Excuses, that is. And Mom's used one of them to lasso him back out of hiding."
"But..." I gulp and feel my forelimbs shivering. "But why?"
"Pfft... Why else?" She exhales firmly, her mouth hardening into a frown. "Cuz she's a withered old tart who doesn't know how to keep her tail down."
"Moondancer!" I hiss, looking over our shoulders at everypony around us. I lean in and speak hushedly, "How could you say that? She's your mother--!"
"She's an idiot," Moondancer grunts. "And I'm sick and tired of idiots. The only thing is that it makes no difference if I pull a prank on her. Her life is the biggest joke there is, and I'm tired of it." She downs the rest of her water in a single gulp and slaps the glass onto the tabletop. "So, as soon as I get a chance, I'm finding a place on my own. No more dorms, no more hotels, and certainly no more bullcrap."
"Moondancer, it... it can't be a permanent thing!" I try to sound strong. It comes out as a squeak. "Your mother--She has to be going through a phase or something! You know how it is for mares that age! I'm pretty sure she'll kick him out in a week--"
"And then what?" She chuckles, but this time it is a dry and lifeless thing, like dragging a cat's tongue across sandpaper. "She'll invite him back just a few months later, or else go crawling to Baltimare herself. It's the same old song and dance, and the music just won't get out of her dang head." She brushes a few stray leaves off her notebook before slapping it and glaring at me. "You know what the sickest part was? I spent the entire weekend yelling my head off at her over how pathetic she is to let that jerk back into our house for the umpteenth time, and she has the gall to say that I'm being 'heartless,' that I'm being a 'bad daughter...'"
"Moondancer--"
"A bad daughter?! Do you know what that heartless stallion used to do to me? Huh? Did I ever tell you about the time he made me stand outside on the balcony all night for wetting the bed, and slap me upside the head if he found out I sat down even once? The friggin' pissant would even sit down beside the window and watch me! Like he had nothing better to do..."
"I... I..."
"Or what about the night he thought I spoke back to him, and so he filled a pot full of boiling water and asked me which hoof I'd like to stick in first for being such an petulant child?! This is the same stallion my mother is choosing to respect over her own daughter. Who here wants to bet it's because he's always had one extra limb than me as long as Mom's known the both of us?!"
"Okay, Moondancer," I mutter, stirring uncomfortably. "You made your point. You're right."
"Oh! I'm sorry!" She stands up, gasping with ridiculous melodrama. "Is this too much for Lyra's little ears?! You can't handle your best friend venting a little steam?"
"I... I didn't say that!" I exclaim, shifty-eyed. "You know that you can always come to me..."
"Then why do you look like a changeling caught in a magical spotlight?!"
I bite my lip. I don't say anything. I can't say anything.
Apparently this is enough. Fuming, she stuffs her things into her schoolbag. "You know what? I get it. I'm ruining your precious lunch. Heh. Not like it's the first time."
"Moondancer, please..."
"What? I'm sorry, Lyra. I'm sorry that I can't make this day any more enjoyable for you. Celestia knows you can't make my week any less crappy than it already is, so don't bother planning to do anything about it, not like you were trying in the first place."
"Hey!" I frown. "Now you're just not being fair--"
"Hah!" She flippantly laughs, grinning venomously at me from where she stands with her bag. "Now that's a tragedy! Something in my best friend's life is not fair! Next thing I know, my other friend will become the pampered satellite to a princess!" Her eyes go wide as she slaps the side of her head with a hoof. "Oh, duh! That already happened! Oh well, I mustn't weigh down your high and mighty lives with my stupid baggage! You know--the stuff I've only had to deal with all my goddess-forsaken life!"
"Moondancer, don't do this," I plead with her. "Don't make a scene. You know I've only ever been there for you."
"Been there for me?" She frowns. "You? You've 'been there for me?'" She frowns even harder. "As if you could somehow relate? As if anything you've ever done or said ever held any kind of sincerity? What do you know, Lyra? What crap have you ever gone through? Has a single thing in your life ever gone south and made you question your very own existence? You with your 'outstanding lyrical talent' and your 'career in Canterlot music history?'"
"I... uh..."
"The fact of the matter is, you've never been there for me, Lyra. And it's laughable that you'd think as much. Your parents bailed my mom and myself out, sure. But you? Did you really think that a bunch of slumber parties and stupid trips to the city park or local doughnut shop ever truly made up for all the junk I went through? Life must be really dang simple for you if that's how you clear your conscience of all the troubled ponies you'll ever have to deal with. But, please, don't ever let me rock your perfect little world. That just wouldn't be 'fair,' now would it?"
I bite my lip, avoiding her gaze. The light around us is turning foggy, and I feel a soreness in my throat that I know would make any sort of reply a mere whimper.
She knows it too, and she scoffs at it. "Yeah, go ahead and cry," she says. "A little bit of warning for the wise: it only works for a little bit." She clenches her jaw and trots off on iron hooves. "And I'm sick to death of only doing things halfway, like somepony I once thought was my friend."
She leaves. The courtyard is quiet. I hear a brief stirring of nervous ponies returning to their distant conversations and studies. It isn't until her hoofsteps are completely out of earshot that I bury my face into my hooves and allow the tears to flow.
I heard Alabaster's strings. I heard his gentle melody, his masterful reinterpretation of the finer movements of the Nocturne. I heard every rising and falling cord that marked the song that had saved me multiple times from the depths of the unsung realm, and yet it did not solace me any longer. I knew that I was not the mare he had always meant to hear that heartfelt tune.
Still, that did not stop me from playing "Penumbra's Echo" over and over again, adamantly and faithfully, with hope that some sort of peace would come. Hope, after all, has been the one thing keeping me alive in this place. It was the same thing that pulled a mad pony away from the roof's edge of the town hall building. It was what made me ask for a hug from an amnesiac friend who could never remember me.
For the moment, it was what made me sit on the edge of the park on the side of town, anointed by the rays of an afternoon sun, with the crisp breeze of October circling soothingly around me as if I was just any other blessed soul. For a second, I wondered if dust would someday cover my body when I no longer had breath to give, or if even in ashes I would forever be an anomaly to the lengths of time.
I heard a pitter patter of hooves. Looking over, I saw four familiar foals. Scootaloo was drawing a red wagon, within which Apple Bloom was seated, wearing a ridiculously cute cape. She stared down a spyglass, licked her lip, and pointed adventurously towards the edge of a hill while Rumble and Sweetie Belle caught up with the pair on waddling limbs. They glanced at me as they scampered by. Then, in a second breath, they looked to my side and grimaced. With mutually blushing expressions, they hid their faces and hurried along.
I raised a curious eyebrow at that, until I heard a rasping voice beside the bench upon which I was squatting.
"That's a relaxing song."
I turned to look; my heart skipped a beat. Awkwardly, I smiled. "Funny. I had another colt your age say the same thing the other day."
"What?" Snips squinted up at me. "Do you perform around town? Like a traveling minstrel or something?"
"Uhmmm..."
"Cuz we once had a showpony visit Ponyville once." His ears drooped. "That didn't turn out so well."
"Don't your parents ever warn you about talking to strangers?" I asked, and almost immediately winced for doing so.
"Hmmph!" He raised his chin and horn and marched across the path before me in an extraordinary show of pride. "I can look after myself! I'm not a little foal, y'know! I've got a cutie mark!"
I looked at the symbol in question, but was instead distracted by a brand new limp to his gait, a limp that he tried in futility to hide. My ears twitched at the memory of the sound his body made after being tossed across the condominium. "You certainly seem like a tough little pony to me," I remarked, trying my best to maintain an adult smile. "Since when did rough and tumble stallions trot clear across the hillside at the sound of sweet music?"
"I didn't trot across the hillside! I..." He fidgeted, gnawing on his lip. His face hung towards the dirt path. "Meh... I was just killing time."
I looked at him, at the grassy fields, then at the bright blue sky. "Seems like such a beautiful day." I glanced Snips' way again. "Don't ponies usually see you hanging out with another colt? Some lanky fellow?"
"Hmm? Oh, you mean Snails?" He shrugged his stout shoulders. "He's off chasing bugs or something. I dunno."
"Well, it's a shame to be alone on an afternoon like this." I strummed a few more notes of "'Penumbra's Echo.' "Why not go and see what he's up to?"
"Mmrff..." He dug at the dirt and sighed. "You ever have a day when you just don't want to see other ponies?"
I smiled a bit more genuinely. "You're seeing me, aren't you?"
"Well, you play such good music, Miss..." He looked up at me, and his eyes were bloodshot. It appeared as though I wasn't the only soul in Ponyville dealing with insomnia. "And it's not like anypony's paying you or forcing you to do it. You're just doing it because you like to, don't you? I mean, why else would you be here?"
I took a deep breath, shrugging. "Silence is hardly a fitting friend."
He chuckled lightly, then gazed at the grass bordering the path. "That must be a really cool special talent to have."
"What? Music?"
"Mmmhmm..." He nodded, flicking at the emerald blades and upsetting a few leaping aphids. "All I got on my flank is these stupid scissors. I still don't really know what they mean. So many ponies my age want to get their cutie mark badly, and I don't even know what mine's all about. Isn't that stupid?"
I lean forward, narrowing my eyes. "Don't you have ponies where you live to share these thoughts with?"
His nostrils flared and a frown crossed his face. "Nothing's gonna change the fact that I have a lame talent." He looked up at me, and his expression was once again soft. "I don't know why, but when I hear that music, I don't feel so bad anymore. Even if it's your talent and not mine, there's something very... relaxing about it. Too bad I can't make that kind of sound with scissors. Heh..."
I looked at my lyre, running a hoof over its smooth edges. "Music is a lot more special than we give it credit for. It was part of the foundation of the world, after all. It's older than both talents and feelings combined." I chuckled slightly and looked at him. "I really don't blame you for being drawn to it."
"You mean I'm not bugging you?" He asked, his stubby tail flicking anxiously. "Cuz... y'know... I was just walking around and... and... Meh, I dunno..."
"Heheheh... Just relax," I said. My lungs exhaled peacefully as I heard myself say, "A song is never meant to just be played, but to be heard." I smiled for myself as much as for him. "I was hoping to have an audience."
"Huh..." He sat on his haunches, wincing slightly from the fresh bruise, but nevertheless smiling. "Would you... Would you play that song one more time? Erm, that is, if you don't mind...?"
I shook my head. "I would love to." I began strumming "Penumbra's Echo" once more, and already I could see Snip's eyes closing as his ears relished the soft melody. "The world we live in has many joys," I said beneath the lulling rhythm. "We should never, ever feel guilty for wanting to be happy."
I took even breaths, squinting from where I crouched behind a tree and a cluster of bushes. Just beyond the nearby length of fence, the condominium of the Straight Edge household lingered under a waning sunset. Hours after treating Snips' to as many renditions of Alabaster's song as I could, I had followed the colt from a distance while he wandered around Ponyville before eventually--hesitantly--returning to his home on the edge of downtown.
My body was tired and my eyes were dry from three nights of very little sleep. I couldn't deny a sharp tremor that was shuddering through my system. What was I doing there? Being cursed didn't give me the right to act like a stalker. My only consolation was the firm knowledge that Snips wasn't the pony I was looking for.
Finally, I saw my target: Straight Edge. The grizzled stallion was trotting home, or at least he was trying to. He swayed a bit in his step, his hooves shuffling in an inebriated pattern that I only found moderately surprising. After several minutes, he stumbled up to his front door. His shoulders heaved in an exasperate sigh, as if he had instead showed up to the worst night job imaginable. After telekinetically lifting a pair of keys up to the door, he marched into the dimly lit condominium and slammed the entrance shut behind him.
I took a deep breath and gazed around me. The sun had completely set. The stars were coming out overhead. Crickets were signaling through the air in a denser and denser chorus. There was nopony around to see what I was about to do.
On stealthy limbs, I hurried towards the front lawn of the Straight Edge household. I opened the fence gate and slithered up to the entrance. Hiding my body safely from the windows, I pressed my ear up to the building front. My heart was pounding. My coat hairs were standing on end. In over a year of haunting the lengths of Ponyville, I had never done something like this. True, I had helped myself to the interior of Twilight's library on occasion, but she was my foalhood friend, and every occasion that I stumbled upon her place of research it was to acquire more important reading materials or do more study on the Nocturne or play the "Song of Summoning."
But this? This was trespassing in the worst possible way. The same spirit that kept me from robbing Rarity blind or stealing Rainbow Dash's thunder or taking advantage of Applejack's hospitality was slicing a dagger of guilt across my heart. I almost pulled myself away after twenty minutes of hiding there, when I finally heard what I came for.
Windsong's unmistakable sobs sounded off first. It was followed by Straight Edge shouting one horrible thing after another. Snips' voice rushed up to the sounds Windsong was making, and then Straight Edge shouted some more. For the briefest of moments, Autumn's whimpering breath tried to intervene, but Straight Edge's growling drowned her out, followed by the sounds of bottles breaking. A dog two condos away started barking.
I took a deep breath, and felt a tug on my lips. I was smiling, for I now had what I needed. Swiftly, I turned away from the door front and ran like an emerald lightning bolt across Ponyville.
Inside the front lobby of the Ponyville Police Department, one stallion in blue finished polishing his horseshoes while murmuring across the lanternlit station. "And so I said to him, 'Sir, unless your neighbor's socks have the magical power of breaking laws of probability, I sincerely doubt they sprouted hooves, climbed out of your neighbor's hamper, and somehow made it into the drawers of your work desk across the street!'"
"Hahaha!" Another officer flipped the pages of his newspaper from where he lazily sat behind a counter. "Blessed Celestia! Is that when you arrested him?"
"Dang straight. Turns out the old pervert was stealing the lady's stockings for months."
"This thing that old stallions have for mares' socks..." The other shrugged and sighed. "I just don't get it."
Right then, the doors burst open. The two officers stood up abruptly and spun to look. "Uhhh... Can we help you?"
I stood, panting, and gulped. "Yes! You can help! But not me! Somepony else! There's a house in trouble on Burton Street!"
"Could you be more specific, ma'am?"
"I-I wish I could!" I exclaimed, my eyes glistening as I raised two shaking hooves up and toyed demurely with my cyan locks of mane hair. "I heard some horrible noises and yelling! I think that there might be a robbery in progress! I was walking by one of the condominiums when I heard the most terrible racket! I... I was so scared! You gotta go investigate!"
The two officers exchanged glances. With a firm nod, they bolted up, grabbed their equipment, and rushed out the door along with me. "Don't worry, madame. We're on it. Just show us the way."
I watched them. Stifling a proud smile, I cleared my throat and broke into an anxious gallop. "Oh thank you, officers! Thank you, so very much!"
"Here! Right here!" I exclaimed a few minutes later, pointing shakily at the front lawn to the Straight Edge family's household. "I was walking past the sidewalk when I heard the noise!"
"Hmmm..." One officer murmured, adjusting his hat as he stepped up to the fence. "The front gate's still open..."
"Oh... Yes... Uhm..." I fidgeted and smiled nervously. "Must have been a robber!"
"We'll take care of this. Please step back." One of them marched up to the front steps. As he did so, a few muffled shouts rattled the windows of the home. I was both terrified and jubilant all at once. "Hello?!" The officer knocked on the front door. "This is the police. Is everything alright in there?"
Again, there was a wave of noise. I instantly detected Straight Edge's growling voice. Windsong was whimpering. Or perhaps it was Snips. I no longer cared. Everything was collapsing and coming together in beautiful poetry.
"I repeat, this is the police! Please respond!" The officer put his ear against the door. He frowned. He looked back and gave the officer a firm nod.
His partner patted my shoulder. "Stay here." He whipped out his baton and gripped it in his teeth as he galloped up to the steps.
"On three." The other officer pivoted around, coiling his rear legs. "One... Two... Three!" He bucked the doors open, snapping the hinges. His partner rushed in as he shouted, reaching for his own baton. "Everypony freeze! This is the police!" Gripping his own weapon, he rushed in after his partner.
I stood outside, squatting on my haunches, waiting. A minute went by, and all was silent inside the condominium. I took several jittery breaths, fiddling with the stone-gray sleeves of my hoodie. More minutes passed by. All I could hear was crickets.
I started to panic. Did Straight Edge do something horrible to his wife and children? Did he turn out to be too strong of a stallion for both officers to handle?
"Oh dear Celestia," I murmured out loud as a sharp chill ran through my figure.
Could I have inadvertently traumatized Snips and his little sister? I knew that Straight Edge was asking for it, but did the colt and filly really deserve to see two grown ponies tackling their father to the floor? Could I possibly have given Autumn another seizure?
Worry turned to despair, and despair turned to action. Hesitantly, I trotted up the path and approached the door to the room. "Uhm... Officers?" I heard nothing. I looked through the dimly lit foyer, seeing the paintings and furniture and normal bric-a-brac of domestic life. "Is... Is everything okay? Okay, so I confess; there wasn't a robber after all." I gulped and trotted deeper into the household, my breath coming out in vapors. "But you needed to see this. You needed to stop this from getting any worse--" I froze in place.
The two officers were standing casually with Straight Edge in the center of the living room, sharing glasses of lemonade. Autumn was sitting on the couch, cradling a sobbing Windsong. Snips squatted on the bottom step of the condo's stairs, staring lethargically into the carpet.
"Yeah, but the Wonderbolts are soooo out of shape this year," one of the officers said with a smirk while swirling his glass. "On account of Fleetfoot and Mercury having gone on tour in the Griffon Lands back in spring."
"Those darn Griffons never cut pegasi a break," Straight Edge said in a grumbling voice. The corner of his grizzled face curved upwards. "Fleetfoot and her buddy never got to show off. They just hung around in pony hotels waiting for the Griffons to kick 'em out of the country so they can get back to real work. Shoot, I don't even know why Canterlot bothered with the exchange program to begin with."
"Yeah! Heh... Those two beaked morons they borrowed could never fly in formation anyways! Thank Goddess they showed up after this year's Best Young Flier's Competition and not before!" One officer took a sip, turned, saw me, and nearly spat out his drink. "Koff! Koff--Auck! Ahem. Can we help you?"
"I... I..." I stood dumbly in place, squirming.
"Hrmmf..." Straight Edge's eyes were thin. "She must have seen the door from outside."
"Nothing to be alarmed about, ma'am," one officer said, waving at me. "An honest-to-goddess mistake on the force's part."
"I swear, I've been on the beat for fifteen years, and I've never done anything like this!" The other said. "I promise you, Mr. Edge, the Department will pay for the damages."
"Hey, nothing that I can't fix myself. It's good to know that you guys are always around at a moment's notice."
"Yes..." Autumn stammered, trying to get Windsong to calm down. "It's nice having the police cl-close by..."
"That's just what I said, honey," Straight Edge growled lightly.
"This... This can't be right!" I exclaimed, my lips quivering. I frowned at the officers and pointed at the walls of the room around us. "You mean you just charged in here and saw nothing going on?! I knew I heard shouting!"
"That was probably the poor foal here being scared by Ponyville's finest," an officer said sheepishly. "Heh. If the Lieutenant doesn't chew us out for this mixup, I dunno what will tip him over."
"I don't know what got into us," the other remarked. "I suppose it's these late night shifts, y'know? One second you're at the station, and the next you're swinging a baton around at loud noises! This town's made basket cases out of us all, what with Nightmare Moon, Ursa Minors, and parasprites!"
"Hey, didn't I tell you to forget about it?" Straight Edge chuckled. "If anything, you made my evening more exciting. It certainly shook me out of the damnedest stupor. I think I got the energy to get some work done around here for a few hours thanks to you guys."
"But... But..." I blinked, then frowned, then snarled. "No!" I stomped my hoof. "This is wrong! Things aren't right with this household!"
"Excuse me?" Straight Edge glared daggers my way. I almost stumbled back from that. Almost.
"Ma'am, please..." One officer put his glass down and marched firmly towards me, his face serious. "I understand if you or any of the other neighbors may have been startled, but this has all been nothing more than a terrible misunderstanding--"
"No! You just don't know anything! You've forgotten! All of you!" I started panting. I pointed a heavy hoof towards the mare and her child. "Why are they so freaked out, huh?! Why is she still crying?"
Straight Edge sighed and looked lethargically at the two police stallions. "Officers, it's really late. Could you do us a favor and..." He gestured towards me with his head.
"Ma'am, if you would come with us--"
"Snips!" I pointed at the colt. He jolted from the sound of his name. "Ask h-him! Ask him what's been going on in this household!"
"Okay, that's quite enough--"
"How'd you get that limp, Snips?!" I almost shrieked as the first officer grabbed my shoulder. I tugged away at him and pleaded with the youngster from afar. "And those bruises on your face?"
"Mmmm..." He hugged himself, scraping his hooves across the carpet. "Snails... and I g-got into a fight..."
"Ungh..." Straight Edge rolled his eyes. "Darn kid..."
"Snails?" One officer made a face.
"His... Uhm..." Autumn shivered where she sat. "His friend. From school."
I frowned. "He's lying! She is too! They're afraid! They're afraid for their safety! Can't you see that?!" As the one officer tried pulling me towards the entrance, I grunted and shouted at Snips. "You didn't have those bruises earlier when I played that music for you, Snips! How did you really get them?! Huh?!"
"I..." Snips gulped, looked at his father, and flinched. "I-I've never seen this unicorn before... Honest..."
I felt all the color leaving my sweaty face.
"I think you need to come with us down to the station," the stallion uttered, tugging at my forelimb.
"Nnnngh!" I snarled and summoned a burst of magic. A shield of protection energy bubbled away from my horn in a green flash. The officer gasped, not even remotely expecting such a show of power. Before he could recover, I was galloping out of the household and charging into cold Ponyville night. My eyes twitched with fury, and my ears rang with the thunder of my churning heartbeat.
"So lemme get this straight," Rainbow Dash squinted from where she hovered above Twilight Sparkle and Applejack in the town library the next day. "You've lived in this town for over a year, but nopony has ever known about it because you've got some mystic curse that keeps any soul from remembering a single thing about you? And instead of trying to get us to help you fix this craziness, you're asking that we investigate some stallion beating up on his kid?
I took a deep breath, stood tall, and firmly nodded. "Yes."
Rainbow Dash pivoted and looked at her two friends. "Now can I say it?"
Applejack muttered, "Reckon ya can, sugarcube."
Rainbow Dash spun and hissed at me, "Horsefeathers!"
I sighed and rolled my eyes. I was low on sleep, strength, and sanity. It took a cosmic effort to stand upright in the midst of these mares, much less keep a sane expression.
"Of all the crazy, low-brow, lame attempts at grabbing attention!" Rainbow Dash hovered circles around me, tossing accusatory glares. Her incredulous rambling was of little comfort to my frayed nerves. "Your randomness makes Pinkie Pie look like a college professor! Oh, so you heard about the Elements of Harmony! So you heard about Twilight Sparkle, the magical apprentice to Princess Celestia, and how she and her bestest friends defeated Nightmare Moon! And now what? You just want a slice of the popularity pie! I mean, hey, kudos on subtlety! At least you're not making us go on some global quest to a 'Nocturnal Locker' on the opposite side of the world or some other epically unrealistic crud! Still, this whole Straight Edge nonsense is downright creepy! Just how long have you been sticking your nose into other ponies' business, huh?! And making nasty claims of child abuse?! Bah! This is a clean town, filly! I'm Ponyville's eye in the sky! I would know this crap!"
I turned and looked coolly at her. "And you would also know that the only reason you haven't already gone off to join the 'awesome' Wonderbolts and leave everything else behind is because your new and altogether 'boring' friends here in Ponyville have unwittingly filled a niche in your life, dissuading the biggest fear you've ever had: of being perpetually alone."
Rainbow Dash's ruby pupils shrank as she fell flat on her haunches. "Derr... wh-what did you just say--?" She began to whimper, shivering like a foal.
Applejack was frowning. "Now see here, Missy--"
I turned towards her. "And you--whose father was the inspiration for both the physical and metaphorical foundations you constantly lay down for yourself and the ponies around you--you just can't stop staring at this hoodie that I'm wearing, can you? Perhaps it's because deep down inside, Applejack, you know that there's a reason for its familiarity; it's the same jacket you once wore when tending the orchards of your farm. You loved it because its color reminded you of your father's coat in winter when he held you close and sang you songs passed down for half a dozen generations."
"Uhhh..." Applejack's face paled as she pulled her hat off and held it to her chest. "Land's sakes..."
"And you..." I pivoted and smiled at Twilight, who flinched visibly. "A pony who fears the greatest horror of all: being forgotten. When you came to Ponyville and you saw the spark of friendship that solidified your place here forever, you discovered what it meant to cry tears of happiness for once. Beforehand, whenever you sobbed, it was always in the lonely confines of the Canterlot Castle study halls. But you never dared share your concerns and sorrows with Princess Celestia. 'After all,' you had once told me, 'Starswirl the Bearded was the greatest mortal magician who ever lived, and he died alone with nothing but his scrolls.' You used to believe that a lonely existence was a necessary means to greatness. But since you found your friends here in Ponyville, a piece of you was willing to be forgotten by the Equestrian history books, because you'd rather be happy in the now than despondent for the future."
Twilight stared at me, her lips quivering. "I... H-how...?"
"There isn't enough time to explain 'how,'" I said, leaning forward and smiling gently. "All that matters is why. And the answer is: I want to help ponies, just like you do. Right now, we have an opportunity to do just that, but no good will come to Snips' family if we just sit around on our flanks." I stood back and gazed at the group as a whole. "You would be completely different, completely lonely mares if you didn't take the leap of faith by becoming friends. But in doing just that, you turned into the three strongest, the three most dependable ponies in the whole of Equestria. Won't you take another leap of faith, right here, right now?"
Rainbow Dash was shivering. Twilight Sparkle sniffled. Applejack placed her hat back on her blonde head and gazed at the other two silently. They looked back at her.
"I don't see or hear anything," Rainbow Dash muttered under the fall of evening.
"Shhh!" Applejack exclaimed hoarsely from where we crouched on the sidewalk outside the condominium. There was a light inside and shadows shuffled within. "Remember what Miss Heartstrings said. Give it time! Apparently this Straight Edge fella gets all hotheaded at random."
"I still think this is really weird," Rainbow Dash remarked, frowning. "Not to mention really uncool. I mean--we're totally spying on other Ponyville ponies! In their apartments!"
"If you're afraid, then go home," I grunted sullenly.
"Lyra," Twilight whispered to me. "That wasn't very nice. We're taking a 'leap of faith' for you, after all."
"I know..." I sighed and ran a hoof over my exhausted complexion. "And I'm sorry, girls. It's just... You won't believe what I've gone through to try to intervene on this family's behalf."
"And y'all mean to suggest that neither Miss Cheerilee nor the police could help any?"
"I'm afraid not, Applejack. It's the curse, remember?"
"It's just so much to take in," Twilight Sparkle remarked. "The search for Scootaloo, the hotel collapsing on Rumble and Morning Dew, the parasprite infestation: you mean to say that you were there for each of those occasions?"
"Yes," I said, then winced. "Though... that last part would take a really, really long time to explain. And even then I'm still a bit sketchy on the details..."
"I... I-I saved Scootaloo..." Rainbow Dash gulped and foalishly gazed at her two friends, her wings drooping. "Didn't I?" she almost wimpered.
"Shucks, girl," Applejack remarked, fanning herself with her hat. "Next thing we know, y'all gonna tell us you were responsible for gettin' Wind Whistler and Caramel hitched!"
"Heh..." I grinned wickedly and doubled over. "Heh heh heh heh heh heh!"
Rainbow Dash made a face. "What's so dang funny?"
"Ohhhhhhh..." I mumbled into my hooves. "I really, really need to get some sleep..."
"Twilight, darlin'." Applejack looked at my foalhood friend. "Ya sure this spell is helpin' us blend in with the shadows all good and proper?"
"For the millionth time, yes, Applejack," Twilight Sparkle replied. "Unless Princess Celestia herself shows up and lights up this part of the neighborhood with her horn, we're darker than a thundercloud. Nopony will see us all sitting here."
"Good." Applejack shivered. "Reckon it's a might rotten feelin' to be sitting here all incognito."
"You said it, girl," Rainbow Dash added.
Twilight Sparkle stirred nervously. She glanced over at me. "Miss Heartstrings?"
"Nnngh..." I tiredly gazed at the household with bloodshot eyes. "Yes, Twilight?"
"Assuming everything you've told us is completely true--"
"And it is."
"Right. Absolutely." She cleared her throat. "This curse sounds like an awful ordeal for any single pony to go through. Could it be possible that--between the fantastical tasks of being chased by an undead alicorn and trying to learn a forgotten magical symphony--you've simply imagined this little detail about Snips' family?"
"I know what I've heard..."
Applejack poked in. "Heard?"
I sighed. "Seen and heard. Heard and seen--Nnnggh. Look! This Straight Edge stallion is bad news! And no matter how horrible my situation is, I'm not going to let a tragedy like this slip through the cracks! It just... It just isn't fair! This world..." I grimaced as memories shot through my head. In a blink, I thought I saw the misty sight of a school courtyard beyond a veil of tears. It looked too eerily similar to a rainy Canterlot street beyond a shadowed stairwell. Groaning, I rubbed my forehead with a pair of hooves.
The three mares shared nervous glances. I could already sense that I was losing whatever threadbare confidence of theirs I had earned thus far.
"Twilight..." I muttered, tilting my head back up. "You... You remember Moondancer, right? I mean... You remember what she went through?"
A sharp breath escaped from Twilight Sparkle's lips. Her violet eyes began quivering. "You... You knew Moondancer?"
I blinked, my heart beating hard. Oh dear, sweet Celestia. I forgot. I always, always forget about this little part.
"Uhm... Ahem." I smiled nervously at her. "You... you told me about her. Y'know, during our past meetings..."
"And I've since forgotten..." Twilight Sparkle nodded, begrudgingly accepting that. She sighed and murmured, "Just how much did I tell you about Moondancer, exactly?"
I swallowed and said. "Enough." I placed a gentle hoof on her shoulder. "You remember how much your parents, Dusk and Stellar, helped Moondancer and her mother Satine in their time of need?"
Twilight slowly nodded. "How could I forget? I was really young at the time, but I became close to Moondancer later." She smiled gently and glanced towards Applejack and Rainbow Dash. "She was the one friend I had long before coming to Ponyville." A sharp pang surged through her system. "But... all of that has changed now..."
"Do you still love her?"
Twilight flashed me a look. She blinked a few times, and her eyes became moist. "Of course I do. I... I suppose I always will, in a way..."
I smiled gently. "Could you imagine how her life would have been if she never knew you? Or if her mother never knew your parents? I mean..." I gestured while speaking. "What if Dusk and Stellar overlooked the little details, the tiny yet significant signs that things weren't very..." I lingered, gazing briefly aside at the other two mares. "Ahem... weren't very happy in Moondancer's household?"
Twilight chewed on her lower lip. "I... I shudder to think..."
"Twilight," I said, "We are not just strangers in this world, or mild acquaintances or even simple neighbors for that matter. We are all placed on this planet for a reason. I mean... we are all crafted out of the same song, molded out of the same chorus that sang Creation into being. It is our duty--no--it is our nature to reach out to each other when we notice a great problem that needs to be addressed. Even the most horrible curse ever conceived by ponydom can't change the fact that we are meant to be the living salvation of each other, chasing away evil, blowing away the ashes of chaos with our righteous breaths of harmony. So, you see, helping Snips and his mother and his sister is like your parents helping Moondancer! Because... Because it's all part of the same glorious movement! Like a beautiful instrumental that knows no end..."
Twilight Sparkle stared at me. Slowly, she gave me a very gentle smile.
"You're frickin' high," Rainbow Dash grunted.
"Rainbow!" Applejack hissed.
"Jeez! Just listen to the lime-green fuzzhead!" Rainbow Dash whispered, gesturing wildly. "Have you ever heard a pony say so little with so many stupid words?!"
"We ain't here to be judgin' no poetry contest!"
"Ugh! I hate all this waiting around! Either let's bust some guilty, child abusin' heads or go home! Goddess almighty..."
"Shhhh!" Twilight exclaimed, raising her hoof as she tilted her gaze towards the house. "Did you hear that?"
"What? What?" I exclaimed, jittery all of the sudden.
"Give her some ear room, sugarcube," Applejack said, resting a gentle hoof on my shoulder.
Even Rainbow Dash was leaning forward, craning an ear from where she hovered. Her eyes circled around the edges of their sockets. Suddenly, there was a sharp cry, followed by a heavy thud. Her wing feathers stood on end. "Horseapples!"
"Sounds like a hog wrasslin' contest in there," Applejack added, her features hardening.
"If only it was," I muttered icily. I glared at the three. "Still doubt me?"
Twilight Sparkle gulped, her body jolting as several more shouts echoed from the condominium a few steps away. "That... Is that actually Snips' father?"
"Stick a feather in my eye!" Rainbow Dash hoarsely exclaimed. "Sounds more like an angry dragon!"
"If there's somethin' I can't stand for..." Applejack grumbled angrily. "It's a self-respectin' parent tossin' his own young'ns around like bales of hay." She adjusted her hat to add shadows to her glare and turned towards us. "Reckon we should fetch the cops?"
"Didn't you hear Miss Heartstrings earlier?" Twilight retorted. "It didn't work last time!"
"Nothing good will come of this if we just repeat what I did previously," I said, trying to keep my cool as the windows of the house rattled again and again. "What I need is for the three of you to witness this all at once--" My body was assaulted with a sudden chill. I saw vapors spreading from my muzzle. My eyes twitched. "Oh no..."
"What is it?"
"Oh no no no no no no!" I leapt into Twilight's face and all but yanked at her mane. "Who am I?!"
"L-Lyra Heartstrings!" she exclaimed.
"What's goin' on--" Applejack started.
I turned towards her. "Say my name!"
"Uhhh--Lyra!"
I flashed a glare at Rainbow Dash. "And you!"
"Fuzzhead!"
"Rainbow--"
"Er, I mean Lyra!" She shook her head wildly. "Seriously! What's the big deal--?!"
"Praise Celestia!" I moaned, then frowned. "There isn't much time! It's now or never!"
"For what?"
"No questions!" I tugged at Twilight again. "You gotta teleport us in there!"
"Wh-what?!" She flinched from me as if I had the plague. "Are you nuts?"
"Just about! I can't risk the curse undoing everything right now!"
"Everypony calm down. Let's just mosey up to the front door and do this all civil-like--"
Another cry came from the house.
"Yeah, screw that," Rainbow Dash said. "Twi?"
"Okay, but this feels like a bad idea--" She started to concentrate, her horn glowing hot.
"Just do it!" I growled, my bloodshot eyes quivering. "Before it's too--"
There was a bright flash of lavender light. The shadow of evening dissolved in a blink, and the four of us landed in the Straight Edge household's kitchen. Glass bottles, porcelain plates, and metal silverware settled all around us. The air was sour with the smell of alcohol, and I was seeing stains on the carpet that weren't there the previous day.
"--late!" I murmured, freezing on the sight of what was before me. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle were identically still as statues.
Straight Edge was levitating Snips in the air. There was a bright glow around the struggling colt's throat, and tears were streaming from his eyes. Autumn was draped halfway off the couch, her weak forelimbs stretching in desperation towards the struggle. In the far corner, Windsong was curled up in the corner, her eyes bright and full of trembling horror.
"--don't you ever, ever tell me what to do, boy!" Straight Edge was snarling. "I know what's best for your mother, and I don't need none of your goddess-awful attitude! I'm the one workin' my flank off for her therapy everyday! Just what in the hay have... you... ever... contributed...?" Straight Edge's eye twitched, then locked on the four trespassers. He hiccuped, swayed, and merely growled. "What in Luna's name is this crap all about--?"
Applejack was pouncing across the room like orange lightning. "You get yer dirty magic off him, ya mangy demon!" She barreled right into him, head first.
"Ooof!" The stallion fell back and crashed through an end table.
"Straight!" Autumn shrieked.
Windsong wailed.
Snips fell limply toward the ground, only for Rainbow Dash to fly over and swoop him up. "It's okay, lil guy. I gotcha!"
"What in the hay is the meaning of--?" Straight Edge gasped as a pair of heavy hooves landed on his chest. "Ooof!"
"Nopony... And I mean nopony should be treatin' their own flesh and blood that way!" Applejack snarled.
"What are you doing to my husband?!" Autumn shrieked.
"Lady!" Rainbow Dash barked from where she cradled a sputtering Snips. "You're dang lucky she's not kicking his lousy teeth in!"
"Everypony, just calm down!" Twilight exclaimed. She was shivering heavily; I had never seen her this scared.
"You come into my house?!" Straight Edge struggled and shoved against Applejack's pressure. "You stick your manes into my life?! I should be calling the cops on you stupid wenches!"
"Oh, wouldn't that be a hoot!" Applejack almost spat on him. "I'd like to just see you rat yerself out of this, ya varmint!"
"Get off my husband!"
Windsong wailed even louder.
"Auugh! Can somepony help that filly to... t-to calm..." Rainbow Dash started to teeter in mid-air.
"Rainbow?" Twilight stammered. "What's wrong?"
"Just... Just so dizzy..." Rainbow Dash muttered, almost letting Snips fall from her grasp.
I looked at her, or at least I tried to. A breath of cold vapors was blocking my sight of the pegasus. I gasped sharply, gritted my teeth, and yanked Snips from her hooves as gently as I could. "It's happening already!"
"Huh?!" Applejack looked up. "What's happening already--Whoah nelly!"
"Rrgggh!" Straight Edge was shoving the mare off of him. "I swear to Tartarus, you're going to pay for this!"
Applejack stumbled back and slammed into a china cabinet. Glass shattered. The shadows of the room swayed from a lamp teetering.
"Applejack!" Twilight cried out.
I was dashing over to scoop Windsong up. I planted her on my back and spun about. "Twilight! Get us out of here!"
"But... But..." Twilight began summoning a force field as Straight Edge picked up a metal poker from the fireplace and stormed angrily towards Applejack's dizzy figure. "Everything's gone to heck--!"
"Where do you think these two kids have been living in their whole lives?!" I exclaimed.
"Hey!" Rainbow Dash saw Straight Edge charging Applejack with a weapon and immediately went into action. "What's the big idea?!" In a blink, she was tackling the stallion to the ground, rattling paintings off the condo's walls with the impact.
"Darn it, Twilight!" I exclaimed. "We gotta get these foals out of here! This may be our only chance--" Just as I said this, a frigid chill ran through the house. "Oh Celestia, please--"
"Nnnngh!" Twilight was already charging energy through her horn. Just as Straight Edge shouted something and swung a hoof at Rainbow, the two of us were blurring away along ethereal leylines. I clung tightly to the shivering bodies of Snips and Windsong. In less than two seconds, we stumbled to a stop against the side of a building across town. "Ooof!"
"Unngh!" Twilight rolled to a stop in the moonlit grass. She coughed and sputtered. "I... g-got as far as I could..." She winced and tried standing up. "But Applejack and Rainbow Dash--"
"They're stronger than the two of us," I stammered, hugging the two foals close and catching my breath. "What matters is that these kids are safe."
"Kids...?" Twilight remarked, shaking her head wearily. "I... don't understand. Applejack... Rainbow Dash..."
"Twilight, we both know they've got it covered--" I stopped, blinking at her, noticing how she was rubbing her head as if coming out of a migraine. "Wait..."
Just then, a bright light shone on all four of us. I winced and squinted towards what turned out to be the double-doors to town hall opening wide.
"My word!" The Mayor of Ponyville trotted out, gasping in shock at the sight of two unicorns and a pair of traumatized children. Several elder ponies walked out with her, squinting and studying the awkward scene. "What's going on out here? It sounded like a bomb went off!"
"We're sorry about that, Mayor," I said. "Twilight teleported us here. You see, something horrible has been happening on Burton Street and--"
"M-Mayor!" Twilight Sparkle stood up, blinking wide. "Why are you up so late?"
"We were having a late night meeting of the City Council to discuss preparations for Nightmare Night. What, may I ask, are you doing out here in the middle of the street? It looks like you just fell from the sky."
"I... uh... I dunno..." She looked my way, then scrunched her face at the sight of the trembling, bruised unicorn in my grasp. "Snips?! Oh my goddess! What... What happened to him?!"
"Twilight, you..." I gulped. I reached a hoof out towards her. "Please. Think carefully. I know you had to have retained something..."
"Huh?" Twilight was trotting over. She and the Mayor knelt down to examine Windsong and Snips. "Retain what? I don't understand! What happened to these foals?"
"Hey! Twilight!" Rainbow Dash's voice exclaimed.
I gasped. I spun around and looked up high.
The pegasus was flying towards us, breathless. "There you are! We need your help!"
"What is it?"
"It's Straight Edge!" she exclaimed.
Twilight gawked. The Mayor and her fellow council members murmured in concern. Windsong and Snips sat up, shivering in fright. A part of me deep inside was smiling...
"You won't believe it!" Rainbow Dash's voice cracked. "There's been a break-in at his house! We think somepony nabbed his kids!"
I stopped smiling immediately. "Hoboy..."
The Mayor breathlessly stammered, "Straight Edge's and Autumn's children?! Kidnapped?!"
"Uhhh..." Twilight Sparkle raised an eyebrow and pointed at the two foals. "You mean these kids?"
Rainbow Dash did a double-take, her ruby eyes twitching. "What in the hay?!" As she touched down, two figures trotted up from a moonlit block over.
"Twilight! There you are! Did Rainbow tell y'all?!" Applejack was also out of breath. She brushed a blonde bang up beneath her hat and exclaimed, "Somethin' plum evil's ahoof! Rainbow Dash and I just woke up in Straight Edge's house like we came out of a spell! Next thing we knew, his kids were gone!"
"It must be some kind of sorcery," Straight Edge remarked. "I thought you ponies defeated Nightmare Moon! For Pete's sake, my family and I moved to Ponyville to avoid this kind of nonsense! We have to tell the police or else--" The stallion froze as his eyes narrowed rigidly on the two tiny unicorns in the center of the group. "Wait a second. What in the heck is going on here?!"
"I... I-I wish I knew!" Twilight Sparkle remarked, gazing at all of the equines and trembling under the cold starlight. "Applejack? Rainbow Dash? You mean to say that you woke up in Straight Edge's house just now?"
"Reckon it was on our way home from helpin' you at the library, Twilight," Applejack said. "Plum flummoxed if I know how we got inside his home..." She scratched her chin. "Oww... My limbs feel banged up somethin' fierce. Whatever it was that knocked me and Rainbow Dash must still be out and about!"
"Perhaps the children could shed some light on this situation," the Mayor suggested.
"Windsong? Snips?" Straight Edge stared down at them. "You know what this is all about?"
Windsong merely whimpered. Snips was blinking dazedly, rubbing his neck with his hoof.
"Well?" Straight Edge's eyes narrowed.
"I..." Snips trembled, his lips quivering. "I... I don't know..."
"Nnnngh!" I stomped at the grass with my hooves, startling everypony. "Snips, tell them! Tell them the truth! You don't have to be afraid of him!"
Straight Edge cast me an awkward glare. "Who's this crazy mare?!"
"Uhhh--" Twilight started.
I shouted again. "Snips, don't let him intimidate you! You're surrounded by ponies who can help you and your sister and your mother! Tell them how your father throws you around and abuses your family!"
"What...?!" Straight Edge backtrotted, his face twisting.
"The hay?!" Rainbow Dash looked crookedly at Twilight. "Twi?! Do you know this freaky unicorn?"
"Uhm... Ma'am?" Twilight gently trotted towards me. "I... I don't know who you are, but I think you should calm down--"
"Nnnngh!" I shook her off, hyperventilating. I knelt down before Snips, pleading with him. "Snips. Please. Everypony deserves to be happy, especially you, especially right now! Tell them the truth!"
"I..." He wilted away from me, his eyes moistening. "I-I'm scared. I want to go home..."
My heart fell. I whimpered. "Snips. Snips please..."
"Y-You're scaring me, lady," he whimpered, clutching his little sister tightly and shrinking away from my frenzied expression. "Please, I just want to go home..."
I almost collapsed right there. The elder ponies behind the Mayor were murmuring hushedly among themselves. I felt the shadows of Applejack and Rainbow Dash converging on me.
"Simmer down there, sally. Seems like you're a stranger around these parts, but I reckon you might be able to shed some light on this recent kidnappin'..."
"Unless..." Rainbow Dash's eyes grew narrow as she hissed suspiciously at me. "...you are the kidnapper."
I turned. I looked at Straight Edge. Perhaps it was a glint from the moon. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw a pearly-toothed smile. "Nnnngh--!" Everything turned to hot, bright emerald. As soon as the flash was over, half of the ponies were sprawled out on the ground, including Rainbow Dash and Applejack.
I didn't bother to help them back up, for as soon as I let loose the magical discharge, I was galloping as fast as I could towards the north edge of town. The cold of my curse pelted me between each heaving breath. My hoodie was heavy with the sweat that had soaked it from my every pore.
The world flickered with a kaleidoscope of moonlight through the trees overhead. The October breeze froze my nerves. Once I was out of earshot of the downtown area, I skidded to a stop and leaned against a park bench. It was a very familiar spot, a place where a tranquil unicorn had once played the gentlest of songs for a lonesome colt.
There was no room for peace, no room for happiness, not for Snips and most certainly not for this pariah.
A low growl fluttered up my lungs, boiled through my throat, and exploded out my mouth. The world flashed emerald again. There was a crackle of thunder, like her furious wrath rippling across the unsung realm, and with a weight akin to the holy Nightbringer, I unleashed a wave of unbridled magic ahead of me. The bench shattered to wooden splinters, splattering debris all across the grassy hilltop beyond.
The only thing more distressing than my wanton act of destruction was the bitter knowledge that anypony who saw it the next morning would simply explain it away with some accursed excuse or another. Shaking my head and fighting the tears, I galloped towards my cabin.
The Threnody bled into the Requiem. The strings of the Nightbringer rang shrilly, harshly, like my gnashing teeth. I lifted my head and glared into the swirling tempests. Lightning radiated all around me, but the thunder of the unsung realm wasn't enough to drown out my shouting voice.
"Come down from there!" I growled. "Come down from your high throne and play 'Desolation's Duet' with me!"
The spheres within spheres levitated, loomed, but did not descend. Bolts of lightning illuminated several moaning ponies crawling across the platform in the shadow of her lofty presence. Jets of water sprayed across the scene, and yet nothing changed.
"I'm not asking you! I'm telling you!" I hissed and sneered into the freezing gale. "You're going to come down here and help me finish the Nocturne and you're going to do it now! Then I'll be out of your life, out of your mane, and out of this damnable pit in the universe that you call a home! I know you don't want me around, so let's get it over with! Get your undead flank down here and let us kill the music together!"
A ring of lightning boiled around the sphere, coalesced into a furious branch of energy, and rocketed down towards me. I clung heavily to the Nightbringer, summoning a shield around me that deflected all of her wrath. The concussive blast blew the rusted platform dry, knocking moaning souls off their haunches.
"Nnngh!" I fought against the vaporous tumult, shouting over the ringing body of the Nightbringer. "I will not sing your song! You will sing mine, dammit!"
Another strobe of energy bulleted my way. I weathered the onslaught, fighting it back with my energy, grinding my hooves into the rust and grime below. As the thunder settled, I stared up, gnashing my teeth as tears ran down my face.
"I hate you..."
The sphere slowly, gently flew away.
"I hate you!" I screamed into the chaos between firmaments. "Damn you and damn your putrid symphony! Damn you and your booming voice and your shattered wings and your cold spirit and your pathetic neutrality and your holier-than-thou aloofness! It's no wonder that the only ponies you have to rule over are pathetic waifs! You're the queen of nothing but the heartless, thoughtless, trotting dead! Who in their right mind could ever possibly love you?! Certainly not the Cosmic Matriarch! I think it's fitting that she dumped you inside this horrible toilet between dimensions! What kind of a goddess has so much power and so much strength and yet doesn't lift a single hoof to make the world any better?! What's so special and tragic about your life that you have to hide in here like a stubborn little foal having a tantrum in her room?!"
The sphere flew off, disappearing into the tempests, looming beyond earshot.
Nevertheless, I snarled, "You're selfish! You hear me?! You're selfish and you're a coward! Maybe instead of rewriting history, you should think of improving the future! Your sisters are doing it! Why can't you?!" I clutched the Nightbringer to the point of breaking and spat, "All I want is to be real! To make a difference! To help ponies around me! But you just can't have that, can you?! You know what?! I don't care how powerful you think you are! I have the Nightbringer, you insufferable demoness! I have all of eternity to scream at you! And so help me, if all you want is for me to be a ghost, then I'm going to haunt you until the end of time! You hear me?! You will not have any rest in this pathetic grave you call a home! I won't let you rest! I won't let you rest, you stupid waste of song! I won't let you!"
All was madness and cold. I sat upon the brink of the drowning abyss, shivering, standing on the only source of warmth I had left.
And the source of that warmth bred a lasting scream through my lips as I tossed my hooves in frustration, grumbled, and played "Penumbra's Echo" on the Nightbringer.
I stood before my cabin, my hooves occupying the middle of the dirt road to the north of town. I was several feet away from my patio, but I couldn't bring my limbs any closer to it. I was perfectly still; not even the lingering cold of the unsung realm made me shiver.
There was a light from behind the windows where I had left a lantern lit. I knew that somewhere inside, Al was either sleeping or inspecting his half-empty food dish, perhaps purring--wondering when I would show up again.
I couldn't see him. Not then. Not anytime soon.
With a deep breath, I turned and glanced at the morning light glowing over the edge of the horizon. I teetered briefly, remembering all of the things I had been through recently, and yet still ignoring all of the sleep I had lost over them.
My hooves shuffled. I pivoted and mutely faced the path towards Ponyville.
"Hmmm?" Ambrosia lifted her hard hat, wiped the sweat from her pale brow, and plopped the article back down in the afternoon light. "Straight Edge? Yeah, the feller works with me all the time; he's a good laborer. It's not often that we have a unicorn who's willin' to get his hooves dirty in our line of construction. Plus, heh, I reckon that horn of his is pretty darn useful, what with all of our machinery goin' on the fritz from time to time. T'ain't no accident that he earned himself a jackhammer for a cutie mark. Ya feel me?"
"I'm... not concerned about how he works," I slurred, standing before her on the edge of a partially built house on the edge of town. Drills and hammers were sounding off on either side of me. I winced and tried to keep my hooves straight. "I was wondering where he goes when he's done for the day."
"Hey, you alright, Missy?" Ambrosia asked, her green gaze narrowing. "Them eyes of yours are pretty dang bloodshot."
"I'm fine," I grunted. "If you wanna know the truth..." I gulped dryly, brushing my mane straight with an errant hoof. "I'm... I'm the stallion's neighbor, and his shouting is keeping me up at night."
"Shoutin'? Straight Edge?" Ambrosia made a face. "Ya tryin' to say that things ain't all that peachy-keen in his household?"
"Does that surprise you?"
"Well... Heh..." Ambrosia shrugged, smiling awkwardly. "He complains a lot about his wife naggin' on him, but that's just usual talk, y'know. It's custom to make jabs at our significant others, what with how much tougher our line of work is than most ponies'. But I never thought much of it. Heck, even my coltfriend has overheard us from time to time and he's snickered quite a bit--"
"Look, can you just..." I shook my head, sighed, and murmured "Could you just tell me... uhm... where he usually goes before heading on home? Because I happen to know for a fact that he doesn't return to the condominium until evening time."
"Well..." Ambrosia fidgeted. "There's really only one place where most hard-workin' ponies go when the sun goes down..."
I stood inside the atrium of the Copper Crown Tavern that night. I'd never entered that place before. Upon smelling the interior, I realized why. The air hung with a hazy mist. In the furthest reaches of the dimly lit establishment, ponies coughed, muttered unintelligible words, and surrendered to deep mugs of ale. A record player was playing a crackling rendition of a thirty year old folk song. The speakers were in need of repair, and the music that came out of them resembled the grinding of sandpaper. Nopony seemed to mind; they all had glossy-eyed expressions, especially the closer they hovered about the bar at the lengthy end of the place.
Two figures in particular were louder than the rest of the tavern's occupants. One of them was a pink-coated unicorn mare with even pinker locks of hair. The other one... was the target of my insomniac escapade.
"Yup..." Straight Edge smirked blearily, took a sip of his mug, and scratched his stubbled chin. "I was part of the crew that built the Equine State Building. I trotted catwalks and platforms with the best of them, riveting pillars into place with pure magic. All the earth ponies had to follow my lead, of course. You know how it is with those poor saps. Without magic, they're as useful as mud."
"Heheheh... You said it!" The unicorn cooed, batting her eyelashes. "They must have really depended on your expertise."
"Darn tootin'."
"How's the skyrise of Manehattan from such a high place?" Her eyes narrowed as her cheeks flushed. "It must be breathtaking!"
"Mmmff..." Straight Edge took another sip, gulped down his ale, and smiled liquidly her way. "Trust me, I know a thing or two about taking breaths away, and they both involve my horn."
"Heeheehee..." She fluffed her mane and leaned back against the counter. "Do they, now?"
I took a deep breath. Icily, I trotted forward.
"This place stinks," Straight Edge muttered.
"What, the bar or this country hick town?"
"Both. Wanna go somewhere that's really sweet, babe?" Straight Edge asked. "Someplace where it's easier to take your breath away?"
I hopped up and squatted on the stool next to the stallion. "I'd not choose the couch. Autumn sleeps on it all the time, apparently."
Straight Edge paled.
The mare craned her neck and raised an eyebrow at me. "I beg your pardon?"
"I don't mean the October weather," I muttered without looking. My tired eyes blinked as I stared into the bar. "I mean the name of a mare, a mare who happens to be this pony's wife."
The unicorn squinted hard. She looked quizzically at me, then back to Straight Edge. "I don't... What is this?"
"Pffft... Please..." Straight Edge chuckled awkwardly. "You gonna believe the first words to come out of the mouth of any dumb broad who just trots in here?"
"No," she muttered, then frowned. "I suppose I could just stick around long enough until I become a 'dumb broad' to you as well."
"Uhhh... Uhhh..."
"Excuse me," the mare grunted and dismounted from her stool. "But you're right. This place stinks. I think I'll be leaving before it gets more rank." She slowly left the tavern with a toss of her mane.
Straight Edge took a deep breath. His hooves scraped viciously across the bar as he swiveled to aim a glass-cutting glare my way. "Bet you had fun there, huh? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't bend your horn into your eye, lady..."
"I know what you do to your children, Straight Edge," I droned.
He stared blankly at me. Something wet was soaking his rear legs. He jumped, seething as he realized that he had let his mug tip over into his lap. He slapped the container down onto the counter and brushed himself off before flashing me an odd squint. "How... did you know my name?"
"You heard me just now, didn't you?" I turned to stare unemotionally at him. "I know what you do to Snips and Windsong."
He was silent as stone. I saw no flicker of conscience in his eyes.
That didn't stop me from murmuring onward, "I know that you strangle Snips' until he can barely breathe. I know that you pile all of your troubles, hate, and fear on the poor colt's innocent head. I know that you insult Windsong's intelligence and stunt her growth. On top of all that, I know that you hide all of your ugliness, all of your cruelty, and all of your vices behind the façade of being a good husband for a poor unicorn invalid whom you stopped loving ages ago, as if you ever did to begin with."
Straight Edge glared at me, his weathered features frozen in place. In the background, the record was skipping. The sound of scratching thundered briefly through the speakers as the bartender flipped the disc over and trotted back to the bar.
"Another drink, Edge?"
Straight Edge mutely nodded, holding up his mug. The bartender filled his container, then walked up to me. I gently waved him off, and he went back to his duties.
Coolly, Straight Edge took another drink, swallowed, and gazed at me. "What the heck is this, anyways?"
I stared tiredly at him. It had been twenty-four hours of restless wandering before this moment came, and I could still smell the unsung rust on my exhausted body. I hoped to Celestia that he could smell it too.
"This is the closest thing you're ever going to have to a conscience," I muttered. "You need to stop what you're doing. You need to stop destroying yourself. I don't know what grief you've been going through, or what pain you're trying to mask. But you are meant to be the pillar of your family. As soon as you let yourself collapse--your faculties and your strengths and your morals--your family will only cave in along with you. That's three lives that you could have been protecting that instead you are throwing into the garbage. Autumn needs you more than ever; that was the reason for moving to this town to begin with, yes? Snips needs a father that can inspire him, not intimidate and anger the poor guy. Your frustration and your wrath: it is being channeled into Snips' peers and friends at school, and if left unchecked it will turn him into a monster. And Windsong? The filly is young, innocent, and full of potential. She's an artist at heart who has yet to discover her cutie mark, and you're wrecking any chance she has to enjoy the most endearing, most pivotal moment of her young life."
I finally pivoted on the stool and faced him, leaning forward with a sincere glint to my eyes.
"And what for? Another day spent hiding your anxiety at the bottom of a mug? Another night of yelling fits and domestic strife? I know you hate this town, Straight Edge. I don't know the reason for your hate, but if you took a step back and looked very carefully, you'd realize that this town doesn't hate you. This place is full of love, full of hope, full of ponies who only want what's best for each other. Why can't..."
I choked on a seething breath, gritted my teeth, and whispered.
"What's so hard, so difficult, so goddess-awfully challenging about the simple notion of accepting help, and admitting you need to change? Admitting that... that you're going about this the wrong way? That it's not too late to begin again, for your family, for yourself?"
Straight Edge looked at me, his nostrils flaring. He took another sip of his mug, exhaled, and muttered to the musty air of the place, "You know, I used to believe in love." He stared at the edge of his container as he swirled it around in his grasp. His eyes were twin, jaded marbles. "I used to believe in change. I used to believe in hope and prosperity and all that fruity junk. Heck, I was once as bright and colorful as you. I believed in all that crap so much that I married myself into it. Autumn and I had a wedding. Both of our families were there, smiling. There was celebration, cake, balloons. We had our honeymoon, and it was... really... really sweet. And after that, you know what I found out?"
I blinked curiously at him. "What was it? What did you find out?"
He took another sip, sighed, and--with a snarl--flung the mug murderously into my face.
The shot to my horn was electric enough to wake me from death. Instead, I fell to the floor amidst shards and suds of ale. My ears rang from my collision with the floorboard. Grimacing, I looked up through a trickle of blood to see Straight Edge's hooves landing beside me. My vision trailed up his limbs until I saw a dragonesque snarl to his face as he spat at me.
"That all mares are good for nothing leeches!" Straight Edge's voice roared above the sound of nearby patrons gasping. "Acute Magical Disconnect is genetic! That conniving harlot knew she had it before she even started dating me! And a single year... a single friggin' year into our marriage, she becomes a coughing, hacking fit! This so called 'love' you speak so highly about is what ensnared me into being her lifelong money wallet to begin with! Do I hate my children?! You're damn right I detest those stinkin' brats! I hate every goddess-forsaken thing that's squirted out of her! Balls and chains are still balls and chains, no matter how cute they are or much they sob their stupid heads off every time I try to teach them right! You wanna talk about change?! You wanna talk about hope?! Well nothing's ever gonna get frickin' fixed so long as they treat me with the same disrespect as their worthless mother!"
"That's enough, Edge!" the bartender growled over the counter. I hadn't realized until now that he had spent the last thirty odd seconds trying to yell above the stallion's enraged voice. He gripped his hoof around what resembled a metal a club as he glared at the drunkard. "I don't care how horrible your Missus is. You don't go tossing patrons around. Not in my tavern."
I stared silently up at Straight Edge, my brow quivering from the fresh pain still coursing through my body.
He stood, fuming, cracking the joints in his neck. As everypony nervously watched, he picked a saddlebag up from a nearby stool and fitted it calmly over his haunches. Eventually, he pointed at me and grumbled, "I don't know what stunt you're trying to pull, lady. If it's the bleeding hearts back at Manehattan Social Services, then you can just take a hike. But if I found out that she sent you... if she thought that this was her cowardly way of getting back at me..." He leered as he marched out the door. "I swear to Luna, they're gonna find both of your heads wrapped up in that dirt rag you call a jacket." He brushed past two patrons and kicked the door open with a rattling of hinges. Starlight briefly parted the haze and disappeared as the door shut on the stunned crowd.
I sat up, running a hoof up and calmly feeling the warm blood crawling down my cheek. I looked at my stained limb.
"Like that punk even deserves a tab at this point," the bartender grumbled from behind. He sighed. "I thought I left all the filth back at Mareami...." He leaned over and looked down at me. "Hey, you look busted up pretty bad. Can I get you something for that?"
My eyes returned to the door and the cold October night lingering beyond.
"Ma'am?"
I took a deep, deep breath.
"Ma'am, are you okay?"
Straight Edge marched down the center of Ponyville. The moonlight cast a lanky reflection across the dirt and grass. Teetering left and right, he mumbled and grumbled to himself. His eyes blinked, growing progressively more tired with each flutter.
He approached a series of closed shops in the market district. Every store was abandoned. Every light was out. A cold wind blew through the street, rustling dust and leaves across the emptiness.
"Hrmmf... Frickin' bunch of dirt farmers, I swear to Tartarus..."
After such an eloquent statement, he reached back into his saddlebag and pulled out a steel flask. He twisted the cap off with telekinesis, his lips curving slightly. He raised the thing to his lips and took a deep swig.
"Mmmmff... nnngh... heheh... 'Ambrosia.' Heh... wonder if she tastes as good as she sounds. Heheheh..."
He swirled the flask and lifted it to his lips once again. Nothing went down his throat.
"Huh?" He blinked, then realized that he was no longer holding the container. Looking down, he saw that the flask had fallen into the dirt, leaking fluid everywhere. "Oh, for pete's sake..."
Straight Edge bent down to pick the flask back up.
It suddenly shifted from him.
He blinked, his brow furrowing. "The hay?!" he remarked, his breath coming out in cold vapors. He watched with a slight shiver as the flask slid out of the street and into the shadow of a nearby alley. His face grimaced. In a drunken stupor, he gazed up at the night sky. He wasn't feeling a brisk wind. Nevertheless, Straight Edge frowned and marched directly after the flask.
The darkness of the thin alleyway enshrouded him. He stumbled into a trash can or two, cursing under his breath as a rat squeaked and darted past his teetering legs. Marching over a pile of lumber, be squinted into the deep niche between buildings. Finally, he saw a dim glint of moonlight.
"There you are. Ugh... Dang thing's probably covered in filth now." He walked over to the flask. He bent over to pick it up.
And that was when the two-by-four slammed mercilessly into his rear fetlocks.
"Aaaaugh!" He shrieked, immediately collapsing forward onto his chest. Straight Edge's muzzle plowed into the concrete. His entire body jerked as he tried to rock his weight back.
The same two-by-four pivoted in mid-air, spun with a glow of green magic, and slammed into the knee of his right foreleg.
"Nnngh--Goddess!" He yelped, his echoing voice muffled by the height of the two-story brick walls. He rolled over to the ground, paralyzed, clutching his right forelimb and hissing. "Snkkkkt... Aaaagh... haaugh..."
The two-by-four was cracked down the center, splintering at the edges. Still, this didn't stop me from dragging it telekinetically across the floor as I marched out of the shadows and loomed above him. My eyes twitched. The shadows were alive with sparks, my sparks.
He squealed like an animal giving birth. I could only wish this moment was that holy. He squinted my way, and a bolt of fear shimmered across his glistening eyes. "Who in the hay are you?!"
That snarling voice: I suddenly imagined how fitting it would be for rusted shackles to be covering his lips. I adorned his mouth with the full length of the wooden bludgeon instead. With a crack of nebulous thunder, he keeled over, spitting blood into the moonlight. The air smelled of copper, like the rust of the unsung realm. I hovered above him, allowing him a feeble chorus of wheezes and whimpers to the bricklaid theatre surrounding us.
"Who am I?" I monotoned. "It doesn't matter. You won't remember. And even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You'll still be the one thing poisoning three innocent ponies... a family who has let your anger, ignorance, and bitterness imprison them for far too long."
"Nnngh... Is... Is this... Is this about money?!" Straighted Edge hacked and sputtered my way. I saw his brow furrowed in the dead kiss of night. Even in pain and paralysis, all he had to live on was anger. "Just take my damn saddlebag, ya frickin' psycho!"
"This is not about bits!" I shouted and pressed the sharp edge of the sundered bludgeon against his bruised knee. He winced and squirmed as I howled down at him, "This is about tranquility! This is about happiness! Things that will never see the light of day in your household so long as you have power in that worthless horn of yours to bully your children to lifeless husks!"
"This... This is about those brats?!" Straight Edge squeaked, his eyes turning round in horror and disbelief. "Lady, you can have them! Say the word, and I'll do anything! J-Just stop hurting me!"
"No..." I hissed. "No, you won't change." My entire body was shivering. Somewhere, the Nightbringer could have been vibrating, and I still wouldn't have been able to tell from the divine ringing in my blood-rushed ears. "Which is why I'm the one who has to make the change, while it's still within my power to do so..."
"What..." His face grimaced in confusion. "Wh-What?!"
"Didn't you hear me the first time?!" I was fuming; my horn had become a hot, emerald beacon. The shattered two-by-four lifted in my telekinetic grasp, casting a haunted shimmer across the coffin-thin alleyway. "Nopony will know the difference! Not even you! I'm a ghost in this town. History will lurch by, and not a soul will know I was ever here. But you?! Who will miss you when you're gone?!"
"Please. Please, lady--"
"Who is going to miss you?!" I screamed.
He raised his good forelimb over his face, trembling.
I was raising the club higher and higher. I seethed.
Just smash his horn. Get rid of it. He won't be able to torture his children anymore.
He shivered beneath an emerald shadow. I smelled garbage and sweat and urine.
Just get rid of the horn... That's all...
I clenched my teeth. The air was full of vapors. I saw tempests billowing beyond him with each pulsing artery. Thousands upon thousands of souls wailed her song forever. It was melancholic, wholesome, righteous...
Just get rid of him. Get rid of him. Get rid of...
The closet was full of stuffed animals. Moondancer sat in the midst of them, hugging herself, sobbing. I curled up close, but Snips said nothing. She was covered in bruises, confused and alone, with the rain pouring beyond the stairwell like a funeral veil. I pleaded and pleaded for him to tell Twilight and the others the truth, but he refused. The school courtyard was lonely and foggy after she left me. I could never understand pain, could never understand suffering. Straight Edge couldn't understand it either, even then, even as he stared up at me with a bleeding mouth, waiting for me to deliver the final stroke. Soon, nopony would be left to understand.
Except me.
My seething melted into heaving breaths. My horn stopped glowing. The alleyway reverberated with the echoes of the falling club as I fell to my haunches. My hooves covered my mouth, but it was not enough to dam up the sobs. They came out of me like scalpels, tearing me wide open and inviting tears to wash away the horror of the moment. They failed.
I hyperventilated, cowering against the alley wall across from the quivering stallion. His body was branded in my name with bruises and cuts. Every second I spent staring at them, they disappeared beneath a curtain of mist. I was a shivering, crying wreck. Somewhere, a voice whimpered forth.
"Are you... Are you..." I squeaked, wheezed, and stammered, "C-can you feel your legs?"
He didn't answer me. He was too busy shivering. A cold chill had fallen over the thin space between buildings, and he was spitting blood and vapors into the space between his aching limbs.
I gulped. I reached a hoof out towards him. "Sir... Sir, are you okay--"
"Nnnngh!" He shook me off, snarling, the whites of his eyes flaring wildly in the moonlight. "Aaaugh! Get away from me!"
I jolted from him, gulping a lump down my throat. "I... I'm not..." My face cracked. "I'm not going to h-hurt you..."
"Haaaugh... Goddess! Goddess, where am I?! H-how'd this happen?"
"Please. I promise, I'm not going to hurt you..." I tried smiling. I only sobbed more instead. "I'm going to get you some help. Please..."
"Gnnngh... Just what I friggin' need! Damn it to Tartarus!"
"I'm going to get you healed. Just..." I shook my head and gently enshrouded him with emerald magic. "Just trust me, Mr. Edge. Shhh... You're going to be okay."
"How... How did you know...?" He started, but hissed in pain as I did my expert best to levitate him slowly off the floor.
In a slow lurch, I carried him across town under the stagnant stars. It took an arduous amount of time. He forgot me at least four times along the way, each time falling into a steeper and steeper panic attack, until the pain and confusion finally overwhelmed him and the battered stallion fell unconscious. It was the first chance I had to hear my own panting breath, and I detested it more than anything that had ever graced my ears before.
The next afternoon, I sat on a bench outside Ponyvile Central Hospital. My mane was a mess. My hoodie smelled of sweat and tears. I heard the hooves of ponies shuffling to a stop as they trotted by me. They must have been taking their sweet time to stare at my figure. I could only guess; I had my face cradled in my forelimbs the entire time.
There was no sleeping. There was no falling unconscious to this. My heart pulsed steadily, guiltily, for the better part of the agonizingly long day. For once, the chill of the curse wasn't enough to cool the heated knot forming in my stomach.
Finally, once my sanity had stretched to the breaking point, I heard the doors to the hospital's front entrance sliding open. I stood up, rubbing the crusty stains of tears off my cheek. I turned and looked, my lips quivering.
Straight Edge limped out. He had a crutch around his right forelimb. His rear limbs were bound in gauze, but they managed to carry his weight. A bandage covered half of his face. To my mixed shock, he looked far more angry than in pain. Grumbling to himself, he gave the sunny sky a dejected look, and shuffled ahead with an awkward gait.
He was in one piece. Never before in my life did I want to rejoice and hide all at once. Instead, I boldly jumped off the bench, winced from stiff legs, and trotted over to him.
"Mister... uh... Mister Edge..."
"Nnngh..." He took an extraordinary amount of time to turn around and glare at me. "What in the hay do you want?"
"Are you... erm..." I fiddled with the sleeves of my hoodie. "Are you okay? I mean, did the doctors say if you suffered anything truly--?"
"Ughh!" He retched and tilted away from me. "Get away from me, ya stinkin' hobo! Goddess, I hate this town!"
"Please, I must know--"
"For one, no, I'm not okay!" He snarled. "The damn doctors want to suck me for every bit I got. And for another, why in the flippin' heck would a bum like you care?"
"I--"
"Get lost, lady!" he grumbled. "I swear to Luna, I can't swing a dead cat in this world without running into a stupid broad! Gaaaaghh!" He growled as he lurched ahead, swearing up a storm beneath his breath before adding, "Last time I have more than three drinks at the Copper Crown. The place is a dump anyways..."
I sat on my haunches, gazing after him, hugging myself. The afternoon wore on, and I eventually swiveled about and trotted slowly north.
The door opened limply to my cabin. Al immediately pattered up and mewed, rubbing my front limbs affectionately.
I gazed dully at him. I saw his empty food dish. Without saying a word, I hovered his bag of feed over and poured some of its contents into the container. I was about halfway through the task when my magic went limp. The bag slumped to the ground, and so did I. I sat with my flank to the cot, staring into space.
Al's tail flicked. He gazed at me, then at the mess of food. His whiskers twitched, and suddenly I felt his warm paws crawling up my sweaty body as he sniffed at my muzzle.
I blinked a few times. I looked at him. I weakly raised a hoof up.
He rubbed against it, nuzzling me closely and purring.
I gulped. Quietly, I brought both forelimbs up and engulfed him in a hug. I felt his warmth close to me, and I began sniffling. Clenching my eyes shut, my lips moved to outrace the tears.
"Why can't I do it, Alabaster?" I whimpered. "Why do I have to be so terribly, stupidly grounded? Why can't I do what needs to be done? I've been a ghost f-for a year now, and... and I just w-won't embrace it. I... I can do so much. I can make a difference. Nopony would need to know what it took. Nopony would n-need to know what I've done to m-make the world more harmonious..."
Al curled up against me, adjusting his little furry body to my shivering curves. He tilted his orange face up and meowed.
A whimper escaped my mouth. I shuddered and said, "But I would know." I held him close and nuzzled him, the tears flowing. "I would know." The sobs came softer this time. I released into the feline's purring side, my voice muffled. "Heaven help me, Alabaster. But I'm glad you're gone. You won't have to see it when it happens..." I raised my head and stared, hyperventilating, towards where the Nightbringer was hidden. "You won't have to see me become her..."
Al innocently clung to me as my tears dried up on their own. An hour or so later, I finished feeding him. Then, as evening fell, I turned the lights out, curled up into the cold of my cot, and finally--fitfully--fell asleep.
I strummed my lyre in the crisp morning air, testing each experimental note against the October breeze, in a desperate attempt to eke whatever lonesome dreams I may have had the night before. I didn't have a chance to remember anything, for soon Cheerilee's voice was merrily chirping in my ear.
"I'm so glad that Professor Blue Noise sent you in the first place, but I'm even happier that you overcame your bout with the flu to show up today!" She grinned brighter than the rising sun. In the schoolyard before us, the schoolfoals frolicked and played, enjoying their spare time on the playground before it was time for the start of class. "You can't believe how much of a blessing your visit is to my students. They've been dying to hear about Equestrian music history ever since I made the announcement that we'd have a guest speaker!"
"Out of curiosity," I tiredly mumbled. "What have you been studying all week before I came by?"
"Oh, the usual rudimentary math, geometry, and--" Cheerilee paused, her emerald eyes blinking. "Huh..." She rubbed her chin, squinting. "Or did I teach those geometry lessons last week? It's... all a blur for some reason..."
I took a deep breath. "Well..." I gave her a weathered smile as I played another tune on the lyre. "I'm sure you kept them happy all the same. And that's what matters when it comes to children."
"Well, happiness is a good thing. Learning, however--heheheh--We can't forget that, now can we!"
"We... can forget many things," I said. I cleared my throat and shrugged. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that you mean more to these kids than knowledge. You... you bring them joy and excitement, Miss Cheerilee. That's something that can't fade from the mind, for it becomes embedded in the heart."
She smiled, her ruby cheeks flushing, if that was even possible. "I like the way you think, Miss Heartstrings. Or... heehee... should I say 'feel?'" Her eyes squinted in a brief expression of concern. "Might I ask, though, if you're sure that you're in good health?"
"Yes, Miss Cheerilee. I'm quite fine."
"Because if you're still under the weather, I'm sure Professor Blue Noise would be more than willing to reschedule until sometime after the upcoming field trip to Canterlot--"
"Trust me," I said with a hint of a growl. Clearing my throat, I gave her the most serene smile I could manage. "I've... I've never been more lucid in my life."
She blinked at that, smiling sheepishly. "Well, alrighty then. I guess we all could do with a bit of--" Her head pivoted aside and her eyes lit up. "Big Mac! You're here!"
"Eeeeyup."
"Oh! And you brought more lumber for the upcoming winter!" She shot up from the picnic table beside me. "Here, let me help you with those!" She turned and winked at me. "Excuse me just one moment, Miss Heartstrings. This shouldn't take long."
"Just... uh... don't wander too far," I remarked.
"Heehee! Perish the thought! Ahem..." She trotted over to the big red stallion as he stood beside the woodbox next to the school building. "Now be careful! I know you're a big fellow, but anypony can get splinters!" He merely chuckled and allowed the schoolteacher to lend a hoof.
I watched from afar. I was still strumming on the lyre, but was barely aware of the melody I was making, if any. After my first night's sleep in days, that entire morning felt like a dreamy haze. Then, just like any other vision, I had a wake-up call in the sound of a familiar, rasping voice.
"How many times do I have to tell ya, Snails?" Snips grumbled as he waddled within proximity of the picnic table. "I don't want to play any games right now!"
"Awwwwww come onnnn!" Snails bounded after him, pouting. "But you never wanna hang out anymore!"
"I'm just tired," Snips grumbled. "And if I wanna get better at pop quizzes, I gotta study and stuff!"
Snails' face contorted in confusion. "Errrr... Since when were you so concerned about quizzes?"
"Who cares?!" Snips snapped at his tall companion. "So maybe I don't wanna be goofing off all the time! Maybe I don't wanna be worthless!"
Snails leaned his head curiously to the side. "You're not worthless, Snips," he muttered. "You're my bestest friend."
Snips closed his eyes, revealing a slight bruise along his left lid. He sighed and grumbled, "We can hang out later, okay, Snails? Go somewhere and... chase butterflies, or whatever it is you do when I'm not around to keep you out of trouble."
"Butterflies?" Snails stood up straight, blinking steadily. He suddenly gasped, his entire body jumping. "I gotta go save the flowers!" He scampered across the busy playground in a tan blur.
"Unnngh..." Snips waddled over until he all-but-bumped into me. "Oh. Music!" He looked up at me, or more appropriately my lyre, squinting. "Hey, uh... You must be that musician that Cheerilee kept telling the class about."
I looked calmly at him. I didn't say anything... not at first.
"But... like... I thought you were too sick to show up or something?"
After a breath, I gave him a weathered smile. "I got better."
"Oh." He nodded, then gazed towards the grass beneath his hooves. "That's good, I guess."
"I couldn't miss an opportunity to teach a schoolroom full of foals," I said, strumming another random tune. "Sharing music is the joy of my life, and I feel that... that everypony deserves to be happy."
"Heh. If you say so," Snips muttered, toying at the ground with one hoof and then the other. "You picked a silly place to do it."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. School is so... so boring," he muttered. "Now if this was a stage or the Ponyville talent show or... or..."
"Do you hate school?" I asked.
"Well..." His brow furrowed. "No, I guess not. I mean, yeah, sure, it's boring. But I get to see a bunch of other foals. I get to play jokes on classmates." He snickered. "I get to hang out with Snails, even if he's a clueless dunce half the time."
"It's relaxing, isn't it?" I said. "Like a good song that keeps changing but stays gentle all the time?"
He bit his lip. I heard a sniffling sound, and his head tilted away from my eyes as he muttered, "'Relaxing' is good..."
I looked at the lyre, then at him. "When was the last time you got a chance to listen to music?"
"I..." He was still looking away from me. His little shoulders shook. "My mom used to sing to me. But... But she doesn't do lullabies anymore."
"No?"
"Nah..." He sighed. "It wouldn't be right."
"Wouldn't be right?"
He was silent.
"You remember them at least, right?" I asked. "Do they relax you to think of them?"
He turned to look up at me. His eyes were misty.
"Listen to me..." I leaned over, smiling softly. "The music doesn't ever have to die, not so long as we can stand to be happy, wherever we are. It's what we deserve, after all, each and every one of us."
Slowly, his face reflected my smile back. His tail flicked. "You're really gonna share some songs with the class today?"
"Mmmhmmm," I said with a nod. "It's... It's the least I can do for you, kiddo."
"Heh..." He nodded slowly, gazing towards the school building where Cheerilee was helping Big Mac with the lumber. "I think I'd like that."
"Hey, boy! C'mere!"
Snips' body instantly jolted. I saw his teeth clench. With a shiver, he spun about, briefly blurting, "Gotta go!"
I watched as he scampered out of the schoolyard, up a grassy knoll, and into the shadow of a haunting stallion along the dirt path. My breath left me and I stopped strumming the lyre.
"You deaf, brat?" Straight Edge grumbled from where he stood on the side of the road with his crutches. "I said get your flank over here!"
Snips was frozen in place. For a moment, I didn't understand why, until I saw him shiver from a cold chill running up his body. "Unnngh... Huh? Dad? How did--?"
"What are you waiting for?"
"I... I don't know. I was just... What was I doing?"
"You come to me when I call for you! Ya hear?"
"Mmm..." Snips hung his horned head. "Yes, Dad."
"Don't 'yes, Dad' me," Straight Edge grumbled, then motioned with his bandaged neck. "Shut up and come along. We're going home."
Snips' face scrunched up in confusion. "Uhhh... H-home?"
"Yes. You heard me. Home."
"But... But..." He turned and looked over his shoulder at the playground and the bright red building beyond. "It's a schoolday! Should I really be going home?"
Straight Edge spun about, his eyes burning like hot coals. "What have I told you about sassin' me in public?!" His horn glowed and there was a fierce, telekinetic tug to Snips' forelimb, dragging the colt towards the adult unicorn. "I got battered by Goddess-knows-what on my way home last night! I'm already paying the doctors out my ears, and now I just found out from my boss at the construction site that I'm not allowed to work until my leg heals up! Which means you're going to have to be at home to help your dear old father around the house!"
"But... But..."
"You gonna give me lip?! After years of me cleaning up after your crap and buying the food on your plate? You owe me, boy. Don't worry about school. I'm sure your mom has some books for you to learn from at home. Celestia knows she spends all the dang time sitting on her flank, reading them."
"Okay..." Snips dully murmured, hanging his head.
"Ugh..." Straight Edge began limping towards the center of town, wincing with each twist of the crutches against his right forelimb. "And let's not drag our tails, ya hear me?! This is embarrassing enough as it is, not that I expect you to understand any..."
I saw them beginning to march away. I turned and looked the opposite way. Cheerilee and Big Mac were finishing up with the lumber, completely oblivious. I could have said something. I could have rushed over and told them about Straight Edge whisking Snips' away. I could have done so many bold and dramatic things.
I chose to do something else instead. With a calm breath, I levitated the lyre in front of me and loudly--but steadily--strummed a very dear tune to the October winds.
Straight Edge and Snips were trotting further down the dirt road. I was starting to have a hard time making out the colt's cutie mark. The muttering curses of his father became a distant hush.
Patiently, persistently, I played through the entirety of the song, allowing its melodic notes to rise and fall. I watched with dry eyes. My lungs were frozen with the chill of my ghostly curse.
And then--with beauty that rivaled a tiny candle being lit--Snips' body froze as well. He stopped in his tracks, his tiny ears flicking with each rhythmic pitch of "Penumbra's Echo." Any twitch or shiver to his limbs instantly melted. He stayed put where he was.
Straight Edge noticed this, of course. Perhaps it was the absence of Snips' pitter-pattering hooves. Perhaps it was the fact that another body wasn't close by to echo his grumbling curses. He swiveled about, blinked at the empty space in the path behind him, and ultimately turned around with a confused frown.
"Boy?! Didn't you hear me?! I said we're going home, and that's final!"
Snips didn't move. An October breeze wafted by, carrying the sound of Alabaster's soothing composition. Colts and fillies giggled in the background. I hung in a breathless lurch, waiting.
And it happened. "No," Snips said.
Straight Edge turned and loomed viciously over the tiny unicorn. "What... did... you... say...?"
It happened again. "No."
I exhaled, only to produce a sharp gasp as Straight Edge flung his crutch down to the dirt, leaned over the petite colt, and hideously snarled, "Boy, I'm not gonna let you push my buttons..."
"Nnngh--You're not gonna let me do anything!" Snips suddenly barked up at him. The shivers had returned to his body, but they were righteous quivers of fury. "You're just gonna shout at me and throw me around and call Mom names and make me feel bad about it all!"
"Shut your stinkin' trap!" Straight Edge raised a hoof. "Do you know who you're talking to--"
"Yes!" Snips shrieked, tears falling from his face as he growled and hissed, "I know how much you hate me and Mom and Windsong! I know how grumpy you get for no good reason! And I'm not going home to that! Not again! Ponies should... sh-should be happy!" He whimpered and yelled at the same time. Foals' heads were turning. The playground was growing silent in the echo of his divine outburst. "All ponies... d-deserve happiness! I don't care how angry you are, but I won't let you stop me from being happy anymore!"
"Boy, if you open your mouth one more time--"
"Get away from me!" Snips shouted, his teary eyes clenched shut as he started howling over and over and over: "You're a bad father! You're a bad father! You're a bad--"
"Nnngh!" Straight Edge slammed his hoof across Snips' horn. With a glowing telekenis, he lifted the sputtering colt up by the neck. "Damn you, brat! I'm gonna do what I should have done the day that stupid wench popped you out!"
Colts gasped. Fillies were sobbing. I heard Scootaloo's feareless voice shouting something over and over. I did absolutely nothing, nothing but play the Echo.
Cheerilee had trotted over, drawn by the hellish racket. "What in Equestria's name is going on over there?!" She gasped, her eyes flashing wide. "Good heavens! Snips! Mr. Edge, what are you doing--"
"Stay out of this!" Straight Edge growled. "Family business!" He lifted Snips in the air once more.
"He... He can't breathe!" Cheerilee shrieked. She spun around, then yelled towards the schoolhouse. "Big Mac! Quick! He's going to strangle Snips!"
"Eeeenope," Big Mac growled, his teeth gritting. On thundering hooves, he galloped across the schoolyard. Dust kicked up in a storm as he barreled directly into Straight Edge, body-slamming the yelping unicorn to the dirt road.
"Aaaaugh!" Straight Edge sneered. "What the--Get off me, you lousy hick--!" Big Mac's response was an iron hoof bucked through Straight's teeth. "Grrnkktl--Aaaugh!"
"Woohoo!" Apple Bloom jumped up and down, pumping a forelimb. "You show that creep, Macky!" Scootaloo joined her cheers. Sweetie Belle trembled and covered her eyes while Rumble hugged her comfortingly, smiling from a distance.
"Nnngh--You lousy piece of farm filth!" Straight Edge was rambling, raving, his eyes bright and murderous. He could only struggle and moan as Big Mac shoved him prone to the soil. "Ghhh--Worst town ever! I'll rip all your hearts out! So help me--Ooof!" His mouth ate dirt as Big Mac applied his weight into the back of his head.
In the meantime, Cheerilee was rushing over to Snips' quivering body. She squatted down and scooped him up. "Snips! Snips, you poor, poor thing! Can you breathe?"
Snips sputtered, gasped for breath. He curled up into Cheerilee's embrace and nodded weakly. "Y-yes," he murmured. "Please, k-keep him away from me. He's so horrible. All the time... so horrible..."
"Oh Snips..." She leaned in and nuzzled him as if he was her own foal. "Absolutely! You have my word, he won't touch you ever again!" Her eyes were moist as she stammered, "If I had only known sooner. Oh good heavens, you poor thing!"
"Mom... Windsong..." He shivered and clung to her in between desperate sobs. "They... They need..."
"He won't touch them either. Don't you worry one bit." She looked at the line of gaping foals. Clearing her tears, she managed to summon one of them. "Snails. Come here..."
The tall colt wandered over, shivering, staring at his sobbing friend with wide eyes. "Y-y-yes, Miss Ch-Cheerilee?"
"Snips is going to be okay. But I need you to run into town and fetch the police. Can you do that for me? For your friend?"
"Uhhhh... S-Sure thing!"
"Good. Don't worry. Big Mac has things taken care of here. Now go, Snails! Run!"
Snails ran into the center of town, beyond earshot of Straight Edge's frustrated growls.
Cheerilee cradled Snips closer, smiling and murmuring to him, "Shhhh. It's okay, darling. You're safe now. Don't be afraid..."
"N-not afraid..." Snips hiccuped, covering his wet eyes with his forelimbs. "Not afraid anymore... Not afraid anymore..."
"Shhh... It's alright, Snips," she said tearfully. "It's alright to cry. Just let it out... It's alright..."
"Penumbra's Echo" finally stopped, only because I couldn't manage it anymore. I was clinging my lyre to my chest, hugging it like Cheerilee hugged Snips. My head tilted towards the morning sky as my face cracked, letting loose the first of several heavy sobs. My lips stretched between a smile and a grimace as I clenched my eyes shut and whimpered to the sky. Two little words squeaked through my teeth, over and over again, until I no longer had the strength to remember who exactly I was thanking anymore.
And neither did I care. Eventually, the police came by to assist Big Mac with the raging unicorn. The schoolfoals gathered around Cheerilee to help comfort Snips. And a certain ghost who may have never been there to begin with was suddenly gone. Only the music remained.
"There's some news about Straight Edge," Twilight Sparkle said at a table in Sugarcube Corner a few days later.
"You mean that unicorn jerk who was beating up his kids or whatnot?" Rainbow Dash paused in sipping her soda to frown. "Did they hang him from the gallows?"
"Rainbow Dash, honestly!" Twilight Sparkle made a face. "What is this, the Solar Civil War era?!" She calmly folded up a newspaper and gazed at Rainbow Dash and Applejack. "They decided not to give him bail. He's remaining under lock and key until they can get him into court. There was some dirt dug up on the workhorse, and apparently Mr. Edge was wanted for insurance fraud back in Manehattan. The Equestrian Bureau of Investigations have been looking all over for him for years. Guess they never thought to check in Ponyville."
"In other words, he's gotta go through a lot of lousy red tape before anypony punishes him for treating foals like punching bags," Rainbow Dash grunted. "Where's the justice in that?!"
"I don't think it's anythang worth complainin' about, Rainbow," Applejack said. "What matters is that he's been caught red-hoofed, and t'ain't nothin' more he can do to them poor ponies he was livin' with."
"Yeah, but still, it just really stinks," Rainbow Dash said, folding her forelimbs and frowning. "Doesn't it bother you guys to know that he was living in our very own neighborhood, abusing his own flesh and blood, and none of us were any the wiser?! I mean, how does junk like that happen in this day and age?! Wouldn't it, like, freak the heck out of Princess Celestia to hear about this kind of stuff?"
Twilight took a deep breath, fiddling with her hooves on the edge of the table. "If Celestia can't stop every bad thing from happening, what makes us think any single one of us can do any better?"
"Yeah, but..." Rainbow Dash sat back with a slump, sighing. "When crud like this makes the light of day, it makes me wonder if we're not trying hard enough. I mean, are we the Elements of Harmony or aren't we?"
"Oh don't get all mopey like that, sugarcube," Applejack said with a gentle smile. "Heaven knows, yer the bravest, most thoughtful pony in town. The first hint you'd catch of bad things happenin', you'd be there to play hero in a jiffy!" She turned to wink at Twilight. "Reckon that's the same for everypony seated here, and the rest of the gang to boot."
"There's no perfect way to make a perfect world," Twilight Sparkle said. "Making life harmonious is... is just like making friends." She smiled sweetly. "There's bound to be a lot of bumps along the way."
"And most likely everypony in Ponyville has more than a lick of sense ever since Straight Edge showed his true colors." Applejack turned toward Rainbow Dash. "If you wanna get started on playin' neighborhood watch, Rainbow, now's yer chance."
"Heh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is." She lifted up towards the ceiling on flapping wings. "Say, I don't normally suggest this, but what if we call the other girls over to the library for a special meeting or something? I think it'd be totally cool if we set up some community thing to... I dunno... try to reach out to the families around town about what's happened. What do you think?"
"I, for one, find that to be a brilliant idea!" Twilight Sparkle hopped up with a grin. "And I think you deserve the honor of setting it up, Rainbow!"
"Darn tootin'!" Applejack added. She stood up and planted her hat on her head. "Where to, Cap'n my Cap'n?"
"Let's round up Rarity from the Boutique first!" Rainbow said, pointing towards the door as the three made their exit. "You know how long it takes her to get ready for last-second get togethers!"
"Pfft! That fussy filly! If it was the end of the world, she'd be frettin' about her eyelashes!"
"Well, thankfully, we won't be having to hold back the apocalypse anytime soon," Twilight said.
The three friends giggled as they left. Passing by them, several young foals scampered into the heart of Sugarcube Corner. It was a veritable parade of school-aged ponies. Cheerilee stuck her head in through the door and called out to them.
"Now, don't spend all your lunch money! And only get fruit or juice! We have a long train ride ahead, and I can't have my little ponies bouncing completely off the walls!"
"Yesssss, Miss Cherileeeee," the group chanted back in unison. Cheerilee giggled and stood in the doorway, speaking with Big Mac and another chaperone.
"Oooh! Strawberry Supreme! Strawberry Supreme!" Snails hopped up and down while a few other kids hoofed bits over the counter to Ms. Cake, receiving juice boxes and apple slices in return. "We gotta combine our bits to get the Strawberry Supreme juice!"
"What?!" Snips retorted, snapping him a crazy look. "But it's just one juice box! I know it's big, but how are we both gonna share it?"
"Uhhhhhhhhh--We'll buy two straws!"
"Snails!" Snips gasped. "You're a genius!"
"Hehehhhh."
"But... Uhm... Oh drat!" Snips fiddled with a saddlebag on his portly haunches. "We're both one bit short! I think we gotta have the smaller juice boxes. That means no Strawberry Supreme."
"Awwwww..." Snails' ears drooped as his muzzle hung low to the floor.
Just then, three golden coins landed between the two colts. "There you go. Get yourself two Strawberry Supremes."
The two young unicorns gasped at that bits. They turned and looked at me. "Whoah! Lady, are you serious?!"
I smiled softly from where I sat in a chair with my lyre. "I'm always serious," I said, then chuckled. "To a fault." I motioned towards the distant counter. "Knock yourselves out."
"Sweeeeeeet!" Snails exclaimed.
"Here, Snails!" Snips slid the bits over to him. "Go buy us the Strawberry Supremes, and all the straws you can fit into your mouth!"
"Sure thing, buddy!" The taller colt grabbed the coins in his teeth and galloped towards a grinning, cheerful Ms. Cake.
"You going somewhere special today?" I asked.
Snips spun to look at me. "Huh? Oh..." He smiled, his tail flicking excitedly. "Miss Cheerilee is taking us on a field trip to the Canterlot gardens! We're gonna see a huge maze and a bunch of statues and flags and stuff!"
"Wow..." I said with a nod. "Sounds really boring."
"Snkkkt-Hahaha!" He broke into giddy laughter. "Heh... Yes, well..." He exhaled calmly and glanced at the far wall of the eatery. "I never used to go on field trips." He gulped. "My... uh... My dad would say that they were just a waste of time."
"That doesn't sound very nice... or sensible."
"Yeah, well, that's my dad for ya," Snips momentarily grumbled. A joyful smile returned to his lips. "But I don't have to worry about him anymore. He's somewhere else right now, and the family's better off."
"I'm... I'm sorry," I said softly. "I shouldn't have pressed..."
"No! No, it's okay... I just..." Snips breathed deeply and looked up at me. "I just never knew that things could feel so... so weightless, y'know? Heehee... I feel like I have pegasus wings hidden beneath my skin, cuz it's like I'm flying!"
I nodded. "So you're happy, then?"
"Happiest I've been in a while," Snips said. "And so's my Mom and sister. We're staying at Snails' family's house, and they're all so nice and fun to be with. Plus, a bunch of ponies came to help my Mom. They say that she's going to get better, that they're gonna help get rid of her sickness. And... And..."
"Hey..."
He blinked, staring fixedly at me.
I smiled. "This happiness you feel? You can get other ponies to feel it, in ways that your dad never did."
His lips hung open for a spell, and soon he murmured, "I know." He gulped. "For a while there, I was afraid that... that..."
"Shhh..." I leaned forward and smiled at his eye level. "We all have plenty of time, kiddo, to become that which we want to be, and not that which we fear."
Snips stared at me. His next smile was a warm thing, like one of Cheerilee's cutie marks. At around that time, Snails scampered up, levitating two containers.
"Juuuuuuuuice boxesssss!" he triumphantly chirped.
At the exit to the eatery, Cheerilee was calling forth, "Okaaaaay, my little ponies! Time to go! The train won't wait!"
"We gotta go, Snips!"
"Yes! Just one second!" The stout unicorn turned around. "Hey, ma'am, thanks for the talk. I think..." He blinked. The space before him was empty. "Ma'am?"
"Who were you talkin' to, Snips?"
He teetered suddenly. With chattering teeth, he crubbed his forelimbs together. "Yeesh. Did somepony leave the freezers open in this place?"
"Uhhhh--Snips! We gotta go! Cheerilee is frowning at us! I haaaate it when Cheerilee frowns!"
"Er... Right! Onwards to Canterlot!"
Snails scampered out of Sugarcube Corner, as did the rest of the schoolfoals. Snips followed up the rear, balancing the juice box atop his head, as well as a song that he hummed in the pleasant air of the place, a very relaxing tune...
I hear the knock on the dormitory door, and somehow I know it can't be anypony else but her. I trot over and open it. Nothing can prepare me for how miserable, how utterly cold and lonely she looks.
"Moondancer!" I exclaim. It is true shock. I rest a hoof over my chest as she fidgets in the sorority hallway. "I... I..." I gulp and smile nervously. "Why don't you come in?"
"Uhm..." She squirms where she stands. "Are... Are your roommates...?"
"We're alone. The girls are out partying on the edge of the Shadow District."
"Hmmph..." She finally trudges in, dragging a saddlebag limply behind her. "You should be with them."
"I'd rather be here, really," I say in a low tone. I slowly close the door behind her. "Besides, those... uh... those bat ponies freak me out in that side of town."
"Liar," she grumbles, pacing across the shadowed room. "You're just like Twilight. Anything you fear has an academic buffer." She looks with disgust at the cluster of junk lying around the place. "Blessed Luna, your roommates are a bunch of slobs!"
"Moondancer..."
"Or did a certain mint-green unicorn lose her ladylike grace since the last time we chatted?"
"Moondancer, I know why you're back in Canterlot," I say as I trot towards her. I raise a hoof up to her shoulder, but I think twice about making contact. Biting my lip, I hesitate, then say, "When I heard, I... uh... I visited your mom."
She gulps. She hangs her head. "I know."
I blink in surprise. "You... You spoke with her?"
"Mmmhmmm." She nods slowly. "Just now."
The room is silent for a while. I shuffle my hooves and circle through the gray shadows until I am standing in front of her. Her violet and red mane is so straight. Her violet eyes are so jaded. This is my good friend, and yet it isn't. I try to keep my voice steady.
"Moondancer, I... You know that when I try to say things, I only ramble on endlessly. You were right all along about me. You always were. I never went through all the horrible things you did. How could I possibly relate? And furthermore--"
"What's worth relating to?" she mutters. "It's very simple, Lyra." She tilts her head up and stares blankly at me. "He's dead. He croaked, kicked the bucket, knocked on death's door. Heck, Lyra, you're a poet..."
"Musician."
"Whatever. Describe it any way you want." She takes a deep breath and marches over to stare out the window. She doesn't bother to push the curtains open. "He's gone. He's gone and... and..."
"And what, Moondancer?"
"I talked to Mom. I even paid Twilight's folks a visit. And yet... And yet none of them could help me... Not like you could..." She rubs her other forelimb with a hoof and whimpers the next part out. "Like you always could..."
"How..." I stammer, honestly perplexed, flabbergasted even. "Moondancer, really?" I give a bitter chuckle. "How did I ever help you? I was--"
"You were there, Lyra. You were always there, each time I needed you, and even the times when I didn't... or pretended that I didn't. And I treated you like dirt for no good reason."
"Heh... Moondancer..." I shake my head and look at the carpet. "You didn't treat me like--"
"I treated you like dirt!" she snarls, her voice starting to shake. "I crushed you and ditched you because... because I was so angry, and so..." She shudders visibly, her back hunching. "So scared that this day would come, and I would have to tell you... t-tell you..."
I look up, concerned. "Tell me what, Moondancer?"
She turns around, and her eyes are glittering with tears. "That... That I feel so horrible." She inhales sharply, her face grimacing. "He's dead, and now that he is, I feel s-so horrible, Lyra, and I... I-I don't understand why!"
"Well... uhm... he was your father, Moondancer--"
"He was a jerk!" she shrieks, grimacing harder. "He was a sadist and an abuser and a dirty, dirty creep and now that he's dead I should be happy, but... but I-I can't feel it, Lyra! You say that you could never relate?! I was his dang d-daughter, and I can't understand either! How does that even make any s-sense?"
"Moondancer, I don't think you give yourself enough credit!" I exclaim. "I know you must think that the two of you were always cut from the same cloth, but--"
"But what?!" Moondancer sobs. She staggers slightly, running a hoof over her face. "Lyra, he... he was everything bad and h-horrible in my life! He w-was... was like the sc-scale I had for all things awful!" She hiccups and hugs herself. "I-I think the real reason I... I haven't settled down with a stallion yet, or even g-gotten a coltfriend, is that... that I'm afraid, Lyra. You know I've always wanted kids of my own someday. But how..." Her eyes clench shut and she shudders. "H-how could a pony like m-me do anything but mess that up?"
"Oh Moondancer..." I smile and clear the gap between us finally, flinging my forearms around her. "You would have the best, most healthy, most fortunate foals in the world..."
"I've been so sc-scared for so long, Lyra..." She clings to me, burying her face in my shoulder. "I don't want anything like th-that to happen. Celestia, help me, I-I don't ever want to b-become him..."
"Shhh... You won't become him, Moondancer," I say, holding her close. "I won't let you. You hear me? I won't let you become him..."
She sniffles, sobbing and laughing at the same time as she surrenders to my embrace. "Thank you, Lyra. I just... I just need you to be here... Th-that's what I've always needed. Just for you to be here..."
"Shhhh..." I nuzzle Moondancer, rocking her gently as I murmur into her ear. "And I always will be." I smile. "Always..."
As the Requiem played in full, I stood alone, a dot of warmth in the center of the unsung realm. Slowly, I tilted my face up. The shackled ponies on either side of me barely stirred. The thunder was low.
The spheres within spheres loomed overhead, as they always did, an eerie accompaniment to the fluctuating tempests.
"I know that you're here," I said calmly, clinging to the Nightbringer. "What I don't know, and what I'll never know, is just how long you've been here." I gulped and murmured, "Just like nopony knows how long I've been haunting the grounds to which your curse has anchored me."
The spheres floated in place. There was no song. No lightning. No stirring whatsoever.
I bravely continued, "I've been a very fortunate pony. I wake up everyday knowing that; it's what makes the curse so potent. But..." I hesitated slightly, then hoarsely spoke, "I also know that I've been a very blind pony, and an ignorant one. I look back at my life before all of this happened and I think--no--I know that I'm better for all that's happened to me. I'm wiser, stronger..." I clenched my eyes shut and saw Straight Edge's frightened face in the midnight of my mind. "...but I'm far from perfect."
A few of the ponies rattled on the lengths of their chains. Mists of water flew coldly over the platform before rejoining the chaotic nether.
"I want to become better. I want to be a good pony, to reach out to those around me. I..." I bit my lip. My eyes opened from the tears springing forth as I shuddered and looked up at her throne, whimpering. "I want to bless others in this world. I want to leave my mark, if only to guide ponies along the path towards harmony and righteousness. And now that... now that so much has happened in my life and I've learned what I've learned, I..." I hiccuped on another sob and squeaked forth, "I can't do a single thing. Not without a miracle or an event of pure happenstance."
I clung tighter to the Nightbringer, falling on my knees as I gazed up at the spheres, teary-eyed.
"Is it so selfish of me, so unholy of a demand, that I ask for yet another miracle?" I gulped and tried to keep my breaths even. "Please... Please speak to me. Sing to me. I ask of you... I beg of you... Come and play the Duet with me. Help me break free from this curse. And maybe--just maybe--I can find a way to help you too." I gulped and stammered, "Because nopony--mortal or immortal--would live in a place like this unless it was their prison. And though I may never want to become you, that doesn't mean..." I smiled weakly through the tears. "That doesn't mean that I can't try and understand you."
The spheres hovered coldly ahead. I saw strobes of light, distant and erratic, illuminating the lengths of the firmaments beyond.
"Please...?" I squeaked again. "All I can do is be here. Won't you help me? Won't you free me?" My limbs went limp, and I almost dropped the Nightbringer right then and there. "What is it that keeps you from at least talking to me? Must we play this game of hide and seek for eternity? Must you ignore me? I beg of you, what's keeping us from finishing the Nocturne?"
Just then, the lightning bolts in the distance doubled, tripled. I heard the rattling of chains. They intensified all around me, forming a cacophony of passion and chaos, until the chanting chorus of every shackled pony in every corner of the unsung realm broke through, moaning the same hideous phrase over and over again.
"Her beloved wakes! Her beloved wakes! Her beloved wakes!"
I gasp, my wide eyes staring at all the quivering equines as they thrashed and howled around me.
"Her beloved! Her beloved! Her beloved! Her beloved!"
They were surrounding me, lashing at me and each other, writhing in agony and fear and joy all at once. Overwhelmed, I scrunched down on the ground and telekinetically strummed "Penumbra's Echo" in quick fashion. Before their chains and chants could drown me, the unsung realm flew away in a blur, and I was once again situated on the lantern-lit floor of my cellar, surrounded by dust and the echoing sounds of my panting voice.
I sat up, running a shivering hoof through my mane as my tears dried and my voice found its way back into my throat. "Her... 'H-Her beloved wakes?'" My brow furrowed. "But... But what...?"
The air was still. I felt as though the world had stopped rotating.
Yet again, nothing had become of the trip to purgatory.
With a sigh, I bagged the Nightbringer, extinguished the lantern, and trudged up the steps to the surface. "Something... doesn't make sense. She didn't try blasting me off the face of the platform that time. Did I actually reach her?" I sighed again. "Alabaster, how did you dwell in that place for a single day, much less a thousand years? No wonder you lost your mind..."
I opened the door to my yard. Instead of sunlight, I was greeted with a pie to the face.
"Gaaugh!" I stumbled back, reeling. Clumps of cherry, custard, and whipped cream covered my horn, eyes, and muzzle. Wincing, I brought two hooves up and wiped the edible material out of sight. "For the love of Celestia," I was already growling. "Pinkie Pie! If you're tossing baked goods at random again..." I froze as soon as my eyes could blink.
There were four more pies where the first one came from, and they were... levitating over the lawn behind my cabin in tight formation. I saw more things floating in the distance. Squinting, I made out what was undeniably a flock of winged pigs. To my horror, there were spherical clusters of landscape floating, embedded with trees and upside down cottages. Above this chaotic sprawl, bright clouds of pink fluff lingered, occasionally precipitating disgusting brown sheets of rain onto a Ponyville fragmented into labyrinthine facsimiles of what it was just hours ago.
It looked far too goofy to be true, too haunting and bizarre to be taken any way but seriously. In a way, it looked perfectly like--
"The end of the world..."
I looked at the mess above and beyond. Slowly, I tilted around and gazed down the steps to my cellar. I blinked, hearing several eerie words repeating in my mind. In a flash, I galloped towards the cabin, flinging the last flakes of pie off my face.
Even an entire year of understanding new things couldn't prepare me for what happened next...
Background Pony
XV - "Being There"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: RazgrisS57, theworstwriter, Props, theBrianJ, Warden, Led Zeppelin, and capitalism
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XVI - Beloved | Dear journal,
What is my quest, if not a grand journey towards remembrance? What do I seek more than to be acknowledged, and to share the mutual memory of everything I've done, everything I am, and everything I've ever learned among my fellow ponies? What point would there be in existing if I did not victoriously seize the chance to erect a monument to such an accomplishment, even if that monument was myself?
That goal has been something sacred to me. Ever since my curse began, I've wanted nothing more and nothing less than to leave my mark upon the world. Even as I write this, as I make this journal entry, it is with the hopes that somepony other than myself will read it someday and take into account what has been seen and done here.
But now, I am beginning to wonder. As I seek to undo this curse, could I actually be propelling my into another, far more dismal affliction? Have I always been tainted by a great shadow, adding layers of misery to the forsaken weight that she holds on her shoulders? By seeking freedom, am I risking something far darker than my mortal mind can comprehend?
Someone obviously felt this way, and it is because of him that I am here, because of him that I linger, because of him that I ponder...
Is this quest even worth it?
I held the flask out the open window, catching the brown droplets from the pink clouds lingering above. As soon as the drizzle ended, I levitated the canteen into the cabin and closed the window. Raising the container to my nostrils, I took a few meager sniffs, and then bravely poured a tiny bit of the fluid down my throat. I swished the stuff around with my tongue, gulped, and nodded.
"Mmmhmmm. There's no denying it." I pivoted slowly about and stared at my cot, trying to remain as still and calm as possible. "That's chocolate rain."
Al was peering out the opposite window, standing on his hindquarters and flicking his orange tail. The tiny feline was evidently excited, and his whiskers twitched as he observed bizarre things flying over the north edge of town. Winged swine, levitating pies, minotaurs in rowboats, and just about any nightmarishly awkward thing imaginable were populating the skies. What's more, the distant sounds of explosions, stampedes and maniacal cackling resonated from the center of Ponyville. A large part of me wanted to go and investigate, but an even larger part was too scared for my life, much less my sanity.
"It's like... like some big, stupid joke!" I exclaimed, hearing my own voice crack as I perched on the cot beside Al. "Obviously some terrible magic spell has been conjured in town, but I haven't a clue what kind of a magician would want to make all this craziness happen!"
It had been nearly an hour since I had exited the cellar from my last venture into the unsung realm. Most of that time had been spent testing whether or not I was dreaming up this whole fiasco. I've seen some insanely bizarre things in my life as of late. I've witnessed the horrors of a world between the firmaments, including the forsaken victims of an undead alicorn's accursed legacy, but at least her nightmare realm had some consistency to it. But this?
This was pure, unadulterated chaos. The fact that every little phenomena I witnessed--levitating pastry items, candied clouds, comically mutated fowl--were all of a goofily absurd variant only made the whole scenario all the more chilling. It was as if some immature foal had been given the keys to creation and was playing goddess with the laws of reality. A part of me feared that if I stepped out of the cabin, I'd be yanked off the earth and transmogrified into a sack of potatoes or something worse.
"I just can't believe the, timing, Al," I mumbled as I fiddled with the sleeves of my hoodie. "Something happened just now in the unsung realm. The shackled ponies were screaming about 'her beloved.' They chanted that he was 'waking.' But... now of all times?" I gulped and stared at where the Nightbringer sat on a wooden table in all its shimmering, golden glory. "Or... Or what if it's all connected? Maybe the laws on this side of the firmaments have changed, and her beloved is being woken up because of it?"
I looked to my side. Al was gone.
Momentarily frightened, I glanced all around, then finally towards the floor. Al was circling his empty food dish. Upon seeing my face, he squatted on all fours and meowed up at me.
Rolling my eyes, I managed a meager smile and levitated his bag of feed over. "Look at you. It could be utter Ragneighrock, and still you'd want your din-din." After pouring him a light meal, I lingered. I gazed out the window again and gasped, "Of course! Twilight! If there's anypony who can fix this mess, it's her!" I placed the bag down and looked over at the Nightbringer again. In the middle of all that senselessness, at least one thing became clear to me. I took a deep breath, urging the shivers to leave my body. "And there's one other pony in this town with enough raw power to give Twilight the help she needs."
Hopping off the bed, I rushed to my saddlebag and slid it over my spine. Al looked over from his meal and watched me. I was sliding the Nightbringer into my bag and pocketing a hoofful of sound stones, as well as a spell book or two.
"Celestia help me, Al," I said, giving him a faint smile. "I've fallen in love with this town. I'm not about to let it go to Tartarus because I'm too scared to go outside and face chocolate rain or pigs on a wing or goddess knows what else." I knelt down and nuzzled his fuzzy head. "Promise me you won't open the door to any strange apple pies pretending to be salesponies."
Al merely purred and nuzzled my hoof.
"Mmmm... There's a good boy." I scratched his ears, stood up, and opened the door wide. "Wish me luck--"
No sooner had I spoken when I heard a terrible salvo of squabbling noises from down the road. It almost sounded like a fight was breaking out, but at first I couldn't believe it. One voice stood out from the rest, threatening bloody murder in the most hideous of tones.
"Miss Cheerilee?" I gasped, making a face. Nervously, I flung the door shut behind me, hopped off the porch, and galloped south along the dirt path towards town. I hadn't gone far when I ran into three ponies struggling to yank a rabid schoolteacher off the side of the beaten path, where she was doing her best to stamp the colorful flora to bits along the road's edge.
"Miss Cheerilee! Please!" a cream-colored mare shouted.
"You have to come with us!" a hovering pegasus stallion added. "It's not safe here!"
"Everypony, we gotta hurry!" Exclaimed Candy Mane, the only other pony I recognized by name. Her wings flexed as she looked worriedly towards the heart of Ponyville down the road. "Stu, help me drag her!"
The pegasus stallion nodded and replied, "I'll get this forelimb if you get that one!"
"I'll do my best!"
The two pegasi tried lifting Cheerilee up, but she growled and bucked them off, thrashing and angrily launching herself at a bed of daisies. "Rrrrrrgh!" Her eyes twitched as she hissed through gnashing teeth, stomping and stomping and stomping on the crushed yellow petals. "I hate flowers! I hate them! I wish all flowers would die in their sleep!"
"Miss Cheerilee! This isn't you! Please! We gotta go get help! Some horrible curse has zapped Ponyville and--!"
"Oh, I get it!" Cheerilee spun and stared down the face of the cream-colored earth pony. "You're on their side, aren't you?! Huh?! Chrysanthemum crusader! Lavender liar! Baby's breath barbarian!" She bit her teeth down on a nearby tree root, ripped it loose from its foundation with unearthly strength, and wielded it in her angry jaws. "Mmmmf--Have at thee!"
"Eeeeep!" the mare flinched away from her.
Before Cheerilee could strike, a green cocoon of telekinesis encased her. "What?! Nnngh--I knew it!" She spat the wood out and thrashed wildly in midair. "The chlorophyll has become sentient! You won't take me alive, you pollen pirates! I will slay each of you at the stem! Raaaugh!"
"Okaaaaay," I muttered as I strolled forward, effortlessly holding her above the group in a telekinetic field. "What question should I ask first?"
The other three gazed at me and gasped with relief.
"Oh! A unicorn!"
"Thank Celestia!"
"We've been wrestling with her the whole way here! She keeps attacking every flower petal on sight!"
"Yeah," I muttered. "Could somepony explain that?"
"There's no time!" Candy Mane stammered. "We have to get out of here!"
"Yeah!" The stallion hovered above me, his green eyes bright and twitching. "Ponyville is gone!"
My face twisted as if I were swallowing a pineapple. "Gone? What do you mean, 'gone'?"
"Something horrible's happened to it!" the cream-coated mare exclaimed, breathless. "Chunks of the land are floating in every direction! Buildings are blowing up! There are... th-things flying around..."
"My work wagon turned into a deck of playing cards!" the stallion exclaimed.
"Nopony cares about your stupid wagon, Stu Leaves," Candy Mane muttered.
"I care about it!" he barked back. "I can't attach reins to a giant jack of clubs!"
"At the rate at which the village is mutating, you just might," Candy Mane said with a cold shiver. "The last thing I saw while running to the north edge of town was the Mayor's hair turning pink and attacking random bystanders!"
"Uhhh..." was all I could mutter, staring blankly at the group.
"Lotus blossoms!" Cheerilee shrieked, hovering upside down in my magical grip. "Do I smell lotus blossoms?!" Veins showed angrily in her throbbing eyes. "Death to the fragrant infidels!"
"Ma'am"--the earth pony trotted up to me, her blue eyes imploring-- "you must not be from around town. But trust us: Ponyville is a disaster area. Our best bet is to hurry to a place called Sweet Apple Acres just north of here and regroup with other ponies."
"Yeah!" Stu Leaves nodded and said, "We can form a party and get help from Trottingham or Canterlot!"
Above us, an upside down hot air balloon full of inebriated penguins descended violently towards the ground and exploded beyond the treeline, raining down a fountain of vanilla flavored cupcakes on our bodies.
After flinching, I stood up and looked at the group. "I... don't think any of us will reach Sweet Apple Acres in one piece. We're better off at my place. It's not far from here."
"You... you mean you live around here, lady?"
"Uhhh"--I smiled awkwardly--"what I meant to say is there's a cabin just a few feet away."
"A cabin?" Stu Leaves' face scrunched up. "Since when?"
Two iguanas rode by on shrieking ostriches, dueling with explosive crossbows.
I ducked a shower of debris and grunted, "Look, just follow me, okay?!"
The three nodded nervously.
"Down with the imperialist rosebuds!" Cheerilee shrieked.
Sighing, I lugged the teacher along with us as I led the way back to my cabin. In swift order, I opened the door and let the three trot in while floating Cheerilee after them. "Al! We have company! Don't be afraid! They just need shelter from what's going on outside!"
"This..." The earth pony gazed in wonder at the plethora of instruments lining the wall. "This place is remarkable."
"It's cozy," Candy Mane said as Al nuzzled her leg.
"It's cramped," Stu Leaves added.
"Stu!"
"What?!"
"Raaaaaaaaugh!" Cheerilee shrieked, screaming bloody murder. Floating upside down, she stretched her hooves out to strangle a potted cluster of yellow tulips sitting atop the hearth. "I will find your children and uproot them!"
"Oh for the love of oats..." I rolled my eyes, levitated the pot away, and bucked the flowers out the door before shutting it to the chaotic world outside. "There!" I plopped Cheerilee squarely in the middle of the bed. "You happy?!"
"Mmmmf..." She folded her forelimbs, frowning and leering at the corners of the place. "There are carnations hiding in the logs of this cabin. I just know it."
"Miss Cheerilee, please--" Candy Mane started.
"I'm onto your game!"
I shook my head in disbelief. "I don't get it! Is there something in the water? Why is she acting so--?" I stopped in mid-speech, squinting at her. "Wait a minute..." I realized that the color in her ruby coat had faded considerably since the last time I saw her at Sugarcube Corner. What was more, the pink in her mane was decidedly bland, as if sapped of color. "Why is she so... gray?"
"You know this mare?" Stu Leaves asked incredulously.
"Sure, why not," I grumbled and looked his way. "Could you just answer the question?"
He gulped and gave Cheerilee an anxious glance. "She came back from the school field trip to Canterlot, and she was colored this way. When we asked her where all the children had gone, Cheerilee just ignored us and started galloping up to storefronts and gardens, smashing every flowerbed she could find!"
"It's like she was a whole 'nother pony!" the cream-coated mare exclaimed. "Candy Mane and I had to tackle her so that she wouldn't destroy the exotic flowers around the Princess Celestia statue! The next thing we knew, the clouds above us were turning pink and all of Tartarus was breaking loose!"
"What frightens me, is that there's a connection," Candy Mane said in a solemn voice. Gulping, she muttered, "I think she's been touched."
I gazed curiously at the pegasus. "'Touched?'"
She hissed through her teeth as a bitter chill ran through her body. "Y-yes. Among all the crazy things happening, there is... a monster storming through town."
"A monster?" I asked.
Stu Leaves nodded. "A large brute. Part snake, part pony, part... part everything!"
Candy Mane went on, "As soon as this monster got close to other ponies, they lost the color in their coats and started acting like sociopaths. I had to gallop away from my landlord because he had suddenly become obsessed with buzzing every mane in sight with an electric razor." She shuddered. "And the razor wasn't even plugged into anything..."
"That..." I made a puzzled face. "That doesn't make sense."
Stu Leaves pointed out the window as several pigs flew by. "Yeah, you think?!"
"Calm down." I waved my forelimbs, trying to breathe evenly in hope that the other ponies would follow my lead. "I'm just trying to get some answers."
"If we had some, we'd give them to you," the earth pony said softly. Trembling, she ran her hoof through her blue and pink mane. "It's just so hard to take in. Two of my closest friends have b-been turned gray. None of them are acting like themselves. It's so... so horrible..." She hung her head and sniffled, covering her tearful face with a quivering hoof.
"Hey..." I leaned in and laid two hooves on her shoulders. "You're brave to have made it this far with your wits intact. You're even braver for having tried so hard to save Miss Cheerilee." I looked into her blue eyes and smiled. "And whatever this mess is, I'm sure it can be fixed."
"You... Y-you really think so?" she asked, lips trembling.
"I know so." I smiled and nodded. "As a matter of fact, I was just on my way to downtown Ponyville to find Twilight Sparkle. If there's anypony who can reverse the chaos, it's her!"
"You know Miss Sparkle?" Stu Leaves remarked.
"Let's just say that we go way back," I said. "Our friendship is... erm... too epic for the history books." I turned and looked at Candy Mane. "I think as long as you four lay low, you'll be safe in this cabin."
"Won't the owners get mad and kick us out?"
I opened my mouth, hesitated, then shook my head. "No. I'm sure that they'd be glad that their home helped fellow ponies remain safe in such a time of crisis. Still, it'd be polite if you took care of their cat while you're here."
Candy Mane smiled and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think we can do that..."
"Good," I said, then took a deep breath to steel myself for what I was about to do. "I'm off."
"Off?!" Stu Leaves grimaced. "You mean you're going out there again?!"
"Twilight Sparkle's not going to find herself!" I exclaimed. I bit my lip. I knew that just seconds after leaving my home, these four ponies would find themselves suddenly in a strange cabin, not knowing how they go there. Still, the nightmarish situation outside was likely enough to keep them staying safely in place. Besides, they had the best feline house guest imaginable. Eventually I said, "Trust me when I tell you this. I have in my possession a great deal of power, and it'd be criminal if I didn't try to use it--or else let another unicorn use it. It's not a question of what I want to do. I have to head into Ponyville."
"Heh..." Stu Leaves saluted. "Goddess-speed to ya, lady!"
"You'll be careful, yes?" the cream-colored pony asked with an expression of concern.
"Don't you worry. I'll... uh... blend in with the background"--I turned to the cot--"Miss Cheerilee, my best wishes to you--" A wooden stool flew into my face, exploding in a shower of splinters. "Aaaaugh!"
"Owwwww..." Stu Leaves winced, his wings drooping.
"Miss Cheerilee!" Candy Mane gasped.
"You saw it! You all saw it!" Cheerilee loomed above me, seething, until the other earth pony yanked her away. "Her eyes are yellow tulips in disguise!"
"Ughhh..." I hissed, clutching my forehead. "I never wanted to burn down a schoolhouse so bad..."
"Don't be mad at her! Please!" the earth pony exclaimed, wrestling Cheerilee to the floor. "She's not her normal self! I promise you!"
"I'm inclined to agree," I muttered, rubbing the fresh bruise on my head and standing up. "Nopony with a voice that adorable could be capable of evil."
"A pox upon your jasmine!" Cheerilee spat.
"Not for long, at least," I said, then made for the door. "Stay inside. Stay safe. But most of all--stay together."
They nodded in agreement, and then disappeared, for I had closed the cabin's front door. I was already feeling the accursed chill halfway down the road as I galloped towards town, but I didn't let that stop me. On either side of the path, things were exploding at random. I winced, feeling as if I had stumbled upon some sort of ludicrous battleground. Despite the bedlam, I heard no screams or signs of agony. Instead, the air had a bizarrely pleasant smell to it. I felt like a little filly in a candy store, only I was full of bone-chilling apprehension instead of hunger. Just beyond the bend of trees there had to have been a lingering series of ovens filled with baked sweets and rich taffy.
There's no fitting way to describe the enormity of absurd things I witnessed during my hurried trek into the eye of that chaotic hurricane. My speedy gallop was punctuated by various anomalies: buffalo in ballet dresses, somersaulting polar bears, riderless unicycles, a scampering phone book on centipede legs...
And yet, all of these random things were starting to appear... less random to me. It's hard to explain, but I was starting to envision a cohesive intelligence to the entire ensemble of oddities. I suppose it's the artist within me, but I can recognize the brush strokes of a creative soul, even a mischievous one. Despite the inexplicable nature of all the anomalous elements, I couldn't help but notice that they all carried the same spirit of seemingly harmless whimsy and ridiculousness.
All of that, of course, was likely a façade, and there was no telling what legitimate deviousness lurked beneath the layers of clownish happenstance. I didn't let my guard down for one moment, and neither did I slow my speedy canter towards the edge of town. I felt the weight of the Nightbringer in my saddlebag. I was on a mission, and Twilight, my friend, despite the frigid veil of my curse, was the goal. Everything would be all right, I told myself, so long as I reached her. Together, with the piece of the Cosmic Matriarch's song in my possession, we surely would have been able to reverse all the horrible things that had happened. Maybe I was powerless to undo the curse on my soul just yet, but that didn't mean I couldn't use the Nightbringer for a greater good while it was in my possession. With the most powerful mortal magician in all of Equestria just a jog away, I was certain to put the instrument's magical qualities to good use.
All of this heroic contemplation ended the very second I rounded the last bend in the road. I gasped, my eyes twitching, for Ponyville was... no longer Ponyville. Except, it was Ponvyille, only Ponyville was everywhere. The downtown area was twisted, weaving in and around itself like a giant optical illusion. Chunks of landscape levitated to the left, to the right, and above me. Buildings sat, clinging to the underbellies of the floating mounds of earth, doubly defying gravity. Hotels, apartments, storefronts, and other structures were horribly warped--some beyond recognition, and others resembling living Picassoats paintings. The emerald plains surrounding the township had lost their immaculate sheen, reduced instead to geometrically astounding grids of alternating shades. I felt as though I was galloping towards a gigantic checkerboard that had been warped by a flash flood and then sprinkled with the shattered remnants of model train houses.When I peered beyond the nearby hills, I could see the distant towers of Canterlot floating upside down, and the hazy shadow of Cloudsdale spinning like an enormous pinwheel.
"Dear heaven..." I murmured breathlessly, feeling my heart beat hard in my chest. "It's not just Ponyville." I gulped. "It's the whole goddess-forsaken world..."
Just then, the dirt path beneath me inexplicably became as slick as ice.
"Aaaack!" I shrieked, slipped, and slid forward. A smell filled my nostrils; I realized that the street had somehow morphed into sudsy soap and water right beneath my hooves. "Whoah whoah whoah whoah--!"
Shrieking crocodiles flew past me on jet packs, being chased by rabbits on stilt-legs. As I slid past them, a chunk of earth between me and Ponyville broke loose and rose like a hot air balloon. Beneath the sundered hilltop, pure blackness loomed, and I was slipping straight towards it like a green sled.
"Oh sweet Celestia!" I gnashed my teeth, held my breath, and leapt forward. "Nnnngh!" I summoned a burst of telekinesis directly behind me. The magical thrust was enough to propel me like a living cannonball. I soared over the nothingness, lunging towards the floating chunk of grass and soil with my forelimbs outstretched. Miraculously, my hooves caught ahold of several dangling brown roots. I hung off the edge of the levitating plateau as it lifted still higher among the cotton candy clouds.
Panting, I struggled and strained to pull myself up the rocky platform. Over the past few years, I had gotten stronger magically, but not physically. I was still the same frail filly who had sashayed her way through indoor study courses at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. It took several minutes to pull myself up from the brink of a deadly plummet. As I yanked my way up the length of dangling roots, clasping onto the grassy edge of the platform, I heard a raspy voice above me.
"Vould do you well to sprouts pegasus vings, da?"
My muscles quivered all over as I struggled to keep ahold of the brown strands. I squinted upwards, wincing. "What in the hay?!"
A flying squirrel grinned, sporting a pair of green goggles and flicking the burning end of a cigar. "Of course, if lime green pony has none, perhaps crocodile jet pack vould do trick!" He grinned with yellow-stained incisors. "Name your price! Sky is limitless, da? Vish I could say same for deep looming abyss of death and dismay beneath pony! Ha!"
Just then, a toaster swooped by with pterodactyl wings. It hissed and plucked the squirrel off the floating platform with vice-like talons before flying off towards the lopsided horizon.
"Nyet! Nyet!" he shrieked and flailed in the toaster's grasp. "Vas about to break deal! Let go of sexy fur!" They were intercepted by a rocket-propelled armadillo from the center of town and exploded in a cascade of fireworks and corn flakes.
I winced, facing forward as I finally pulled myself up. "Well, okay then..."
When I made it to the top of the platform, the sky disappeared. I gasped, looking every which way until I realized that the world had fallen under the shroud of night in a blink. I gawked at the moon, watching as it flew through its cycles in reverse. Then--just as the stars were starting to twinkle--the moon dropped out of the orbit and was replaced by the flaming image of the sun. I squinted, finding myself in the shadow of the town's trademark windmill--only we were both floating hundreds of feet over the rooftops of downtown. But that wasn't what was alarming me at that particular moment.
"The sun and moon..." I murmured, watching in pale fear as the celestial orb dropped again, blanketing the world once more in inexplicable evening. "Day and Night are uncontrolled." A sharp gasp escaped my body, and I fell on my haunches at the shocking realization. "Princess Celestia... Princess Luna..." I gulped dryly and shivered. "They're... they're no longer in control of their elements..."
There is no scale to the horror that was shooting through my spirit at that very moment. The simple yet mind-numbing concept of the sun and moon going haywire was enough to turn my world upside down, quite literally. If some horrible spell had caused Celestia and Luna to lose control of what the Cosmic Matriarch's song had imbued them with, then there was no telling just what kind of power I was dealing with. Even she, for all of her intimidating grandeur and mystery, was suddenly an afterthought to this mortifying realization.
A part of me wilted inside, questioning whether or not Twilight Sparkle would be remotely capable of confronting this scenario, even if she did have a unicorn such as myself gifted with the Nightbringer to assist her. I only had to remind myself that Twilight Sparkle had confronted the likes of Nightmare Moon, the very deliverer of my curse, and yet my old companion had come out alive and triumphant. To this day, there's still nothing more invigorating than the thought of a strong and dependable friend.
Taking a deep breath for courage, I stepped forward past the windmill. In timely fashion, the sun rose again. I couldn't detect a pattern to the lit and unlit halves of the "day," but I didn't bother trying. I had a new problem to confront: getting down from that lofty, floating platform.
Narrowing my eyes, I studied the distance between where I was perched and the stationary landscape below. I took note of everything floating around me and suddenly had a ridiculous epiphany. Reaching deep into my leylines, I telekinetically strummed a few strings of the Nightbringer from within my saddlebag. Feeling a rush of magic channeling through me, I aimed my horn at the edge of the floating cliff and fired a bright burst of emerald energy. A chunk of soil broke free. Instead of falling straight towards the world below, the clusters of rock and soil floated about, descending gradually towards the earth like a string of pillow feathers.
"Here goes..."
I gritted my teeth, threw caution to the wind, and tossed myself over the edge. Launching forward, I landed on the first floating chunk, then the next one beneath it, and then the half-dozen clumps below. Skipping and hopping, I made my way down the magically drifting pieces of debris until I was within safe jumping distance of the checkerboard plain.
"Ha!" I bounced one last time and grinned in midair as I plummeted towards the soft earth. "Cake!"
My descent was interrupted by a huge pan of custard slamming me in the side. I twirled at least three times, fell like an anvil, and landed in a puddle of mud head-first.
"Ooof!" I grunted, finding myself in the horrendously bizarre predicament of being stuck upside down with my horn embedded in the earth like a tent peg. I sputtered and gasped through dessert fragments. "What the hay...?!"
"Not cake!" a mare cackled from several feet away in my lopsided vision. "Pie! Haahaahaa!" She snickered as monocled crabs and mustached snakes slithered backwards past her.
"Nnnngh!" I grunted, squirmed, and finally popped my horn loose from the ground. Rolling over in the mud, I stood up and shook all of the excess dirt and custard off me. "Ugh... Milky White?!" I frowned incredulously at the mare. "What's gotten into you--Whoah!" I ducked a flaming pie pan soaring past me.
"I'm not Milky White anymore!" the earth pony exclaimed, grinning maniacally. She slipped a paper bag over her head that had holes cut in the precise spots to show off her psychotically bright eyes. I detected a noticeably gray hue to her coat as she juggled several more dessert trays and tossed them at various bystanders on the edge of town. "I'm Milky, the Pienisher! Deliverer of crust and justice!"
"Miss White, where's the 'justice' in flinging edible junk in random ponies' faces?!"
"What are we on this earth for if not to spread custard and aluminum tins?!" Milky White gave a muffled shout and threw the next volley at a passing pegasus. "Breathe freedom, good citizen!"
Thunderlane took the messy attack straight in the face. He merely shook the mushiness off his gray mane and muzzle before proceeding to haul three stacked pianos chained to his haunches. "Nnnngh!" The legs of the bottommost instrumens ground through the soil behind his twitching gray tail. "Gotta... get these... to the bingo club...!" He grinned maniacally. "Then I'll be up to my wing elbows in estrogen!"
"Slower!" Blossomforth shrieked from high above. I saw the gray pegasus perched on the topmost piano, whipping a dozen intertwined rubber chickens at Thunderlane's hide as he slowly pulled her across Ponyville. "Slower! Slower! Mush! I want to get there yesterday!"
"Whatever you say, my liege!" Thunderlane hissed, his monochromatic cheeks blushing. "Chicken me harder! Please! I'm a bad stallion!"
"You will take the poultry and you will like it!" Blossomforth roared, her gray eyes rolling back in her head.
Ironically, I heard a young filly speaking in a dainty voice off to the side. "Hey, anti-Mom! Don't I look darling?"
I glanced to my side--then did a massive doubletake.
The Carousel Boutique was ransacked and dented in several places. Beside a smashed window, surrounded by piles of pastel-colored loot, Scootaloo was busy trying on one of several ridiculously ruffled dresses. A makeup kit was lying open a few feet away, and she had more color on her lips and eyelashes than I've seen at an entire Canterlot ballroom dance.
"Does this make my blank flank look fat?" Scootaloo posed before a cracked mirror, also dragged out of the Boutique. Her eyelashes fluttered as if she were having an epileptic seizure while she examined her bifurcated reflection from several angles. "Ugh! Not poofy enough! Unmother, are you even looking?!"
"I can't at the moment, ya little brat!" Milky White stalked after Cloudchaser and Flitter, who were wheeling away on a reverse bicycle. "The Pienisher has to rid the world of scum and feathers! Ha!" She launched five pies all at once, using her tail as a catapult. "Go occupy the driving lane in Tartarus, you helmeted misanthropes!"
Just then, Dinky scampered across the path with Scootaloo's scooter in tow. Interestingly enough, the unicorn filly did not appear as colorless as the maniacal equines surrounding me.
"Dinky!" I shouted, reaching towards her with a hoof. "Wait! You can't take that! It belongs to Scootaloo--"
"Eh, who needs it?" Scootaloo waved an elegant hoof and ran a diamond encrusted brush through her mane while pursing her lips before the mirror. "My tomcolt days are over. Hellllllo, my prince. Why, yes, I have royal blood. Now friggin' kiss me."
I groaned and galloped after the tiny unicorn. "Dinky! Wait up!" I followed her two blocks, past tap-dancing construction workers and upside down flamingos perched inside storefront awnings. "It's not safe out here! You gotta get somewhere inside where it's safer!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am!" Dinky called back, pulling the scooter faster. "Mommy says she needs this!"
I squinted in disbelief. "Miss Hooves...?"
Just then, I saw Dinky come to a stop before a pegasus whose coat was grayer than normal. "Here ya go, Mommy! Just like you asked!"
Spinning around, Derpy grinned with uncharacteristically even eyes. "Perfect!" She snatched the handles of the scooter in one hoof and lifted a baseball bat in the other. "I've waited a long, long time for this!"
"Miss Hooves! You're... You're not yourself!" I exclaimed, trying to reason with her. I didn't know if there was any hope. I didn't even know if these afflicted acquaintances of mine were infectious. I stood like a clueless moron in the middle of the street, fidgeting with my hoodie's sleeves and stammering, "Try to focus on who you really are! Your daughter needs you right now!"
"What she needs is an example! It's what all of Ponyville needs!" Derpy parked her haunches on the scooter and beat her wings. Blurring down the street, she stretched the bat out to her right and slammed every mailbox to shrapnel in vicious succession. "Yeah! Buck yeah! Mail call, ya melon fudging blowhards!" She spun around and glided down the opposite side of the street, shattering every container in sight. "Lick your own stamps from now on! Ha!"
"Yaaay!" Dinky innocently cheered. She hopped in place and stomped her hooves. "You show those evil boxes! Mommy's the best!"
"Dang straight!" Derpy cackled, then slammed through an exploding wagon, littering the street with dizzy frogs in tuxedos. "Ow! Blast it! Ugh!"
I backed slowly, slowly away from the sight, trembling all over. Just then, I bumped into an equine body.
"Gaah!" I spun around, then exhaled with relief to see somepony who was born black and white for once. "Oh! Zecora! Thank goodness!" I wiped my green brow and pointed at the uncharacteristic insanity reducing the town to rubble all around us. "Can you believe all of this nonsense?! You've got to help me!"
Slowly, like a frosted doll, her lifeless face pivoted in my direction.
"I need to find Twilight! She must have a spell that can reverse all of this! Is she at home, you think? At the library?!"
Zecora faced me. Icily, her mouth opened wide with a cold, metallic whir.
I stopped, squinting at her. "Uhm... Zecora? Are you all right--?"
Her throat glowed. The air crackled with static energy. Then, with a cacophonous burst of thunder, she fired a giant blue laser out of her muzzle.
I ducked, eyes wide, as the searing beam parted my mane. The energy beam soared across town, sailed into a hotel, and blew the building up into burning debris. I sat there, squatting, blinking dazedly.
With a metallic hum, Zecora's jaws slowly closed. Her nostrils flared, producing a hyena laugh, and she cartwheeled away with glassy eyes in time to join a stampede of dolphin-riding encyclopedias.
I stood back up, shaking the cobwebs loose in my head. With a wince, I uttered, "Errrrr-yeahhhh. Time to get to the library."
Without wasting a breath, I spun around and galloped across Ponyville. This was no easy task; obtusely unexpected things darted past my path every other second. When I wasn't doing my best to dodge the hazardous swarms of chaos, I was struggling not to stop and gawk at all the craziness. I had always felt like a pariah in this place, a splinter in the essence of a warm town I'd never know intimately. But now, my helplessness took on a new meaning. In a strange way, I almost felt as though fate had arranged for me to be an unwitting audience to a grand play of absurdity. A part of me almost wanted to laugh, but that same part of me was quietly weeping inside. I wondered about Scootaloo's fate, and Milky White's and Zecora's and Cheerilee's. Was there any way to reverse what had happened to them? Better yet, had I just abandoned Dinky to a fate worse than death? Shouldn't I have scooped her up and carried her with me instead of letting the grayness consume her as well?
I had to press on. I told myself that finding Twilight was the most important thing. With her, there was the scant yet glimmering possibility of not only salvaging this situation but potentially cutting off the magical affliction at its root. This was assuming, of course, that I didn't turn gray too. So, selfish as it was, I had to look after my own well-being.
This meant pausing to dodge, duck, and sidestep every awkward thing that soared my way. I lost track of all the familiar faces I saw, each turned to monochromatic madness by some malevolent force. To my mixed joy, Twilight was not among the cursed lot. Then again, neither were her closest of friends. This puzzling revelation vexxed me, until I saw the blessed sight of Twilight's treehouse looming ahead.
"Finally!" I giggled like a schoolfilly and quickened my canter towards her front door and the salvation within. "Now to go about cleaning up this mess--"
A giant lock of tangled hair slapped me upside the face.
"Ooof!" I flew back and slammed into an oak tree. Several green bananas fell on my crumpled body. Rather than stare at the bizarre, fruity sight, I looked up at my assailant. Something may have possibly collapsed inside my brain.
The Mayor stood in the middle of the road, her eyes turned into black-and-white swirls. Her mane had morphed into an enormous cluster of tentacled branches atop her head, clutching and tossing around a group of shrieking, panicked ponies in her follicular grip.
"I absolve thee of thy sins!" the Mayor shouted in a booming voice, her head twitching as the mane-tentacles ripped up street lamps and tossed them at passing albatrosses. "Get thee to a nunnery!"
The ponies in her hair shrieked and cried for help.
"Uhhh..." I stood up, panicking, glancing between her monstrous demon hair and the treehouse beyond. "Save ponies. See Twilight. Save ponies. See Twilight." I clenched my eyes shut and seethed. For the briefest of black moments, all I could see was Al's whiskery face. I realized that I had a home to return to. Reopening my eyes, I made straightway for the treehouse once again. "First thing's first--"
Just then, a stagecoach being dragged by chipmunks ran into me. With another grunt, I found myself being tossed off the road once more, this time thrown into a garden that had been turned into a bubble bath.
"Ugh! Nnnngh!" Gritting my teeth angrily, I climbed out of the pool, shook myself and my saddlebag dry, and galloped towards the library again. "I swear to Celestia, if I get interrupted one more time--"
Several green stalks shot up out of the ground in front of me and budded bright kitchen sinks. I ran straight into one, seeing stars. Stumbling backwards, I was rammed in the side by Derpy on the scooter. Then I was caught by one of the Mayor's mane-tentacles, shaken rigorously and tossed into the side of Sugarcube Corner.
"Ooof!" I winced, aching from head to hooves. As I struggled to get up, Thunderlane dragged his pianos past me, and a chain of rubber chickens was whipped across my spine. "Ouch!"
"Stop being lazy!" Blossomforth growled from above, almost rolling off the rattling instruments. "The rooster does not forget, nor forgive!"
"Grrrrrrr--That's it!" I shouted, my eye twitching. "One way or another, I'm going to the library!" Furious, I spun around and faced Sugarcube Corner. Following a deep, dark whim, I picked up a nearby garbage can and tossed it through the front window. I then hopped through the smashed glass and galloped deep into the eatery.
I had to dodge several paintballs sailing back and forth across the paint-splattered interior as Mr. and Mrs. Cake huddled behind separate barricades and launched the projectiles angrily at one another.
"Your apple fritter lacks taste!" a gray Mrs. Cake exclaimed, pulling at her trigger.
An even grayer Mr. Cake dodged her pellets and launched a return volley. "Your fruitcake lacks imagination and sprinkles!"
Mrs. Cake kicked over a chair, slid behind it, and fired several more potshots. "Your doughnuts are generic and flavorless!"
Mr. Cake brazenly stuck his head out and glared his gray eyes at her. "Your cupcakes taste like licorice!"
Mortified, Mrs. Cake gasped. In a furious tantrum, she tossed her paintball gun hard to the tile floor and it burst into flames. "You take that back!"
"You take our marriage back!"
"You take back the Fillydelphian banquet where we met!"
"You take back your parents' house in Fillydelphia where you stayed to bake for the banquet where we met!"
All the while, I had stormed past them to rummage through the Sugarcube Corner's large kitchen pantry. After much struggle, I pulled free Pinkie Pie's spare party cannon from where she always kept it. I swiveled the thing around and--grunting--shoved it across the messy restaurant. "Excuse me, coming through..."
They craned their necks to argue past me. "You take back your childhood that got you interested in baking to begin with!" Mrs. Cake stomped her hoof and her paintball gun caught fire again.
"You take back your father's sperm that fertilized the egg that turned into you that fell in love with baking that went to the banquet in Fillydelphia that met me and got married!"
Once outside again, I huffed, puffed, and slapped my hoof over the party cannon's trigger button. "Everypony, out of the way!" I braced my entire weight against the cannon as the thing ignited.
With a celebratory pop, a pressurized plume of streamers flew into the Mayor and sent her flying into a rose bush. Her hair tentacles went limp and several ponies--now freed--galloped away in fright.
"I mean it!" I shrieked, shoving my way through the street and cutting a path to the library. "Anyone who blocks me will get a face full of confetti... and a concussion!"
"Cry me a river!" Derpy Hooves hissed, sailing towards me on her scooter and swinging the bat at my skull. "Then put it in an envelope marked 'Non-returnable!'"
"No, you!" I fired the cannon into her muzzle.
"Ooof!" She took it rather well, in that she took it to the face. She fell back and landed in a market stand full of exploding grape fruit.
"This is for your own good!" I spun and fired the cannon at stampeding buffalo in tu-tus, mutant rabbits on giraffe legs, a minotaur with a flower basket, and several other incoming anomalies as I made my way to my destination. "I have to get to Twilight! I have to end this chaos! For... F-for harmony's sake!"
A hairy, serpentine creature with antlers slithered into view bearing a cockeyed grin. "Well, if you aren't the little spitfire!" He raised a yellow finger while his red eyes twitched. "If I might make a suggestion--"
I launched the party cannon into his goat-bearded muzzle, knocking him through a shattering building across the street. "No more distractions! We're going to find a way to undo all of this!" The party cannon ran out of pastel-colored ammo. Panting, I discarded the thing and galloped the last remaining distance between there and Twilight's door. "Please be home. Please be home. Please please please please--" My hooves clamped over the handle to the treehouse's entrance.
Just then, a brown, scaly tail wrapped around me three times from behind.
"H-huh?" I blinked awkwardly. "Daaah!" I was yanked away from the library and into the air several hundred feet away. "No!" I shrieked, reaching in vain for the treehouse as it grew more and more distant. "I was j-just there! What... How...?"
"Ahem... Now, let's try that again," an eloquent voice rumbled from behind me.
My insides froze. I twisted around in the serpentine grip, finding myself face to face once again with a pair of lopsided red pupils. These were parked in the center of a gray equine face that was attached to a brown torso that was then attached to a harlequin assortment of reptilian, mammalian, and avian limbs. A veritable jigsaw puzzle of surreal nature hovered before me with two wings--one pegasus and the other sarosian--and an asymmetrical pair of antlers crowning a softly furrowed brow as the monster looked into my soul, smirking with a loose fang that glinted in the sunlight.
"Good afternoon, madame," the beastly thing said. "How's the weather, hmm?" He gestured with a lion's paw as his right eye twitched wider than the left. "Partly chaotic with a twenty percent chance of cannon?"
"Buh?" I gaped at him.
"You know, that was rather rude what you did there earlier."
"I need to get to Twilight Sparkle!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, but of course! The splendiforous Mary Sue of the hour!" He spun us slowly around with his beating wings while scratching his goatee with his talons. "She seems to be awfully popular lately, except for--well--the whole thing with every friend she's ever made utterly abandoning her like she was a sack of dirt. It's all a touch bit on the melodramatic side. Say"--he pointed at me--"is that jacket of yours hoof-stitched?"
"Wait, is Twilight in trouble?!" I gasped.
"Because it certainly looks like it was sewn together on a lemon tree farm." He leaned forward and sniffed my mane. His muzzle puckered as if from a sour taste. "Whew! Which is probably where you sprouted out of the ground as well! Tell me, limey, do you believe in showers, or do you always bathe in pretense?"
"Nnngh!" I growled and slapped my hooves against his tail around my waist. "Let go of me!"
He took one glance at the grand height between us and the rooftops of Ponyville below. He flashed me a squinting look once more. "That may not be very advantageous at the moment."
"Please! Let me go!" I exclaimed, cupping my forelimbs together and practically pleading. "I have to find Twilight!"
He slowly hovered the two of us down. "Why the big hurry? It's a lovely day!"
"You call this lovely?!" my voice cracked as I gestured at the cotton candy mess and fractured townscape all around us. "I must get to Twilight and help her fix all of this! It's... it's utter chaos!"
"Hah hah hah hah haaaah!" he laughed triumphantly, tossing his slender neck back and cackling towards the heavens. The sun sank and the moon raised in its place, casting an intimidating glint across his antlers as he looked down at me with a mischievous grin. "Isn't it, though? And yet, as wild and unpredictable as it is, none of it pleases me nearly as much as running into a pony like you!"
"What... do you mean?"
"Because... erm... well..." He glanced aside, scratching his chin. "Hmmm... I suppose this will take a rather wordy monologue to explain, though something tells me you're rather used to that."
"I'm afraid I don't understand..."
"Let's remedy that, shall we?" The monster uncoiled his tail and plopped me down on a moonlit roadside. "Here, have a seat." He snapped his fingers.
I gave him a strange look, only to feel my limbs wobbling from a huge rumble below. Like magic, a bench sprouted up from the ground and appeared beneath me. "Gaah!" I slumped back against the neck rest, my lower legs dangling.
He paced bipedally before me on a lizard foot and a buffalo hoof, twiddling his digits and rambling to the stars, "Here I am, trying to construct my latest work of art, instilling mayhem and chaos across all of the land, and what should I find? A single unicorn--untainted, mind you--pulling a weaponized party favor from a nearby building and wreaking twice as much havoc on her lonesome! And for what? To reach some long-lost 'friend' across town?"
"I was... nngh..." I fiddled and squirmed. "I was trying to... ugh... to reach Twilight so we could--Look, could you hold on for one second?" Jerking my body, I writhed, struggled, and finally repositioned my body so that I was squatting normally on folded legs. "Whew. Much better." I looked up at him from the bench. "Twilight's the most gifted magician in all of Equestria! I need to help her find a way to--"
"--bring harmony to the world! But of course!" He doubled over and slapped his knees, snickering. "And yet... heheh... for such a supposedly benevolent goal, you only caused more chaos! Hah hah hah! You see... heh... this is exactly the kind of thing that proves my point!"
I inched away from him, shivering slightly in my seat. "I don't get it. What point?"
"The same point that Princess Celestia doesn't seem to get! Or her bipolar sister! Or all the eldritch horrors in Tartarus for that matter!" He smoothed his midnight black mane back and chuckled. "Whew! Now that Trottoroth, Eater of Foals: he really knew how to party back in the day!"
"I... I..." I leaned forward, narrowing my gaze on the highly vocal monstrosity. "Who are you? Just how can you--?" The moon dropped and the sun rose in its place, nearly blinding me. Wincing, I remained steadfast in my glare. "How can you speak of the Princesses in such a tone?"
He yawned. "Ohhhhh, it's simple, really." He pulled his left antler out and twirled it between yellow talons. "Boredom."
"Boredom?"
"Oh, not the usual kind, of course. But the ancient, venomous, timelessly fermented kind, like a vengeful demon returning from the depths, or really bad eggs on a Sunday morning."
Just then, four stallions in blue uniforms dashed out of hiding. Waving batons and trying their brave best to frown, a cluster of Ponyville's finest charged the serpentine stranger. "There he is, boys! Hey! You! Draconequus! You're going to answer for your crimes against this town, you conjurer!"
"Draconequus...?" I repeated in a troubled murmur. A gasp escaped my lips, and I gave the absurdly proportioned creature the first good look since he had yanked me from the heart of the chaotically cursed town. It was a figure I had only seen erected in stone, tapestries, or antique stained window art. "But there hasn't been a draconequus in Equestria for thousands of years..."
"Oooh!" The talkative creature's eyes brightened as he plopped his antler back into his skull and twisted it in place. "Speaking of boredom!" He turned about to face the officers and cracked his asymmetric knuckles. "Where've you been off to, gentlecolts?! Dunkin' for your loved ones?" He pulled a mug out of thin air, plucked his fang loose, and poured steaming black liquid from it like a dispenser. "I got plenty of coffee for the road! Sprinkles too!"
"I'm going to pay you back for turning my wife into a buoy!" an old police stallion grumbled.
The officer next to him blinked. "What's a buoy?"
"Shut up, sergeant!"
"Way to ruin the moment," the creature grumbled, popped his fang back, and sipped from the steaming mug. As the line of police officers closed in, he glanced lethargically my way and gestured. "Quick, limey. Pick a good vacation spot: desert, jungle, or ocean."
"Wh-what?" I exhaled in confusion.
"Hurry up!" He gestured at himself. "I have no intention of growing more ancient here!"
"Uhhhh..." I gulped and grimaced as I squeaked forth, "Ocean... I... guess...?"
"Ah! But of course!" The draconequus tossed the mug so that it exploded behind him. He slapped his forehead and smiled crookedly. "The desert is so last eon! Too much sand in the goatee. I'll leave you to guess which end."
The stallions yelled and charged him.
The creature merely winked and snapped a talon in their general direction. "Aloha!"
There were four flashes of light. I blinked--then had to rub my eyes in shock at what remained of the officers. Their uniforms were lying on the ground, and tangled within the garments was a quartet of thrashing seaponies. They gasped, twitched about, and sputtered for air.
"Ahem..." The serpentine beast fluttered upside down over them and pointed towards a nearby river. "Water's over there. Now be clever little ponies and give evolution a shot."
Whimpering, blue in their faces, the four aquatic equines flopped about like seals. They inched their way to the river bank and plunged into the hot pink currents.
"Heheheh..." The draconequus somersaulted and landed on his rear limbs beside my bench. He leaned against the wooden thing and gazed with pride at the river as the seaponies disappeared within. "Cough syrup. Figured it's the closest those coppers will ever get to a relaxing night at the bar."
"How... H-how could you?!" I stammered in horror.
"What?!" He shrugged innocently. "At least they'll have a fix for the common cold!"
"What gives you the right to... to..." I hopped off the bench and snarled up at him, my hooves planted tight against the soapy road. I avoided slipping long enough to shout, "To butcher and violate the lives of those around you?! You bring them back this instant!"
"Why?" He coolly shrugged and sashayed around me in elegant pirouettes. "It's chaos! It's what I do! To question it is to ask why leaves fall, or why pandas are fat, or why you smell like you were plucked off a lemon tree!"
"Chaos..." I murmured breathily, gazing up at the brown curtains of chocolate rain sweeping over the far ends of Equestria. Pigs flew in the air until they were intercepted by archers riding on the backs of upside down zeppelins. I shuddered, gazing at the river full of pink currents. "The way you transformed those police officers with a snap of your finger. The coffee. The bench." It's not often in my life that I say the obvious; I'd have to be stripped of all anchorage to reality and reason. I'm only half-ashamed to say that was my state of mind then. I looked up at him and murmured, "You're not just any random draconequus."
"And you, my dear, were born yesterday." He spun to a stop and squatted down--his long body bunched up--so that his large face was staring point blank into mine. "It's a ridiculously predictable trait you unicorns have, you see."
"What trait?"
"Tunnel vision, of course." He stood back up and brushed a few flakes of dust off his hairy chest. "The stiff, inelastic, unpliant pursuit of a noble goal: be it 'magic,' or 'harmony,' or 'clarity,' 'Neighvana,' etc. It's all the same: all words, all multitudinous detritus of the Equestrian language, all ways of hiding the simple truth."
"And that is...?"
"That pursuing order is the same thing as pursuing disorder," he said, smiling cynically. "Only"--he bent over and twisted his head around one hundred eighty degrees to grin at me--"in the opposite direction!"
I frowned. "Now that's a blatant overgeneralization if I've ever heard one."
"Oh, but admit it!" His body spun about to match his rotated head. When he turned to look in my direction, he had one of his antlers positioned square in his forehead. "Your precious alicorn princesses have got it worse!"
"Do they?"
"Only they're in a position of power." He plucked the horn loose, extended it into a club, and spat out a golf ball from his lips. He perched it on his lizard foot and lined up the bony bludgeon. "And mixing power with self-righteousness is a good recipe for mayhem. Oh, it's subtle at first, like icky grime that is squeegee'd off a window." He swung at the ball, missed, cursed under his breath, and lined the club up again. "But over time, it collects, and soon the goddesses of harmony you once worshipped without question start doing... questionable things." His hairy gray nostrils momentarily flared with vigor. "Like turning visitors from faraway planes into stone." With that, he thwacked the golf ball hard. He watched fixedly as it flew in a wide arc, struck a distant building, and caused the structure to collide with the apartment next to it. Soon, all the buildings were toppling like dominoes, filling the air with thunder and dust.
As the bedlam gradually settled, I found myself staring in awe at him. "Turned... into stone?" I gulped, feeling a deep shiver rising up through my body. "The alicorns... the Elements of Harmony..."
"They most certainly sealed the deal, didn't they?" He leaned on his antlerlub and tossed me a lethargic glance. "Such a steep price, 'peace' has. It practically does my job for me. Now tell me... has Equestria enjoyed its millennia of interspecies strife? Civil war? Pestilence? Everfree monsters? Tartarus breakouts? Grass wars over the Zebrahara? Hmmm?" He twirled the club and slapped it back into its original shape atop his head. "I think I'm a teensy bit overdue for some tribute, what do you think?"
I gawked at him, and I could literally feel the pupils in my eyes shrinking as I gulped and dribbled forth, "Discord?"
My whole body winced, for I was answered with an array of loud cowbells and flashing lights. The draconequus bounced before me, suddenly wearing shades and a glittering red tuxedo as he shouted flamboyantly into an unplugged microphone. "Yes! I do believe we have a winner!" He stretched his arm impossibly far to the right and yanked a familiar filly with thick glasses into view. "Darling! Tell her what she's won!"
Grinning like a postcard, a decidedly gray-maned Twist chirped happily, "Mith Limey hath retheived the title of Captain Obviouthneth! The mare winth an all expenthe paid vacation to 'No Duh' Valley, Equethtria!"
"Thank you very much, precious." Discord lowered his goggles and smirked. "Remember, you're a bland, unimaginative character and nopony likes you."
"I'm a bland, unimaginative character and nopony liketh me!" Twist said, absolutely beaming.
"Now you're getting it!" Discord gave her a thumbs up before punting the once-redhead beyond the nearby hills. "Kids these days." He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his glittering tuxedo to nothingness like a venetian blind. "Can't live with 'em; can't score a hoofball field goal without 'em!" His eyes twitched from the distant sound of a foalish thud beyond the city limits.
"I... It... You..." I was beside myself with shock.
"Oh come now. Didn't they debunk the 'goldfish memory' on Mythbuckers?" He curled around me and stared into my eyes. I could smell a stench older than time off his breath. "The name's 'Discord,' my dear. It's rather easy to say. What's your name?"
I was speechless. All the courage and strength I had gained from multiple trips to the unsung realm had been sapped from me in an instant. I was still coming to grips with the startling reality that I was in personal discourse with a being who had brought so much agony and malice to ancient Equestria. This entity was bigger than a single mortal's comprehension. He was evil incarnate, a demon in the skin of dead creatures, animals whose very body parts he had absorbed the dark day he first entered this domain and eviscerated their hides to make up his unholy exterior. History had been lacking a visual depiction of the Great Deceiver, but somehow a draconequus was perfectly fitting. I couldn't imagine a more ironic, more disgusting, more disconcerting form to embody the antithesis of all Equestrian values. I was beside myself in horror, for I had read enough of this despot's actions to know how hopeless my situation was. After all, in the span of a few decades, Discord had single-hoofedly brought this dimension to the precipice of oblivion, and had almost slain the alicorn sisters themselves in cold blood. What could I possibly do? What could I pretend to say?
Base instincts took over. I whimpered like a foal and weakly produced, "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings." I winced, expecting him to fling an interstellar comet into my forehead.
Instead, he spat into my face from laughter. "Haahaahaah! So formal! What are you, a Canterlot spy in disguise?" He winked and snapped his fingers.
"Please..." I raised my hooves, only to be gripping a martini. "I had no idea. I--" I paused, fidgeted, and tossed the martini away. "I had no idea who you were."
"That certainly didn't stop you from barking at me like a self-righteous canine! Honestly, Miss Heartstrings, why the obstinate attitude against my artistry?" Discord rolled his crooked eyes and twirled a finger. "Yes, yes, so I gave a bunch of police officers gills. And so I kind of sort of turned a flightless filly into a sissy and broke the bond between her and her vigilante foster mother. Aaaaaand I might have made a sexually aggressive octopus out of your beloved Mayor's mane..."
"Wh-what about kicking Twist into next year?"
"Who?"
"Is this all about getting back at Princess Celestia and Luna?" I bravely remarked, trying not to tremble. I eyed his coiled length around my tiny body. "Are you turning their kingdom upside down just to spite them for turning you into stone?"
"Oh please, don't paint me as some sort of trifling avenger," Discord dismissed, resting a paw on his hairy chest. "Besides, they only turned me to stone because I let them."
"You... let them?"
"Why, affirmative!" He grinned brightly. "There comes a time when trying to cure boredom becomes boring! The key is knowing when to take a slumbering sabbatical, if you catch my somnambulistic drift, Harpo."
"'Harpo?!'" I made a face, then frowned. "My name is Lyra!"
"Heh. Yeah, sure it is. Come..." He lifted me with his tail so that I hung upside down by a rear hoof, gasping and flailing. "Dangle with me."
"H-hey!" I could only sputter as I gawked at the inverted horizon before us.
Discord frolicked on all fours into the depths of Ponyville, weaving his way through chaotic traffic. "But being stone is boring too, which is why I'm so gratified to be back in the realm of civilized locomotion. It means once again having a rich canvas to paint outside the lines! I'm not entirely certain what it was that brought me back, but I certainly can't complain!" He turned his head at a sharp angle and waved. "Isn't that right, Miss Hooves?"
"How's this for same-day?!" Derpy screamed by on the scooter and slammed the baseball bat across Discord's cheek.
Discord's head spun five times and swiveled squeakily to a stop, grinning. "Ahhhh, I love a mare who aims for the bleachers. Don't you?"
"You do know..." I wheezed, all the blood rushing to my head as my jacket's hood fell over my twitching ears. "...that the royal sisters haven't forgotten you one bit! They won't let you get away with all this mischief! They have--"
"Ugh. Spare me the lecture on the Elements of Harmony. I've read the instruction manual to this little shindig we call a 'villainous return,' Harpo. Besides, whose expositionary monologue is this?" He lifted me up to a bent lamppost and hung me by my hoodie. "And if you must know, the Elements of Harmony are useless against me."
I frowned at him. "How can you be so sure? The Elements are crafted out of a power that resists chaos!"
"Then how silly of Celestia to have let the Elements dissolve into six disparate personifications!" he said, stifling a chuckle. Discord then plucked a rosebush from a nearby storefront, transmogrified it into a throne, and took a seat before me. "I'm guessing Celestia herself finally got bored in my absence! How else would she have gotten the droll idea of entrusting Equestria's greatest beacon of ostentatiousness to six flighty stereotypes of camaraderie?" He held his talons out and wagged his eyebrow. Two massage balls appeared in his palm, and he rotated them while yawning. "Ummmf... nyup... Yes, I rained on that parade. Like a monsoon of righteous, chocolate win-bomb! Nyeeeeaaaaaaaaarrgh-Kertroll!"
"What..." I looked at him from where I dangled, my lips quivering. "What did you do to Twilight and her friends?"
"Ah! Listen to us! Pontificating in the past tense!" He spun the twin massage balls on his talons. "The fact of the matter is, it's happening right now as we speak! Ahem..." He raised both balls and plopped them over his sockets so that they transformed into violet eyes. His mane took on a purple streak as he cupped his hands to his chin and spoke in Twilight's voice, "Girls! Why are you all acting like this? We need to stick together!"
I gasped. "You..." I glanced down at the gray villagers doing random, ludicrous things beneath me. "You're creating a rift between Twilight and her friends!" I gnashed my teeth. "That's your edge over the magic that's threatening to turn you back into stone!"
"Also, I was totally showing off my mammary glands at that last pony convention!"
My limbs flailed as I tried charging him in midair. "How dare you! Twilight Sparkle doesn't deserve this! The Elements of Harmony are stronger than you're making them out to be! You'll see!"
"Oh please, all of this hoo-haa over harmony!" Discord jerked his head and the two violet eyes shot forward, ricocheting off my skull. His mane fluffed back to its normal color as his voice returned. "See? This is exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to bend your ear about, Harpo. I've been around modern Equestria for less than a day, and already I feel like vomiting. In a short ten thousand years, this place has gotten even duller than I left it! To think that so many ponies worship the ground your princesses trot on! It's positively sickening."
"This kingdom has order!"
"This kingdom is a prison"--he sat up, kicked the throne to splinters, and tickled my chin with a talon--"and it's time we ousted its warden, don't you think?"
I stared daggers at him. "With chaos?"
"What you call chaos, I call 'freedom.'"
"Really?"
"Still doubtful?" He yanked me off the lamppost and held me under his left armpit. "Here, allow me to demonstrate."
"Where are you--Gaah!"
I held on tight as he "skated" across the village, slid towards a vaguely familiar apartment building, and smashed the two of us through its side. We landed inside a living room, littered from corner to corner with fresh rubble, as two frightened ponies scooted up to the far wall, gasping in fright.
"Candygram!" Discord chirped happily, waving me in his paws. "Did someone order a background pony?!"
"The draconequus! He's back!" Wind Whistler shrieked amidst the settling dust. "C-Caramel!"
"St-stay behind me, honey!" Caramel remarked. Gulping, he nevertheless stood bravely in front of his significant other as he faced off against the omnipotent monster gripping me. "You! Keep away! We don't want any of your sorcery, you hear?!"
"Don't knock it until you've tried it, handsome!" Discord winked, then glanced down at me. "Friends of yours?"
"I... I..." I winced. The fact that we had just demolished our way into the home of Wind Whistler and Caramel didn't bother me nearly as much as how colorful they still appeared. I suddenly realized what was about to happen, and I felt like collapsing into a corner and sobbing. "Please. Please, Discord. I'm sorry for all the things I said earlier! You don't need to give me a demonstration--"
"Ugh..." He facepalmed before flinging a frown into my face. "It's all about you, isn't it? Just relax and watch the master at work, Harpo." He plopped me down in an easy chair and snapped his fingers. The hoof-rests turned into shackles and bound me in place. I struggled in vain to free myself from the seat as he sauntered past me and approached the trembling couple. "I'm about to liberate these poor, unfortunate souls in ways they never dreamed of."
"We... we don't want anything from you!" Caramel spouted again, grinding his hooves against the floorboards. Behind him, Wind Whistler was stretching her wings over her cowering face to hide the tears. "We just want our neighbors back!"
"Neighbors, neighbors, neighbors..." Discord shook his head and gave them a sympathetic look as he leered above the couple. "Tsk tsk... Are you two really so small that you must function by whatever society tells you is acceptable?"
"Wh-what?!" Caramel stammered. He flinched as Discord looked him square in the eyes.
"You! So frightened of losing money! So mortified at the thought of dying crops! So scared of not having the moo-lah to make sweet ooh-lah-lah to your honey pooh-lah!" Discord shoved Caramel onto his back and scooped Wind Whistler up so that she was staring, frightened, into his grinning face. "And you! So worried about the wedding arrangements! So concerned over looking clean and pretty before your friends! So anxious about convincing your neighbors of your mutual, romantic sincerity!"
"L-leave her alone!" Caramel barked, trying to roll back onto his hooves. "Nnngh--What's this all about?"
"Question of the hour!" Discord jubilantly orated. "Just what is this all about? This lovey-dovey, romantic, topsy-turvy attempt at a relationship you have going on here?! A little bird told me in seven thousand words or so that you both entered this bond to get away from all your worries and fears. And yet, here you two are, so petrified of losing everything. So, you go through the paranoid rinse night after night! Now where's the romance in that?! Aren't you both enough for each other?"
Discord dropped Wind Whistler down beside the earth pony. The two equines clung to each other, trembling, exchanging glances before gazing up at Discord once again.
"What... What are you trying to t-tell us?" Wind Whistler managed.
"All I want to say is this..." Discord spoke, his voice suddenly deeper. I watched helplessly as his shadow doubled over the two. "Why work so hard to make your relationship right when you can happily make it random?" He leaned over, his red-on-yellow eyes suddenly turning into prismatic swirls. "What is the sense of being in love, when you still have things to be afraid of?"
With that, he lightly tapped Wind Whistler and Caramel on their foreheads. Their eyes blinked, forming swirls that matched Discord's hypnotic gaze. I gaped in awe as the color was drained from their manes and coats. Bathed in gray haze, they stood up and grinned maniacally. With a foalish bounce, they glanced at each other.
"Hey!" Caramel gasped. "You thinking what I'm thinking?!"
"Screw gravity!" Wind Whistler returned in a clownish voice. "I never liked my bones in the first place!"
Caramel grabbed a lampshade off a nearby fixture, slapped it on his crown like a helmet, and lifted Wind Whistler over his head with two insanely strong forelimbs. "Three... Two... One..."
"Contact!" Wind Whistler yelped, then blew through her lips. "Blblblblblblblblb!"
Caramel gave a running start, galloping on his rear limbs alone. He jumped off the shattered edge of the apartment and plunged into empty space. At the last second, Wind Whistled stretched her wings out and flew the two of them like a hangglider over the rooftops of Ponyville. "Weeeeeeeee!"
I gawked at them, then slowly turned my head to stare at Discord.
"Haah haah haah haah!" He clapped his hands and stood proudly at the edge of the crumbling living room. "Did you see that?! Did you see what I did?!"
"You violated their privacy and mutated their personalities!" I winced as I heard a distant shattering of windows, followed by the blood-curdling laughter of Caramel and Wind Whistler. "They'll be lucky if they don't kill themselves!"
"Harpo, all we are is rain that never bends in the flowerfall--erm... No..." He toyed with his lip, scanning the pink-clouded sky. "Is that how it goes? Eh, I forget. Been stuck in stone too long."
"Uhm..."
"What matters"--he bent over and grinned at me-- "is that I freed them."
"From what?!" I exclaimed.
"From their attachment to the hypocritical façade of order!" He paced along the edge of the apartment, gesturing in the air as flying pigs and lemurs with helicopter tails fluttered past us. "The universe is inherently chaotic, after all. It's Equestria that's the anomaly. It's Equestria that's the tiny pocket of silly ritual, marinating in a gigantic jacuzzi of glorious, sudsy, unadulterated unpredictability. You cannot maintain a perfect structure forever, Harpo. I don't care how many alicorns are around to carry the absurd notion of purpose on their shoulders. Eventually, all walls crumble, even the strongest firmaments. And when they do..."
He skidded to a stop on a lizard claw, twirling to glare rather seriously at me.
"Things are no longer fun."
I took a deep, seething breath. "Life is not all about fun..."
"Oh, and I do suppose you're going to tell me that it's about lengthy sacrifice and persistence against incomprehensible odds." Discord knelt beside my easy-chair, gesturing ecstatically towards the random explosions and chocolate rain and mailbox-smashing mailmares beyond. "Look at all your friends! Yes, perhaps, their lives are short, brutish, and cruel--but they are enjoying it! Thanks to me, they are devoid of attachments! They've been freed from the shackles of monotony! What's the purpose in having everything together when it's all going to fall apart sooner than later anyways?"
"We all live to become better than the universal factors that constrict us!" I retorted. "Even Celestia and Luna--immortals until the end of time--are in this journey of mutual self-discovery along with us! The moment we give in to a banally impulsive existence is the day we lose all hope of transcending the substance of our fears!"
"Whew! Look at you go!" He stood up again, folding his arms while flapping on disproportionate wings. "You're like a wind-up toy attached to a megaphone!"
"There's just one thing I don't understand..."
"Do enlighten me, perhaps in three sentences or less," he uttered, lazily filing one of his talons.
"If you're so dead certain about what your role in Equestria is..." I squinted quizzically up at him. "If you have every intent to spread chaos throughout the land--from one individual pony to another--then why bother taking such a chunk of time out of your busy schedule to take me aside and tell me all... of... this...?" My voice trailed off as I blinked in a sudden, cold sweat. "Philosophizing..." I gulped and shivered, for everything was becoming clear, and I felt like I was tied to the chair with iron weights. "All that we've been doing is philosophizing."
"Mmmm..." He leaned forward, his face grinning wickedly. "Now there's something you've been attached to for far too long, my dear."
I stared helplessly at him, twitching in panic.
"Pondering in circles is an awfully boring thing to do." His eyes turned into hypnotic swirls. With icy precision, the Great Deceiver of the Ages raised his omnipotent finger to my horn. "Let's see how much thinking gets done when your mind turns to goo."
"Mmmm!" I whimpered and clenched my eyes shut. I thought of Twilight. I thought of Mom and Dad. I thought of Al. And then, after a few panting breaths, I realized I still had the faculty to think. Sweating profusely, I opened one eye, and then the other.
Discord was leaning over. Discord was touching his finger to my forehead. However, nothing had changed.
"I said... 'When your mind turns to goo.'" He tapped my horn once more.
Nothing.
"Turn to goo!" He tapped yet again.
Still nothing.
"Hmmm..." His gray brow furrowed. "That's rather queer, isn't it?" Licking his lips, he hovered around me and produced four, eight, ten, a dozen extra pairs of limbs and tapped me all over with a blurring forest of fingers. "Turn to goo! Turn to goo! Turn to goo! Turn to goo!"
"Nnnngh!" I hissed and thrashed in the chair. "Stop... poking me!" A pair of onyx strings vibrated somewhere in my saddlebag, and my vision flashed emerald. The next thing I knew, a green dome of magic shot out and Discord was lying prostate on the floor, stunned.
"Ay carumba!" He bent impossibly backwards and stuck his head up from beneath his tail, blinking cockeyed my way. "As I live and belch! Now there's a twist!"
"I... I..." I gulped and glanced at myself. "Wh-what happened?"
"I haven't got a clue, but I'm sure of one thing!" He grinned and flipped his rear end over. Crawling towards me like a cockroach, he lifted the entire easy chair off the floor with his hands and grinned psychotically. "I'm not bored anymore!"
I felt a literal sweatdrop forming beneath my left ear. "Uh oh..."
"Hey! Let's see what else you can do, Harpo!" He spun me around and gave the chair a vicious kick. "Go long!"
"Gaaaah!" I shrieked as the entire easy chair dissolved into debris beneath me. This wasn't nearly as horrifying as the sensation of sailing clear over half of Ponyville. I glided through a squadron of flying pigs, a pink pony wearing a beanie, a shark statue, and several other comical, airborne set pieces before whistling like a mortar shell towards Cheerilee's schoolhouse below. "Oh sweet Celestia, save me--!"
My voice was cut off by the thunderous noise of my body slamming through the red shingled rooftop and smashing into a sea of desks below. I rolled to a stop against a wall of the one-room school, coughing and wheezing through a settling cloud of dust. To my shock, I was still in one piece. None of my limbs were broken.
"What?! How... How am I...?"
"Hi!" A voice lisped to my side. I glanced over to see a thoroughly bruised Twist hanging by her tail from a coat rack. "I'm thuper utheletth!"
"Yeah. Uh huh..." I turned back to my forelimbs, reexamining them. "Why isn't a single bone broken?" My exclamation was answered as I felt a green glow fluctuating around me. My ears twitched to the sound of the Nightbringer's strings resonating once again from inside my saddlebag. It was then that an epiphany came to me. "I... I never went out in public with the Nightbringer like this before! Every time the holy instrument has protected me, it's been against her in the unsung realm." I gulped and stammered, "But what if it can protect me against more than her...?"
My eyes darted across the rubble-strewn floor of Cheerilee's school as things started to make sense.
"The Nightbringer is a piece of the Matriarch's song. So are Celestia, Luna, and her. They're all pieces of the same spirit of Creation. Pure harmony is resistant against chaos, just like the six elements in cohesion, or the firmaments that protect this world from the tempestuous nether beyond!"
I stood tall and proud, happy with my epiphany and rejoicing in the distance that I had gained from my oppressor.
"If the Nightbringer can keep me safe from turning gray, maybe it can help Twilight save her friends and restore Harmony!" I grinned and galloped towards the exit. "Praise the goddesses he kicked me so far away! Now that I'm forgotten again, I might just have an edge against all this craziness--"
"Well, look at you!" Discord was suddenly grinning in my face, wearing a black robe and a graduation cap. "Let's see any ordinary lime bounce back from a kick like that!"
"Gaaaaieee!" I fell back on my haunches and scooted away from him until I sat in a corner. I hugged myself, shivering, my eyes wide to the point of bursting. "You... You... You r-remember m-me?!"
"Well, of course I'd remember the one pony who couldn't buckle from my cleansing touch!" He stood tall before the chalkboard and fiddled with his cap's tassel. "The only ponies in all of Equestria who can resist my chaos energies so defiantly are Celestia and her bipolar baby sister! But now that's all changed! I'm pleased to make acquaintance with you and your magic green bubble of sparkles, Harpo! You're a very special pony indeed..."
"Yeth!" Twist giggled and clapped her dangling hooves from the coat rack. "Thuper sthpethial!"
Discord's eyes became hard, yellow lines. He sighed, yanked his coat off, and flung it over the grayed filly like a funeral shroud. "There. Much better. Where were we? Oh, yes!" He pulled his cap off his head and plopped it down over my horn. "I simply must know your secrets, Miss Heartstrings. You're like a diamond in the rough, provided that the rough was a collapsed schoolroom and the diamond had a habit of dressing like a roadie for Coltplay."
"How... How..." I gulped dryly. "How could you still remember me? You kicked me clear across Ponyville! This is impossible!"
"Nay, hardly impossible, my little limey!" He lifted his left foot, which was suddenly sporting a brightly colored sneaker with grass-stained cleats. "I had quite the golden toe back before the beginning of all Creation. Granted, it's tough playing quarterback when you're the one singular entity populating a deep, nebulous pocket of the cosmos. But hey! Not like anypony was keeping score... until Harmony came to poison the paleomiasmic equilibrium, that is." He stood up straight and scratched his chin. "Now, to answer the question of your bubbly, emerald enigma..."
I bit my lip, my eyes dashing back towards my saddlebag. In as casual a manner as possible, I shifted the package on my back so that I felt the comforting weight of the Nightbringer, veiled from his eyesight.
"Perhaps..." I stammered, "I am simply an unpredictable factor in your equation. You... uh... like unpredictability, do you not?"
"Madame, I am the director of this ballroom dance of bedlam, not a participant. And like any true artist, I would very much like to be in firm control of all the colors of my palette, gray though they may be." He reached over and fingered the streaks of my mane. "Wait. Is that some gray right there? Ew, no, that's cyan--"
I batted his paw away and growled, "That's enough! Okay, so now you know that you can't transform me like you can the other ponies! Why not leave me alone?! You can get your enjoyment elsewhere!"
"Haaah! As if!" Discord leaned down to my level, wagging his eyebrows with a childishly giddy expression. "Do you know how many eons I've waited to have discourse with a psychological equal?!"
"If you meant that as a compliment, I'm afraid you had the opposite effect."
"So is that how it's going to be?" He shook his head. "No no, my dear, you are still a piece of this grand pageant I have to play out! Though you may be resistant to my--ahem--charm, that doesn't mean you can't liven up the grandest moment in the history of this lame kingdom you call Equestria! For I am still Discord, Ruler of Chaos, and you"--he aimed his talons at me like a pistol and pulled an invisible trigger--"are a puppet. Even a puppet that bounces back still has her strings."
With a flash of light, the graduation cap atop my head turned into a harlequin hat and my hoodie transformed into garishly colored clown gear over my saddlebag. I took a gasping look at myself. "What in the hay...?!"
He snapped his finger. The world around us flashed brightly, and suddenly we were positioned in the center of Ponyville's town hall, only it was no longer the town hall. The entire place had been transformed into a grand throne room filled with every villager of Ponyville that I had the wherewithal to name. They all cheered and waved and bowed before a tall, mahogany seat within which Discord majestically sat in red and black robes. And I...
I was squatting on the steps before him, my cap's bells jingling with each turn of my head as I looked about, taking in the ridiculous banners illustrated with abstract art and stained with chocolate precipitation.
"How... What...?!" I gazed out the window, only to see the Equestrian horizon upside down. The sun disappeared and was swiftly replaced by the moon... which promptly formed a pie-shaped mouth and started gobbling up the stars lined up all around it. I felt nauseous. "Oh for the love of oats..."
"Welcome to the Court of Chaos!" Discord bellowed, gesturing towards the herd of ponies bowing low and exalting him in all their gray euphoria. "This is the Capital City of the New Chaotic Equestria, after all! Don't you think it could use a bit more cheer?"
I frowned, grimacing at the happy, drooling faces of the hypnotized masses. "I think it's cheerful enough as it is..."
"Hush puppies! I disagree. Jester"--he kicked me in the flank-- "a tune, if you will!"
A harp appeared brightly in my grasp, and I felt my hooves playing it. I did a double-take, frowned, and tossed it away from the throne. "No! I will not play for your amusement!"
"Pfft! Of course not!" Discord scoffed. "You're playing for theirs! Court is rather dull, after all." He snapped his fingers again.
An accordion materialized between my hooves, magically playing itself. Wincing, I tried tossing it away, but the handles were tied to my forelimbs with twine. The more I shook and struggled, the more the bells of my outfit jingled, adding to the grating, discordant melody. "Ughhhh..."
"Sing it like you mean it, Harpo." Discord snatched a flying pig from midair, snapped its head off on his throne's armrest, and drank sweet lemonade from the swine's hollow neck. Burping, he motioned towards the thick crowd of equines. "May the first ponies with a desperate need please step forward! Your lord and master of mayhem shall oblige thusly!"
The masses squabbled and fought with each other, surging back and forth, until two older ponies finally popped out of the front line and stood boldly before their patchwork lord and master.
"Exalted Discord!" Mr. Cake exclaimed, pointing a gray hoof at his significant other. "Tell this self-absorbed, hysterical trollop to take back that spark that split the first atom that energized the first alicorn spirit that gave birth to the Cosmic Matriarch that shaped the cosmos that made the exodus to this world that sang Equestria into being that introduced progeny into the universe that gave birth to her father that inseminated her mother that gave birth to her so that she went to a baking contest in Fillydelphia and met and married me!"
"Negatory!" Mrs. Cake smacked him over the head with a flaming paintball gun and appealed to the regally seated draconequus. "You tell this misogynist sack of incompetence to take back the dichotomous factor of universal improbability that gave birth to the spark that split the first atom that energized the initial alicorn spirit that--"
"Yes, yes, yes," Discord muttered, waving a yellow paw. "I do think everypony and their brother can see where this is going. Seriously, you two, weren't the splattering projectiles enough to enliven your revolutionary little spat?" He leaned forward, grinning wryly. "Why must you bring your domestic turbulence into my most esteemed court?"
"All I wanted was a little bit of thrill in my life!" Mrs. Cake exclaimed.
Mr. Cake shoved her aside and growled, "She's always smothering me in insipid compliments and pet names!"
Mrs. Cake re-shoved him back, barking up at the malevolent chaotician, "And he's always asking for it with his sweet promises and everlasting devotion!"
"Look at these two fools!" Discord gestured, gazing down at me. "I give them a dose of disharmony, and still their poor souls are chained and fettered to the pointless notion of structure! It's like a part of them still believes in the lie that they've been anchored to all their miserably blind lives!" He reached into his chest and juicily yanked out a dripping, throbbing, black heart. "It just gets you right 'ere, don't it?" He winked.
I gritted my teeth, struggling and fumbling to yank my hooves free from the cacophonous accordion fused to my forelimbs. "So help me, I've never wanted to punch anything so hard in my life..."
"Oh, lighten up, Harpo." He tossed the heart up, snatched it in his mouth, and gulped the thing back down his long throat. "You're horribly grumpy when music runs away from you." He smiled and pointed. "Need a hand?"
I looked up at him with a confused expression. "Huh?"
"Hmm..." Discord scratched his goatee. "Funny, for some reason I thought that would rub you the wrong way. Ah well." He shrugged, swiveled about in his majestic throne, and cleared his throat before bellowing down at the married equines. "Mr. and Mrs. Cake! I loosened the tiny gossamer threads holding together your insidiously sappy love so that you might feel the thrill of turmoil and embrace a little bit of excitement in your lives! That is what you've wanted all this time, is it not?"
"Yes, but we need more!" Mrs. Cake exclaimed, her gray eyes sparkling.
"Oh please, your worshipfulness!" Mr. Cake got down on his knees and begged. "I feel the hideous waves of joy and contentment washing up on my mind! You must make us more miserable and confused!"
The bulging group of clamoring ponies murmured and chanted in agreement.
"Hmmm..." Discord leaned back and rapped his digits against the throne's armrests. "There's only one solution to a diluted modicum of chaos."
I looked up at him and stammered, "Harmony?"
"Nope!" He waved his hand up high. "A saturated excess of chaos!" He snapped his fingers close to the ceiling.
A gigantic strobe of light wafted through the crowd. In a blink, the entire "Court of Chaos" had transformed into a tall set of metal bleachers surrounding a square wrestling ring, replete with ropes and padded turnbuckles and half-blurred insignias. All of the ponies turned into a raging audience of bloodthirsty spectators, waving white signs and wearing black and white t-shirts.
"Now let's see some attitude!" Discord growled, sitting at a table beside me in a five thousand bit suit. With his tail, he struck a hammer against a large bell.
Sitting in my harlequin gear, I gawked at the ring as Mr. and Mrs. Cake squared off against one another in skin-tight leotards of spandex.
"Raaaaugh!" Mrs. Cake, a great deal grayer than a few seconds ago, flew forward and locked her husband tightly in a cross-neck legbar. "Prepare to taste excruciating pain, loveykins!"
"Nnnngh!" Mr. Cake sneered back at her. "You call down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind, sweetie-poo! Haaaugh!" He viciously suplexed her to the mat and wrangled her into a figure-four leg-lock.
"Aaaah!" Mrs. Cake screamed and snarled over the loudly cheering crowd. "Whatcha gonna do when the cupcakemeister bears down on you, sugar-lumps?!" She kicked out of the submission hold, bucked him to the far side of the ring, and speared him to the mat before engaging in a vicious exchange of elbows and headbutts.
A few feet away, an obese stallion sat, wearing a black cowboy hat and shouting into a microphone. "Bah gawdess! I've never seen anythang like this in my whole life! If Celestia is my witness, he's been broken in half! Ooooh!" He winced. "Damn her! Wasn't that the greatest piledriver you've ever seen, Zecora?"
He looked aside. The zebra seated next to him mechanically turned her head, opened her mouth, and blew a giant sapphiric laser in the stallion's face.
I ducked, wincing, as ashes and tatters of cowboy hat settled all around Discord and I. "This is what you call entertainment?!"
"Eh, it was good when Laureneightis wasn't in charge of things, I suppose." The draconequus yawned. "Besides, it's not really us who should be entertained." He leaned back in his chair and gestured towards the loud, raving crowds of grayed equines. "Just feast your eyes on the Ponyville universe! Do they worry about their jobs or their careers? Do they worry about writing the Princess on a weekly basis or having their magical tramp stamps match their special talents? Do they worry about prettying up the village for an impromptu royal visit or the impending invasion of changelings!"
"Changelings? What do changelings have to do with anything?!"
"Oh, right, too soon." He cleared his throat and leaned forward again. "Still, don't you see, Harpo? Happiness doesn't necessitate peace. Everything you've ever possibly sought after in your life you could have easily acquired. All you had to do was put down the philosopher's quill and ink, shove the parchment into your mouth, and dance around instead!"
I frowned at him. "I'm not all about philosophy!"
"Right. You're also about magic, Mary Sues, and music. Speaking of which, I never said you could stop." He flicked a finger towards my hooves and launched a magic bolt.
A guitar appeared in my forelimbs, automatically playing a punkish melody that barely matched the volume of the roaring crowd around us. I sighed, rolled my eyes, and simply held the vibrating instrument as I glared up at him. "Obviously you have a gift of detecting a pony's innate talents, but you still don't know a thing about me, Discord."
"Oh no?" He remarked, craning his neck to oogle the grunge fest between the Cakes. "Care to enlighten me? Because I'm dying to know what dastardly power possesses you with the ability to resist my gray brushstrokes."
"To what end?"
"You don't need to hide the truth behind your psuedo-intellectual exterior, Madame Limey. Deep down inside, there's one quality of yours that's as common as it is pathetic." One beady red eye pivoted to take me in. "You're lonely."
I bit my lip.
"Ah, lonesomeness. Such an exquisite element in this universe--like hydrogen! And just as common, if I do say so. Almost as smelly too, especially on a Saturday evening." He winced as Mrs. Cake powerbombed her husband off the turnbuckle and through a collapsing table in front of the roaring crowd. "Oooooh--hoo-hooo! How spectacular!" He clapped his odd hands and smirked my way. "Funny how it's always the Mexicolt one that goes first, isn't it?"
"What makes you think that I'm lonely?" I said without thinking. I fidgeted, pondering the degree to which Discord knew about my curse. There was no sign that he was aware of the Nightbringer, so it was safe to say that as all-powerful as this chaos lord was, he was hardly all-knowing. "I mean..." I continued, picking my words cautiously. "We're all lonely, deep down inside. That's why it's so special that we have harmony. In union, we are made whole. All that unbridled chaos and mayhem can do is separate and isolate. Do you really, honestly think that such a thing is healthy for the population of this mortal realm?"
"Funny that you would emphasize the mortal realm in particular," Discord said, watching the Cakes smack each other against the crowd's barricades. "Ponies, after all, are as much an aberration to the universe as harmony. Before some upstart cosmic hussy decided to plant the seed of life in this pocket of the constellations, everything was blissfully empty and desolate. There's something to be said about the eternal simplicity of utter oblivion, before divisible consciousness decided to take root like a festering cluster of smelly weeds."
"Are you meaning to tell me that you were once the spirit of nothingness before life in Equestria began?" I remarked, hugging the twanging guitar to my chest.
"What I'm trying to get at, Harpo, is that that which was once blissfully nothing is gone forever." His long neck dodged a metal ring step being flung past him and toward the far side of the town hall chamber. "And because of a certain cosmic horse goddess' divine dabbling, chaos shall forever be forced to deal with a great deal of frivolous energy threading itself apart under the merciless whim of entropy. Harmony, for all the platitudes you launch upon us, is a real fickle mistress. The end of life as you know it would be a lot less bitter if it didn't begin in the first place, you see."
"I can't imagine how someone with the power to do so many amazing things could submit to such a nihilistic belief."
"My dear, you can't imagine anything, because you've never been there!" He gave me a fanged grin, his eyes twitching. "But I can teach you!"
"Teach me...?"
"Mmm... Yes. Discordant Intervention 101, if you will." He leaned over and whispered past the back of his paw and into my ear. "Pssst... With my omnipotence and your invulnerability, we can break our way beyond the Firmaments and spread the realm of chaos to other worlds."
I blinked at that, struggling to keep my own brain from melting. "Other... worlds...?"
"You really don't think your beloved Cosmic Matriarch made this place her one and only rest stop, now do you?"--he chuckled--"Oh, what a charming series of stellar bread crumbs she's left for us across the universe! All it takes is a hop, skip, and a jump--and we'll find other landscapes to undo the selfish rigidity she has hammered into being. Then, plane by plane, the entirety of existence can learn to do the tempestuous tango of chaos! Now whaddya say?! Not even Stone Colt Steve Oatsten could turn down an angle like that!"
"You're insane..."
"No." He briefly frowned. "I'm generous, and you should know a deal of a lifetime when it's handed to you. Now, how 'bout it?" He extended a talon my way. "The most you can lose is your threadbare anchorage to life-long ludicrous concepts of 'friendship,' 'devotion,' and 'serenity.' Is it really that crazy of an offer to comprehend? I promise you, Harpo, worse deals have been made. Take this endless match, for instance." He turned to look at the fight, frowning. "Seriously! Who booked this crap?! Fire Russoats!"
I shuddered, looking out the window as the upside down sun rose again. "This is a waste of time. I gotta find Twilight." I didn't believe for a second that Discord had as much power over me as he let on. After all, I had the Nightbringer, and I was starting to feel like the righteously enraged goddess he so despised. Why not? I had a piece of her immaculate voice, did I not? "Hey... uhm... don't look now, but isn't that Sweet Whinny Music that Mr. Cake is using as a finisher?"
"What?!" Discord sat up, squinting harder at the fight. "But he hasn't used that since he turned hoof at Manetreal!"
This was my opportunity. Telekinetically vibrating the strings of the Nightbringer in my saddlebag, I channeled timeless energy into my horn and zapped the guitar between my forelimbs with a basic transmogrification spell. The instrument turned into a metal folding chair in a flash.
"Hmmmff... Good enough." Holding my breath, I swung hard, clobbering Discord across the antlers with the metallic seat.
"Fappo!" he grunted. The air rang sickly with the denting of aluminum, and he toppled into the crowd like a bowling pin. Ponies cheered and screamed bloody murder, piling on top of him and raving.
There was a flash of light. I looked at myself, seeing my hoodie return to normal. Smiling, I leapt out of my seat and galloped across the arena. In swift order, I threaded through the crowd and made straightway for one of the town hall building's tall windows.
"Please don't turn to night! Please don't turn to night!" I opened the pane and jumped out into the bright daylight. "Yes! I'm out!" It was somewhere around this point that I remembered that the Town Hall building was floating upside down over the rooftops of Ponyville. A half-second later, gravity itself also remembered, and I was sent plummeting towards the sundered, checkerboard vistas below. "Gaaaaaaah!"
I sailed like an anvil past flocks of levitating pies, sword-fencing dolphins, and a one-eyed diamond dog in a propeller aircraft. Somewhere in the midst of the spinning madness, I prayed that the Nightbringer's extension of magic would somehow cushion what was about to happen to me next. To my mixed luck, my body sailed through several successive layers of rain-slick cotton candy. My fre fall slowed so that I landed softly through the roof of a giant house of playing cards. The large white sheets fluttered to a stop around me after my impact. I stood up, teetering dizzily, relishing in the aura of a green energy shield fluctuating around my form. A giant jack of clubs landed, leaning against my horn. I simply blew it back to the ground with a grunt.
"Back at ya, Stu Leaves."
Not wasting another breath, I galloped briskly across the chaos-stricken town, trying to avoid the shadow of the hovering town hall that loomed high above. I figured that I had the element of speed and misdirection on my side. So long as I found a place to hide, some place out of open view of a flying draconequus, he just might not find me, even if he had the power to remember me.
It was a very, very long time since I ever had to actually elude someone. The events of the last several hours were so random and bizarre that I barely had a second to truly embrace the shock of my situation. I can't quantify just how many times I've begged, prayed, and pleaded to the stars that somepony--anypony--would remember me, if even once. It seemed a truly hideous whim of fate that the first entity to register my existence was the last creature I would have ever asked to do so.
As I galloped down alleyways and avenues, desperately searching for a place to hide, my mind tried to make sense of the senselessness. Both the ancient texts and the draconequus' boastful words confirmed the same thing: Discord was not of this world. He came into Equestria from a realm that existed apart from the harmonious dimension that the Cosmic Matriarch had sung into being. His arrival was like a foreign object invading a healthy body, or a splinter creating a festering wound. It took the combined effort of Celestia and Luna--tapping into the essential fabric of their mother's song--to defeat him, and yet they still didn't have the power to destroy him. Discord was never obliterated; he was contained. More than anything, that told me that while pure harmony could silence or imprison the lord of chaos, it most certainly couldn't erase him. In a way, the Elements of Harmony and Discord were like oil and water.
Perhaps, just perhaps, that meant Discord was immune to the effects of my curse. Everypony forgets me because my affliction stems from the Nocturne of the Firmaments, which--for all of its cryptic power--is merely an offshoot of the Cosmic Matriarch's song. As horrible as my curse is, it's crafted from the same fabric that wove the Elements of Harmony into being. The forgotten symphony was made to sequester an alicorn goddess within the unsung realm, a place that was suspended nakedly in the chaotic nether that collected like sediment inside the hidden vacuoles of the Firmaments.
Everypony in Equestria is bound to the structure of Creation, both known and unknown. But what power does my curse have over a being that potentially existed before Creation, as well as apart from it?
It never fails; with each passing day I discover new and disconcerting reasons to consider myself the unluckiest pony in the annals of history. Though, perhaps "second least lucky" would be a more apt title, as I have it within my power to remember Alabaster forevermore.
I couldn't let myself get too lost in thought, or else I might lose grip of my immediate and most pressing goal: finding a place to hide. But even this directive was lost the very second I turned down another street and saw--within just a few paces' distance--the glorious sight of Twilight's treehouse library.
Grinning, I scampered towards the building like an excited little foal. When I reached the door, I didn't bother with etiquette. I burst my way through the infernal thing and invaded the wooden sanctum like a demonic warrior straight from Tartarus.
A tiny dragon whelp immediately shrieked and hid behind a wooden horse carving atop the center table. "Gaaaah! Please! Leave me alone! I don't want to be chocolate rained on or forced to eat pies or bullwhipped by rubber chickens or asked to appraise any more dresses!"
"Spike!" I hissed and slammed the door shut tightly behind me. "It's okay! I'm not hear to hurt you or make you turn gray!"
"You're... Y-you're not?" His eyeslits peaked from around the table. He blinked. "Even the rubber chickens?"
"Shhh!" I pulled several blinds closed, casting the interior of the library into darkness before approaching him, out of breath. "I don't have much time and there're too many things to explain! Discord, an all-powerful draconequus from the past, has returned from thousands of years of imprisonment. He's turned Ponyville into the chaos capital of Equestria, and I fear he's put a terrible magic spell on Twilight's friends! I have to know where she is!"
"Where who is?!"
"Twilight!"
"What for?"
"Ughhh..." I frowned at him. "My name is Lyra Heartstrings, and you will not remember me. You won't even remember this conversation. Just like everypony--" I stopped in mid-sentence, crossed my eyes, and face hoofed. "Unngh... Look. Just... just believe me when I tell you that I'm an old, old friend of Twilight's and I need to talk to her right away!"
"That's gonna be kind of hard..."
"Why's that?"
He toyed with his claws, digging a foot nervously into the floor. "She's... not here..."
My face paled. "What?!"
"She and the rest of the girls went to Canterlot at the request of Princess Celestia!" He waddled over to a window and parted the curtains long enough to gaze forlornly towards the pink clouds and flying randomness outside. "I figured it was to help the royal sisters put an end to all this nonsense!"
I smacked his wrist, forcing the curtain shut again. "How long ago did she leave?!"
"It was... it was this morning!" Spike exclaimed, fidgeting some more. "At least, I'm pretty sure it was before noon. It's been kind of hard to gauge time with the sun and moon rising and falling like crazy!"
I gaped, staring off into the shadows. "That... that was before I left the cabin." A lump was gulped down my throat. "Before I even last visited the unsung realm."
"Unsung realm?" The whelpling looked at me sideways. "What are you talking about?"
I was pacing about the center of the room, toying with my hoodie and murmuring aloud, "Discord is somehow freed. Chaos breaks out throughout all of Equestria. Twilight is summoned to Canterlot..." I froze in place, grimacing. "The Elements of Harmony! Celestia must have needed Twilight and her closest friends to put Discord back into stone! But then... But then he got to Twilight's friends, and now there're no Elements of Harmony to stop him from making Ponyville the chaos capital of the world and spreading it to all of Equestria!" I winced visibly once more, feeling a guilty jolt surge through my heart. "And he even wants to spread it throughout the universe next..."
"Just to get things covered..." Spike gestured. "We're talking about Discord--as in the dude that Celestia and Luna banished ages ago?"
"They only wished they banished him," I muttered, shaking my head. "Not even Tartarus can hold this menace at bay. If Twilight can't reach her friends, then none of them can turn him back into stone and make all of Equestria safe."
"Wait a second; how do you know that Twilight and her friends are in trouble?"
I swiveled to face the baby dragon. "Discord told me."
Spike gasped. "So you've actually talked to this draconequus guy?!"
"It's a long story, and I don't have the time to explain everything." I took a deep breath, gazing at all the books surrounding us. "If Twilight's not here, I have to make do until she does the smart thing and returns to Ponyville." I rushed toward the first bookcase and shouted over my shoulder, "Spike! I need you to collect all the scrolls, spellbooks, documents, and tomes you have related to harmony and the divine power of the Cosmic Matriarch!"
"What?!" He gawked at me, flabbergasted. "What for?"
"If Twilight's away, then we're gonna have to try and bring harmony to Ponyville on our own."
"Huh?!" Spike frowned and planted his hands against his hips. "Miss Heartstrings, I dunno what's gotten into your head, but nopony in all of Equestria is even close to having the sort of magical power that Twilight has! What makes you think you could possibly find any sort of chink in this Discord dude's armor?!"
"I have to try, Spike!" I exclaimed, rummaging through the bookcases fitfully. "While it's in my power to do so!"
"Again, I gotta ask!"--Spike waddled over and yanked on my tail--"just what makes you think you've got the power?"
I looked at him, blinking. I sighed. He was right; he needed an explanation. It was time to stop hiding. "Very well. I was hesitant to share this, but it's only fair that you know, especially if I'm to demand any of your help right this instant. Not like it'll matter in the long run; you'll only forget in the end."
"Forget?" He leaned forward. "Forget what?"
I took a breath and opened my saddlebag to reveal the velvet pouch that held the Nighbringer. I held the grand musical instrument in all its glittering glory. The interior of the library positively lit up from the golden instrument of divinity.
"This, Spike," I said. "This gives me more raw power than the average unicorn. I may not be a match for Twilight, but I promise you that I have her best interests at heart. I only ask that you help me perform a spell or two of hers, just so that I can win back a few ponies from the cursed grayness, or at least do something to hold the forces of Discord at bay until Twilight herself shows up. Do you think you can give me that much faith and support? Huh?"
His jaw dropped. Slowly, he pointed. "You... you have the Nightbringer?"
"Yes, don't ask how, but I was able to--" I froze suddenly, my entire body petrified. I squinted at him. "Wait... How did you know that this was called--?"
"Snkkkt-Heheheheheh..." Spike hugged himself, doubling over as a vicious cackle bled through his system.
I stared at him, my body shivering in a pensive manner.
When he tilted his head up, his sockets were filled with red-on-yellow eyes. A single fang broke out through his lips as he rumbled in a deep voice, "You... Haah haah haah... You actually think that the Nightbringer can resist my waves of chaos?! Haah haah haah!" He doubled back, growing a serpentine tail and a pair of antlers.
I blinked. Sunlight peeked into the room as a loud creaking noise filled my ears. I looked up and watched with mixed surprise as the walls of the "library" fell in opposite directions like giant cardboard cutouts. Discord and I stood in the center of Ponyville, with the real treehouse standing three blocks away beneath a drizzle of chocolate rain.
I shut my eyes and took a long, deep breath. Slowly, lethargically, I turned and gave the tickled-pink draconequus an icy glare. I should have known; he didn't dig the swell hoodie. "Okay... that was well-played."
"Haah haah haah!" He hugged himself and grinned in my direction. "If there's anything I do so love, it's a good old-fashioned game!" He winked, then shrank into the ground.
On the other side of me, an ear of corn sprouted up and bloomed. Instead of a corn cob, a miniature Discord with an eyepatch popped out and perched on my shoulder. "Yarrrgh, 'tis a pretty piece of plunder! Methinks Harpo's been lootin' the chests of the Cosmic Matriarch's locker!"
"Don't you even think about--"
"Avast ye, pretty pluckers!" With a jagged hook, mini Discord lashed greedily at the onyx strings. Before I had time to react, much less gasp, he made contact.
And then there was a bright flash of green light. The miniature draconequus caught flame like a flag struck by lightning. He dissolved into an explosion of popcorn kernels which littered the floor, congealed, and melted up into a full-sized sower of chaos.
"Well, if that isn't a burn." He squinted and rubbed his chin quizzically. "Let's try that with the gloves off, shall we?" That said, he ripped his right paw off and reached forward with a bony hand.
"Stop--" I hissed, flinching away from him.
Again, there was a flash of light. Without even trying, I managed to successfully ward him off the very moment he tried making contact with the holy instrument. Discord's smoking body sailed into a hotel. In the meantime, I was left standing in a crater forged from the magical discharge. I felt the strings of the Nightbringer vibrating ominously while a dull bass tone hovered in the air.
"It... It..." I blinked, gazing at the golden instrument in my hooves. "It resists him..."
"Hmm, yes. So it would seem." A river of bathwater spewed forth from the hotel's second story. Discord cascaded towards me, riding a bathtub and rowing with a boat oar. He scratched his head through a shower cap and squinted at the holy lyre that I was clutching. "Still, I've seen uglier buzz kills. At least now I know why you've been so alicorny to my charm." He pouted and juggled a rubber duckie. "And here I thought we had something special, Harpo."
"We had nothing!" I grunted and held the Nightbringer between us like a shield. "Now back off!"
"On the contrary, mon petit cheval!" He hopped out of the bathtub and side-kicked it into an exploding flower garden. "You've suddenly become a heck of a lot more irresistible! I suppose that will remain true until that little string-plucker of yours is handed to me, and then I'll be the irresistible one."
The implications of that suddenly dawned on me. The only reason I hadn't been transformed into a gray anomaly was because I possessed the Nightbringer. So long as it was in my possession, so long as it was attached to my leylines, I was just as resistant to Discord as Celestia and Luna. But if the lord of chaos got ahold of the Matriarch's very own song...
"If you think for a second that I'm going to even humor the idea of giving this to you--"
"Oh, you'll have plenty of opportunities to consider it, Madame Limey!" He sneered wickedly. "For, if I'm to understand things properly, we possess all the time in the world so long as you're hugging that thing like a comfort blanket!"
I bit my lip. I thought of Alabaster, of how long it took him to teach me "Penumbra's Echo."
"So, how would you like to do this?" Discord cracked his knuckles, his toes, his neck, and his tongue. "Philosophical fencing? Moralistic fisticuffs? Ontological debates at twenty paces?"
"Even you couldn't be so persistent!" I frowned. "All I'll do is distract you..." I was bluffing, but I gave him my best leering smirk regardless. "And then Twilight and the Princesses will strike when you're not looking!"
"You forget that you're speaking with a deity extraordinaire who knows the fine art of omnipresence." He clamped a hand over my horn and swiveled me around like a chess piece. "Observe..."
I gasped, for I was gazing across the way at Twilight Sparkle's treehouse... and Discord was there. Not only that, but so were Twilight, four of her gray friends, and Spike--the real Spike.
"Well, well, well..." the other Discord limped woefully before the phalanx of monochromatic mares. "I see you've found the Elements of Harmony. How terrifying!"
"Discord, I've figured out your lame riddle!" Twilight exclaimed, the only colorful pony of the bunch. I couldn't remember a time when I had seen her so angry. "You're in for it now!"
"I certainly am! You've clearly out-dueled me..." In perfectly acted melodrama, the draconequus brandished a pair of shades and solemnly painted a bullseye on his chest. "And now it's time to meet my fate! I'm prepared to be defeated now, ladies. Fire when ready!"
"Formation, now!" Twilight exclaimed. A part of my soul leaped, for I realized that I was about to witness the Elements of Harmony in action, something very few equine mortals are blessed to experience. But then, just as swiftly, my heart fell, for what proceeded was quite easily the most anticlimactic display of divine power. It was somewhere between all of Twilight's friends collapsing and the same gray mares angrily stomping away that I realized that a key ingredient of the harmonious recipe was missing.
"Rainbow Dash...?" I stammered.
"So long as best pony is out of the picture, they can't pull the trigger!" The other Discord said behind me. I was swiveled around to face the draconequus once again. He was sporting the same shades and bulls-eye as his doppelganger, until he tossed them into a nearby river of cough syrup and smoothed his mane back with suave pride. "And even if Twilight somehow does recover from this humiliating defeat to round up her 'extra-special friends,' again, I'll make it so that another pony is preoccupied! And then another, and another, and another, and so forth ad nauseum. There really isn't a single thing your beloved lavender unicorn can do about it. The Elements of Harmony defeated themselves the moment some cosmic brainiac decided to pluralize them to begin with! So, Harpo, as you can well see..."
He slithered to the other side of me and toyed with my chin, grinning.
"This little rendezvous of ours can and will last forever. And even if you don't plan on kissing on the first date, I still have plenty of places for us to take our midnight strolls!" He gestured towards the heavens, and the sun fell on cue. He laughed in the sudden moonlight. "Haah haah haah! Equestria belongs to yours truly, and so you might as well just accept the truth"--he reached his talon towards the instrument--"and let me get the weight of that thing off your hooves."
I batted his hand away, hissing, "Not on your life!"
"My my! So stubborn!" He cooed, "What a persistent little fishy you are, to constantly swim up this little existential stream of yours."
"Huh?"
"Need I spell it out for you any more than you obviously spell it out for yourself, wordy one?" He plopped a monocle over his twitching eye and grinned. "I've had a little look-see into your leylines, Madame Limey. I know a thing or two about your hopeless little struggle."
"I... have no idea what you're talking about," I proclaimed, gulping.
"Oh please, Harpo, don't be coy. Let's have a little review, shall we?" He stuck a claw out from his index talon and tore open the fabric of reality. Reaching in, he grabbed a handfull of glowing leylines and tugged at them with a ringing bell noise. "All aboard the time trolley! Destination, sadness central! Woo! Woo!"
I gasped as a flat panel of starlight swiveled in the middle of us. We both fell through a magical revolving door and landed onto a gray facsimile of a very familiar balcony. I looked at my hooves, only to see that my limbs were bright, white, and see-through. Before I could ascertain the nature of this vision-state, a similarly translucent draconequus stood in a stone-gray hoodie, wiping the frost off an apartment window as snow fell over the ghostly rooftops of Canterlot.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" He smirked and pointed into the warm household beyond the clearing he had made in the foggy glass.
I looked in, and a sharp breath escaped my lungs. "Mom?! D-Dad?!"
It was Hearth's Warming Eve, nearly twenty years ago, and a pair of proud unicorn parents sat, cuddling, on a sofa, watching as their lime green foal happily tore open a present and hugged a rainbow-colored xylophone to her chest. She eagerly began plinking the various keys with a tiny drumstick, giggling with joy.
"One Lyra Heartstrings, musically gifted filly, born to a pair of affluent unicorns among the upper elite district of Alabaster Street." Discord squinted my way and chuckled across the ghostly snowfall. "Jee, it sure is ironic around here. I just wonder what puberty is up to!" He flicked his translucent finger against the glass so that it swiveled around. Suddenly we were looking out a library window towards a university courtyard where my collegiate self sat, chatting and giggling happily with Moondancer. "There it is! Wow, Harpo, you never did a darn thing to that manestyle of yours, did you? Tsk Tsk... So conservative..."
"Discord..." I gulped and looked pensively up at him. "What are you trying to--?"
"And look at this..." He gave the window another flick, and I saw my shivering body cowering before the ominous shadow of Nightmare Moon in the center of Ponyville. "Hot dog!" He slapped his odd palms together and rubbed them. "Things are starting to get positively Flankspearean! Lyra goes to visit her dear, special, friend Twilight--and she gets the zap! What kind of a zap, you ask?"
He breathed hotly on the glass and rubbed at the fog that formed, revealing my helpless self standing atop the Ponyville town hall building with Caramel trying to talk me out of doing something truly terrible.
"Why, the most tragic kind of zap!" Discord continued. "The kind of zap that makes her forgettable, invisible, and unremarkable. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Hey!" He called out to my past self atop the roof's edge. "Do a backflip!" He pivoted the window, this time vertically, and gaped at an image of me talking with and comforting Derpy Hooves. "What's this?" He flipped it again and again, blurring through a montage of ponies, conversations, tears, and a log cabin in progressive stages of construction. "Ooooh! How juicy! She lives!" He turned and winked bitterly at me. "If you could call it 'living...'"
I bit my lip, watching in trepidation as the images grew more and more painfully familiar.
"What a delectably agonizing existence that had to have been for our self-indulgent little heroine! To receive hugs, but never receive love! To save foals, and let the glory go to tomcolts! To do all the giving... but what of the taking?" He swiveled the window one last time, and in between the multiple panels I saw Moondancer and Twilight yelling at each other, a gravestone to a forgotten soldier, Scootaloo in the arms of Rainbow Dash, and a blue-maned stallion nuzzling a tearful construction worker. Sticking his grinning face before all of these images, Discord hissed, "It must sting to have only one pony care for you, and knowing that that pony is you." With a twitch of his eye, he slammed his fist against the glass.
The vision fell apart in translucent shards all around us, revealing the sunlit courtyard of chaotic Ponyville once again. Only in the light did I realize how misty my eyes had gotten. I sniffled and cleared my throat, hugging the Nightbringer tight to my chest like a pillow.
"One has to ask how a pony with such a bizarre little curse managed to hold on to so much and yet so little..." He paced around me, examining the nails of his paw. "Hmmm... But I suppose it could explain why you're so instinctually drawn to the Nightbringer like a magnet. I mean, what else have you ever afforded yourself, Miss Heartstrings?" He paused and glanced down at me. "Perhaps you just haven't had a real opportunity to receive anything until now."
I swallowed a lump down my throat and looked up at him, my lips quivering. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it, my dear." He squatted down at my level and breathed softly, his eyes full of sympathy and warmth. "Your past speaks the truth in gentle tones, like a mournful piano ballad. You've had no other soul to share your agony, your loneliness, your frustration. But things have changed. I, a being of chaos, have frolicked into your life." He reached a talon out. "And I do so extending a hand of mercy..."
"You... do?"
"Oh, absolutely. Lyra, I-I had no idea!" He gestured towards me. "No wonder you've been so stubborn and defiant! You've only had yourself to answer to all this time! Nopony can blame you for wanting to defend the magic of your alicorn goddesses so badly! I mean, it's the only thing you've had to lean on for so long! It's noble! Why, it's more than noble, it's legendary! And maybe... just maybe... I can make sure that your exhaustive plight gets recorded into the history books like it so justly deserves."
My eyes quivered, on the verge of tears. "How...?"
"I am a god among insects, my dear, and you've spent far too long sitting at the bottom of the anthill." He stood up straight. "Let me use my immeasurable powers to pull you to the surface, so that you can be with your loved ones again, and all the ponies whose lives you've touched can know how special, charming, and selfless an equine you've been all these long, sad months." His crimson eyes sparkled as he reached his arms out towards my forelimb. "All it takes is a little faith, and a sign of your trust. If you just hoof me the Nightbringer, I promise that I will do all that is within my strength to cleanse the horrible curse that has befallen you."
I gulped. I looked at his smile, his palms, then at the source of the shimmering golden glow that was reflecting off of it all. I imagined the Nightbringer in his grasp, the music being made to bring mayhem to the cosmos. Hundreds of millions of ponies, all equally as precious as Twilight and her friends, screamed in confusion and pain before being rewritten like so many of my weeping words. After a deep breath, I frowned and hugged the instrument closer. "No go, Discord," I grunted.
"Oh, come on!" he barked, his entire body jerking into a frown. "You are the most uptight bag of winded pretense and blind resolve I have ever met!"
"And you"--I swung the divine lyre away from him and raspberried--"are an ugly goat!"
"I'm getting that dag-blasted Nightbringer from you!"
"No, you're not!"
"Ay gevalt!" He grabbed me by my haunches and shook me vigorously over the Main Street of Ponyville. "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"
"Nnnnngh!" I hugged it tighter and hissed through an impermeable barrier of emerald magic. "Never!"
"Ugh!" He tossed me angrily to the ground and stomped his irregular feet. "I swear! Equestria is as bad off as when I first showed up ten thousand years ago! Nopony wants to play along!"
"Existence is just one big, silly game to you, isn't it?!" I retorted.
"No, of course it's more than that!"
"How so?! Humor me!" I frowned at him. "Show me that there's a single shred of respect to be found in that demonic body of yours!"
"I would... erm... if I could remember."
I made a face. "Huh?"
"Being in stone does wonders to the body. It rejuvenates and regenerates. But it takes a big dump in the brain, if you catch my smelly drift." He leaned forward with a wicked sneer. "Speaking of which, you can't possibly keep both of those hooves locked onto the Nightbringer forever. Some mortal function or another is going to force you to let go."
"You..." I grimaced at him. "You are a freak!"
"To each their own, Harpo. You'd better make plans for what you're going to let go of first, that golden lyre or your decency."
"I am prepared to do whatever it takes for preserving Equestria's safety--"
Discord was already morphing his wrist into a megaphone and shouting before the entire village. "Hey, Ponyville! Did you hear that?!"
"Discord--!"
"Madame Limey here is gonna smell up your whole town!"
"Discord, stop it!"
"Stick that in your plushie and smoke it!"
"I mean it!"
"Haah haah haah!" Discord bent over and slapped his knee. "The funny thing is, I already know that I'm going to win this duel, Harpo! Now, why don't you quit now while you're ahorn?"
"Just you wait and see. I'll reunite with Twilight. And when I do, we'll use the Nightbringer to bring back her friends and--"
Just then, a frolicking sight struck my peripheral vision. I became aware of Scootaloo prancing through the street in a pink gown, sporting a tiara. "Heeeeee! I'm a pretty princess--!" The gray filly had her bouncing eyes shut, so that she was unaware of the giant cheese wheel rolling towards her in front of a stampede of moose-antler'd mice.
I gasped. "Oh jeez!" In a green flash, I was dashing over to her with a magical burst from the Nightbringer.
Discord must have been watching, for I heard him utter, "Hmm? What's this?"
I was hardly paying attention to him. I sailed myself towards Scootaloo at full speed. Before the chaotic mayhem could run her over, I shoved the fancily dressed foal out of the way and into the safe cushion of a nearby flower bush.
"Ughh..." I sat up, shaking my head as the cheese wheel and murderous mice rode past us. "That was close. Scootaloo, I don't care what state your head's in, you gotta be more careful--"
She responded with a gray hoof slapping my cheek. "You oafish brute! Look at me! My dress is ruined!" She limped off on broken heels. "Now how will I ever dazzle my prince?"
I looked after her, then slumped to the ground with a groan. Slowly, like melting ice, Discord slid up beside me. He stared at Scootaloo, at me, then at Scootaloo again.
"Hmmm... Well, if this isn't interesting."
I stared exasperatingly up at him. "What now?"
"What indeed." He grinned and snapped his finger. He disappeared in a flash of light, and Scootaloo appeared in his place.
"Uhhh... Scootaloo?" I hummed.
She blinked at me from beneath a bent tiara until her eyes went crooked. When they snapped back in place, they took on a red color. A fang dripped out of her mouth as she grinned and spoke in Discord's voice. "I think I've figured out what truly henpecks you, Harpo. You're the local mare-do-well of these parts, a ghostly phantom of providence. Dare I say"--Scootaloo's head tilted to the side--"a guardian angel of invisibility?"
"What... What are you getting at?"
"It's all so siii-iii-iiimple!" Discord's voice uttered in a chuckling tone. Scootaloo's left forelimb morphed into a talon, reached into her pink gown, and pulled out a frying pan. "This is your brain." She smacked herself in the gray skull with a resounding clang. "This is your brain on benevolence!"
"H-hey!" I protested, gasping.
Scootaloo smacked herself again. Clang. "And this is what it does to your pony friends!"
"Stop it!"
Clang. "And to your neighbors." Clang. "And to your foalhood companions!" Clang. "And to your mentors!"
I snarled and gripped the frying pan with telekinesis. "Stop abusing Scootaloo!"
She leaned her welted forehead towards me, glaring with Discord's eyes. "But what... does it do to your heart?"
I stared at her with a pale sheen, sweating.
She grinned with a bleeding lip and flung her neck back. "Mail call!"
In a flash, Discord and I were perched on the back of the scooter behind Derpy. The gray mailmare looked behind her in mid-glide across Ponyville. "Huh?! Hey! This is my route!"
"You've been written out!" Discord kicked Derpy in the flank. With a gasp, the straight-eyed pegasus flew into a nearby fruit cart, baseball bat and all. Taking over the handles of the scooter, Discord swung us around the bend, down the block, and skidded us to a stop in front of a gasping little unicorn.
"You're not my mommy!" a colorful Dinky exclaimed.
"No, my dear, we are not." Discord grabbed me and dismounted from the scooter. "But we had a long talk with googly-dearest, and we mutually decided that music playing just isn't for you."
Dinky gasped, her eyes wide and watering. "But... But... I've been practicing with the flute so much! Mom got it for me as a gift!"
"Discord..." I stammered, shivering once again.
He leaned over and sneered into the little foal's face. "You don't deserve a flute, you avaricious little larva!" His fang glinted as he hissed, "Just like you never deserved a father!"
Dinky reeled back, gasping. Her wide eyes began brimming with tears. "But.. But... Mommy says I have a Daddy, only he's not around a lot..."
"That's because your Daddy's far away, getting paid and getting old." Discord ran a hand over Dinky's mane and tapped her nose until her eyes swirled. "Drinking every night to forget the little accident his wife foaled."
Sniffling, Dinky collapsed to the ground. As the color was drained from her body, she broke into quiet little sobs.
"Discord!" I hissed at him. "You take that back!"
"You take it back yourself!" Discord flippantly said, yawning. "That's what you do, isn't it? Sap the pain and anguish from ponies too forgetful to thank you in return? Oh, wait, I just remembered"--he grinned and glared at me through the corner of his yellow sockets--"you're too busy holding onto the Nightbringer and 'protecting the interests of Equestria' to bother being what you're good at. Hmmm?"
"I... I..."
"I wonder who else is on the list..." Discord gripped me and spun us like a cyclone. The chaotic village whirled around us, and suddenly we were materializing in the center of a wooden clubhouse. In the corner, three foals were cowering.
"It's him!" Apple Bloom shrieked, her amber eyes wide. "It's that monster that's been doin' evil things in Ponyville!"
"Make him go away!" Sweetie Belle shrieked, hiding under a sheet in the corner of the room. "I just want all of this to go away!" She began sobbing. "I want my big sister! I want Rarity!"
"Nnnngh!" Rumble was there, and in spite of his shivers he was bravely rushing forward. "You leave them alone! I... I-I'm not afraid of you!"
"No!" I shouted behind Discord's frame, waving frantically at the foals in panic. "Run away! I can keep him occupied! Just don't let him touch you or--" The tip of Discord's tail flew into my mouth. "Mmmmf!"
His front half was leaning forward, grinning clownishly at the two fillies behind Rumble. "Step aside, Romeoats." He flicked his wrist, and the two little ponies levitated up in a field of chaotic magic. "My little ponies, why have so much fear? There's so much to do now that your talents are here!"
"Our..." Apple Bloom squinted at him. "...talents?"
He merely chuckled and snapped his finger. Bright beams of light illuminated their flanks as he lowered them back down. "Try not to blow up anything you might miss..."
When the two ponies landed, they glanced at their hind quarters and saw bright red dynamite sticks emblazoned on their coats. They gasped with hypnotized joy as the color drained from the rest of their bodies.
"Our special talents!"
"Hoooray!"
"Cutie Mark Crusader Demolition Experts!" They slapped on hard hats and produced black, bulbous bombs from seemingly nowhere and began tossing them around at random. Huge pockets of fire and shrapnel began ripping holes in the wooden treehouse as they scampered around, giggling innocently amidst their destruction.
"Discord! Stop it!" I shouted. I glanced in horror at the absurd scene, praying that none of their limbs flew off from the random blasts. "They're going to hurt somepony! Or worse!"
"Hey, dying is the easiest talent to learn!" Discord said with a shrug.
"Sweetie Belle!" Rumble stammered, gazing at his sweetheart with wide eyes. He winced as part of the roof blew up over his long mane. "What's gotten into your head?! This... th-this monster's done something to you!"
"And why should you care so terribly much?" Discord looked him square in the eyes and dug a paw pad into the colt's ear. "You're far too young for romance and such."
A cutie mark appeared on Rumble's flank: a bleeding heart with a dagger through it. His face turned a paler shade of gray as a horrendous frown crossed his features. He swiveled about, marched across the treehouse, and tripped Sweetie Belle in mid-prance.
"Whoah!" Sweetie fell to the floorboards, dropping a pair of bombs that blew up a table and a bench across the way. As a shower of splinters fell past her, she saw Rumble leaning over and frowning in her face.
"You're selfish, fat, and dumb as mud!" Rumble spat. "In fact, the only pony who loves you is your sister, and that's 'cuz you're her garbage disposal for when she cooks too much! Hmmph!" He kicked dirt on her and trotted fitfully out of the place. "Try wooing another guy, assuming you have the brains to tell the difference between a colt and a fire hydrant!"
Sweetie Belle blinked after him. Slowly, her eyes began to water, and a pitiful wailing sound came out of her gray mouth. This, of course, was interrupted by a large explosion as Apple Bloom tossed a stick of dynamite across the treehouse.
The place collapsed around us. I fell several feet and hit the ground below the tree, clutching desperately to the divine instrument. When I got up, everything was smoldering debris and wreckage. I gasped and started lifting planks of wood off one another with telekinesis, panting in terror.
"Sweetie Belle! Apple Bloom!" I searched and rummaged and scoured the wreckage. "Speak to me! I gotta get you out!" Finally, I saw a horn and plucked at it with my magic. "Sweetie Belle--"
The antler lifted out, and Discord's grinning head rose along with it. "I can help them. I can reverse this and everything." His eyes narrowed. "You know what to give me to make it happen..."
"Quit it!" I snarled, trying to remain firm; I was close to hyperventilating. "These foals have done nothing to you--"
"They're alive," Discord droned with thin eyes. "They're harmonious. They worship Celestia. They've done absolutely everything that I despise. The only thing keeping me from doing everything that you hate to them is your stubbornness. Now be a responsible little background pony and give that musical prop of yours to someone closer to center stage, preferably moi."
"I... I..."
"Well?"
I bit my lip and trembled, clutching the golden item with rattling hooves.
"Hmmm... I see that I have to raise the stakes a bit." His eyes suddenly lit up, chilling my soul. "Oh ho ho ho ho..." He reached forward and grabbed my shoulders. "You're gonna love this."
In a blinding strobe, we were gone. I jerked, clenching my eyes shut. When we landed, I heard a gasping voice echoing across a tiny room.
"Good heavens!" a horrifyingly familiar voice stammered. I smelled lavender and musk. I felt like sobbing. "What are you doing here?"
I opened my eyes, and they were already tearing. Morning Dew and Ambrosia stood at the far end of their living room, gawking at the hovering draconequus who was overshadowing them with wicked menace.
"D-Discord..." I heard my voice whimper. I barely had the strength to stand up, much less hold tight to the item of his desire. "Pl-please..."
"Who in tarnation ordered a turkey vulture from Tartarus?!" Ambrosia remarked, only to have a fierce lion's paw shove her across the room. "Ooof!"
"Yes, yes, we'll get to you some other time, my little hussy. But you." He gripped Morning Dew's muzzle, scrunching his lips into an awkward smile. "Oh, of all the whimsically unintentional symbols of hopeless love!"
"Hey!" Ambrosia shouted and tried to get up. "You get away from him, ya hear--!" Discord's tail pinned her down. She struggled and fought against his weight
Discord wasn't finished. He lifted Morning Dew up in his hovering grip, muttering, "Quite frankly, I don't get it! I mean, look at you! You're frail! You're weak! You're practically effeminate!" His head swiveled about like a sink faucet and grinned directly at me. "Who fits into whose grooves, I wonder?"
"Discord, not him!" I was shouting at this point. I couldn't stop it, nor could I stop the tears rolling down my cheeks. "Please! I'm begging you! Not him!"
"What... what do you want from m-me?" Morning Dew barely hissed.
"Me? Oh no no no no, toilet-head, not me!" Discord ran a talon through the stallion's ocean blue hair and gestured behind him. "This is all about her! That's why we're paying you this cordial visit!"
"Wh-who?!" Morning Dew's eyes twitched between me and Discord. "I... I don't understand!"
"Oh don't be so shy! This is your time in the spotlight!" With a snarl, Discord spun and tossed the stallion like a ragdoll into the center of the room. A table was knocked over, shattering a lamp in front of my hooves.
"Discord--!" I shrieked.
"You know what to do in the spotlight, don't you?" Discord marched over him. "I'll give you a hint. It involves staying focused." He snapped his fingers.
Morning Dew instantly turned gray. When he did so, his eyes rolled back in his head and his body collapsed from a sleeping spell. He lay on the floorboards, twitching and spasming in unconsciousness.
"Yooohooo! Earth to casaneighvaaaa?" Discord paced around him just far enough to keep his tail pressed against Ambrosia. "Tsk tsk tsk... What a terrible way to treat your audience! You need to man up and keep your head in the game!" He snapped his fingers once more.
The yellow returned to Morning Dew's coat. His eyes fluttered as he awoke, limply looking up at us. "Where... How...?"
"My my my... what a terrible little condition you have! To fall asleep at a moment's notice! It must be hard to keep your wits about you." He snapped his fingers again.
Morning Dew slumped gray and cold on the floor, his eyes frozen open.
"For that matter, it must be hard to keep anything about you!" He caught Ambrosia's frowning glance and snapped his finger. "What promises of provisions do you have for your loved ones?"
Morning Dew gasped, sputtering, as if coming up to the surface of a deep, deep lake.
Discord leaned over. "In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only souls who loved you..." He pivoted about and stared off-kilter at the two mares in the room. "Are ones pathetic enough to confuse intimacy with pity."
"Just... Just... t-tell us what y-you want..." Morning Dew stammered, wheezing and gasping for a solid breath.
"Oh, I know what I want!" Discord paced around some more, snapping his fingers repeatedly. As a result, Morning Dew was thrown into spasms, waking and collapsing with his body quivering all over from massive seizures. "But a certain self-righteous soul isn't giving it to me! If I can't have what I deserve, why should anypony? Hmmm?"
"Leave him alone!" Ambrosia snarled. "Curse you! Just leave us in peace!"
"A funny thing, peace." Discord did not let up. From the repeated snapping of his omnipotent fingers, Morning Dew was starting to gurgle, gagging on his own tongue as the floor turned damp from the stallion's drool. "You're supposed to get that from dreams, yes?" He snapped and snapped and snapped his fingers. "You know, where I come from, there's nothing but chaos. There is no sun or moon. Sleeping, as you must guess, is very strange to a creature such as me." Morning Dew twitched, collapsed, spasmed, and collapsed again. "I imagine it must be oh so terribly frightening for the likes of you: to be suspended in darkness, with the promise of morning like a slim speck of light on the desolate, empty horizon. In a way, it's how ponies practice for death. There must come a time when you ask yourself"--his eyes took on a poignant shade of crimson as his fang reflected his snapping fingers--"when will be the last time you go to sleep, and when will you not wake up?"
Morning Dew's sputtering voice echoed across the chamber. He curled up in a fetal position, helplessly sobbing from the ordeal. Ambrosia was rambling incoherently at this point. The lights of the dancing sun and moon were flashing outside the window.
Through my tears and my hysteria, I looked at Morning Dew, at the Nightbringer, and at Discord's curved lips. The draconequus was menacing, he was evil, and he was cruel. But through it all, the logical part of my mind reminded me: he was playful. Our horror was his fun. Our torment was his pleasure, and all this time he had been scoring all the points. A sharp breath escaped my lungs.
Discord leered above Morning Dew's waking figure. He prepared to snap his fingers one final time.
"A game!" I shouted.
His talons froze. The draconequus pivoted to face me with a bored expression. "I beg your pardon?"
"A game. I... I challenge you to a game!" I exclaimed, panting hard. I gulped and held the golden Nightbringer up high. "And this... th-this is my wager!"
He squinted, blinking periodically. "Oh really?" he hooted and stood up straight. He relinquished the pressure on his tail, and Ambrosia rushed over to cradle a gasping Morning Dew, nuzzling him dearly.
I gulped. "Let's play a game. If... If I win, you let me go and stop messing around with all of these ponies' lives!"
"Interesting. A tad bit predictable, but interesting." He sat in an invisible chair before me and folded his arms with a curious glare. "And what, pray tell, do I get if I win this improvisational contest?"
"You get..." I gulped hard, trembling all over as I forced myself to spit the words out, "You get to t-turn my brain to goo... and gloat to all of Equestria that you finally defeated this little philosopher."
"Mmmhmmm..." His eyes trailed down to the source of the golden shine. "Aaaaaaaaand?"
I took a deep breath. "And the Nightbringer becomes yours."
"Nowwwww we're talkin'." He tapped his talons and paw pads together. "Just what does this game entail?"
"The game..." I stammered. "The game..." I muttered again, more limply this time.
My eyes flew off into space as my thoughts stabbed myself for not thinking this far ahead. I pondered over all of the horrible things Discord had done. I thought of all the absurd, cynical, and comedically dark angles he had painted his artistic mayhem with. I looked beyond all the menace and the pomp and realized that, deep down, he was nothing more than a hooligan with innately godlike powers. The only way to keep a crafty imp from being bored was to present him with an equal degree of craftiness altogether.
I can't say that the epiphany I had was a brilliant one, but it was all that made sense at the time.
"The oldest game!" I exclaimed boldy, smirking up at him. It took titanic strength to maintain that smile, as my cheeks were still damp from witnessing Morning Dew's ordeal. "The most classic and creative of games! A game of weights and averages and constants and contrasts! A game that appeals to logic, creativity, and daring!"
"Yes, your ambiguity is an art unto itself." He gestured with a gnarled paw. "Details, Harpo. Details!"
I looked at him firmly. "I state what I am, and in response you state that you're something that can conquer, eliminate, or undo what I am. I subsequently state that I'm something that can trump what you chose to be. We proceed with our hypothetical transformations, with each combatant having to logically defeat the other in our projected scenarios. The first one who can't think of a legitimate victor, or is too confounded to propose a conquering statement, becomes the loser. The victor will earn his or her spoils. Now, what do you think?"
He gave me a cockeyed glare. "I think somepony's been reading a little too much of Neil Gaimane's The Sandmare."
"Are you going to hide behind snarky comments all day?!" I finally barked at him. My eyes narrowed with menace. "Or is it that you're too cowardly to take up a good challenge when you hear one?"
"Oh ho ho ho... Look at the molars on you, Madame Limey!" He stood up straight and cracked his knuckles. "As a matter of fact, I'm more than willing to meet you at this insipid little obstacle course of vocal ballistics. I can't think of a faster and easier way to get the Nightbringer out of your obstinate hooves! But hey! Once your mind is turned to goo, you won't have the nerves to feel how burned your ego is, now will you? Haah haah haah!"
"Well?!" I glanced--shivering--at the loving couple a few feet away from me. They were shaken, they were rattled, but they were safe. I glanced up at Discord. "Are you game or aren't you?"
"If you paid any attention to me, Harpo, you'd realize that I was totally game for the game, my little gamemeister." He gestured towards me. "Now game away."
"Huh?"
"Pfft. It was your proposal. I think you should be the first to unfurl the sails for this splendorous voyage of redundancy! Well? Let's hear it!" He flicked a finger against his fang, producing a bell sound. "Round one, harpflanks!"
"Right... Uhm... Right..." I took a deep breath, glancing at the two ponies. "But first, a change of scenery. We've messed with them enough--"
"Nnnngh!" Discord shoved his paw against the wall and spun the entire room around us like a wooden top. "Stop delaying!" he snarled. "I want that damnable Nightbringer!" The room spun slowly to a stop, fittingly turning into the interior of the Carousel Boutique. Light filtered in through the broad glass windows as well as two large stone-shaped holes as Discord impatiently leered above me. "Now get started!"
"Okay." I took a deep breath, leaning back on my haunches and feeling my heart beating through my stone gray hoodie. I clutched the Nightbringer tightly, tripped over a mental hurdle, and finally produced. "I am a manticore, strong and ferocious. I prowl the thickets of the Everfree Forest, claiming the top seat of the food chain. I back down from no creature, for there is no living thing that has ever looked into my face without my jaws lunging towards its throat."
"Haah! Oh puhhhh-leeease." Discord tilted his scoffing head so far back he almost fell into Rarity's sewing table. "If that's how you're going to go about it, then I'll be winning your precious little Nightbringer in a Manehattan minute! Ahem..."
He leaned back, and when he did so he was sporting a curved beak and two avian eyes.
"I am a griffon, king of the air." He raised a pair of razor sharp talons while sporting a lion's tail. "I've evolved well beyond the need to live in the wilderness or the incessant habit of defecating atop bald ponies' heads from cloud level." On twin wings, he hovered around the room, never stopping to leer down at me for one second. "But still, that doesn't change the fact that--deep down inside--I am a carnivore, and I know how to turn the most ferocious predator into the weakest prey." He grabbed a curtain and hung off it, pretending to be scanning an invisible forest with hawkeyes. "I see the strong manticore, and my stomach gurgles. So I swoop down"--he landed thunderously before me in full draconequus mode, grinning psychotically--"and I claw out the poor bastard's eyes! And then I wait for the mighty manticore to bleed out, and take his shanks of flesh back home to my nest in the mountains." He stood back and leisurely brushed his paw off his hairy chest. "That one was for free. Your turn."
I stood proudly and said, "I am a dragon, older than continents themselves. With my wisdom, I see the griffon acting like a barbaric murderer. With my strength, I intervene. My iron jaws cleave easily through the avian creature's feathers and hollow bones. I swallow the flesh whole, and any trinkets of metallic importance become mine to take home to my hoard."
"Hmmm... How dark. I like it!" Discord merely smirked, reverse somersaulted, and landed bare-back on one of the boutique's many ponyquins. With a snap of his finger, a full suit of armor appeared on his body. He twirled a mighty lance in his paw. "I am a knight, sworn to the order of the Equestrian Court! For ages, my fellow soldiers and I have been trained to vanquish the land of marauding dragons. With my guile, I charge the foul-breathing drake! With my tenacious skills of combat, I avoid the wyrm's iron jaws. With countless ages of Equestrian civilization's recorded knowledge, I outsmart all of the dragon's many tricks. His wisdom is no match for me, for I've chopped off the source of the ancient creature's wisdom at the head--literally!--with my mighty blade! I carry the skull back to the castle and put it on a pike for all of ponydom to see. Victoriously I shout, 'Here there may be dragons, but there'll always be slayers of dragons!'" He tilted the face guard of his helmet up and winked at me. "Your turn."
I looked at the floor of the boutique, anxious, searching. My heart began beating faster and faster with the seconds that lingered by. Then, with a gasp, I looked up at him and said, "I am a pestilence! A horrible, rampant, and infectious disease! The dragon's head is one of many things that brings a contagion to your castle! Armor, combat, and tenacity means nothing when I seep into your body and pull your most guarded organs apart at the fibrous seams. Your kingdom's pride can't hold off a plague. Your beloved culture has no shield against something that is tiny and invisible! Before you know it, I have consumed half of your populace, and your triumphant victory is short lived."
"Au contraire, mon petite equine." Discord snapped his fingers and appeared in a white lab coat with matching stethoscope. "I am doctors, nurses, surgeons--heck--the entire field of medicine! I was invented by civilizations that were almost wiped out by the likes of you, but did not completely die off. Why? Because they had enough brain noodle in their skulls telling them that nothing's truly invisible, and with enough commitment and study, even the most seemingly insignificant causes of suffering can be combatted! Not with swords and with maces, mind you, but with sterilization and carefully constructed remedies. I look after my fellow kind and uphold their health and well-being above all. I acknowledge the power that your pestilence has, and yet I learn from it; I evolve." He grinned devilishly, his fang glinting. "I survive."
"I..." My breaths came out in nervous pants. I was starting to lose my concentration. I was dealing with a creature of omnipotence who had been around for far more years than I'd ever hoped to count. How could I have possibly hoped to outwit him, much less outlast him? I had to be daring. I had to take a chance and morph the game. "I am economy!"
He raised the metal disc of the stethoscope quizzically towards me and cocked his ears. "Buh?"
"I... am money. Finite resources. The means to which everypony--even doctors... especially physicians must go to feed themselves and their loved ones." I gulped and leaned over the Nightbringer in my grasp. "I am an object of necessity, the carrot at the end of a stick. The field of medicine has infinite possibilities, but because of me there is limited scope. No civilization has ever existed that can appropriate everything to everypony. Societies have come and gone, changing and transforming throughout the eons. I have stayed constant, a necessary illusion by which all sentient and civilized entities must function. Until all equines become as powerful and invulnerable as alicorns--a veritable impossibility--there will be a need for good health, and I'm the funnel through which those who are specialized in the field must aim their talents. Doctors, nurses, and surgeons seek to help other ponies, but they must also help themselves. So long as they acknowledge me, the symptoms of the world are cured, but diseases remain forevermore. I force the industry of caretaking to quantify benevolence, thereby diluting it. After all, selflessness is noble, but everything still has a price."
"Alright, just hand it over--" Discord reached a talon towards the holy instrument.
I swung away from him, frowning. "You haven't earned it yet!"
"'Economy?!' Seriously?!" He almost gagged. "If I wasn't nearly falling asleep from boredom, I'd say you're stretching things a bit!"
"And like the 'field of medicine' wasn't abstract enough!"
"Horses for courses, Madame Limey. You never defined the categories at the start of this game."
"So why don't you stop dragging your feet and think of something to better my turn?!" I tilted my chin up and smiled. "Or are you simply not as imaginative as me?"
"Ohhhh... Ohhhh ho ho ho ho..." He cracked his knuckles, his knees, and spun his head around twice, all the while grinning at me. "You wanna go abstract, Harpo? Then let's make sweet love to the nebulous tenets of reality in style!" He leaned aside and snapped his fingers.
In a flash of light, a deep blue unicorn appeared with a starry sorceress hat and robe. Gasping, she spun around and frowned at us. "The Great and Powerful Trixie demands an explanation for this unwarranted--"
Discord viciously kicked her in the side.
"Ooof!" She flew off into a ruby chest on the far end of the boutique while her garments fluttered behind.
"There! You had your cameo!" Discord bitterly spat. He donned her pointed hat and flung her cape over an arm while smoke and sparklers framed his figure dazzlingly from behind. "I am the epitome of mysticism, the curious spark that causes hearts to leap in the dark hush of night." His face peered up from behind the cape, grinning darkly as his eyes lit up in the fireworks bursting prismatically across the Boutique. "I am that which is feared and desired above all and--above all--all at once!" He raised both arms. In one paw, he cradled a plume of flame. In the other, he levitated a cloud of frost. "I am the puppet master of the elements, the rule-breaker of that which is seen, and the conjurer of that which is not seen." He gestured towards the glass windows, staining them with yellow shapes of stars that shot through the panes at his command. "The heavens part at my whim, and the earth divides at my leisure." He flung a shower of sparks in my direction and spoke menacingly through the crackling embers. "What I desire, I can produce. There is no need for money, for alchemy transcends paper and coin. There is no need for economy when I circumvent the limits of resources and expose ponies to the wonders of infinite possibilities." He struck a pose, the cape billowing majestically behind him as he grinned into the shimmering aura he had created. "For I... am magic."
Even I was surprised at how quickly I retorted. "I am science!" I said with a grin. "Through careful observation and experimentation, ponies use me to grasp the truth of the world, including all its magic!"
"Hey, no fair..." He glared as all of the parlor tricks behind him collapsed like bricks onto the floor. "I already picked 'medicine,'" he said, pointing with a talon.
"I do not speak of a practice!" I exclaimed. I smiled. "I speak of absolutes, of the rules of the universe that must be followed. Can magic conjure things that weren't there before? Certainly, but it does not do it without a reason. Can magic give ponies that which was previously unobtainable? Most definitely, but even the energy imbued with mysticism must follow specific guidelines. These laws aren't subject to being bent, being changed, being manipulated in any way. Even you, for all of your omnipotent talents and absurd power, have an explanation. I exist as a means for ponies to grasp the universe, even if they can't grasp themselves. For even though sentient beings don't know all the truths that there are to discover, they at least know that something exists out there to be grasped, to be ascertained, to be understood. I stand firm and absolute in the minds of sentience, proclaiming a rigid truth: that all things that exist do so for a reason!"
"Hmmm..." Discord leaned back, peeling the cape and hat off of him as he scratched his chin.
"Is that it?" I frowned. "Well?! Have we reached an end?"
He was silent for a few seconds.
I clung tighter to the Nightbringer, grunting, "Have we?!"
He blinked. Then, he smiled. "Hardly..." He snapped his fingers.
My entire body went numb. I wanted to scream, but all that came from my mouth were vapors. I fell to the ground, discovering cobblestone and mortar instead of the familiar floor of the Boutique. Every inch of my body twitched in convulsing pain from the utter cold assaulting me from all angles. I looked up, shivering, fearful that my eyes would freeze within my sockets. I saw a giant cathedral, marked with the Celestial crest. I instantly recognized it, but my heart was too freezing to possibly register a startled jump.
"We're... w-we're n-n-not in Ponyville anymore..." I said through chattering teeth.
"I've never been much of a laypony," Discord remarked, pacing around me as we sat--hunched in the moonlight--before the Celestial Temple of central Canterlot. Pink clouds drifted through the stars overhead as his voice echoed in the empty streets before the majestic building of tribute. "How about you, Harpo? Something tells me you could use a prayer right about now."
"You... y-you're ch-ch-cheating..." I hissed and huddled around the Nightbringer. I should have been dead by then. Only by the magical grace of the holy instrument was I surviving, or at least that was what I had imagined. Even still, I didn't know how long I could have possibly lasted. My face convulsed as I lost the feeling in my ears, hooves, and nose. "Even you m-must kn-know what the c-c-curse does to m-me th-this far away from th-that town..."
"If you were so concerned about trivialities, then perhaps you should have been a bit more specific with the rules when you established this little duel, gamemeister!" He said with a frown.
"T-t-take us b-b-back..." I hissed, feeling my spit turning to frost in my mouth. I sputtered and wheezed. "Pl-pl-please..."
"Shhhh... Pay attention, Harpo." He paced past me and approached the large wooden doors to the temple. "Can't have you losing concentration and forfeiting the game while you're ahead, now can we?"
I weakly shifted and looked up at him, my tear ducts leaking with blue crystals.
He spun to face me, gesturing epically towards the broad face of the building. "Science?! Hah! I scoff at science! Oh ye of little faith..." He stepped back towards me, smirking. "Not to mention warmth."
I whimpered and curled into myself, trying to rub my forelimbs together. My hoodie felt like a stiff burlap funeral shroud.
"Do you not know what I am? Do you not know how long I've been around? I'm older than the cosmos, bigger than the universe!" He gestured towards the stars peeking above the cotton candy clouds ahead. "The cosmic bodies that make up your constellation?! I was in the bitter blackness before they even blinked into being! Hey, for all you know--heheh--I could have been the one who dropped them into place to begin with! Can your science explain how that happened? I daresay 'no.' Your beloved science can't explain why the heart still beats and why miracles happen and why things live only to die. The Cosmic Matriarch is older than science, after all, for she was older than thought itself."
He hissed and pointed a finger at me, his talon positioned as far away from his head as possible.
"How dare you question the source of where questions come from! You think you know everything, little scientist? Tiny philosopher?!" He shuffled over and stood before me. "Yes, there are rules... but there also has to be a rulemaker. You present me science?" He knelt down and tilted my freezing face up to look into his grin. "I present you divinity."
My vision was shaking too hard to take in the enormity of his curved lips.
"So then, Madame Limey, what are you?"
I hissed, trying to move my tongue through a numb mouth. Sputtering, I produced, "I am honor."
His brow furrowed beneath his antlers.
I wheezed again and continued, "Yes, I am honor. N-not j-j-just to mortals, but to y-yourself. Your d-divinity m-may hold sway over the rules of th-the world, but you h-have the responsibility to m-m-measure up to yourself." I gulped, buried my face into my hooves, and muttered through my misery. "Your cr-cruelty exists because you are c-capable of grace. Your p-power exists b-b-because you not only g-gave birth to weakness, but did so b-because you needed something to cherish. A god or g-g-goddess cannot be purely destructive, for then they would be alone. A divine b-b-being cannot be immanent completely in creation, b-because then their omnipotence would d-dissolve into nature. To exist, you m-must be b-balanced, as we are all balanced, as we are all b-b-bound--forever and ever--to honor. Th-that is why we b-build temples, and that is why we erect cities around them. Honor is the wellspring of l-life, and th-the fulcrum upon wh-which all laws function."
"Hmmm... Indeed." Discord stood up and snapped his fingers once more. "But to what end?"
I yelped, my breath crystallizing in the air and falling like glass shards over blades of grass. I rolled over, gazing up at a gloomy, overcast sky. Northern Equestrian coniferous trees spread beneath me, and I saw several marble stones looming beyond my foggy vision. We were in a graveyard, and I instantly recognized the skyline of Whinniepeg in the distance. Suddenly, Discord was prancing by, hopping from one gravestone to the next, dancing over the grandiose burial site.
"Look at the mark I have made upon this world! The neat and even scars! The geometric scoops I have carved in the soil to deposit so much ash and refuse and junk!" He spun a pirouette atop a rectangular tomb and stopped to face me. "But have I always been so neat? No, no, hardly!" He jumped over and leaned against a tall obelisk, a monument to the fallen soldiers who battled over that landscape a millennium ago when Nightmare Moon stood defiantly against the forces of the Celestial Monarchy. "I've cast bones and blood upon the ground without recourse! I've widowed mares and orphaned children! I even hung a poor sap or two, calling them heretics! Ha!"
I clenched my eyes shut and curled into a fetal position, holding the holy instrument tighter in hopes that I could survive a few seconds longer. I couldn't feel my legs anymore. My skin was turning blue. Every time I tried to cry or sob, a sharp pain ran through my lungs, growing less and less pronounced as the horrible cold of the curse took claim of my body, sapping me in ways that even the Nightbringer's power couldn't rescue me from.
"But did I do all of these things for justice? Did I kill kin and countrystallion for a noble cause? Sure, I might have excused such atrocious acts of mercilessness at the time, but the fact remains..." He hopped down from the gravestones and slithered towards me, pulling one of my numb ears aside to whisper into it. "I did what I did because it suited me."
I squinted up at him, quivering all over.
"And, really... haah haah! When hasn't this been the way of all things?!" He stood up. "Even divine beings, defined by honor, bound themselves in the first place because it suited them too! And why not? They had things to do; it was only fair that they fabricate some means for doing them! Eventually, though, who and what I am had to show through the cracks! It showed when the Cosmic Matriarch left your beloved Equestria eons ago. It happened when the royal sisters tore this landscape apart in their pathetic, trifle, civil war. And it happens even now, on the microscopic level of mortals too! Oh, ever so terribly so!"
He hovered up and squatted on a gravestone, leering down at me with his smirking chin on his knuckle.
"It happens when you devise silly little ways of delaying my acquisition of the Nightbringer. It happens when you struggle to survive, even doing things that you'd be ashamed of. And it most certainly happened earlier--haah haah--when you party cannoned your way to Twilight Sparkle's house on your mad little crusade of stopping chaos. You see, Harpo, when our backs are against the wall we really can and will do anything to get what we want. Honor or no honor, the universe is full of excuses and short on shame. You want to know why cruelty exists? It's because I exist."
He pointed at his chest as his red eyes caught the starlight.
"I am selfishness."
I was hugging myself, curled up into a lime green ball, hyperventilating. If death had came between those fitful, spasming breaths, I wouldn't have been surprised. I existed on the sheer warmth of a thought--blossoming from the depths of myself--hopeful and pathetic all at once. I somehow knew that it was fragile enough, weak enough, and desperate enough to work.
So I worked it. "I am a m-mother's comforting embrace in th-the night, a f-f-father's gentle v-voice." I looked up at him, my lips turning black and blue. "I am the sm-smile you never expected t-to receive, when all your dr-dreams have d-died. I am the pony th-that travels across c-country to see you for only a day, the laborer wh-who quits his j-job to support you at h-home, the general who surrenders to a larger army to spare his loyal st-stallion's lives. I am wh-what keeps the h-heart beating, even in c-cold and d-darkness. I am what makes cruelty cr-cruel and m-m-mercy merciful. I am the reason for peace, the r-reason for pl-pleasure, the source of s-sadness, and the impetus f-f-for laughter. I am what inspires patience, sacrifice, and d-devotion, even if it m-m-means betraying myself, because s-selfishness c-c-can serve me, but it can never save me..."
Discord leaned his head to the side, squinting curiously.
I sniffled as a real tear broke through the frost. "I am love." I choked, coughed, and murmured, "Something... th-that I think you've been sorely lacking for a long time..."
I always knew that I was dealing with a monster, but Discord had a way of making the most dire situation sparkle with the flimsiest notion of whimsy. However, upon receiving that last statement from me, any sign of brightness left his face, and I knew--upon the bitter bluffs of death--that I was dealing with a true, tried, and immeasurably cold menace.
"It is time to put an end to this," he said in a dull, metallic tone. He snapped both sets of fingers at once.
The graves sunk into the floor. The Whinniepeg skyline receded. The sky turned dark, for all the stars had bled away. The sun dissolved; the moon shattered. A sheen of frost covered the earth, which had been stripped to cold stone, devoid of moisture, almost resembling a rusted metal sheet that reflected a deathly pale light dimming all around us. The Firmaments beyond billowed cyclonically, swirling around us without meaning or purpose. I heard thunder, but realised it was just the sound of my own choking breath in my dead ears.
Discord stood before the desolation, catching flakes of snow and droplets of sleet in his palms as they showered down upon his suddenly grim figure. With his back to me, he gestured towards the grand, lifeless horizon, his voice echoing across the tempests like a curator might go about auctioneering a corpse, dull and starved of any melodious tone whatsoever.
"The oceans recede, the forests die, for I am here." His claws and hoof dug into the petrified remains of the planet. "Life withers away, along with all the law and honor attached to it, for they must bow to my domain."
I lay there, shivering, gazing and listening. Even as he spoke, I couldn't stop thinking about how sharply his personality had changed. Was there something especially poignant about my last utterance? Had I somehow reached into the heart of the Great Deceiver and twisted the knife the wrong way? Why was he suddenly elevating the game?
Elevate he did, unemotionally so, his eyes locked upon the deadness before us. "I exist beyond the sunrise, beyond the revolutions of bodies. When the sun extinguishes itself, I am there. When the moon breaks apart, I continue undaunted. Entropy will claim all the various energies that science pretends to chronicle and magic dares to master, but all in futility. There is nothing more vain than attempting to avoid me, other than the wanton act of utterly ignoring me..."
I glanced at the landscape Discord had conjured up, and a part of me gasped beyond my shivers in surprise. It all looked so terribly familiar. I suddenly realized that there was someone else beside myself and Alabaster who could recognize it, and what's more, live on.
"Love is a word," Discord said bluntly. "Something as flimsy as divinity, for love--like all absolutes--cannot continue forever. Either by death, desire, or convenience, love will fade, as will all abstract emotions. For the closest thing this universe has to a constant is not light nor gravity nor matter, but boredom. Everything that is simply bores itself to death, and who can blame it? Stars burning hydrogen for eternity? Dark matter stretching the universe beyond infinite measure? Energy exhausting itself along the means of least resistance? Where's the fun in that, for a single instant much less for an immortal span of eons? Every party has to end, Harpo, even the grandest party of all. No amount of sentiment or respect or hope can change the fact that somewhere before the beginning of all space and time, a pact was made, and it thereby guaranteed the conclusion to all space and time."
I looked at him, my eyes finding new strength, for I suddenly understood something, something I had known for a long time but was too busy being angered by his parlor tricks and horrified by his cruelty to acknowledge until that very moment.
"You're him..." I stammered. "You're her beloved..."
"I am the final destination of all warmth and motion," Discord continued, undaunted. "I am the terminus of light, the final bulwark against which all matter and energy cease to be defined. I am the finality of thought, the end of life, the end of all things, and all the factors that science, faith, and progress need to measure it. Love cannot pierce me, for there is nothing to cherish. Hope cannot resist me, for there is nothing beyond. Peace, joy, and tranquility can only excuse me, because there is nothing else to call it, nothing but one word."
He turned to gaze back at me, and it was finally then that his smile returned, a very deep and bitter thing.
"I am the future." Swiveling about, Discord calmly trudged towards me, one irregular foot at a time. "And the future is something you cannot win against, Miss Heartstrings, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you lie to yourself, no matter how much you pretend you are growing from it, for there is quite simply nothing to grow into."
He knelt down and softly reached for the golden instrument.
"Still, it was fun while it lasted, hmmm?" He looked for a moment like he was going to chuckle, but his frown came back just as icily as before. "It's always fun while it lasts. But only when it lasts. Now, hoof it over..."
And that's how I knew that the lord of chaos wasn't all-knowing, for he stood to remember something. I stared steadfast into the crimson eyes of he who had seen the birth and death of the very firmaments themselves. I spoke, unblinking.
"My turn."
Discord raised an eyebrow at that.
"I am not just the substance of everything, but I am its essence. I am the tempo that gives birth to the universe, and I am the bridge that leads to its death."
I was breathing heavier and heavier, feeling a current of blood rising up in my frozen limbs.
"I am the woeful declaration of despair that announces the end, and yet the rigorous octaves that scoff at it. I am the lyrics that write themselves, for creativity's sake, because there's more to this existence than construction and destruction. There is art."
Discord's face was scowling in confusion and disgust. I noticed this because a bright green light was shimmering across his features. I was sitting up at this point, and my horn was glowing as I channeled a brilliant stream of magic into the Nightbringer, empowering its onyx strings in ways that none of my numb limbs could.
"What we create is more than an extension of this universe's fabric, it's a tapestry of dreams that has evolved beyond the abstract barriers that used to bind it! Fantasies turn into poetry which turn into sound which turn into warmth, feeling, and spirit!"
I hissed and spat as my whimpering voice rose up and turned into a righteous growl. The strings of the Nightbringer were being plucked one after another; it felt like continents shattering.
"Somewhere in the crux of that transfiguration, something is born, something that was not there to begin with, but was conjured through something more powerful than magic, something more binding than honor, and something empowered by selfishness as much as by righteousness or divinity!"
"Stop it..." Discord hissed. "The game is over, you mad lunatic!" He reached towards my instrument, only to bounce back with a green flash. He hissed angrily at me. "We had a deal!"
"And I'm finishing it!" I snarled back, shivering. "I'm finishing you! Or at least I'm ending what you think you are! There's more than a patchwork abomination that holds you together, Discord! There's something missing, a huge chunk that was ripped loose, a timeless wound that has bled forth anger and cruelty and mischief, when once there was only joy and contentment and comfort!"
"What are you doing?" His eyes bulged, for he hadn't realized until that very moment just what my magic was performing with the strings of the Nightbringer. His face contorted, like a soul giving birth, giving birth to himself and dying all at once, a glorious collapse of an omnipotent accident that didn't realize that it was still fractured until that very second. "Stop it!" He clutched his antlers and bent over, curling into himself like a convulsing serpent. "No! I don't want to hear it!" he yelled, sending thunder and lighting branching across the penultimate graveyard of the firmaments. "Stop!"
"There is one piece to your puzzle, Discord, one link to the fractured chain of your anguish and despair!" I had to shout at this point. I was almost to the end of "Twilight's Requiem," and the dying universe all around us was buckling, filling our ears with a cacophony that could only sound off the calamitous end of time itself. "It is the same piece that can be found in all of us, the piece that is never truly missing, but is clicking with our heartbeats, asking for us to listen, asking for us to share, asking for us to live--to be that equation--even if that equation can't explain more than the bare limits of ourselves that we must discover before putting together!"
"I don't want to hear it!" He was screaming, shouting, pleading, transforming. "I don't want to remember!"
"What am I, Discord?!" I shouted into the waves of melody that sent rivulets across the shores of desolation. "What begins and ends the world?! What makes us exist, even when there isn't an audience?!"
He clutched his skull and screamed.
"I am a song!" I bellowed as the rhythm overtook him. All was bedlam and beauty and birthing. "I am her song! And you need to sing it!"
Discord's eyes and mouth opened, and I saw the sun again. I winced, using the Nightbringer to block myself from being completely exposed to the luminous event horizon of imploding chaos. And yet, the brightness did not cease. I sensed a bubbling wave of energy from what was once him, an ever-expanding froth of fury, emotion, sorrow, and carnage. Ten thousand years of isolation and ignorance collapsed, and a nebulous charge of otherworldly spirit was chain reacting, spreading, threatening to drown every corner of the universe all at once. It was around the time that I felt the golden structure of the holy instrument actually buckling in my hooves that I realized the horrendous enormity of what I had just sparked.
"Oh blessed Celestia," I whimpered into the searing heat of annihilation. I pictured the parasprite destruction of Ponyville. I remembered Alabaster's account of the sarosian bomb that blew up part of the palace in Canterlot. I combined those things and magnified them by a hundred trillion in my imagination, and even still I wasn't horrified enough. "Dear goddess, what have I done?"
She had banished her beloved for a reason.
"No..." I choked as the brightness enveloped me, enveloped the universe, enveloped everything. I dug my face into the onyx strings of the Nightbringer and clenched my eyes shut. "N-no!" I called out names; I sobbed them out loud, unashamedly, like a foal. And, just like a foal, I heard myself panting and gasping when the grand thunder of the titanic eruption ceased in a sudden burst of silence.
My eyes opened, and I saw that the cosmic explosion had shrunk to the size of a glowing, white marble. It hovered expertly in Discord's yellow palm, for he was standing calmly before me in the center of the dimly-lit Carousel Boutique, where even a pin drop could be heard.
It was his voice that rang instead, and it did so in a heartfelt whisper.
"Aria," he murmured, tasting the name on the tip of his tongue like a sweet lover's kiss. "My sweet, sweet song." He gazed calmly, longingly into the globule of light in his omnipotent grasp. His eyes were thin, his lips firm and set. "How like a child you were, an angelic foal who pranced into a demon's realm. All was chaos, all was confusion, and all was loneliness... until I met you."
I breathed deeply, gazing up at him with a gaping mouth. The delicious warmth of Ponyville was seeping back into my limbs, and yet I couldn't help but feel a sharp chill as I anxiously breathed, "'Aria?'"
"Words are meaningless," Discord said softly, turning the glowing orb around in his fingers. "Just like time. And yet, both took shape the day--yes--the very day that I saw her."
He turned and--with careful grace--flung the orb towards one of the windows. The golden light splashed across the stained surface, then solidified, parting the chaotic patterns of the pane and forming the cohesive image of a frail alicorn goddess in the center.
"She was a glorious example of oneness. I never knew or understood singularity. All I could comprehend was the incrompehensible, a looming miasma of happenstance, incapable of form or structure. There was no end or beginning, but then she came, and the firmaments were erected along with her, and around her. That place was only ever my world, and yet it was to become her prison. Did she expect me to be there? Did anyone expect that she wouldn't be alone in her hideously imposed exile?"
Before us, swirls formed in the stained glass. An effluent cloud of energy and matter coalesced around the alicorn. She looked up, and she sobbed. Reacting with quivering bands of light, the cloud bent, fluctuated, and took shape, trying its best to mimic her, only partially succeeding. She seemed to relax, and she allowed the intelligent distortions to drift closer to her.
"I wanted to know more, and she was my knowledge. I wanted to feel as she did; she gave me her heart. I was excited by her fears, enticed by her smiles, and mortified by her sorrows. She was barely a foal, an infant goddess. It should have been I who was teaching her, but that was not meant to be. We held each other there, keeping each other company, communing in the desolate space between worlds. She appeased my lonesomeness, and I catered to her needs in turn. Where the cosmos was cold, I made her warm. Where the constellations were dim, I crafted her stars. We built a world together, and it was beautiful, for it was ours."
Horizons formed in the stained glass, taking on solid colors and textures. Two four-legged shapes galloped across the spheres, one brilliant and the other dim. When they crossed over each other, sparks spread, creating more spheres, crafting more details. Soon the entire window was ablaze with planetoids and moons and comets.
"She didn't have a language, not at first. We had to build that too. When we did, it opened up our minds as much as our hearts. She told me that she was a song, for she had been born from one. But for some reason, she was broken. Broken by whom? How could a creature so beautiful and so delicate and so graceful be an accident? Her name was Princess Aria, and she was meant to be the Goddess of Twilight. But that could no longer be true. Those who were built out of the same song had exiled her to that place, and for all of my strengths of power and comprehension, I could not understand why. But I did not ask. After all, she was now my beautiful song, the melody of my soul, for she had showed me that I had one in the first place. In return, I gave Aria a canvas to paint with her gifts of twilight. We had a grand auditorium of our own to conduct brand new symphonies, and I wanted nothing more than for her to be happy."
The cosmos dimmed. The colorful alicorn figure slumped towards the horizon. Violet shadows overtook her as several tiny equines materialized around the plains of nebulous color. The dim shadow tried to console her, but a gradual barrier formed between the two.
"But she would not stay happy forever. I may have been a creature of chaos, but that would forever separate me from Aria. After all, she was birthed into existence. Goddess or not, a beginning necessitates an end, and death has many relative speeds with which it weaves its venomous snare. The rift through which she entered my domain could not entirely be sealed, no matter what powers we had at our disposal. The song--the holy melody of ages--held sway over the firmaments, and soon she was no longer the only victim of that prison. Souls came, mortals who were as broken and as forgotten as her. I wanted to welcome them into the fold, to show them the beauty that we had created, but Aria felt differently. Something had changed in her. She started... to remember."
The planetoids shattered. The colors turned black and gray as a horrible rust overcame the window pane. The alicorn figure's wings spread wide and shed its feathers. Bony stalks protruded from her undead frame, and they wove chains that shackled the tiny equines to her like puppets. In the distance, massive plumes of tempestuous energy morphed together to form the watery bowels of the unsung realm.
"She was forever an accident. In her heart, that designated her as the Queen of the Forsaken, the Overseer of Misery and Limbo. The ponies were coming to her for a reason; they had been rejected, abandoned, and banished to oblivion by the song. The mark of a divine being holier than her had designated them as unclean, and Aria reached out to them like long-lost siblings, engulfing them in misery instead of joy, for such was her conclusion to the way of all things, including unthings. How could I have convinced her otherwise? I could not taste of the bitter poison of death, the merciless force that caused all things to dissolve over time by some holy order that surpasses explanation, rhyme, or reason. Chaos, I soon realized, was a bliss that I could only shape into something that resembled structure, but I would never suffer the consequences of maintaining it like she did. For such was something that Aria was born to do, accident or not. My beloved had a purpose, and that purpose was to diminish, and provide a home for those too unlucky, too lost, and too hopeless to sleep. By her grace, they merely had to sing her song, and become... nothing."
Discord walked towards the window and gently caressed the undead equine shape, his finger lovingly tracing along the rigid lines of her wing-stalks. His eyes were glazed over, and for a moment there I saw something far more potent than all the explosions that the sower of Chaos had ever conjured up.
"But that was not the song that I wanted to hear, or for her to sing. I pleaded with her, begged for her to stop what she was doing. These souls deserved more than what they were being given. We had made a paradise out of prison before; what was to stop us from extending the blessing to them? But it was far too late. There was no reasoning with her. She was no longer the infant soul who had fallen innocently into my domain eons ago. The prisoner had become the warden, and my words were mere echoes in the grand well of purpose she was prepared to see through for eternity, bound by a dedication to the same entities that had exiled her there in the first place."
He released his finger, and as he did so, all the color was drained from the alicorn figure, all except for a pair of glowing, violet eyes. The dim shadow fractured under her stare, overwhelmed by her shackled army of equine souls. The entire window pane began to buckle and shake within its frame.
"Her motivation was clear, but I was inconsolable, flabbergasted, furious. The same beloved with whom I had once practiced words of love, I was now assaulting with a barrage of angry sermons and moralistic lectures. This lasted for... ages, and even a steward of forsaken souls knows an end to patience. She loved me, and she knew that I adored her, but she could no longer have me interfering in what had quite essentially become her domain. I was her beloved, but her soul, as well as her heart, was committed to somepony else, a Matriarch, a being who was incapable of loving Aria in return. For the sake of her duty, and for the righteous honor she needed to perform it, she banished me from the realm. She ousted me from the former paradise that she had transformed back into a prison, and there was no going back for me. The place had become unsung, and I did not have the means nor the knowledge to bring myself back along the same melodious currents that came naturally to her and her holy flesh and blood."
He snapped his finger, and the dim shadow receded from her. The dark image fell towards the lower panels of glass, like a rock plunging to the bottom of a glass ocean. Beyond the firmaments, the dark shadow took shape, borrowing the dismembered limbs of dead creatures, morphing into an asymmetrical living corpse of chaos and agony. With a mute scream towards the glassy heavens, devoid of any of her colors or grace, Discord was born.
"And so it was that I came upon this realm called Equestria, taking physical shape in as haphazard a manner as I could afford. And it so happened that I did discover Aria's flesh and blood among the mortal plane. I pleaded and begged for Celestia and Luna to send me back, for I knew that they had to have been born out of the same song as her. Imagine my shock--my utterly irreversible disgust and anger--when I found out that they didn't know who I was talking about, their very own middle sister, their missing Princess of Twilight. Whenever I came close to explaining the exact truth to them, they reacted in a manner so unpredictable and explosive, it shocked this lord of chaos to the core. It was then that I discovered that the original bringer of the song--the Cosmic Matriarch--was the one responsible for making the holiest, most beautiful of creatures a secret to the universe, and there was no feasible way the rest of the world could learn what I had to tell them, could know what I was cursed to know."
The draconequus figure rose, consuming the green colors of Equestria and setting them aflame with furious reds and oranges. Equines transformed into hideous glass abominations around him. Oceans evaporated and canyons split open. The figures of Luna and Celestia sailed in orbit around the chaotician, assaulting the figure with rainbow colored beams of harmonious resolve.
"And so, I lashed out. All my anger, all of my rage, and all of my pain, I delivered unto this peaceful land. Life was a joke, after all, a cruel and absurd prank that was played on me, for I could never return to my beloved, and yet I would always remember her. Nopony else knew a single thing about Aria, not even her sisters. I was the only being in existence that could carry her legacy. I wielded the knowledge like a two-edged sword, laughing the entire time, for even as I wielded destruction I knew what a pathetic little tantrum it all was. What was more, I knew that there was nothing Celestia or Luna could do about it, or about me. What were they possibly capable of? Their domain, the world of Equestria, was a fabrication, inserted like a flimsy bubble within the realm of chaos. It was not their power that maintained their sister's exile, it was a song, a song I had no mastery of. I could have turned their realm into an explosive stage play for eternity. As a matter of fact, I was planning to do just that. But there was only one problem."
The draconequus figure slumped to the brown, burning earth. In a dark shadow, he wilted, curling in on himself, remembering scant beams of purple that emanated from his beating heart.
"Even if I transformed the entire world into my image, even if I wiped everything into a desolate slate of empty comprehension, even if I bloomed chaos into every corner of reality, I would still be alive. And what was more, I would still remember her."
Celestia and Luna closed in. The draconequus stood up, his glassy figure tall and proud. When they launched their final volley of rainbow magic on him, he merely laughed, leaning back and shouting pompously towards the heaven as his entire body turned white with rigid petrification.
"And so, I let them win. I let them imprison me with the Elements of Harmony. I granted them their little victory, for it was my victory as well, whether they knew it or not. I am incapable of dying, incapable of fading away from this continuum. Chaos breeds chaos, after all, and the only thing it can ever hope to do is the last thing it would ever expect to do, and that is to sleep. And encased in stone, frozen for eons, I did just that. I slept. And as I slept, the dreams faded over time, until all was blissful darkness and confusion upon the plains of my slumbering mind. Somewhere, deep within one of the many pockets of that dismal and dark suspension, I found an oblivion for my thoughts, and a death to my memories. I had discovered what she never could have. I found peace."
He snapped his finger, and the glass faded to bright white light, brimming with the green lengths of Ponyville beyond. Discord took a deep breath, resting his eyelids shut as he stood within the shadows of the boutique.
"All of the pain, all of the agony, and all of the bitterness of my legacy, I had completely and blissfully forgotten..."
Slowly, icily, he pivoted about and opened his eyes to stare at me.
"And then I met you."
I stared up at him, my lips quivering. Swallowing, I spoke weakly into the dim air, "When you were freed from the stone, you had lost any recollection of Aria. But... But you still had the anger, the bitterness, and the resentment. Hidden under jocularity and wit, it was still there, festering, manifesting cruelty for reasons you couldn't explain. I'm... I-I'm sorry that you now recall that which you don't want to on account of me, but I had no other choice! Your chaos and mayhem? It h-had to end, Discord. It just... It just has to end!"
"Funny how only the things that are incapable of ceasing are that which 'must end,' more than anything else," he remarked with an exasperated smile. "You would make a delightful lord of chaos, Harpo. You certainly possess the spirit of an immortal. I daresay, you may even have enough guts to weather the pain that comes with eternity. So, I think a gesture of respect is in order." He bowed deeply towards me, waving a hand from his antlers to my horn. "Congratulations, Miss Heartstrings, you have won the game."
I blinked at him. I looked at the Nightbringer in my grasp and almost dropped it like a diseased rag. Even if I did lose my grip, I suddenly doubted that Discord would swoop down to pick it up. His entire body hung in a slouch, as if all life and color had been funneled from his being. Desperately, I stammered towards him.
"I am not here to celebrate a hollow victory any more than you are, Discord. I too want peace, bliss, and freedom."
"Take a vacation to Disneigh World," he muttered, sitting in the shadows of the place. "I hear they hire young musicians in a heartbeat."
"No, I'm serious!" I hissed, all but pleading with him. "What just happened... r-right now?! It's a miracle! Here you are, a godlike being, and you were exposed to a piece of the damnable 'Nocturne of Firmaments' that has cursed me for so long. And unlike Princess Celestia and Luna, you did not allow the world to be rewritten! You stopped the cataclysmic explosion, something that the alicorn goddesses were incapable of each time they witnessed the song that imprisoned their sister!"
"They share more than flesh and blood," Discord said lethargically, blending with the walls of the place. "They share a melody, a harmonious bridge that connects them and them alone, even beyond the firmaments. I always figured that's how the incorrigible Woona caught wind of her sister and turned into Nightmare Woona."
"Yes!" I exclaimed, pointing eagerly. "They have a connection! I understand that! But you?! You're different! You're a being of chaos! You have an edge! You may not be able to go back to your beloved in the unsung realm, but I can! I've mastered most of the symphony that binds her there! I can go there any time! I can even speak to her--"
"There's no need to explain yourself, Harpo. I'm quite aware of your weekend trips." He gazed at me with thin eyes. "I didn't see it earlier because I couldn't allow myself, but I understand it now. I understand everything."
I gulped and murmured, "Then you must understand what I'm going through, and what I'm trying to do. Please... Please, Discord." I leaned forward, my voice cracking, "Won't you help me?"
"Help you?" He squinted towards me. "Help you bury my beloved's memory, like all of mortal Equestria's assortment of pretentious history has done throughout the eons?"
I stared at him in blank shock.
"You do realize that's what it all comes down to in the end?" He stepped towards me, pacing slowly, like a drifting snowbank. "Not death. Not destruction. But remembrance. We do not end when the last atom falls apart or when the final burst of light dies out. We cease to be when all thought of us ceases to be. That might work well for you and your so-called friends and loved ones. But for me? For an endless entity?"
Discord gestured towards himself as his eyes lit up with a final burst of crimson resolve.
"To help you, I would have to help you hijack the royal alicorns' essential song. I would have to escort you into the land that used to be a paradise that used to be a prison that used to be a miasma of chaos. And then what? Even ten thousand years ago, Aria had long lost her singularity and become a hollow melody; I doubt she'd be capable of banishing me a second time. I'd be stuck forever in that domain with her, or at least the shadows of her, while you will have gone off to the ignorant bliss of whatever la-la land you have only dreamt of in your bed of tears at night. What then would be my purpose, Lyra, my impetus for existing? I suppose I would have to make an appeal to my beloved, getting down on my knees every sunless day and confessing my undying love to her, a love that I cannot forget, but she herself has rendered to dust and desolation, because it's her innate task to be utter forgetfulness and forsaken spirit until the last sighing breaths of time."
"Discord, I beg of you..." I said, my voice choking as tears started to form in my eyes. "You have so much power, so much strength, so many talents. How can someone with such amazing gifts be so despondent? You have to help me. You can do it; I know you can assist me in ending this curse..."
"My little pony," he murmured, suddenly squatting down and running a paw through my mane hair. His lips were frozen in a stony smile. "We are all born cursed. For whatever cruel twist of fate, the only blessed being is her, for she has found peace in her forsaken purpose. But I cannot share that same melody of victory and contentment with Aria, for my beloved has become unsung. Be glad that you are not like me, Miss Heartstrings. Your freedom will come to you, as it will come to all ponies, courtesy of her." He caressed my chin as he stood back up. "It will come when you finally begin to forget..."
"Discord..."
"And it's time that I found that freedom too..."
"Discord, I'm sorry!" I sobbed, beginning to hyperventilate. "I'm sorry that I made you remember, but please! Not everypony shares your sense of despair and immortal pain!"
"I can't think of something to be more grateful for."
"What harm will it cause you to take a leap of faith and d-do something for a single m-mortal who just needs something this badly?!"
"Because, Harpo, you quite frankly don't know what you need. Not yet. Not until you've spoken to Aria herself will you understand the price for what has happened today. And believe me, when or if you do finally comprehend it..." He squinted menacingly down at me. "You'll only wish you were going where I am going."
I blinked. "I... I don't understand..."
"It's quite simple." He scratched his talons against his chest and stared at his claws. "As we speak, Twilight Sparkle has salvaged most of her friends from the chaotic taint of my gray touch. In a matter of minutes, they will have freed Rainbow Dash from her altered state, and the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony will then be coming to confront me here in Ponyville. I have had plans of erecting another labyrinth in their path, of maybe turning another one of them gray and beginning the whole game all over again--probably that pink one, she's rather amusing, to a fault." He turned and stared lethargically at me. "But I'm not going to bother with that. Not now. I'm tired, Harpo."
"Discord--"
"I'm ready for a long, long sleep. And for Equestria's sake, we both know that it would be best if I never woke up."
"Discord, don't do this!" I was screaming hysterically. "You want the Nightbringer?! You can have it! You can have every song in the damn Nocturne! Just don't give up! All is not lost!"
"On the contary, it is oh so damnably found." He smiled calmly at me through my tears and hiccups. "Bear this in mind, Lyra. There is no worse fate than being the only soul in the universe capable of remembering that which should be forgotten. I suggest you give up on the music, my dear. It has already given up on you." He waved his hand at me. "Arrivederci."
I yelled at him, but my voice was miles away. In a flash of light, the Boutique disappeared, and I was flung into the freezing foliage of the Everfree Forest. I gasped, shivering all over, not so much from the cold of my curse, but with the hideous realization that I was suddenly on the opposite side of Ponyville from the Boutique. If I had any hope of getting back to town in time...
"Oh dear heaven... Oh please..." I broke into a furious gallop, levitating the Nightbringer into my saddlebag. With my hooves free, I blurred over the forest and grass and weed. I barreled through bushes and shrubbery and moss. Chocolate rain pelted my features as pink clouds loomed high above, mocking me. Despite my excessive speed and despite my heaving breaths and despite my tears, I wasn't making any ground. The edge of the forest constantly loomed just beyond the freezing extremity of the treeline. I pierced through it all, blasting chunks of wood away with green magic, bursting upon the precipice of one heart-wrenching sob after another.
When I finally made it to the edge of town, I knew that it was hopeless. A bright light was billowing from the center of Ponyville. I did not stop for one second. I glided over the curved, checkerboard grasslands, vaulting over fences, dodging every chaotic creature of haphazard conjuration that intercepted my path. My muscles were quivering, my strength was wearing thin. At last, I stumbled upon the fringes of an epic battle, but even then it seemed to draw away the faster I galloped towards it.
I saw Twilight. I saw her friends. I saw the medallions around their necks and the bright beams of platinum light emanating from their divine union. And then I saw Discord on the throne, cackling with his masterful charade of pride and confidence. The actor was on center stage, and the final curtain was about to fall. I stumbled down the aisles, hollering, screaming, launching the ghostly protests of a pariah upon the deaf ears of the living.
"Fine, go ahead!" Discord uttered towards the gathered companions. "Try and use your little elements. 'Friend me.' Just make it quick." He sat proudly on his throne, in perfect and uninterrupted range of their righteous fury, uselessly pontificating towards the flimsy barriers of the altered world around him. "I'm missing some excellent chaos here!"
"Alright, ladies!" Twilight heroically exclaimed, her tiara glinting majestically as the six equines stood in formation. "Let's show him what friendship can do!"
By the time their divine beam of rainbow light began consuming the lord of chaos, I was already collapsing. My screams were his screams, two souls conjoined under the union of a forbidden memory. Ponyville flickered back to its normal self all around us, and with a stony thud, Discord fell to the ground, rediscovering his bliss.
And when I fell, it was in sobs. Through a numb cloud, I became vaguely aware of cheering voices all around me. Ponies came out of hiding, no longer gray or discordant. Loved ones reunited. Families and friends shared tearful embraces. I heard Milky White sobbing Scootaloo's name as she found her adopted daughter and scooped her off the ground. Caramel and Wind Whistler stumbled into town, slightly bruised, but no worse for wear. Even Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were in one piece, consoling a sullen Rumble--who spent the entire afternoon trying to apologize for sins he was never responsible for. The sound of a flute playing jubilantly in the air provided a melody to which an embarrassed mailmare swiftly began trotting to, picking up discarded envelopes and fragments of shattered mailboxes. I heard Morning Dew's healthy voice, followed by Ambrosia's joyful laughter. A grand roar of excitement filled the town, full of ponies talking about what had happened, the transformations they had survived, and the six saviors of their momentarily horrifying plight. By the time I heard Thunderlane bragging and Blossomforth sighing dreamily, I could no longer stand it, and I was trudging home, slumped over like a corpse, silent as a shadow.
I was beyond tears, beyond anger, beyond any emotion. All I had in my head was a melody: the same song I had shared with Discord, the same song that had almost destroyed all of Equestria and yet had oddly saved it all at once, and yet still could not save me.
"The holy sisters' song..." I murmured to myself, trying to think it all through, trying to philosophize, trying to do anything but feel. "Have Celestia or Luna ever heard the Requiem specifically? Have they ever even heard Aria's name?"
My mind limped back to those heart-stopping moments of shadow within the Carousel Boutique, when I saw all the life drained from Discord's eyes, when I heard all of his love and hate dripping from his fanged lips.
"It took the song to banish her beloved to Equestria," I muttered. "If he had helped me, he would have hijacked the alicorns' song to bring me directly to Aria." I gulped and lingered in the dirt as I arrived at my cabin in the woods. The cheering sounds of Ponyville were now a distant roar. "Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I need to find to reach her, to make her play 'Desolation's Duet.' I need to do to her sisters what I did to Discord, but how? How can I do it without destroying the town, the world, the very fabric of the song itself?"
I ran a hoof over my face, sighing.
"Heaven help you, Discord. What did you know that forced you to give up? Why couldn't you just tell me?"
I was back where I began, alone, shivering. The door to my cabin was halfway open, but I hadn't the faculties to gripe about it. I trudged forward in a dull cloud, as if I had been turned gray all along. I needed time alone to bathe in the shock of what had happened that day. The only thing was, I did not have the luxury of being turned to stone.
But just as I stepped upon the wooden porch, I heard a twangy voice uttering from behind me.
"Howdy there! Are y'all okay?!"
I turned around, blinking curiously. "Hmm? I beg your pardon?"
An orange mare stood with a beautiful blonde mane. She wore a brown cowboy hat and sported delicious red apples for a cutie mark. She looked at me with emerald eyes, bobbing, for she was out of breath. "Y'all ain't gray or nothin'? Has the chaos magic left ya as well?"
"Uhm... I-I guess?" I remarked, squirming uncomfortably from the sudden inquisition. "I feel normal. Why do you ask?"
"Whew! Thank heavens!" She wiped her sweaty brow and grinned wearily. "Reckon ya weren't turned into anythang too terrible or nothin'. I'm headed back home, and I thought I'd check on all the pony folk along the way to make sure that Discord's power is gone for good! Boy, this sure was a mighty frightenin' day we had, wasn't it?"
"Oh. M-most certainly," I said. "And it's very kind of you to check up on me, Miss...?"
"Applejack," she said, tilting her hat and smiling brightly. "And you are?"
"Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
"Well, I'm plum happy that you're just fine and dandy, Miss Heartstrings. But for right now, I'd best be gettin' to my family. I can't wait to see if they're okay!" She galloped off, giving me a lasting wave as her hospitable voice danced along the afternoon wind. "Y'all should come visit us at Sweet Apple Acres! I'm fixin' to treat the whole of Ponyville to an early cider season to celebrate comin' out of this gul'darn mess!"
"Uhh... Sure thing!" I waved after the polite mare. "Nice to meet you, Applejack!"
She was gone. With a deep breath, I turned around and trotted into my lonesome cabin.
"Well, that sure felt nice," I spoke aloud, closing the door and stripping off my saddlebag. I flung the container onto the cot and shuffled limply towards the wardrobe on the far end of the room. "I guess I have Equestria's most polite neighbor. Cider, hmm? Don't think I've ever tried the stuff." I opened the wardrobe and prepared to slip off my hoodie, when something bright and crimson stood out to me. "Huh... Funny..." I reached forward and ran a hoof over the thick, woolen material. "Since when did I have a red sweater? It's beautifully crafted, that's for sure."
Just then, something furry rubbed up against my rear leg.
Gasping, I jolted towards the cot with a stifled shriek. I looked down to see an orange tabby staring up at me, meowing contentedly.
"Good grief!" I exclaimed, coming down a crest of sharp breaths. "Where the hay did you come from?" I gazed towards the windows of the cabin. "Are there a lot of strays around here or something?"
I froze. I saw a bag of cat feed lying beside the door, along with a partially-empty dish. There was a modicum of orange fur on the bedsheets of the cot. Where my saddlebag had landed, a velvety bag had fallen loose. Something bright and immaculately golden peeked out from within.
My heart was beating swiftly. I gazed up at the walls of the cabin. Dozens of strange musical instruments hung in the dimming sunlight. I marveled at the complexity of the bizarre collection.
"Something... Something isn't right here..."
I sat slowly down on my haunches, and the cat came to me. I realized that I was scratching his ears without thinking, and I could only stare at the gesture blankly. There were goosebumps forming along my forelimb, and the world was feeling very, very cold for some inexplicable reason.
That's strange. What was I writing about just now?
Background Pony
XVI - "Beloved"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Warden, RazgrizS57, Props, theworstwriter, theBrianJ, Ponky, and Daytona Beach
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XVII - All That's Left You | Dear journal,
What remains when we are stripped of all that we hold dear? What is the essence of a pony when she's robbed of all the tools she once had available to her? Do we find bliss in that confusing darkness, or just endless sorrow?
I've lived long enough to find out, and still the truth is difficult to grasp. On one hoof, there is something that lies deep beneath the layers of wisdom and pretense: a pony's substance. Can ponies such as myself rise back from the depths to articulate the haunting discoveries we've made?
Perhaps not, but the key, I believe, is not to try so hard. When we focus on what's left us, when we meditate on what's missing from our life, it's easy to think that there's no life left to live.
I cannot believe that there is nothing. I refuse to believe that there is nothing. I've been to the foundations of oblivion, the deep, dark and lonesome roots of myself, and I've come back with one word that maintains my purpose in writing this journal, in persisting against annihilation, in fighting Princess Aria's damning song:
Fate.
The band played cheerful music while Caramel and Wind Whistler cut the first slice of cake. Under the flickering light of camera flashbulbs, they smiled. To the sound of blissful cheering, they blushed. Everypony in the large chamber surrounded the two newlyweds, applauding as they each broke free two morsels of white frosting, crossed forelimbs, and simultaneously gave each other a bite. Wind Whistler accomplished her task with a dainty nibble. Caramel was far less graceful, and several yellow crumbs of cake bread splattered across his trim black tuxedo. Laughter and whistles filled the room, to which Wind Whistler contributed with her melodious giggles. Bearing a flustered smile, Caramel nuzzled his bride while she brushed his expensive suit clean. The two shared yet another kiss, basking in the warmth of the eternal moment.
A few pony photographers reloaded their film while the reception frolicked into the next hour. After cake and a series of heartfelt toasts, the couple moved out onto the enormous dance floor. The whole interior of Ponyville Town Hall had been converted to a reception room. Equines from all local walks of life were seated at tables covered with snow white table cloths and ornate floral arrangements. Applejack was there with Big Mac, Granny Smith, Apple Fritter, Golden Delicious, and several other members of Caramel's enormous family. They smiled and unabashedly cheered with whooping and hollering. Rarity sat in the corner next to Fluttershy, both adorned in modest bridesmaid gowns. The fashionista had taken a break from admiring her frilly white hoofwork on the bride to drink in the moment. Her eyes watered as her face cracked a fragile smile, and the smiling mare beside her took the moment to give her close friend a comforting embrace. On the far edge of the town hall, several well-dressed pegasi were gathered: Thunderlane, Blossomforth, Cloudchaser and Flitter cheered, giving the dancing couple several encouraging winks.
Wind Whistler suppressed a foalish chuckle. She shut her eyes and leaned against Caramel's neck as the two nuzzled in the center of the floor. A touch of moonlight drifted in through the tall windows above, giving a glint to the polished hooflets on the couple's forelimbs. The music encompassed them in a gentle cloud; they drifted like they were cast off from the fetters of time.
Watching from the sidelines was a giddy Pinkie Pie. Bedazzled by the moment, she bounced and bounced and bounced with bright blue eye. It took all her strength not to burst out into uproarious song. Instead, she leaned aside and nudged Rainbow Dash. Rainbow groaned, fidgeting with her pitifully simple dress and keeping her eyes locked on the clock that hung along the south wall of the room. Behind them, next to a group of adorably tiny tables with half-eaten plates of cake, a bunch of young fillies and colts were chasing each other. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Snips played tag with Dinky, giggling and hiding behind curtains of white table cloth. From the side, Derpy Hooves, Milky White, and Cheerilee stood in smiling conversation, their attention happily divided between the newlyweds and another dancing couple to their right.
A few feet away, Sweetie Belle and Rumble awkwardly mimicked the special moment that took place in the center of the reception. Sweetie Belle's flowerfilly dress and Rumble's intensely straight-laced little suit added to the tiny spectacle. Several mares chuckled and murmured sweet things from a table or two away, which only added to Rumble's nervous jitters. Sweetie Belle merely absorbed the situation and gently leaned her neck against the colt's shoulder, to which the young stallion-to-be bravely reciprocated.
At the table directly facing the center floor, the Mayor sat next to Dr. Hooves. The two talked about recent events, their eyes locked on the dancing couple. The Mayor smiled and murmured something to a young, red-maned mare seated beside her who chuckled and responded with a tranquil nod. A few seats down, Zecora sat with her mane braided fancifully to honor the occasion. She listened intently as Bon Bon and Carrot Top discussed plans for another upcoming celebration. Towards the far end of the table, where all was quiet and still, Ambrosia and Morning Dew sat. They stared intently at the dancing couple, their eyes soft and peaceful. Leaning against each other, the two joined hooves and shared a singular, warm breath.
The latest string of instrumentals ended. As the band at the far end of the reception paused, the entire town hall broke into applause. The Mayor stood up and said a few words to the gathered guests, motioning towards the floor. At her insistence, several ponies stood up from their tables and flocked towards the center of the reception in pairs. The music resumed, and the dance continued. This time, however, the newlyweds weren't alone. Ambrosia and Morning Dew slow danced a few paces away from them. Thunderlane and Blossomforth shared a warm embrace as their hooves shuffled across the floor.
Cheerilee was still chatting with Derpy and Milky White when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw nothing but Big Mac. Upon receiving a silent invitation, she fidgeted and blushed until the other two mares practically shoved her into the stallion. Smiling nervously, Cheerilee shared the floor with Big Macintosh while Applejack trotted over to Derpy and Milky White, sharing whole-hearted chuckles. Pinkie Pie, beside herself with the euphoria of the moment, glanced every which way before settling for Rainbow Dash. The pegasus actually yelped in surprise as she was hoisted out onto the floor, forced to do the pony-pokey while that half of the town hall chuckled with merriment. She groaned and endured the moment for Pinkie's giggling sake.
It was around this time that Spike waddled past the refreshment table with a glass of punch in each hand. He gave Pinkie Pie one glance, Rainbow Dash two, and then looked ahead. "Yeesh. Now that I think about it, Ponyville could use a heck of a lot more stallions. It'd make dancing less awkward, don't you think?"
"Oh please, Spike." Twilight Sparkle's voice accompanied her lavender telekinesis as it lifted a glass out of his clawed grasp. She took a gentle sip, staring contentedly at the communal event. Her smile was as soft as her breaths, gentle and happy as she waded in the melodic waves that serenaded the pleasant evening. "Don't ruin the moment. Things haven't been this calm in a while."
"Calm?" Spike made a face, twitching in his top hat and whelpling-sized tuxedo. He downed his punch with a single gulp, suppressed a burning belch, and muttered, "This is the craziest, most rushed, last second wedding I've ever been to!"
"Spike, it's the only wedding you've ever been to!"
"Nuh uh!" He pointed with a smirk. "What about Mr. and Mrs. Fuzzhead?"
"Fluttershy's pet otters don't count."
"Yeah, well..." Spike gazed down at his squirming toes. "I liked the party afterwards better than tonight's."
"Don't be silly! This night is very, very special."
"For them, sure..."
"For all of us, Spike!" Twilight turned to smile once more upon the couple in the center of the dance floor, surrounded by fellow ponies. "Just three weeks ago, the world almost came to an end. Discord's return caught everypony by surprise, including the Princesses. We were just seconds away from losing all hope and suffering endless chaos..."
"But then you and the Elements of Harmony saved the day, yadda yadda yadda..." Spike shrugged. "Heard it before, Twilight. I know the deal."
"Do you?" Twilight glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "What happened on the Day of Discord corrupted everypony, Spike. Every living thing in Equestria saw their lives flash before their eyes. Personally, I don't blame Caramel and Wind Whistler for deciding to marry sooner rather than later! If recent events have taught us anything, it's that life is precious!"
"Yeah, well, Applejack says that things aren't gonna be easy for her cousin," Spike said. "I overheard her and Granny Smith talking about having to let the two 'share-crack' with them."
"It's 'share-crop,' Spike," Twilight corrected. "And there's nothing wrong with letting the two move into Sweet Apple Acres! That's what family's for, after all. When I was really young, my father and mother lent money to Moondancer's mother Satine to help get her through tough times."
"But Moondancer was your friend, not family!"
"You're missing the point!" Twilight gazed again at the center of the reception. "There's a beauty in harmony, something that goes beyond friendship and family and neighbors and community. It's taken months and months of writing to the Princess, but I think I'm finally starting to figure it out."
"Figure what out?"
"That harmony doesn't make itself. Peace doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It takes ponies like us to do brave and bold things to make harmony, well, harmonious!" She chuckled slightly, but her eyes were starting to water. "It's just so simple, Spike. I wished I realized it long ago, but I guess that would make this moment less special. How many years did I spend locked up in my room, thinking that all I was or all I ever could be would happen through books?"
"Enough years to write your own book about living through books?"
"Yeah, well..." She sniffled and put on a brave smile. "Every day, I'm learning newer and more amazing truths. Someday, I hope to be just like Wind Whistler and Caramel."
"You mean you wanna get hitched?"
"Heh... I don't know about that," Twilight said in a humored voice, then breathed more evenly. "What I mean is, I hope to be in a place where I'll know what I need to do and just seize the opportunity without being afraid of where I am in life, because I'll be making that life for myself then and there."
"I dunno, Twilight," Spike said with a shrug, suddenly looking over her shoulder. "I think you have your life 'made' enough as it is."
"Heh, perhaps, but nopony can know for certain what is or isn't missing until the holes show up," Twilight said. A very cold hoof tapped on her back. She literally jumped. Spinning around, she froze in place, her eyes squinting. "Uhhh... Yes? Did you need something, Miss...?"
I stood there, shivering. My gray hoodie was like a homeless mare's funeral shroud in the middle of so many splendid dresses and suits. My mane hung loosely over my neck with frayed ends as I stared at her--eyes jittery and lips quivering while I fought to speak past my own panting breath.
"I know you," I stammered.
Twilight Sparkle bit her lip. Spike nervously shifted from one foot to another, his eyes darting between us.
"Ma'am...?" Twilight remarked.
"I... know you," I said, my eyes searching over her, through her, beyond her. I gulped dryly and ran a hoof through my disheveled hair. "The tone in your voice, the pitch, like... like a child, always discovering, always concerned, always innocent." I gritted my teeth as a wave of cold doused me with invisible snow. The room was spinning and this unicorn was my anchor. "You want something more than anything. I want it too. It's what all ponies want, but not all ponies can say it. Someone... yes... I think someone was sobbing." I shuddered and gazed up at the confusing starlight. "Books. Books and so much dust, yes... I think we've both been there, and every time I try to remember it, I feel like collapsing..."
Twilight took a step or two back, her face stuck in a grimace of confusion.
Spike was already looking towards where the Mayor stood. A pair of strong security stallions flanked her side, talking to one another while standing at attention.
Twilight's hoof rested on the whelpling's shoulder before he could take one step away. She grabbed my attention as she leaned over and said, "Just calm down, miss. I think... I think you might be lost..."
I gazed at her. I felt my heart beating. When I spoke, it was like a star was burning out somewhere in my peripheral vision. "Yes. Yes, that's it. Lost."
"Is there any way I can help you?"
I felt a weight in my saddlebag just then. It almost matched the lump in my throat. "There's... there's a melody," I stammered, trying my best not to hyperventilate. I was on the crest of something sharp and steep, and I was so terribly afraid to peer over. Nevertheless, I took the plunge. "I know some of it, but there are several bars missing." Without looking, I opened the saddlebag and lifted something out. I looked at it and was only half-surprised to see a tiny golden instrument with tinier platinum strings. "I feel like I should know all of it." I took a deep breath, my brow furrowing. "I need to know all of it."
"Twilight..." Spike inched over and tugged on the unicorn's shoulder. "This lady's starting to creep me out..."
"Shh!" Twilight hissed at him, her eyes remaining locked on me. She bravely said, "Ma'am, I'm no musician. I think you need help from another pony. If you follow me, I can show you to Ponyville Hospital--"
"No!" I barked, causing a few heads to turn my way. At the sight of Spike jolting, I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and leaned forward. "I need to know this melody. Everything will make sense then. I don't know how or why, but I just need to know it... as you know it!"
"But I said I'm no--"
"You're the only pony who can help me!"
Twilight bit her lip. Ultimately, she nodded and gestured towards me. "Very well, ma'am. Play me what you know, and I'll see what I can do."
I gazed at her. Sitting down, I closed my eyes and concentrated. My face was tense as I plucked the first string, then the second, then the third. In slow procession, I telekinetically strummed all the notes that I knew, filling the air with a calm but solemn song, just as broken and fractured as I. When it was finished, I opened my bloodshot eyes, gazing steadily at her.
"It's... It's familiar," she remarked in a muttering tone. "Like... Like something from the Royal Archives--"
"Do you know the rest?!"
"Well, I've only heard it a few times, so my memory is rusty--"
"Hum it!" I exclaimed hoarsely.
She blinked, then nodded. "Very well. Uhm... Here goes." Taking an extraordinairly large breath, she did as I asked, hitting each note with as much grace as a scholar might dance her way around a flower garden. The sounds coming from her were fragmented and short, but it was nonetheless beautiful, for they came from a sincere heart. When the humming was done, and the semblance of a melody was played out to the air of the town hall, she looked towards me with a nervous smile. "Uhm... Does that help you any? I swear, I haven't heard that since I was first taken under Celestia's wing--"
I cut her off by strumming my lyre with vigor. The melody repeated, slowly yet with firm resonance. I felt my breaths rising as if I was soaring into a deep, deep canyon. Then, as the song played itself out under my magical rendition, an incalculably bright light burst from the abyss. I knew the song was "Twilight's Requiem" only because I had the capacity to recognize it once again. I felt my body catching fire, only to sense my hooves teetering dizzily on the town hall floor beneath the burning miasma. The colors in the room took shape, stabbing my eyes, producing tears out the other side. With a deep gasp, I spun about and gaped at everypony.
Scootaloo was trotting up to share a hug with Milky White. Rumble was dancing with Sweetie Belle. Pinkie Pie giggled and bounced merry circles around a deathly bored Rainbow Dash. Applejack was laughing over a joke with Bon Bon and Derpy. Rarity and Fluttershy were closely admiring Zecora's exotic gown. Caramel and Wind Whistler shared a kiss in the middle of the warmth and music while Ambrosia and Morning Dew nuzzled and spoke sweet nothings into each other's ears.
A loud clatter filled my ears as my lyre fell to the floor. I collapsed onto my haunches, covering my mouth with a pair of hooves. I couldn't see the reception anymore; everything was fog and agony. The first sob came out of me like a gunshot, the second like the felling of a whole forest. I buried my face into my quivering forelimbs.
Through it all, I felt Twilight's hooves grasping me, embracing me. "Dear heavens! Ma'am, what's wrong?" she exclaimed, her voice so close and yet so far away. The simple fact that her gorgeous tonality now had a name to it was enough to make the sobs redouble. "What's the matter? I don't understand! Why are you so upset?"
I choked, hiccuped, and hissed to find an even breath. I blinked, and the world once again took hideous shape, bearing all the blissfully concrete signs that I was still alive. I fell into her embrace, wincing over her shoulder as a foalish voice squeaked out of me.
"He w-was right," I whimpered. "He was right. He was right. He was r-right. I wish--" I sharply inhaled and stared up at the accursed, cold gaps between the stars. "I wish that I could be turned to stone..."
"Huh?!" Twilight's face--of what I could see--was locked into a wretched grimace. The pity in her eyes was more painful than any wave of frost paralyzing me at that moment. "Who was right? I don't get it..."
"Please. Tell me." I gripped Twilight by the shoulders and stared at her, my eyes brimming with tears. "What day is it?"
"Huh?"
"What day?!" I ignored the dancing, the music, the laughter, all of the joys of the ceremony. "I have to know!"
"It's... It's October the Twenty-Ninth!" Twilight said, her lip quivering. "Don't you know that?"
I gasped sharply, holding a hoof over my mouth. "Blessed Celestia," I stammered. "The month is almost over. I could have sworn... I thought..."
"Ma'am, I think you need to see Nurse Redheart--"
"No..." I clenched my teeth and shook my head as the tears flowed even more. Seething, I uttered, "No, no, no, no... She can't help me. You can't help me. Nopony can help me. Even the Princesses..." I gasped again. "Oh heavens! Celestia, Luna; I must find them. I must speak to them. They're a piece of her, a part of Aria, the forsaken twilight..."
Twilight's face paled. She looked at Spike. Spike merely shrugged.
"Can the Requiem work with them too?" I thought aloud, my body on the verge of hyperventilating. "Can it salvage them like it did Discord? Their power extends beyond the Firmaments. It could work. It has to work..."
"Discord?" Twilight remarked. Her face took on a soft expression, "Oh dear. Where were you when he returned, miss? I..." She raised a hoof to my shoulder. "I can understand if you still haven't recovered--"
"Recovered?!" I grasped her hoof tightly, looking deep into her eyes through panicked tears. "Nothing is recovered! All is buried! All is dead!" My face broke and I stumbled through more sobs. "Except me..." I breathed sharply. "There's n-nothing worse, Twilight, than being the only living thing to remember."
"Remember what?"
I gulped and breathlessly uttered, "Everything."
"I'm... I'm so confused. What do you mean--?"
"You were Celestia," I murmured in a briefly steady breath. "Moondancer was Luna, and I was Starswirl. We spent our Canterlot days in laughter and music and doughnut sprinkles. Moondancer gave you a pink saddle for your cute-ceanera, and I bought you a book on griffon astrology. Your laughter was so joyful, like tiny bells ringing in the glitter of night. I was happy and proud to be the friend of a pony so gifted, so smart..." I added with a painful smile, "...and so very gentle."
Twilight gazed at me, her eyes soft and perplexed. "I... have a book on griffon astrology. But... But I can't seem to remember how I... how I..."
"I remember," I said. My face broke into another sob as I ran a hoof through my tangled hair. "For now. Just as I remember Aria." I gulped and whimpered, "Just as I remember him." I sniffled and clenched my eyes shut. "I remember him, and now it's just a matter of time until all of it is gone: both the pain and the peace. There are so many holes, Twilight, and I'm falling into every deep pit, losing parts of myself, being stripped of every layer like... like a tapestry ripped to tatters one thread at a time. Soon, I will be nothing but the melody itself, and the song still isn't strong enough to save me..."
"Save you?" Twilight remarked. "The song? But I thought it--"
"The Requiem has done all it will," I said, gently stroking her hoof in mine. I sniffled and smiled. "But you can do more."
"I can? Like what?"
"Listen to me," I said, my breath reaching a calm pitch as my sobs slowed down. "Somepony needs to hear this. Somepony needs to know what I know, even if that knowledge will be gone in the next gasp, the next whimper. I need to tell it, to share it, for all that was once whole is withering away and it's all I have left to give."
She nodded slowly, gazing at me with mixed sympathy and fear. "Alright," she said, gulping. "I'm listening."
My smile left me as I stared into the space beyond Twilight. "I first saw him walk into Ponyville thirteen days ago..."
His gray-streaked mane shone in the afternoon air. The stallion's amber coat matched the changing leaves of the season. Autumn collapsed around him, showering his figure like a celebratory parade as he marched down the steps of the train depot.
He wasn't alone; a mare--barely past her filly years--accompanied him. The earth pony had a blood-red mane and piercing blue eyes. Her face was locked in a permanent scowl, as if the last thing she ever wanted was to be there in Ponyville. She carried a camera around her neck, and was preoccupied with fidgeting over her loose saddlebag and staring at a watch affixed to her forelimb.
However, I payed the young mare no more than ten seconds of observation. It was the stallion I couldn't stop looking at: his haggard expression, his heavy jaw, his weathered muscles coiling and uncoiling beneath exhausted orange limbs. He carried a thick velvet bag full of blank canvases with him. He looked ready to draw a landscape, but was at a loss to find any sight joyful enough to warrant his brushstrokes.
The two were obviously from out of town. This wasn't so strange a thing; hundreds of ponies had been showing up daily at the train station that week. There was a pilgrimage of sorts taking place, and Ponyville had tripled in occupancy over the weekend. Still, I couldn't stop staring at these two in particular. As I watched them trot slowly across the village to find a hotel, I felt my heart beating heavily, threatening to burst through my chest. I wanted to scream, to sob, and to laugh all at once.
I couldn't do anything, for suddenly a feminine voice was chirping at me from behind. "Miss Heartstrings? Is there something wrong?"
I spun around and looked, blinking.
A mare stood before me, quite close, as if we were in deep conversation. Her indigo eyes narrowed behind a pair of bifocals as her green ascot fluttered in the fall breeze. "I'm sorry, was that the last question you had for me? You stopped mid-sentence."
"I..." I squinted awkwardly at her. My eyes traveled across her features: from her gray mane to her pale coat to her cutie mark of a scroll tied with a blue ribbon. "I... was... asking you a question?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Yes. I believe you were."
My jaw hung open. I stared at her blankly.
She brought a hoof to her mouth, cleared her throat, and smiled awkwardly. "You were wanting to ask something about Princess Celestia. Did... Did you wish to contribute to her monument in town?"
"Princess Celestia..." I murmured aloud, my breaths coming out in confused shudders.
"Did you wish to write a letter to the Royal Council? I fear the Princess is rather busy as of late. From what the Council has told Ponyville, her royal highness is currently busy making trips throughout Equestria to assess any leftover damage caused by Discord."
"Discord..." I gulped and stared at the village around me. Rustic buildings gleamed with golden-thatched roofs. Ponies were cantering about, embracing each other, sharing in joyful conversation and triumphant laughter. There was a treehouse in the center of the place, as well as a bright eatery with chimneys shaped like cupcakes. "Princess Aria..."
"Aria?" The mare made a face. "Are... Are you sure you're all right, Miss Heartstrings?" she said. "Do you feel ill? We have a very competent medical center just a few blocks down--"
"The princesses..." I muttered, reeling with a sudden dizziness. "Why would I want to see them?"
Her brow furrowed. "That's what I was hoping you would tell me. I figured you wanted to perform a special tune to honor the triumph of harmony over Discord. You are a musician, are you not?"
"I..." I glanced down at myself. I was wearing a stone gray hoodie. A saddlebag hung on my back. There was something heavy and metal inside. I felt the strings through the leylines of my horn. "I... need to play music..." I was speaking, and yet there was no substance or passion or meaning. The longer I lingered, the more my mind hovered around the two strangers, the lethargic stallion, his gray-streaked mane...
A half-minute passed. Eventually, the mare's sigh broke the silence.
"Well, if you feel any better, you're welcome to track me down again. Though, I fear that I may be terribly busy for the rest of the day," she said, adjusting the collar of her ascot and gazing towards a tall, cylindrical building in the center of town. "We're almost done setting up the celebratory welcome party."
"Welcome... party...?"
"Why, for the Elements of Harmony, of course!" She beamed. "They're returning from the Canterlot Palace tomorrow night! Ponies from all over Equestria have flocked here to join in the triumphant festival! I figured that's how you arrived to our provincial town!" She briefly rubbed a hoof over her aching head. "Nnngh.. And then there's the communal photo shoot to prepare for, not to mention a wedding, then Nightmare Night. Good heavens! This year's Nightmare Night! I swear, my mane isn't gray enough..."
I gasped sharply. My face spun towards the center of town. I envisioned a dark alicorn with a midnight coat and a silver helm. Stars appeared from beyond, all laced with sobs and shadows. I realized how terribly cold I was, and my teeth began to chatter.
"I don't even want to begin thinking about the setup for Hearth's Warming this year! Especially after the Day of Discord, the celebration is going to bring the roof down!" She turned towards me. "So if you'll excuse me--" She blinked awkwardly. "...Miss?"
I was already galloping away. My breath came out in panicked little spurts. The stores and hotels blurred past me in the frigid air. Every time my eyes blinked, I saw the stallion and the red maned filly. I reached beyond that--whimpering--and tugged at a melody, a song that had been haunting me from the inside out. I couldn't think, couldn't rest. I had to get to the north of town. I didn't know why, but I had to rush there as swiftly as I could.
Ponies waved and greeted me as I burned by. They all melted into a pastel-colored blur, a sea of strangers and sounds and confusion. The world was growing colder. I waded through the madness, flailing, drowning. I looked ahead for something--anything that was familiar. Through the bare vestibules of my mind, I found it. It stabbed me like a splinter to the brain: a tiny log cabin in a crook of the forested path. I flew into it. The door gave way without any incident, and I was suddenly inside some strange house with dozens of instruments and some furry thing padding up to rub its tail against my leg.
I shut the door and stumbled past the creature. I sat on the edge of the bed, hugged the lyre to my chest with shivering forelimbs, and reached deep into the magical leylines of my mind. I did not think of fear; I did not think of pain. My mind focused all its remaining energy on the song, and the song took shape between the walls of the tiny abode. I plucked the strings like a camper would start a fire. It took a few minutes, but the Requiem was reborn, and the cold split apart to make room for the flooding waves of memories.
I winced. My face actually stretched from the unavoidable grimace of weathering so many truths all at once. I fell back on the cot and curled up, biting my lip to hold the sputtering sobs in. I was in Ponyville. I had been in Ponyville for over a year. Discord had risen. I challenged him to a duel of wits. I won and lost, all at once, and the Elements of Harmony fatefully swooped by to finish him off. Now, days later, my mind was leaving me, and the only solution was to play the same song that gave Alabaster focus, that stripped the world of Princess Aria's illusion, and that humbled the lord of chaos into sparing the world.
When the melody faded and the malleable substance of my soul once again floated towards the surface, it was instantly scarred, ripped into porous holes: each of them shaped like the stallion with his gray-streaked hair. I hissed as if giving birth, allowing the image to rip through me. I thought I had no tears left. I thought that this blasted cold had paralyzed every nerve left in my body. I was wrong. All the song did was return me to the realm of knowing, and I couldn't have felt more naked and vulnerable.
Eventually, my sorrowful convulsions stopped. I gasped as if coming up from a deep, tempestuous dive. My eyes darted about the room, the lonely and all-too-familiar shadows of the place. There were so many musical instruments on the wall, so many mementos of a long year of introspection and discovery, so many details that I was too afraid to review or else I might discover that "Twilight's Requiem" had not salvaged all that had been lost... again...
"It's happening faster," I murmured. When I felt a tiny body hopping onto the bed, I realized who I was talking to. Al walked up to me, meowed, and rubbed his whiskery cheek against my face. I reached a trembling hoof up from the lyre and petted him softly. "I was gone for... for..." I glanced out the brightly-lit window. "Four hours? Five? I swear, it was morning when I left." Another tremble soared through my limbs. I shuddered and hugged the lyre again. "I thought I could just go to town to talk to the Mayor, but then... I got lost, didn't I? I walked into Ponyville, and I couldn't... I couldn't..."
My eyes twitched, for in another blink I had seen that damnable image yet again: a stallion and a young mare trotting down the steps of the Ponyville train depot, the sun glinting off their dull and bright coats. They didn't look at me, or at least I didn't see them glance my way. Perhaps that was why I ran?
"The Mayor..." I thought aloud, perhaps in an effort to distract myself. Al stepped to a cushiony spot beside me, twirled around once, and plopped down into a fuzzy little ball, licking himself. I looked at him as I murmured, "She told me that Celestia was busy as of late. Maybe she just hasn't checked all of her memos. The Mayor's had so much on her plate. Everypony has. I've never seen so many ponies in town like this before and... and..."
I gasped. The room was growing colder. I felt a chill flowing down from my horn to my tail. In my panic, a green light emanated through my leylines, and I heard the notes of the Requiem being played from the lyre in my grasp.
"It's getting worse, Al," I said, suppressing a sob beneath the haunting music. "I keep having to play it to remember... to remember..." I shuddered. "Anything."
He turned to look tiredly at me. A low pur resonated.
I leaned over and nuzzled him, forcing the tears away. "I can't go into town without playing it anymore. I don't care if it looks silly for me to be playing the lyre in any random place. I'll invent excuses. I'll just grin and bear it. I need to have access to 'Twilight's Requiem' at any given moment, or so help me Celestia..."
The cabin fell gravely silent.
I repeated, this time in a foalish tone. "So help me, Celestia. What can either of Princess Aria's sisters do?" I stood up, and on numb limbs I stumbled to the fireplace. "Before Discord banished me from his presence, he said that in order to send me to Aria he would have to 'hijack the song' that joined her to her sisters. What do you suppose he meant by that?" I lifted a few logs into place and lit them. A crackling warmth was born in the center of the room. "The 'Nocturne of the Firmaments' separates Aria from the mortal realm. And yet, could she still have a connection to her siblings, in spite of that block?"
Slowly, I shuffled across the cabin to where a bag of cat food was lying. With gentle magic, I refilled Al's eating dish. Instantly, the feline hopped off the bed and waited patiently beside the rattling container.
"The Nocturne is a smaller, more recent piece of the Cosmic Matriarch's song," I said out loud as I finished with my task. I placed the bag down and stared into space. "It's older than the Elements of Harmony, and more powerful." My brow furrowed as I began pacing across the cabin. "But it's also younger than Celestia and most of Creation. The essence of the alicorn daughters is an older song than the Nocturne. Even though the Nocturne keeps the alicorns from knowing about Aria, it doesn't sever their connection. The song still keeps the sisters attached, and there must be a way to traverse that junction and reach Aria within her throne room of the unsung realm. But, if that's true, then how come I haven't gotten it to work with Celestia before? I know I met her once, but the parasprites happened. Nnngh... What actually took place on that day? I just wish... I just wish I could remember what I want to remember..."
I froze in place, for the room had become darker. I looked out the window. A breath escaped my lips.
There was nothing but starlight.
My ears flicked. I spun about and looked into the fireplace. The logs had burned out; all was ash and fading embers.
I heard a meowing sound. I glanced at the bed and Al was looking up at me curiously, standing tall and at attention. I didn't want to, but I looked at his food dish on the floor. It was utterly empty.
I started to hyperventilate. Rather than collapse on my knees, I crawled over to the bed and held Al close. He rested contentedly in my forelimbs, purring with pure innocence as I nuzzled him closely and fought the shivers away. The silence outside the cabin was deafening, bringing with it the stinging memories of a stallion sporting a gray-streaked mane. I fought them away too.
"I can't do this, Alabaster. I can't stand to lose my m-mind. It's the b-best tool I've ever had. It's the only thing that can k-keep me afloat." I sniffled and clenched my moist eyes shut as I whispered to the collapsing shadows. "If I had known what happened to you would strike m-me so quickly, I would have pr-prepared for it. I would have studied harder. I would have figured out the symphony s-sooner. I... I..."
I felt a tickling array of whiskers against my tear-stained face, followed by a gentle trilling noise.
I calmed slightly, surrendering to exhaustion. I had been to the unsung realm. I had endured the torture of a chaotic draconequus. I had come too far to fade away that easily. Alabaster hadn't let a thousand years of imprisonment shatter him; why should I allow less than two years of battling this curse defeat me?
"I have to speak with the Mayor again," I murmured past Al's flicking ears. "I have to find out when the Princesses are visiting Ponyville next. I don't care what blows up this time. If there's a catastrophe, I will fix it. If a part of the song breaks, I will piece it together. I must see Aria, and the only way at this point is if another piece of the Matriarch's music sends me to her."
I gently kissed Al on the forehead and surrendered to the folds of my blanket. I closed my eyes and hummed the Requiem, interjecting desperate lyrics in between the notes as the remaining strength of my breath wavered thinly.
"I will remember everything in the morning. I will remember my name, my friends, and my quest. I will remember. I will remember."
The stars faded. The forest collapsed. The shadows swallowed the universe in its entirety.
"I will remember... I will remember... I will..."
A lonely, confused pony looked at me. My forehead tensed, and I saw her squinting. A breath escaped my lips, and I saw her mouth twitching. When I leaned my head to the side, she gave me a quizzical look.
For some reason, my heart began beating swiftly. I heard lyrics repeating in my head. I thought of a melody stuck in the back of my mind. Insinctually, I reached into my saddlebag and produced an ordinary lyre. The pony gazed at me strangely. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. I realized what I had to do. With professional grace, I performed the melody that was straying from the corners of my brain.
"Twilight's Requiem" materialized in the autumn winds. I glanced ahead to see a frightened expression on the pony's face. Suddenly, her eyes flickered to a bright amber. Her horn shimmered with mint-green energy as a cyan mane billowed behind her twitching neck. I stumbled back from the storefront window, desperate to catch my breath. I jerked my body and glanced around.
It was morning, or maybe afternoon. The sun was directly overhead; east and west were still foggy concepts. Ponyville materialized around me, complete with sounds and shapes and lights and laughter. I couldn't think of a more cheerful place to be my hell. Then again, I just couldn't think.
I was out in public to go somewhere--no--to meet somepony. The cylindrical shape of Town Hall formed in my mind, like a goal. I thought of indigo eyes, a gray mane, a green ascot.
"The Mayor..." I spoke aloud, gulping hard. I glanced at the flowers beneath the windowsill. I saw tulips and thought of ocean blue eyes. A knot formed in my stomach as I jerked my head aside. I saw roses and thought of red irises floating inside chaotic yellow circles. My body froze within itself, sending shivers through my spine. I ran a hoof over my face and took several breaths as the memories took bitter root. "Celestia and Luna..." I seethed and turned from the storefront altogether. "I must find out if they're coming to Ponyville soon. Must speak to them. I know more of the Nocturne now. Things will be different. They have to be different..."
In between breaths, a stallion with a gray-streaked mane descended the steps of a train depot. In a blink, he was gone, and I had to trot forward just to keep from stumbling.
I stumbled through town like a frozen phantom. The sun shimmered brightly overhead, and yet every inch of me was freezing. I tugged at the sleeves of my hoodie to give me more insulation. Did I always live with this? How could I have kept sane over fifteen months of such madness?
I heard sounds to my left and right. I glanced up to see Thunderlane chatting it up with a bunch of pegasi. On the other side, three fillies and a colt were riding across town on a red wagon. A mailmare flew overhead, and my ears twitched from the haunting resonance of flute music in my mind. I tried to burst past such fractured thoughts, but could only hear the shouting voices of Twilight Sparkle and Moondancer across a tiny eatery. My heart skipped a beat, because I had a two-by-four levitating above Straight Edge's body. Somewhere, a mare was sobbing.
My breath hissed through my teeth. My trot slowed even further as I clenched my eyes shut, took several deep breaths, and limped forward. My eyes traced the blades of grass below as I murmured in a low tone to myself, "My name is Lyra Heartstrings. I was born in Canterlot. I went to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, studying history and music theory..."
A zebra trotted past me, waving and engaging in a cheerful conversation with an earth pony in a hard hat. Their names were on the tip of my tongue. I sliced them off the fringes of my mind and trotted towards my goal.
"My n-name is Lyra Hearstrings. I was b-born in... in Canterlot. I went to Celestia's... to Celestia's..."
Several clumps of dark clouds swarmed overhead. I squinted up in the daylight to see a winged mare with a rainbow colored mane hair leading a pack of weather fliers. There was a series of bright chirping sounds to my left. I glanced over to see a yellow pegasus conducting a choir of songbirds. Was there some special event taking place? Was this how these ponies lived their every passing day? Did... Did I know this? Did I celebrate it with them? Were any of these equines my friends, my family, my lovers?
I had one place to go, one pony to speak to. I just needed to get to Town Hall. I just needed to talk to the Mayor. The Requiem could wait until then. I was afraid of playing the forsaken music until the magic was stretched too thin. There was a unicorn who suffered worse than me for experimenting too much. What was his name? Did I ever meet him? Did he ever find his... his... his special thing that he had lost, that he had forgotten, that had forgotten... had forgotten...
"My name is... is Lyra Heartstrings," I stammered. "I... I was born..." I wheezed for breath, the air around me filling with translucent vapors. "I was... born..."
I heard a giggling voice beside me. I glanced over. A pink earth pony was bouncing alongside an elegant mare who was boasting airily about some fabulous wedding gown she was working on. Beside them, several bags full of ivory colored silk and frills hovered as the mares made for an elaborate building constructed to resemble a gem-encrusted carousel.
I froze in place. The temptation was too great, the fear even greater. I lifted the lyre out of my saddlebag. For the briefest of moments I panicked, horrified that I may not remember how to play. With a calm breath, I relaxed and allowed myself to function by base instinct alone. I heard a tune lifting into the air, becoming more and more familiar with each passing chord.
When it finished, and the weight of reality came crashing into my skull through an aching horn, I shuddered as if slammed in the face by a pie pan. My eyelids shut, and I saw Pinkie Pie galloping circles around Sugarcube Corner, a toothless alligator biting tightly to her fluffy tail. She baked doughnuts and spun them on the end of her nose, pretending to be a circus performer. She was such a child, such a buffoon, such a joy.
When my eyes opened, I could barely see, for my face had contorted too heavily from uproarious laughter. I dropped the lyre and clutched myself, doubling over in cackles and chortles. In the pitch of my voice, I heard Pinkie Pie laughing, singing, celebrating life. There was such a fantastic art to her dance, and then the industry crushed it in a single wave of cold.
I gasped, my eyelids twitching from the sudden shadows collecting in the far corner of Rarity's boutique. She had rows upon rows of dresses, and nopony was wearing them because nopony cared. All of her life she fought so hard to get noticed, to become famous, to contribute her two bits to the collective consciousness of a fickle culture. Her entire career had amounted to a tiny pebble splashing in a grand ocean of artistic indifference, and it tore her up inside. And yet, every day, she hid her frustrations beneath a façade of eloquence as well as the selfless pursuit of generosity. It was so inspiring, and yet so sad. She never cried, and so I cried for her.
I wept just as quickly as I had laughed, collapsing in the middle of the street and covering my clenched eyelids with shivering hooves. Rarity fought a constant, uphill battle, and yet she wasn't the only one. Rainbow Dash was deathly afraid of being alone. Twilight Sparkle worked hard every day to not be forgotten. One stream of thoughts led to another, and soon everything was flooding, flowing through me, fountaining in my eyes: Morning Dew's failed career as a guardpony, Caramel's financial woes, Scootaloo's poor, precious wings.
Through it all, silent as a grim steward, Discord sat in stone, guarding an untold song of mourning to a love that would never die. Was he a coward, or was he a genius? Why did he send me away? If he knew that it was going to be this bad, this painful, why didn't he take me with him? What do I have left to do here? What do I have to salvage? What--
"Scarlet, I wish you would eat something," a deep voice said from a few paces behind me, freezing me to my core.
"How can I eat?" a feminine breath replied. "My stomach's full of butterflies as it is. Doesn't this town freak you out? What with all the magic hijinks and tomfoolery?"
"I would think you'd be used to them, Scarlet. Heh... considering this is your home town."
"Correction, it was my hometown. Just because I was foaled here doesn't mean I owe it any more than a passing glance. Nnngh... I really wish that I didn't have to come here..."
Shivering, I looked behind me. I immediately jerked aside and hid my body behind the wooden post of a restaurant's front veranda. Just a whisper's distance from me, the red-maned mare and the aged stallion were seated at a table, engaged in a passive conversation. The mare was fiddling with a camera in her young hooves. The old pony was putting the finishing touches on a landscape portrait of Ponyville.
"You could have told the Enquirer that you wished to cover Stalliongrad's recovery instead," I heard the stallion's voice exclaim. "From what I understand, there're plenty of sights to take photographs of in that city. The ponies there took a huge blow; what, with Discord turning their giant wall into a huge block of cheese."
"Yes, but then I would been visiting the city alone."
"Is something wrong with that?"
"You know I enjoy traveling exclusively with you!" the young mare exclaimed.
"Heh heh... That must obviously be the case, since you chose to come here with me after all."
"Just... why did you take up this assignment in Ponyville?"
"Let's just say I thought a trip to the country would do me good, and you too."
"Hmmph. You're crazy, old stallion." With a shuffling of her chair legs, the young mare got up. "While I'm here, I might as well go visit family."
"I do hope we are talking about the living..."
"You know me too well. You should also know not to press my buttons..."
"Scarlet," he said in a low, sympathetic tone. "I do very much enjoy our travels; I would enjoy them a great deal more if I knew my good friend was at peace with herself."
"Peace is boring. I'm a photographer, remember?"
"Life is built on simpler excuses, and many of them just as painful."
"Ugh. Could you paint more and talk less?"
"Guilty as charged, I suppose."
"Whatever. You know where to meet me later."
"Absolutely. Goddess-speed."
By this point, I had made a desperate attempt to shuffle away from the scene without attracting attention. I was almost successful, and the voices of the two ponies had become like the faint rustling of leaves. However, just as I prepared to gallop into the street, a huge bulky wagon full of rattling cooking utensils rolled right before me. With a gasp, I fell back, collapsing with a hard thump in the middle of the road. I dropped my lyre, and my ears echoed with the resounding vibrations of the upset strings. Just as the shivers of my curse rebounded...
"Ma'am? Are you okay?"
I opened my eyes, glancing up to see a young mare leaning down to look at me. She had deep indigo eyes, a fair coat, and a blood-red mane.
I must have been convulsing, for the mare gasped. "Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you! That is to say..." She smiled awkwardly. "You look like you've just seen a ghost." She glanced at my disheveled mane and wrinkled hoodie. "Is everything okay? Did... Did you wish to talk about it?"
I stood up and telekinetically lifted my lyre from the ground. I gave it a few shakes to toss loose the dirt and grass blades sticking to its surface. All the while, I sniffled, trying to even my breaths and compose my jittery nerves.
"My name is Lyra Heartstrings," I said without thinking. I glanced at the restaurant veranda through my peripheral vision. The stallion was gone; I breathed easier. "Er, I mean, I'm fine. I just... I just have a lot on my mind..."
"I would guess as much," she said with a gentle tone in her voice. A camera hung from her neck, and the shadows under her eyes suggested that she hadn't been getting much sleep lately. Undoubtedly this pony was a very busy mare, and yet she had taken such a bizarre moment in time to speak to me, a perfect stranger... a perfectly nervous basket case of a stranger. "My name is Scarlet Breeze," she said. "I was born here."
I cleared my throat and stood up straight, attempting to look surprised by that confession. "Were you?"
"Yeah. And if there's anything I remember about Ponyville"--she said in a bittersweet tone as her face took on a dry smile--"it's that ponies here are always tranquil all of the time. So, you kind of struck a weird chord. Heh, if you don't mind the pun."
"I... don't mind," I said softly, gazing at the ground between us. I had most of my wits collected, and she had calmed me enough that I didn't fear forgetting about the Mayor anytime soon. "You have to be careful with memories, though. They're not always happy."
To that, she nodded somberly. "Don't I know it." Her eyes narrowed. "Would you... like to talk about some of yours?"
I chuckled bitterly, then smiled at her for politeness' sake. "No. I mean, thanks... but it wouldn't make a difference. I'm pleased by your generosity. Are..." I thought of the train depot, of the scowl that had been on her face when she first arrived in town. "Are you visiting for nostalgia's sake?"
"Visiting?" She raised an eyebrow. "Hmmm... No, this is all strictly business."
"Business?"
She motioned towards the camera hanging around her neck. "The Fillydelphia Enquirer wants me to make a collage of photos documenting the 'rustic aesthetics' of the town where Discord was defeated. Heh... You should see what it's like in the big cities right now. Everypony is flipping their gaskets over the end of the world having been averted at the last second. A wave of 'miracle fever' is swarming across Equestria. There's been a total media frenzy."
"I... I had no idea," I said, my eyes lingering on the distant sight of Town Hall. "I don't exactly get out much."
"No crime in that," she said. "So long as you're content."
"Right..."
She gave me another worrisome gaze. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about what's bothering you Miss... Heartstrings, was it?"
I looked at her. She seemed to be a decent pony, albeit a potentially complex one. I saw layers of pain and lethargy etched into her face. She was far too young--I felt--to have dealt with so many convoluted emotions. In another life, I would very easily have made friends with her in an instant, just as I would with Rarity and Pinkie Pie... just as I wish I still could with Twilight.
"I-I'm feeling better now, thank you." I gave her a sweet smile. "Sometimes, what a pony needs the most is to see the world still standing tall and healthy around her."
"Well, we can always afford that outlook now, can't we?" Scarlet remarked. "I mean, now that Discord's gone. Heheh."
I almost responded to that, but I looked to the center of town and recalled something that I had blissfully forgotten. Discord had sat on his throne, being bombarded by the Elements of Harmony. As the prismatic beams enveloped him, I could only think of one pony responsible for putting him there in the first place. As he turned to stone, there were screams, and they did not all belong to him.
"Well, I need to be off," Scarlet said. "I'm in town for another week. If you wish to talk about something or get stuff off your chest, just look for the burning red hair," she said with a girlish chuckle. "Remember, the name's 'Scarlet Breeze.'"
"I will... try to remember," I murmured. Looking up, I saw her trotting past me towards the desolate edge of Ponyville. "Where are you headed to?"
"The cemetery," she responded in a swift, cold tone.
I blinked. "Ponyville's letting you take photos there? What for?"
She chuckled dryly, and gave me the thinnest of smiles before trotting off. "Oh no. This? This is hardly business..."
And she was gone.
With a swivel of my legs, I trotted towards my destination. I hummed a tune under my breath and enveloped myself in the melody like a comfort blanket until I was gone too.
The Requiem played for the tenth time that hour. I sat on a plush sofa, strumming the lyre with a mix of dexterous hooves and precise telekinesis. I faintly remember the song being a beautiful instrumental when I first discovered it, but that didn't last forever. The first thing "Twilight's Requiem" ever did for me was make me remember my trips to the unsung realm. The second thing it did was open my mind to the haunting madness of Alabaster's journals. It was a beautiful tune, and yet it would be the last thing I'd ever choose to listen to over and over again in a desperate attempt to salvage my mind.
Why had I suddenly become so dependant on that particular instrumental? I had lost memories before, memories that required the performance of the Requiem to rediscover. But they had always been pertinent to parasprites or my trips to the realm beyond the firmaments. Something had changed, had decayed overnight, had reduced my spirit to a tattered flag clinging to the Nocturne in a tempest of shifting realities.
Was it all because of Discord? Did performing the Requiem for the lord of chaos have a negative effect on me? I thought of Alabaster, of the madness that had swiftly consumed him. Perhaps this was something that was always bound to happen to me as well. Just as Aria's song had robbed all of reality from recognizing me, her curse was starting to spread into my soul and destroy my recollection of myself. Maybe my experience with Discord had simply accelerated something that was inevitable. Was that something he knew would happen? Did Discord try to warn me, or did he think that this dementia, this utter breakdown of comprehension, would somehow translate into freedom from turmoil?
I heard a throat clearing from across the room. I paused in performing "Twilight's Requiem" and looked across the way.
A secretary sat at a desk, her mane a bit frazzled as she struggled to give me a fake smile. I could see the annoyance clinging to the frayed edges of her expression. I realized that I was inside a luxurious receptionist office. A pair of oak-paneled doors stood on the far wall, flanked by photos of a gray-maned mare shaking hooves with dignitaries from all over Equestria.
"I'm..." I spoke aloud, awkwardly eying the corners of the spotless interior. "I'm in Town Hall, waiting to speak with the Mayor..."
The secretary nodded with a plastic grin. "That you are..." She resumed slapping her hooves over a large typewriter.
I blinked. "How long have I been here?"
She paused. She pivoted her head over and gave me an even faker smile, her eyes twitching. "About ten symphonies ago."
I blinked. I glanced at the lyre in my grasp and slid it into my saddlebag with a blushing expression. "I'm sorry. I just needed to... uh... relax..."
"Uh huh..."
"And I guess that must have been really annoying to you. Ahem. I'm sorry--"
Just then the doors swung open. Caramel and Wind Whistler were trotting backwards, bowing and curtsying before the Mayor with bright smiles.
"Thank you, ma'am!" Caramel exclaimed. "You have no idea what this means to us!"
"Oh, I think I can imagine!" the Mayor exclaimed, trotting after them while speaking in a singsong voice. "I was blessed to have a similar ceremony in this same building decades ago! My husband was so overwhelmed with joy, he nearly fainted! Good thing he slid the hooflet on me first." She winked and chuckled merrily. "Matriarch rest his soul..."
Wind Whistler hugged Caramel and smiled the elder pony's way. "Seriously, Mayor. We're absolutely honored to have this opportunity."
"You've had so much to deal with lately," Caramel said. "If we had known you'd take the time to lend us the meeting hall--"
"Hey! Ponyville stands in one piece!" the Mayor exclaimed, resting a hoof on each of the young ponies' shoulders. "Equestria is under the glory of harmony, not the chaos lord's shroud! This is a time of rapture and jubilation! I'm more than happy to let you celebrate your wedding under this roof! Consider it one of several declarations of life in this new and exciting age we have to live." She winked. "As well as your children!"
Caramel and Wind Whistler exchanged blinking, blushing glances. "Eh heh heh..." They bashfully toyed with the carpet and avoided her gaze. "One thing at a time, Mayor, ma'am..."
"Heheheh... I'm just teasing!"
Caramel glanced her way. "Unless, of course, you were going to lend us the lakehouse on the east side of town for the honeymoon?"
Wind Whistler batted him over the head with a hissing sound.
Caramel flinched. "Okay! Gotta go!" he waved and trotted out of the room with a giggling pegasus. "Wedding plans!"
"Try not to stress yourselves out too much!" the Mayor exclaimed, smiling and waving at them. Once they were gone, she exhaled slowly, her face locked in a soft grin. "Oh, how I do love second chances." She glanced at the receptionist. "Hello, Miss Amberwind. What's next on my itinerary?"
The receptionist pointed a bored hoof in my direction. "You've got a unicorn musician who'd like to have a quick word with you. A Miss..."
"Heartstrings," I stood up, gazing earnestly at the Mayor. "Lyra Heartstrings."
"Heartstrings! Such a beautiful name!" The Mayor reached forward and shook my hoof. Her eyes lit up as she said, "I thought I heard music earlier. Was that you, darling?"
"Erm... Yes." I winced. "I'm sorry. This is your office and all, and I didn't mean to--"
"Nonsense! I found it rather soothing." The Mayor winked and looked at her secretary. "What about you, Miss Amberwind?"
"You still have that meeting with Filthy Rich at four o'clock, Mayor."
"Oh dear..." The Mayor's face contorted in a grimace. Sweating, she smiled awkwardly my way. "Here's hoping I contract the pony pox by then." Brightening once more, she motioned for me to follow her into her office. "Come right in, Miss Heartstrings! My door's always open, so long as you're not asking for more land to slap down future Barnyard Bargain depots!"
"Erm... Right..." I shuffled weakly into her office. The place was luxuriously furnished, with wooden ornaments of historically famous earth ponies flanking tall antique bookcases. Her desk was a spacious work of art. I feared that I would have to raise my voice to speak across it. Sitting down in a plush chair, I hugged my saddlebag to my chest and gazed--shivering--into the tabletop. "This... this is a nice office."
"I inherited it like this; I swear." She sat down and instantly gave my quivering form a worried glance. "My my, you look freezing! Would you like a blanket?"
"It won't matter..."
"Huh?"
"I mean, thank you, but I... I have something of a condition," I said. "Uhm, it's not infectious or anything, but trust me when I say that I'm quite fine..."
"Ah, well, if you insist." The Mayor leaned back in her seat. "That explains the jacket, I suppose. So then, Miss Heartstrings, you're a musician?"
I slowly nodded.
"Do you perform locally?"
"I... guess you could say that."
"How fantastic!" She smiled and adjusted her bifocals. "I must hear you play sometime!" She rolled her eyes and chuckled. "Outside of my office, I mean. The acoustics here are horrible. I know; because I've yelled at several tax forms in this room before. Heh heh heh..."
"Eh heh..." I smiled nervously, my eyes travelling across her wide desk. I saw several pictures of the Mayor, each portrait growing progressively younger. One particular photograph--worn and faded--showed her with a pink mane as she posed next to a black-coated earth pony and a little redheaded foal. All three had become dull, smiling shadows, much like my thoughts. "I've somewhat hit a dry spell as of late..."
"Oh?"
"But.. But I'm wanting to make a comeback," I said, thinking aloud. "However, I'm not just planning just any normal venue. I was hoping to treat the greatest audience possible, which is what brings me here--"
"Do you write your own music?"
I blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Are you a writer as well as a songstress?" the Mayor asked, pointing daintily my way while smiling. "I've always admired the talent of ponies to produce melody out of thin air. Unicorns especially: your kind are always so good at your craft."
"Well, I've been... uhm... doing a lot of covers as of late," I said with a slight wince. "To put it lightly..."
"I used to dream of playing musical instruments when I was a young filly," the Mayor said. "Heavens, that was ages ago..." She slumped back in her seat and eyed the ceiling. "Funny how the things we used to dream of doing stay in the mind longer than memories of what we actually do. I suppose you're too young to relate..."
"Oh, no." I shook my head, speaking softly, "I understand. Believe me." I gulped. "What we wish to do, what we desire to be, means a lot, for they are immortal feelings. I'm certain that..." I hesitated, glancing at the window as flakes of dust danced in the sunlight. "I'm sure of only one thing, and it's all I'll ever have to lean on when worst comes to worst."
The Mayor leaned her head to the side curiously. "What's that, Miss Heartstrings?"
I swallowed hard and hugged my saddlebag tighter, feeling the shape of my lyre inside. "My love of music," I muttered. "In the end, that's what defines me. Everything else is just an extension of that one thing." I glanced at her. "I'm sure there's still a dreamer alive in all that you do, Mayor, as much as there is a doer."
She smiled calmly at me. "I'm intrigued to hear a young mare speaking with such wisdom. You don't look like you've lost too many years of your life, Miss Heartstrings."
"Years are just numbers," I replied instantly. "Dreams and desires are the substance of a pony's soul. I think it's best to focus on that and that alone, beyond the veil of memories, for in the end... memories are all that's left you."
She gazed at me steadily for a while. I wasn't certain whether she was about to reply or kick me out of her office. Eventually she smiled with a steady nod. "A very interesting way of looking at things." She chuckled lightly. "Well, as much as I'd love to sit here and talk philosophy with an artist"--she leaned back in her seat and gestured across the desk towards me--"I do believe you had something you wished to discuss with me."
I gulped hard and uttered, "The Princesses."
She blinked awkwardly. "What, you mean of Equestria?"
I held my tongue; then was not a good time to be snarky. "Yes," I said solidly. "Princess Celestia and Luna. Are... are they scheduled to be visiting Ponyville anytime soon?"
She adjusted her bifocals and leaned forward. "This is about a musical performance, is it?"
"No. I mean yes! I mean..." I winced and tried to compose myself. It would have been far too awkward to remove the lyre from my saddlebag and perform the Requiem in front of her. I had to stay calm through sheer meditation. "I was hoping to be in town at the same time as either one of them," I said. "So that my music might reach their ears, and I could show them as... uh.. artistically as I can how happy I am that harmony has once more defeated the evils of chaos."
"That's a poetic way of putting it," the Mayor said, smiling politely. "However, darling, even if I did know when they were arriving next, it's beyond my ability to arrange any meetings with them."
I ignored the heavy beating of my heart to lean forward and exclaim, "That's perfectly fine! I... I really don't expect you to curry any favors or make magical appointments happen! I was just hoping you would at least know when the Princesses are scheduled to be in Ponyville again! We have many events coming up, don't we?"
"Well..."
"Nightmare Night!" I said with an awkward smile. "The Running of the Leaves! Hearth's Warming! Boxing Day!" I leaned back and breathed easier. "You see, I've... uhm... I've asked everypony in town that I can and none of them seem to have a clue. I figured you, the Mayor of this village, would know more than any other pony about the royal sisters' upcoming whereabouts."
"I'm very sorry to say, Miss Heartstrings, but there is nothing scheduled for the next four months at least!"
I felt my heart collapsing through my chest. The room had gotten colder, and I wanted more than anything to play the Requiem so that the memories of far warmer things would drown out the frigid truth I was hearing. "Four m-months...?"
"Mmmmhmmm..." The Mayor nodded solemnly. Her eyebrows rose. "And I'm a pony who faithfully checks her schedule every morning."
"Oh..." I gazed down at the desk with a heavy slump to my shoulders.
"I'm so very sorry, darling. Surely I can do what's in my power to help you perform for some of our upcoming festivals, though!" She grinned brightly. "I just got done arranging a wedding to take place in this very building! Several of Ponyville's most beloved citizens are likely to attend, including Twilight Sparkle, the very apprentice to Princess Celestia! That should be promising, at least!"
"I... I will consider it, ma'am," I said in a dull yet polite voice. "I appreciate it. Truly, I do."
"Still, I have to wonder..." She chuckled lightly. "Were you too shy to perform for Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, two days ago?"
I blinked, my heart stopping. I slowly gazed up at her, my mouth hanging open. "Two... t-two days ago?"
"Why yes, Miss Heartstrings. She was here for the better part of an evening. Everypony was ecstatic about it. It was the first time she had arrived since before the rise and fall of Discord."
"How..." My brow furrowed as I stood up from my chair. "When? What for?! What brought Celestia here?!"
The Mayor leaned back, blinking worriedly at my passionate reaction. "Surely you jest! Were you out of town for it?"
"No! I wasn't!" I exclaimed, starting to pant in a cold sweat. "Please. I must know what happened!"
The Mayor's indigo eyes narrowed. "She came to undo the spell..."
"What spell?"
"The one that caused a huge riot on the northeast side of town, of course!" The Mayor blushed slightly. "The one that had reduced even me to a common ruffian, attacking her fair citizens over a meaningless little doll." She shivered from a haunting chill before putting on a brave smile. "I almost thought Discord had somehow resurfaced. It turns out that it was just a magic spell gone awry. Hah! I do admire you unicorns for your art, but sometimes your science could use a little bit of polish! Heh heh heh..."
"I... I don't get it!" I exclaimed. "How could that be? I..." My eyes twitched. I looked at her. "What day is it?"
"Why, Tuesday, of course," she replied.
A foalish squeak escaped my throat. I thought of my cabin, of the fireplace, of starlight shining off of Al's slumbering body. Then, in a blink, I saw two ponies marching down the steps from the train depot, and I was further stabbed to recall that having been a Thursday.
"Four days..." I shuddered and ran a hoof over my face. "It's been four days. Blessed alicorns... how could I let something like that slip?" I gulped and slumped back down into my chair, hugging myself. "Celestia was here..." I whimpered. "Celestia was here and I didn't even know it..."
"Hey, don't look so down in the mouth!" The Mayor gave me a sympathetic look. "It was all for the best! She cleared the enchantment away in a blink, and everything returned to normal. We live in the shadow of Canterlot, Miss Heartstrings. I know that nothing is currently scheduled, but our beloved Princess is bound to show her face again sooner than later--"
Just then, the double doors to the office swung open. The secretary stood, twitching slightly with frayed nerves. "Ahem. Mayor...?"
"Amberwind!" The Mayor frowned. "Can't you see that I'm in the middle of--"
"I'm so terribly sorry," the receptionist droned. "But, she insisted. I swear, she was going to tear all of Town Hall down if I didn't tell you that she was here--" Just as she said this, an earth pony strolled into the room with a blood red mane and a camera hanging over her neck. Scarlet Breeze came to a stop and glared with dull indigo eyes across the room.
The matching color in the Mayor's gaze twitched. She stood up, utterly breathless. It took her a few seconds to stammer forth, "Scarlet, darling..."
"Mayor..." Scarlet uttered with a terse nod.
I blinked at the distance between the two. The room had gotten incredibly colder, and it wasn't my curse. I felt my heart beating as my gaze fell to the table, to the old photograph, to the red-haired foal squatting in the lap of a younger city official with a pink mane.
"Uhm..." The Mayor was fidgeting at this point. She glanced at me with a fractured grin. "Miss Heartstrings. I don't suppose--?"
"I think I got what I came for," I said in a neutral tone. I stood up on my own and trotted gently for the door. "I thank you so very much for your time, Mayor. I'll... uh... I'll think about your offer concerning the wedding reception."
I strolled slowly past Scarlet. I glanced at her face, and I saw the same scowl that had dominated her expression when she first strolled into town the day before--no--four days previous. Gone was the sweet, sympathetic, and smiling stranger that had greeted me a few hours ago when I collapsed dizzily in the middle of Ponyville. She trotted past me and stood before the Mayor's desk like a war general might approach a cliff overlooking a battlefield. I wasn't sure what possessed me, but I closed the door for the sake of the two. When the oaken panels were shut, I leaned against them, feeling the steady pulse of my heartbeat. I clenched my eyes shut, and a stallion with gray-streaked hair burned his way across my vision. I felt like sobbing. I felt--
"Brrrrr..." the secretary exclaimed. I glanced over in time to see a cloud of vapors lifting in the air above her desk. She rubbed her forelimbs, shivered, and sat before her typewriter again. "Ugh, I really hate the fall..." She was completely ignoring me. I realized it was because I didn't exist.
Blinking, I glanced at the shut door, at a dim hallway flanking the receptionist office, and then at the secretary. Since her attention was elsewhere, I side-stepped and ducked into the dark passageway. I snuck past the Ponyville town archives, another office or two, and threaded my way towards a utility closet. Tapping the air with translucent threads of emerald magic, I sensed that the closet was attached to the far end of the Mayor's room.
While nopony was looking, I slipped my invisible self through the door and closed it behind me. Assaulted by the smells of cardboard and disinfectants, I snuck to the far side of the tiny compartment. A thin door rested between me and the Mayor's office. Certainly, it had to have been locked, but opening it was not my concern at the moment. Quiet as a feather, I leaned over and pressed my ear to the surface of the door, listening in on a decidedly heated conversation transpiring on the other side:
"I know I didn't announce my visit. That's because this isn't personal; it's strictly about business."
"Isn't personal?! Scarlet, it's been over six years! You waltz into my office like we last met only yesterday and you expect me to think that this isn't personal?!"
"I'm working for the Fillydelphia Enquirer. They want me to take photographs to memorialize Ponyville, the location of Discord's defeat. To do this, I must be permitted access to several town landmarks. With your permission, Mayor, I'd like to have access to the following places..."
"'Mayor?!'"
"Ahem. The clock tower. The Ponyville Library. The Celestia Statue. The old Windmill on the edge of town--"
"Scarlet, I'm your mother, for Celestia's sake! You don't have to call me 'Mayor' like just any other pony."
"Why not? It's your job."
"There's more to me than just my job..."
"I doubt that very much."
"Scarlet, what is the real reason for you being here? Just listen to yourself! Everything you say is so bitter and cold--"
"Like I said, I'm only here for business."
"Then why be so personal about it? Why talk to me to my face like this?! You know how it hurts me to listen to that tone in your voice, to see that infernal expression! It always hurts me..."
"I'm only in town for a short time, Mayor. I wanted to get this meeting over with as swiftly as possible so I could make my rounds."
"So that's what everything has come to? You just wish to brush me out of your life now that you've come home for the first time in years."
"Fillydelphia is my home. This place means nothing to me."
"Then why don't you leave already?!"
"I wish I could. I wish that the Enquirer had sent me elsewhere. But if there's anything you've taught me, Mayor, it's that a pony is the substance of her hard work and professionalism."
Silence.
Scarlet's voice rose again, "So do I have permission to access the landmarks I mentioned?"
"You have my blessing..."
"I did not ask for your 'blessing.' I asked for your permission, Mayor--"
"Oh, just be gone already! I don't want to entertain this nonsense any longer than you do!"
Another bout of silence.
"Very well. I'm glad we could have that settled." Scarlet's hoofsteps sounded across the room. "Good luck on your next election."
"Scarlet..." The elder's voice stammered. "Scarlet, darling, please. I'm sorry. Don't--"
The doors opened and shut just as quickly. Everything was still, until a sound emanated softly from beyond the wall. It resembled a pony who had collapsed in her cot four days earlier.
The cold of the world doubled. I felt my teeth shattering, and the urge to play the Requiem gnawed at my threadbare mind. I couldn't do it there where I was hiding. So, I left as stealthily as I could to avoid making a scene. I suppose it was a good enough excuse at the time.
I trotted in circles for the next few hours. I was beyond distraught. Not only were neither of the Princesses planning on showing up in Ponyville anytime soon, but I had missed a golden opportunity to meet up with Celestia. If only my curse hadn't gotten worse that month, that very week, then I might have been able to put my evolved knowledge of the Nocturne to the test. I could have experimented to see what the Requiem was capable of doing to a holy alicorn. I could have been connected to Aria through the sisters' song. Now what chance did I have?
As horrible as this new revelation was, it amazingly wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I trotted beneath the edges of the Everfree Forest, wincing as the shadows of trees passed overhead. I scaled the emerald lengths of Ponyville's park, my mind repeating the bitter conversation between the Mayor and her daughter, Scarlet. By sunset, I had approached the fringes of town, chilled by the cold breeze of Autumn and even more assaulted by the palpitations of my heart.
How could a mother and daughter who had so many pure recollections of one another choose to live at such a frigid distance? They had no curse, no magical affliction, no supernatural reason to be such total strangers to one another. Were the mistakes of the past so grand that they had to block one another's affections? I saw the scowl on Scarlet's face; I heard the muted sobs of the Mayor. These were ponies who were capable of feeling, capable of hurting, capable of hating. Life was so precious and fragile, and I couldn't think of something that proved this more than our quaint little near-apocalypse, the recent debacle of Discord.
I tried telling myself that I didn't have the power to know and understand everything. Just because I was a pariah didn't give me license to criticize the lives of those warm, living ponies around me. A ghost is good at haunting and not much else; so why was I so obsessed with the turmoil of the mother and daughter when I really should have been thinking about... when I should have been focusing on... on...
I was starting to lose grip of my mind once again. I stopped in my tracks, panting, for the world around me had once more become an indecipherable blur. I dropped to my haunches and pulled out my lyre. Taking several steady breaths, I played "Twilight's Requiem" as carefully as I could, gripping the golden instrument in trembling hooves. When the music played its course, I opened my misty eyes and saw several solid shapes around me. I blinked, and found myself in the middle of Ponyville's cemetery, the golden glow of the sunset parting through the granite slabs in dancing bands.
Leaves fluttered over my head as an October wind kicked up and died down. All was silent, making a bed of stillness upon which my memories collapsed all around me, as lonely and abandoned as the soft mounds of earth. I levitated the lyre and strolled limply ahead, drifting from stone to stone, wondering if all these strange names died with their heads intact as much as their hearts. I couldn't imagine a world so hopeless and cold to think that there were more ponies besides me and Alabaster, spirits that couldn't be silenced by her song, ghosts that were bound to wander the world in endless confusion until they themselves became flimsy melodies clinging to the holy weight of the Nightbringer.
I slowed my steps, thinking about the holy instrument that rested in a hidden compartment beneath the floor of my cabin. In a world where there was nopony to bury me, I realized that I had nevertheless built myself a monument, one that would never bear my name.
My hooves shuffled to a stop, for something had caught my eye. One gravestone was actually recognizable. I squinted at it, trotting over on light limbs. I stood before the slab, reading the engravings over and over again. I must not have played the Requiem accurately enough, because though I saw two words at the top of the stone, it took me a long time to actually discern it as a name.
"A very peaceful evening, isn't it?"
I gasped, instantly hugging the lyre. My eyes twitched upon hearing the voice behind me.
"There aren't many places like this in the big cities," he continued. "It's quite a shame. More ponies like these fine souls deserve their rest."
I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. I didn't turn around. I didn't want to turn around. I simply waited and waited and...
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. You're paying your respects. How rude of me."
My heart was beating swiftly. I wanted to sob, to scream, to do anything but sit there as still as one of the many stones.
"I shall leave you be, Miss. I wish you a good evening."
His hoofsteps drew further away, crunching leaves, echoing in my ears like chains beyond the firmaments. I felt like whimpering.
Instead, I said, "Wait." Every part of me stung from the weak utterance.
His hooves stopped. After a beat of silence, I heard him shuffling around. "Hmmm?"
I took a deep, meditative breath. I turned around and looked at him like a foal would peer into a cavern full of flame. "You're not rude at all. Don't... don't feel bad, please..."
He gazed at me, levitating a bouquet of flowers a foot before his glowing horn. The wind kicked at his gray-streaked mane as he squinted against the sunlight with tired eyes. "I really didn't mean to disturb anypony. I'm... not from around here. As a matter of fact, I'm paying respects for the father of a dear friend of mine."
I nodded slowly. "You don't say?" It took all my strength not to shiver. "Your friend has a father buried here?"
"Yes." He was neither smiling nor frowning. It was like most of the life had been drained from his figure, and yet there hung a deep well of wisdom beneath the surface of his graying features. "I doubt she has the capacity to fathom it, but her family's lucky." He glanced across the many stones. "This is a beautiful plot of land. Tranquil, undisturbed..."
I bit my lip. He sounded so cold, and yet so capable of feeling, still. "This... this place is almost as old as the town itself."
"Is it?"
I nodded quietly. "Many important ponies who helped found Ponyville are buried here."
He pointed with his hoof towards the stone before me. "Including your relations?"
I fidgeted and gave a sideways glance to the slab, my eyes tripping once more over the two words at the top. "Yes... I, suspect he was also very important."
"What did he do while he was alive?"
I gulped. "He was a father, soldier, and businesstallion, apparently."
"I see." His lips performed a slight curve, and it stole my breath away. "I won't pry."
"Do... do you need help finding your friend's loved one?"
"I'm quite sure I'll succeed if I'm persistent enough," he said, his low bass voice drifting against the ghostly breeze. He scanned the nearby horizon, and his jaded eyes briefly lit up. "Ah. But of course." He strolled ahead two rows until he approached a large, rectangular stone that had been adorned recently with a similar bouquet of fresh lilies. "She was here earlier, after all. We live such busy lives that we couldn't afford to be here together. It's a shame, really."
As he lay his floral respects down before the grave, I stood up. I should have galloped immediately away. I should have buried the lyre somewhere and succumbed to the shadows of night, allowing the curse to make me forget that this moment ever happened. But, instead, I trotted over and stood beside him. He was incredibly tall, and the amber tone of his coat resembled a mountain in the setting sunlight. I tried my best not to look at him, affixing my eyes to the stone instead. I found something just as somber: a name. "Salty Breeze."
"Scarlet's father..." I murmured.
He flashed me a look of surprise. "You've met Scarlet?"
I winced. "Uhm..." I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes. I... I ran into her earlier. She was... very nice to me."
He raised an eyebrow. "Was she, now?" A dry chuckle escaped his lips as he looked at the stone. "Well, that's certainly good to know. I'm comforted by the thought that she isn't all business and sighs."
"I... don't quite understand."
"Oh, it's nothing for you to be concerned about," he said in a dull voice, his eyes scanning the fiery western horizon beyond the cemetery. "Scarlet used to tell me plenty of stories about Ponyville, about how 'insidiously cheerful' the ponies are who live here. Now that I've arrived myself, I must admit, she's right about the 'cheerful' part. Honestly though, I chalk up the 'insidiousness' to her own cynicism."
"We get along as well as we manage to," I said, gulping hard after each phrase I uttered. With each second that limped by in the presence of him, I felt like collapsing. I spoke simply to stay strong, to stay conscious. "This is the harmony capital of the world, after all."
"So I've been told..." he said in a voice that sounded as lethargic as mine.
I took note of that. I also took note of the thinness of his eyes as I looked his way and said, "So she was here earlier? To pay respects to her father?"
"Yes," he said with a nod. "He passed away when she was very young; apparently there was a very terrible accident. According to Scarlet, everypony was very hush-hush about it, considering Salty was married to the Mayor at the time and all. They didn't want the publicity of the tragedy to turn into something horribly melodramatic. It seemed like a good idea for the village at the time, but I think Scarlet took it to heart, and in all the most painful ways. This week marks her first time in Ponyville in years. I find that hard to believe, but she is a very strong mare for her age."
I looked at him. After a few soft seconds, I remarked, "You care a lot for Miss Breeze, don't you?"
His lips curved as a slight chuckle escaped his lips. "To a fault. I understand a great deal of her sorrow, but not so much her bitterness." He glanced at me. "We're both artists, you see. She's a photographer for the Fillydelphia Enquirer and other periodicals. Me? I'm a painter. I've been sketching landscapes and portraits for as long as I can remember. The two of us met at an Equestrian Media Convention in Baltimare last year. I saw in her a young filly with a great deal of talent, but a severe lack of focus. So... I guess I took her under my wing. I couldn't help it. She's always struck me as lost: a foal who needed to find her way home."
"She's done that now, hasn't she?" I asked.
"Hmmm... Hardly." He gazed once more at the stone. "I suppose it's good that she's gotten to see her father's grave for the first time in years, but that's hardly a cheerful reunion. When we both got assigned to pay Ponyville a visit after Discord's defeat, she was furious. She was this close to quitting her job at the Enquirer and moving out to Los Pegasus."
"What changed her mind?"
"I did," he said. "I thought"--he bit his lip--"I felt that a trip back to the place of her foaling would help her. I was hoping she would get a chance to talk with her mother again. The poor Mayor's lived here alone for so long, without having a chance to see her daughter again. I doubt even Scarlet knows how much she's hurt her with her distance."
"What's the reason for their bitterness, do you think?"
"I've never asked her enough questions to find out," he admitted. "But I suspect I know enough. A mare as young as Scarlet can easily confuse bitterness and pain for strength. She's not at the age to realize that those emotions will only bite her in the end, turning her life into a prison. One of these days, she will have to come to terms with all the memories that make her what she is, for better or for worse. At this rate, I fear she'll miss so many opportunities to make better memories for herself. That is, if this distance doesn't destroy what remains of her and her mother."
I ran a hoof through my windblown mane and shudderingly said, "The only thing Scarlet is missing, I think, is how lucky she is to have a friend like you." I gave a painful smile. "If only she knew how much you cared for her well-being, for her future..."
He took a deep breath and slowly nodded. "If there's anything life's taught me, it's that we're on this earth for a reason. Scarlet's relaxed so much since we met. Once upon a time, she did nothing but snap other ponies' heads off. Now, she actually smiles and says kind things to those around her." He nodded my way. "Your little testament of having met her is blissfully solid proof of that."
"All of us are capable of kindness if we put our hearts to it."
"Yes, well, my heart would feel a lot less heavy if I knew she could see the light in her life once more," he muttered. "It's been a long, long time since I ever contributed to somepony's happiness. I'm not sure if you can relate to the feeling of... of being useful..."
I gazed at him. When I spoke, my voice was cracking. "I truly can."
He glanced at me, then smiled. I felt like my heart would fracture, especially when he said, "You don't need to stay here any longer, darling. Thanks for listening to an old stallion ramble."
"It... it was my pl-pleasure," I said, my lip quivering. I turned around before he could see and began briskly trotting away.
And then I heard him say, "My name is Nebulous, by the way."
I turned and looked at him. I smiled and found the strength to say, "That's a very handsome name, sir."
He glanced at me, blinked once or twice, and merely nodded. "I wish you a good evening." He turned back towards the stone and bowed his head.
And I was gone.
The next day came in a blink. I hadn't slept. I hadn't done anything but play the Requiem over and over again, remembering the stallion's voice, remembering his name. It was torture, a constant and unceasing laceration of my heart. But I kept playing the instrumental regardless, seated frozen in my cabin, preserving my thoughts in a sacred sarcophagus of purpose, until daylight rose once more upon the autumnal landscape.
After feeding Al, I bolted out the door. I didn't even bother with my slipping into hoodie; my desperation was enough to melt the frost from my shoulders. I scoured the lengths of Ponyville, searching each alleyway and corner of the village. Gravestones were facsimiles of precious thoughts. The only things worth grasping, worth savoring and hanging onto, were the things that couldn't be put into words, the things that were so fleeting that I had to fight for them with music and misery and mirth, all in one single shout of righteous fury. To live is to persist against the dissipating cloud of substance, and for one fractured week of confusion since the Day of Discord, I had been too busy marinating in inane sorrow to bother with what I was still anchored to, what I would forever be buried under. When all the colors of my life have left me, and I'm stripped of everything I've pretended to understand, all that will remain is the part of me that feels, the same precious shred that Nebulous was clinging to--in spite of his age and weariness, and in spite of the souls he had tried so hard and so long to bless, only to come up short.
He had all the inspiration that I once did, but none of the ghostly talents. He had saved Scarlet long ago, he just didn't have a vessel through which to deliver the salvation. For the first time in days, I once again knew what I was there in Ponyville to do. As the daylight wore on, I searched with furious vigor. I didn't even have to play the Requiem again.
Finally, I found her. Scarlet was outside the antique windmill on the outskirts of Ponyville. She stood before the round stone entrance of the building, photographing a bed of flowers that had sprouted up beneath an abandoned wooden wagon chock-full of rusted metal farm tools. She looked so peaceful in the midst of her lonesome task. There wasn't a frown to be seen on her face. Still, even from a distance, I could have sworn I saw a grayish tug to her lips, an expression I had seen on the likes of the Mayor and Nebulous, the very same look I had spotted in the mirror on more forlorn occasions than I could count.
Hiding behind a woodshed, I watched her, shivering, pondering how a ghost can exorcise a spirit of bitterness from a mare half a decade younger than myself. I wasn't Nebulous; I wasn't the Mayor. I was, at best, a messenger, cursed to have all of her words of wisdom and heartfelt emotion torn to bits by the accursed frost of Aria's song.
It was then that I gasped with a startling realization: I was capable of delivering more than words. I thought this the very moment I saw Scarlet abandoning the flowers and instead turning towards the heart of the windmill. Slowly, unassumingly, she trotted deep into the echoing interior of the structure. A pair of wooden doors hung loosely on their hinges behind her.
I blinked. I turned towards the village. Giving the windmill one final look, I spun and galloped swiftly into the heart of Ponyville.
"The harvest of pumpkins is ready to deliver in three days!" Carrot Top exclaimed proudly on the east edge of the village marketplace. "We'll be donating ten percent to the town, of course." She giggled. "The're really plump this year. The foals and their families will love 'em!"
"Well, that's magnificent!" the Mayor replied with a wide grin. "I've already rounded up volunteers to carve some fine ghoulish designs into them! Not only that, but Miss Applejack has quite a few exciting games lined up for the evening!"
"Oh, she never fails to deliver!"
"Everything is coming together so fantastically," the Mayor said. "This is undoubtedly going to be the best Nightmare Night ever."
Carrot Top leaned forward with an earnest expression. "Is it true that Zecora is going to be this year's storyteller?"
"Hmmmm... Yes." The Mayor chuckled merrily, adjusting her bifocals. "It will be an utter delight to hear her rendition of the Nightmare Moon story. I always felt that the tale could use a bit of poetic flare, and our local Zebraharan shaman is bound to deliver."
"I can't wait!" Carrot Top waved and began to trot away. "Well, I'd best be heading back to the farm before sundown! If you need anything else, Mayor, feel free to stop by the ranch and holler!"
"Sure thing!" The Mayor nodded and laughingly said, "I'll be sure to bring my bullhorn! Heh heh heh..." She shook her head and happily breathed in the crisp, autumn air. "Princess Celestia has it all right. This certainly is the best time of the year." She turned around and got a face full of me.
"Mayor! Quick!" I exclaimed in a panicked voice. "You must come with me!"
"Huh?" She jumped back, quite visibly startled. "What on earth is the meaning of this? Who are you--?"
"There's no time!" I said, glancing around me in a mock show of paranoia. "He may be listening right now as we speak, disguised as a merchant's tent or a shopping counter or even a bed of roses!"
"Huh? Who?!"
I gulped and whispered hoarsely, "Discord, of course."
The Mayor's indigo eyes twitched in fright. "D-Discord? You... You mean he's back?!"
"Shhh!" I nodded and leaned in to murmur into her ear, "Twilight Sparkle has assembled all of the Elements of Harmony to deal with the situation. They don't know where he's hiding; only that he's returned already and Princess Celestia is powerless to stop him. The reason you've never seen me before is because I'm a specially hired agent of Canterlot sent on Twilight's behalf to deliver this message to you without any local villagers recognizing me and instantly falling into a panic. Discord's back, and it's a matter of minutes before he starts sowing chaos across this gorgeous landscape of yours once again!"
"But... B-but how can this be?!" She was shivering at this point, her every limb quivering as she nervously scoured the rooftops with a sweating expression. "He was defeated! Just two weeks ago! The Elements of Harmony--"
"--had barely assembled within an hour of zapping Discord with their rainbow energy... thingy," I said, wincing from my brief fumbling of words. "Ahem. You must understand, Mayor, that they were not in the same stable frame of mind as when they so expertly vanquished the spirit of Nightmare Moon. However, they've assembled now and are ready to silence Discord for good."
"Then... th-then why do they need me?"
"Discord won't come close to being dug out of his hiding place unless Twilight and her friends get the firm cooperation from a pony who knows the streets of Ponyville inside and out." I pointed. "That's you, Mayor! Now, please, I must escort you to the Elements of Harmony at once."
"Alright, alright!" she hissed, trying to control her shivers. She leaned in, her face pale and vulnerable. "But where are they? Where's Twilight Sparkle?"
I took a deep breath, turned around, and began galloping. "Follow me. I'll show you..."
"Quickly, Mayor!" I shouted behind me, my green coat glinting in the setting sunlight as we bounded over the grassy hill. The windmill loomed on the emerald crest, its wooden gears grinding and translucent blades rotating slowly. "Time is of the essence!"
"Just slow down a bit!" she limped after me, huffing and puffing. Her collar had begun to droop from sweat and exhaustion as she adjusted her crooked bifocals and fought to catch up. "I'm not a young filly like you! I want to save Ponyville from Discord as much as the Elements, but I won't be of any use if I collapse before I get there--"
"Well fret no more," I said, turning towards her as I pointed at the open doorway of the windmill. "For we're here!"
She looked around, her ears twitching in the chilling wind atop the hill. "Where's Twilight? Where're the destined defenders of Equestria?"
"Inside, Mayor! Quick! Go inside! I'll be right behind you!"
"Okay!" she exclaimed, trying not to pant with fear. Shuffling on tired hooves, she dashed through the stone doorway and stood upon the wooden floorboards. "I'm here, Twilight! Your messenger told me all about Discord! Now how can I help--?" She froze, blinking.
Scarlet blinked back, stuck in the middle of photographing a dancing spiderweb in the afternoon light. Her indigo eyes narrowed as she muttered, "What in the hay are you doing here?"
The Mayor's mouth was agape. "You're... not Twilight Sparkle."
"Uhhhh, you think?"
The elder blinked. With a frowning expression, she spun around. "Lady, what is the meaning of this--?"
The interior of the windmill darkened with a loud thud. I stood before the closed wooden doors. Latching them shut, I spun and faced them both calmly.
"What?!" the Mayor sputtered.
Scarlet stood at her side, glaring at me. "Hey! What's going on here?! Who do you think--?"
A golden shape reflected off their angry eyes as I pulled my lyre from my saddlebag. Without hesitating, I played a haunting melody in the center of the cacophonous building of spinning axles and grinding gears. I closed my eyes, anticipating the ethereal shroud to come. They, however, weren't prepared for what happened next. When I finished the "Darkness Sonata," I calmly weathered the blindness with paced breathing. They, on the other hoof...
"Oh dear Celestia! I'm... I'm blind!"
"Just stay calm, Scarlet! There must be a reasonable explanation for this--"
"Augh! I-I can't see my own hooves! What in the hay did she do to us?!"
"It must be Discord's work! He's assumed a unicorn's image to curse us with some chaotic enchantment!"
"I don't like this! Uggh! Why did I even come back to this stupid town?!"
"Will you stop complaining for just one second?! I have to think!"
"What good is that going to do?! I'm blind!"
"You're not the only one, darling--"
"Stop calling me 'darling!' I'm not a little... little..."
The two mares grew silent as a dastardly cold overwhelmed them. Wincing, they collapsed into each other's embrace, their breaths exhaling flimsy clouds of vapor. I noticed all of this... because my sight had returned. While they had stumbled about in confusion, I had carefully scaled my way up the wooden steps lining the cylindrical wall of the windmill's interior. Hiding in the shadows of the third story, I gazed silently down at them as their sight returned, which was the least I could say about their memories.
"Unnngh..." Scarlet stirred, shaking her head dizzily. "What happened? Everything's all foggy... What?" She looked up.
The Mayor was opening her eyes. She blinked at the sight of her own daughter in her forelimbs.
Scarlet twitched. Instantly, she frowned, and yanked herself out of the elder's grasp. "What's going on here?! What are you doing?!"
"I... I..." The Mayor gulped and glanced at the grinding sights of the windmill above her. "I have no idea!"
"What do you mean you have no idea?!" Scarlet grunted. "You always know everything! Were you spying on me or something?!"
"Honey, I've no clue. I just woke up here myself--"
"I don't believe you!" Scarlet frowned. She trudged angrily towards the door and pushed against it with her entire weight. "This is some sick little game! I wouldn't expect any less!"
"How many times do I have to tell you?!" the Mayor barked, shrugging with her pale forelimbs. "I don't know how I got here or what knocked both of us out?"
"Nnnngh!" Scarlet hissed, fiddling with the latch until it loosened. Still, no matter how hard she pressed against the doors, they refused to budge. "The heck?! Ugh! Stupid door! What gives?!"
I took a deep breath and leaned my head towards the thin, slitted windows of the windmill. With expert telekinesis, perfected from months of exercise under Twilight's amnesiac tutelage, I finished rolling the wooden wagon full of metal junk in the direct path of the windmill's doors. It would take the combined strength of six non-magical ponies to force the entrance open, and I knew it.
However, those two didn't.
"Piece of junk Windmill!" Scarlet Breeze grunted, her face flushing to match the furious crimson of her mane. "I swear to the Matriarch, you should have had this ugly place razed to the ground years ago!"
"You know very well that I couldn't do that!" the Mayor retorted, leaning against a stone wall to catch her heavy breaths. "This place is a landmark! Though I wouldn't expect you to understand that--"
"The only thing I understand is how pathetically you fall in love with useless things that have to do with your job!" She stumbled back from the door, panting. "I can't believe this crap. Somepony!" Scarlet shouted, tilting her head up towards the rafters of the echoing interior. "Somepony! Anypony!"
"Mmmph..." The Mayor face-hoofed, groaning. "Scarlet, please..."
"Get us out of here! We're trapped!"
"We're too far from the center of town for anypony to hear us!" she said, yelling above the young mare's voice. "You'll wear your throat out with all that infernal hollering!"
Scarlet glared at her. "Well, one of us has got to do something useful, Mayor!"
"In Celestia's name!" the elder snapped explosively, her indigo eyes flaring. "Will you stop calling me that?! I am your mother, dammit! I foaled you into this world! Don't you think that took a little bit more than a bit of scheduling and intense paperwork?!"
"You would have been more proud of my birth if it did!"
The Mayor glared.
Scarlet frowned back.
Silence washed over the pair. Several seconds passed, until Scarlet's hoofsteps passed beneath the grinding wooden gears as she shuffled over towards the far wall and plopped herself down beside her camera. She slumped on her haunches, hugging herself and glaring into the ground.
"This sucks," she said.
The Mayor fumed, staring off into the cobwebs. "I'm not entirely fond of it myself."
"Hmmmph," Scarlet managed with a bitter smirk. "You were never all that fond of me."
The Mayor's shoulders rose as she weathered a deep breath. "That's not true."
"Oh please, spare me--"
"It's your attitude I was never fond of!" the Mayor said, flashing her an angry look, a look that melted with the trailing seconds as her gaze fell to the floor before her daughter. "I could never stand seeing your unloving face, hearing the cold tone in your voice whenever we passed each other like shadows in the house."
"Why not?" Scarlet gulped and maintained her furious frown. "It's what you wanted, wasn't it?"
"Scarlet, what I wanted was for you to be strong."
"What, like you?" Scarlet hissed. "That's not strength, Mayor, that's workaholism."
"All I've ever done in my professional career"--the Mayor said, pointing a stiff hoof at herself--"I did to protect Ponyville, to protect the citizens, to protect you."
"It wasn't enough to protect dad, was it?" Scarlet said in a venomous murmur. "Face it. A part of you died with him."
The Mayor's face stretched in a vulnerable grimace. "When I see the way you look at me--right now as I do in my memories--it makes me wish that more of me had died."
At that, Scarlet's scowl buckled. She bit her lip and avoided the Mayor's gaze as her eyes softened.
The Mayor sighed and ran a hoof over her face. Swallowing a lump down her throat, she began pacing for several seconds. Those seconds bled into minutes, morphing into the shadows that hung over the interior as the setting sun burned past the edge of the windmill's slim windows.
Finally, the elder murmured, "I've been Mayor of this town for nearly three decades. I've seen Ponyville prosper in that time. I've witnessed magical things: the return of Nightmare Moon, harmonious heroes rising to the occasion, the power of friendship defeating pure apocalyptic chaos..."
"Tell me something I don't know," Scarlet said bluntly.
Her mother looked at her, hugging her left front forelimb with her right. Her lip quivered as she said, "They were all amazing, glorious thing. But none of them were what I truly, dearly wanted to see again."
Scarlet's nostrils flared. Without looking, she muttered, "The last time I was here, you told me that I was a slacker. You said that I had no business being a photographer, that I had so much more potential as a businesspony and I was only wasting my life away."
"Scarlet..."
"You said that if dad were still alive, he'd be ashamed of me," Scarlet growled.
"Please, Scarlet--"
The young mare snapped, "Why the heck should I think you'd give a crap about who or what I've become since then?!"
"Scarlet, I'm sorry!" the Mayor shrieked, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Scarlet blinked awkwardly at that, an eyebrow raising in confusion.
The Mayor sniffled and ran a hoof across her face. Shuddering, she said, "I'm sorry, and... and I want to make it up to you. But you need to show me how, because... because I've made mistakes. Several horrible, horrible mistakes and... and I've lost so much already. I feel like... like I'm a shadow left behind, because the light of my life is gone, and I want her back. I-I want my darling daughter back..."
Scarlet was merely squinting at her. Her breath was hot and scathing, but nevertheless she whispered, "How could you possibly expect me to believe you? You've..." She gulped and hissed, "You've never apologized for anything before!"
The Mayor sighed and hung her gray head. "I know..."
"You've always been too strong for that! Too stubborn and... and too you for that--"
"I know, I know!" The Mayor seethed and fought through her tears to look at Scarlet dead-on. "But that was before I had the very land beneath me cast under hideous shadow not once--but twice. Equestria is changing, Scarlet. There is magic happening in this land--both dark and majestic--that hasn't been around for centuries. I've seen things that I never thought would happen in my lifetime. I've brushed elbows with the horrors of a living apocalypse. I... I had my body put under a spell, so that I lost touch with the fibres of my being and when it all came back, I couldn't believe just how... how..." She winced. "How empty I was." She gulped hard and said in a steadier breath, "And I realize that it's because I was the one who emptied myself, who robbed myself of everything that was important. Including you."
Scarlet gazed at her, her mouth agape.
The Mayor strolled slowly towards her, waiting for Scarlet to flinch. She didn't, and the elder eventually stood over the young mare. "Scarlet, when your father died, I never thought I'd experience something so painful. I didn't want to feel something that horrible again, and I didn't want it for you. I... I thought that I could protect you. That's why I raised you the way I did. That's why I made you put all of your effort into studies, into course work, into pursuing a business career. I... I wanted you to be strong, and that was what I thought was the answer." She shuddered. "I-I was wrong. And... and it's my fault that you can't bring yourself to call me 'mother' today. I planted that seed inside you, and I regret the weeds that have grown in place of a life that should be full of blossoming happiness."
"I am strong," Scarlet said, albeit in a wavering voice. "But only because I had to be, because you didn't give me any other outlet."
"Yes. Yes, I know..."
"And now I'm supposed to believe that you've changed?" Scarlet squinted at her suspiciously. "Do you even know what you're supposed to be in the first place?!"
"I'm trying to figure it out, darling. I-I'm trying and..." She lingered in mid-speech, her eyes rising as if catching a vaporous cloud of frigid thought. She gulped hard and said, "The substance of a pony's soul..."
I raised an eyebrow at that.
Scarlet was merely confused. "Huh?"
The Mayor looked at her. "My greatest mistake, I now think, is trying so hard to sculpt you into a doer... when you were always a dreamer, and a delightful one at that." She smiled painfully as her eyes teared once more. "Just like your f-father..."
Scarlet gazed in breathless silence.
"What am I supposed to be, Scarlet?" The Mayor spoke in a brave voice. "Strip me of all my memories, my pride, and my mistakes, and what substance do I have? I'm a pony who loves her daughter, Scarlet, who loves you and m-misses you and wants you back in my life." She knelt down on trembling knees and reached a hoof out to the young mare's shoulder. "I don't want you to be another piece of forgotten memories, of all the things that have left me."
A shuddering breath left Scarlet's lips. Her face stretched painfully as she murmured in a foalish breath, "You have changed."
"No..." The Mayor shook her head with a tearful smile. "I've changed back. And I ask you, beg you, my beautiful Scarlet, to change back too. Let us save ourselves, while we're both in the same room, while we have the chance to avoid drifting into bitter shades of our pasts."
Scarlet stared at her. Slowly, she bowed her head and began shaking.
The Mayor tilted her face to the side, awash with concern. "Scarlet...?"
"I'm so angry... Just so angry at you..."
The elder nodded, sniffled and said, "It's okay to be. I've... I've not been a good example to you..."
"No. It's not that." Scarlet's voice was cracking. She brought two shivering hooves to her face and spoke in a muffled voice, "All this time, you've made it so hard... so dang hard, and now you give me an open invitation?"
The Mayor's moist eyes curved in brief confusion. "I don't understand. What invitation?"
Scarlet looked up, and her face glinted in the dimming sunlight. "To c-call you 'Mommy' once again."
She smiled back at her and caressed the filly's face. "I promise, I'll live up to it. But I'm going to need your help. Can you do that, Scarlet? Can you forgive me... and help me? So that I can help you?"
Scarlet grasped the Mayor's hoof, nuzzled it, and whimpered, "Of course, Mommy." She gave a torturous smile, her eyes brimming with tears. "Of course..."
"Oh Scarlet..." The Mayor scooped her up in her forelimbs.
She clung to her, sobbing into her shoulder, having finally returned home.
The Mayor refused to let go. "We can fix this. I know we can. We have time... all the time in the world..."
"I'm so s-sorry," Scarlet sobbed. "All these years, all the things I did... all the things I d-didn't do..."
"Shhhh. No more apologizing. Please, let me just hold you..."
She did, into the golden bands of evening and the cool shadows of night. Hours rolled by. Once their tears had dried and their sobs had turned into chuckles, they discovered the door to the windmill hanging ajar. The wagon had rolled away as if under its own volition. Neither of them were about to complain. When they left the windmill, it was at a leisurely pace. It wouldn't be until midnight that I made my own exit, bathing in the pale glow of a harvest moon, going so far as to donate it a smile to shine on.
"Pinkie Pie, darling, do stand still!" Rarity exclaimed the next day. "You're posing for a photograph, not preparing for a party!"
"Oh, don't be too hard on her," Scarlet Breeze remarked calmly. The Town Hall building loomed above a large group of ponies in the noonday sun. The sky was bright and cloudless, casting a perfect light upon the scene as over half of the population of Ponyville lined up in front a camera on a tripod with a wide-angled lens. Behind the device, Scarlet stood, expertly preparing the perfect shot. "If anything, she's practicing her smile. I want all of you ponies to look happy for when I bring these back to Fillydelphia."
"Including yourself?" Twilight Sparkle spoke over Spike's head as she stood next to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. She smiled and added, "You were born here, after all. Shouldn't you belong in the shot?"
Several other ponies nodded and cheered enthusiastically.
"Heh... That's a nice sentiment," Scarlet replied. "But it wouldn't be very professional of me..."
"Since when did that stop anypony?" Remarked a cheerful voice. The Mayor marched into view, standing beside Twilight Sparkle and Spike. "I, for one, think she should be immortalized along with the rest of us. After all, she is family."
Several ponies cheered and goaded Scarlet on. The earth ponies stomped their hooves while the pegasi whooped and whistled.
Blushing, Scarlet relented, waving her forelimbs. "Alright, alright! If you insist."
"Yeeeeha!" Applejack added, motioning the pony forward. "Come and join us, sugarcube!"
"But it's not enough that I just set up the shot! This camera doesn't have a timer," Scarlet said with a concerned look on her face. "Somepony has to be out of frame to take the photo!"
The villagers exchanged curious, thoughtful glances. They murmured amongst themselves, fidgeting.
"I'll do it."
The crowd looked in one direction. I happened be standing in the path of their gaze. I smiled and lowered the hood from over my horn.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry. Looks like you got some sort of group photo taking place."
"Uhhh..." Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. "You think?"
"Who are those two unicorns?" Derpy asked from the far end of the group.
Dinky leaned up to her. "It's only one, mother..."
Derpy closed one eye and smiled brightly. "Oh! Hi there! Just passing through?"
I took a deep breath, smiling. "You could say that. How can I help?"
"Well, if you're up to it..." Scarlet pointed at the camera. "See that button? I need you to press it when I tell you to. We need more than one shot, though, so it might take more than a few minutes." She smiled nervously. "Is... is that too much to ask?"
"Don't fret." I waved a hoof and trotted over, shrugging off the cold from my shoulders. "I'd be more than happy to."
"Great!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed. "Come and join us, Scar-Scar!"
Scarlet groaned and trotted over in a slump. "I really, really hope that ponies don't start calling me that permanently."
"Why not?" The Mayor smiled and draped a hoof over the younger mare's shoulder. "It's endearing."
"It's silly and stupid..."
"Hmmm... Welcome back to Ponyville." She winked through her bifocals. "Would you rather be called 'the Mayor's Daughter' for as long as you exist?"
Scarlet blushed slightly. She shook her head. "Nah. I can live with what I have to live with."
"Sounds like an adventure already." The Mayor glanced up and nodded at me. "We're ready!"
"You hear that, everypony?" Twilight stood tall and proud as dozens of her friends and neighbors copied her posture beside her. "This is it!"
Scarlet nodded my way. "Thank you so much for all your help, Miss..."
"Hey..." I shrugged and rested my hoof over the button. "What's in a name? Preserve your memories." Clearing my throat, I leaned forward and squinted through the viewfinder, capturing the whole of Ponyville like a tiny crowd on a dusty stage. "Now say cheese!"
"Cheeeeeeese!"
The camera's shutter resounded with a ghostly click.
His amber hooves flipped through one dried canvas, then another, then yet another. His neck craned up and down, his eyes squinting as he compared each colorful landscape to the physical sight of Ponyville lingering in the afternoon glow just beyond the crest of the hill. To his satisfaction, each brusthstroke was even and each slathering of color was accurate. With a deep breath, he lined the canvases up and slid them neatly into a velvet container.
"They're very beautiful," I said.
Nebulous blinked. The aged stallion turned around and looked at me. The October wind blew at his gray-streaked mane with as much vigor as the emerald blades of grass around us. He smiled into the crisp breeze, nodding. "Yes, well, it's a beautiful town."
"I'm rather fond of it," I said, clinging to my hoodie as the whipping winds blew at us, cold and sporadic. I felt like a tiny porcelain figure in the shadow of him. I tried hard not to stare at his weathered features. "I wish it was the reason for why I stay here, but I'm not complaining."
"Neither would I, but that's not a luxury I'm about to enjoy," he said. "I'm catching a train within the hour."
I took a deep breath. Somehow, I knew that already. I should have just left him alone; I should have just gone straight home after the photo shoot. But as soon as I saw Nebulous standing here like a dull flame on the hilltop, I had to do this. I had to be here. "Ponyville isn't beautiful enough to make you stay longer?"
He chuckled. "It's remarkable how everypony here is so kind and approachable, even perfect strangers."
I merely looked at him.
Nebulous cleared his throat and finished zipping the velvet containers shut. The sunlight bounced off him at an angle, reducing his muscles to dark shadow, like the polished surface of a granite slab. "I've done what I've come here to Ponyville to do, and aside from a bizarre incident involving an enchanted doll and some inexplicable stampede, I'd say it was a rather relaxing visit." He glanced my way with a nod. "I can see how this tiny little town got its reputation."
I smiled weakly. "I do hope it's a good reputation."
"Oh, good enough, certainly." He took a deep breath. "My only regret is that my travels will be rather lonely for a while."
Biting my lip, I gazed down the hillside towards the golden rooftops below. "Lonely?" I murmured to the wind. "Why's that?"
"When I came here, I had a fellow artist with me. Turns out she's staying in town. Her mother's here, after all. They... had a reunion of sorts."
"Well, I'm sorry that you lost a friend--"
"Hah! Lost? Oh, hardly," Nebulous said with a handsome smile. "It's hard to mourn the parting of company when one's companion has rediscovered herself, and done so in such a blissful manner." He looked at me. "She held a grudge against her mother for the longest time. But now they've suddenly decided to make amends. I can't describe how joyous a sight it is to see her smile. It's like day and night; she's an entirely different pony, only... she's the same friend I made in my travels. She's just shrugged off a lot of weight from her shoulders." With a contented sigh, he added, "And so have I."
I breathed a bit more evenly, my cheeks warm as I smiled his way. "Sounds like visiting Ponyville has worked in your favor."
"Only because it's worked in hers," he said. "After years of wandering Equestria on her lonesome, she's finally home... and with family. I can rest well knowing that."
"That's good to know." I weathered the heaviest breath of my life and murmured, "And... and what of your home?"
Nebulous' face became long, the shadows doubling across his jawline. "Hmmm... Well, that's a different thing altogether. The road is my home."
I twitched. Bravely, I stared at him. "You don't say...?"
"Yes. What was once her prison is still my journey." He shook the velvet satchel for emphasis. "She had to come here to find herself. Me? I'm still on the path to self-discovery. That's why I could never help her, not like her mother finally did in this town." He chuckled dryly. "If I sound a bit envious, that's probably because I am. Childish, I know, but when you get my age, you feel rather protective of others. It's as if... as if..."
"Something's missing from your life," I said. "And you want to fill the void, even if you don't know what belongs in that empty space." I glanced at my hooves. "I know a thing or two about that. You see, being in Ponyville has changed me too. I couldn't imagine myself in any other place..."
Nebulous nodded, shifting his weight across his hooves. "I once had a home like you," he eventually said, gazing into the wind.
I glanced up at him. My lips trembled. "Oh? D-do tell."
"Not much worth to tell," he said. "I was in Canterlot for many years. I was even married. But, as the years wore on, I found that my life wasn't changing for the better. My wife and I? We just... didn't see eye to eye, I suppose. She was a politician and historian. And me? I wanted to paint, to draw, to find the substance of my dreams and share it with others. So... one thing led to another, and we separated about a year ago. Since then, I've been travelling abroad, hoping to discover myself before it's too late. And until I've found that substance, I can never rest easy." He glanced over with a soft smile. "I don't suppose somepony your age can... relate..."
I was not smiling. It took all my strength to keep my tears in. I gazed at the waving grass, shivering, until I ran a hoof over my lips and bravely tilted my head up. "I can... I c-can relate..."
He gazed at me curiously.
"It's... it's been so long, so very long since I've seen my family," I said. "My p-parents, I mean." I stared into the burning horizon, trying to keep the lump down in my throat. "We separated not that long ago, but... but it feels like ages..."
"Did you not see eye to eye either?" he asked.
"Heh... No. Uhm..." I cleared my throat and fought to maintain a steady voice. "Fate--I guess you could say--divided us. At this point, I really don't think I'll ever have a chance to reunite with them."
The stallion's face turned a sympathetic, pale shade. "I'm very sorry to hear that."
"Hmmmm..." I smiled painfully, my eyes locked on the landscape behind him. "Sorry? Heh. Their memory lives on. It lives on in me. It lives on in the respect that they taught me, the philosophy they instilled in my mind, the love of music that they made a part of my being. I only ever found my talent, my calling, and my passion because of my parents." I inhaled sharply, then said, "Still, there isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about them. Every morning, I dream of seeing my mother again. And I long for the moment to meet my father once more, and look him in the face and say..."
Slowly, I pivoted until my gaze was upon him. I wanted to control the trembling of my lip. I failed.
"...to s-say that I love you, Daddy, and I miss you more than music itself."
He stared at me, and his eyes moistened, matching the silver streak to his mane. With a blink, he composed himself with a strong smile. I only wished that he could give me more, and then he did: "I know that I'm going on in my years," he managed in a soft voice. "But I hope someday to have a daughter as wonderful and thoughtful as you."
I smiled painfully, and my voice cracked. "You deserve no less," I whispered.
The space between us was still, like a blank void between firmaments.
With a frigid gust, the October breeze returned. Nebulous winced, and gave the watch on his forelimb a nervous glance. He almost sighed as he uttered, "Well, the train is coming soon. I must be going if I wish to return these landscapes safely to Fillydelphia."
I nodded, my cheeks hurting. "Go on. I wish you luck in your discoveries."
"Heh. I think I've got enough luck as it is. About time I answered to fate." He levitated his baggage and began strolling downhill, as if sliding away into the shadows of the evening. "By the way." He lingered, making my heart jump one final time. "I didn't catch your name."
I shouldn't have, but I did anyways. "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
He nodded, as if in approval. "It's quite a beautiful name."
I gave him a lasting smile as my vision clouded. "It was a good choice."
"Indeed." And he was lost in the fog. I was lost too.
The first hour without him passed by, and I descended slowly to the earth, an icy collapse, like I was just one of the many shadows of the windy evening. More hours limped by, slipping away from me like so many warm breaths. When night fell and my shivers made the stars shake...
"...I was still there. I don't remember when I arrived home at my cabin," I said before Twilight at the edge of the wedding reception. "Nor do I remember staying there long. Maybe I fed my cat once or twice, or perhaps a dozen times. The only thing I know is that I didn't play the song. I couldn't; I refused to. The Requiem was my seal, my personal unsung barrier between today and yesterday. For the first time ever, I wanted that bliss of forgetfulness. I wanted to be an amnesiac, like everypony around me. And why not? It was comfortable. It was joyous. It was even... liberating."
Spike had a blank expression. Nervously, he glanced up at Twilight.
Twilight's eyes were misty. Holding back a choking sound in the back of her throat, she looked me deeply in the eyes. "Then wh-what changed? Why did you come to me?" She sniffled and almost whimpered, "Why, after all of that, did you ask me to help you play the song and remember everything?"
I stared at her, breathing steadily. Navigating a wincing expression, I summoned the strength to say, "Because when all my memories have left me, I have to know that the pony who remains is made of greater substance than cowardice. I still have a quest to complete. I still have a curse to undo. And everything I've gone through will be worth the pain and anguish if it means I have the capacity to learn from it and be something greater than I once was. You see, Twilight? I refuse to believe that life is nothing but loss and decay. Someway, somehow, I am growing. And I just have one last hurdle to cross."
She nodded, composing herself as her face took on the challenge in my eyes. "We must get you to see the Princesses. Performing the Requiem in front of them must be the solution!"
"But there's no proof that the endeavor can be anything more than pure danger--"
"It's a risk that must be taken!" Twilight said in earnest. "For your sake!" She spun towards her whelpling companion. "Spike!"
"Gah! What?!" he exclaimed, jumping.
"Head towards the library and prepare a letter! We must get the attention of the Princesses at once!"
I sighed, shuddering all over as I ran an exhausted hoof through my frazzled mane. "Twilight, I'm sorry. But... But you've done all you could. There's no way to summon the Princesses, no way to get a message through--"
"We have to try!" Twilight exclaimed. "If you managed to affect Discord, there must be a way to reach them as well!"
"Twilight--"
"It's worth the effort! Spike, what are you standing around for?!"
"But it's way past sundown! You want me to reopen the library now?!"
"Didn't you hear what I said?!" Twilight pointed at me. "Didn't you hear what she said?"
"Hey, it's a pretty intense sob story if you ask me. But come on!" Spike shrugged. "Do you really believe all that about everypony forgetting her?! Or that bit with the Mayor and her daughter at the windmill?! Or... Or..."
"Spike, please! Trust me on this!"
"She just came off the street, Twilight!" Spike shrugged in his tuxedo. "I don't care if she's polite or if she has a swell hoo--... a swell hoo--" He started to lurch and hyperventilate.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Spike...?"
Suddenly, his head flung forward and he belched. A plume of furiously hot emerald flame billowed outward, engulfing half the refreshment table. A tiny scroll plopped down to the ground, but Twilight was far less concerned about that than she was the wreath of flowers that had just caught ablaze.
"Spike!" Twilight shrieked, recoiling in horror, almost tripping over her gown.
"It wasn't m-my fault!" Spike jumped in place, wincing at the climbing flames. "How was I supposed to know there'd be a royal letter this late at night?!"
"You should have aimed straight up or something! Ugh!" Twilight rolled her eyes and lifted the burning wreath in her telekinesis. "Help me take care of this!"
"Yeah! Uh... sure thing! Just one second..." The baby dragon bent over to pick up the scroll.
"Spike! Now!"
"But don't you want to read the--?!"
"Doesn't it look like we have a greater emergency here?!" Twilight said, frowning. "Come on!"
"Ugh..." Spike ditched the scroll and waddled hurriedly over to the unicorn's side. "Okay, let's put this out!"
"Look, I'm so, so sorry!" Twilight exclaimed over her shoulder at me. "This will only take a minute!" She and Spike hurried four steps away towards the middle of the table. "Quick! Spike, grab the punch bowl!"
"Ewww, seriously, Twilight? The punch bowl?! Isn't there--like--a perfectly large trough full of water just outside?"
"Do you want the entire town hall to go up in smoke?!"
"Fine! The punch bowl it is! Let me just get a claw hold..."
"Steady... Steady..."
I turned away from their panicked struggle with the blaze. As they splashed brightly colored liquid over the mess, filling the ceiling above with smoke, I weathered a cold chill. Hugging myself, I glanced down at the floor until my eyes settled upon the scroll.
My eyes blinked hard.
The parchment had a lunar seal on it.
Fidgeting, I glanced at Twilight and Spike, then back at the scroll. Nervously, I knelt down and scooped it up in my telekinetic grip. Without saying a word, I unrolled the thing and scanned the elaborately written calligraphy. A few seconds later, I was gasping, my body shivering doubly now, but not from the cold.
I stood up, my heart beating heavily. I glanced at the unrolled parchment in my grasp, then glanced at the rest of the wedding. The flame was almost out, and the smoke was starting to dissipate. Twilight and Spike still had their backs to me.
When the time came that they turned around, I couldn't see them, for I had fled from the warm interior of the Town Hall.
And I had taken the scroll with me.
Hours later, as dawn rose over the horizon, I sat on the edge of my cot, staring across the space of my cabin. Pinned to the wall, flanked by dozens upon dozens of instruments was the royal letter. I had the most important instrument in my grasp. Rhythmically, I played "Twilight's Requiem" on the Nightbringer over and over again, wishing to the Cosmic Matriarch's holy heavens that the ancient instrument would buff my mind for the insomniac fever I was about to endure.
"She's coming, Alabaster," I murmured to the air. A feline figure was snuggled up against me. He didn't wake; he didn't need to. I relished his warmth, as well as the harmonic chords of the Requiem that were suddenly and inexplicably soothing to my ears once more. "She's coming to Ponyville. In two days, she'll be here..."
The unrolled parchment flickered from the golden sheen of the ancient instrument. My eyes were locked on a series of numbers: the beautifully clear date of Nightmare Night.
"And I'll be there too," I murmured, a tear rolling down my cheek as I struggled and shivered to stay awake. "I'll be there. So help me, Alabaster. We'll both be there. And we'll remember together. We'll remember together." I gulped and whimpered, "We will remember..."
If memories are all that's left me, I'll gladly welcome whatever falls in their place.
Background Pony
XVII - "All That's Left You"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Props, Warden, RazgrizS57, theBrianJ, theworstwriter, and fascism
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XVIII - Crescendo | "My little ponies," Princess Celestia spoke, her wings spread majestically on either side of her. "I am pleased to be here for this meeting in the beautiful town of Ponyville. Though this isn't the largest of towns in Equestria, it is far from the furthest thing in my mind. I care for each and every one of my precious subjects, and it is with all of you in mind that I make this visit to your humble community."
The hotel lobby brimmed with bright faces and glistening eyes. Rows upon rows of awestruck equines bowed before the alicorn at the far end of the chamber. Bordering the group, muscular pegasus guards stood in glinting armor, scrutinizing the crowd with glaring, suspicious eyes that their benevolent leader couldn't afford. Twilight Sparkle was there, smiling proudly from where she stood alongside her mentor.
With a dip of her horn, Celestia nodded towards the many ponies in attendance. "Peace and harmony are the essences of our souls; I have believed that since the dawn of time. To that end, I present myself to you with an open heart, so that all of your concerns regarding the well-being of Ponyville and Equestria as a whole can be fully addressed here. I do believe your beloved Mayor has already chosen the order for questions. You may proceed at your own pace; I have the whole afternoon dedicated to you, my precious subjects."
The ponies chattered amongst each other, at least until the Mayor waved her hoof and silenced the crowd with a shrill whistle. Smiling, she gestured towards a stallion standing in the front row of the lobby. "Your Majesty, I present to you Cold Gardens, the proprietor of the Rising Sun Floral Shop on the east end of town."
A stallion stood up from the group and performed a bow. Wringing his forelimbs together pensively, he spoke to the brilliant alicorn standing before him. "Your Highness, let me first say that it is a privilege and an honor to be in your presence. Ever since I first saw you at the Orlandoats Summer Sun Celebration of 983, I've been mesmerized by your wisdom and beauty."
"983..." Celestia's smile was a tranquil thing as she said, "That was a good year for sunflowers."
Cold Gardens blinked. With rosy cheeks, he smiled and nodded. "Yes! Yes, they were everywhere that year. I was so f-fascinated with sunflowers as a little colt. Ever since that Summer Sun Celebration, I would look at a sunflower and think of your glory and power." He gulped and said, "I do believe you were my inspiration to pursue my special talent in gardening, your majesty."
"That brings me great joy," she said. "How may I help you today, Mr. Gardens?"
"Well, y-your highness..." He gulped again and gestured outside the front doors to the place. "There's been something of a drought Ponyville this year. It's not nearly as bad a dry season as 997, but several of the local flora have recently withered due to dehydration. We had to build a second greenhouse just to prevent a few local flowers from going extinct. Now, I know th-that you've been awfully busy this year, what with the dragon situation in the mountains west of here, not to mention the wonderful reunion you must still be having with your sister, Princess Luna--"
"I assure you, never for one second is my attention so divided that I cannot see to the concerns of my subjects," Celestia interrupted with a smile. "I am quite aware of this drought of which you speak. I assume you were the one who commissioned the town to write the public petition for weather assistance two months ago here in Ponyville?"
The stallion blinked. "Why, yes! Yes it was me! You... you mean you actually t-took the time to read it? Uhm, your Highness?"
She chuckled warmly. "But of course. Immortality does come with its share of insomnia, after all."
Several ponies laughed and giggled cheerfully. Twilight smiled.
Celestia continued speaking. "I did read that letter, Mr. Gardens, and I immediately made a request of the Cloudsdalian Weather Commission to plan an extra week of precipitation for the middle of April. However, upon further study, a group of pegasus meteorologists told me that extra rainfall won't be a permanent solution for the growing drought problem. To this end, I spoke with your Mayor and suggested an irrigation program. Being earth ponies, I figured that such a project would be quite feasible to..."
As the Princess spoke, her voice became muffled between the many crowding bodies. This was because I was presently ducking through the bodies, ribs, and shoulders of the thick group. Peering up, I struggled to clench my clattering teeth shut.
My heart leapt into my throat at the first sight of the Princess' face, her rosy eyes, her starlit mane. She was glorious, she was beautiful, she was a goddess. And a goddess was the one thing I most desperately needed right then.
I glanced to my far left and right. Pegasus guards stood on intimidatingly broad legs. From where I was it looked as though their armored necks stretched all the way to the ceiling. No doubt, with a single flap of their wings they could leap upon any part of the lobby instantaneously. Still, despite knowing all of this, I had to try making my move. The Princess said that she was going to be there all afternoon, but that was no excuse for me to tarry.
Struggling to hold my shivers at bay, I tugged my hoodie's sleeves further down my limbs, curled up onto the floor, and crawled forward through the crowd. I moved my petite limbs slowly, silently, hoping that the shadows of those all around me would obscure my approach to the Princess' seat. I smelled the pensive breaths of the humble villagers; my ears twitched to the beating of their hearts. The Sun Goddess' voice grew louder and louder, shaking my bones, milking tears from my amber eyes.
"...and with a terrestrial spell from Canterlot's Royal Geological Division, the aqueduct should remain structurally intact for the next twenty-five years at least." Celestia leaned her head forward. "Does that sound like a feasible solution?"
"Oh, absolutely, your highness!" Cold Gardens exclaimed with a fervent nod. He smiled, his eyes glistening with joy. "Thank you for your wisdom. Ponyville will make good use of your assistance."
"And perhaps you'll have more of your beautiful sunflowers on display for the next time I visit!" Celestia said, receiving many giggles and cheers. She turned her head towards the town leader. "Mayor?"
"Ahem. Sibsy from the central market had a question for you--"
I stepped on a mare's hoof. A loud shout filled the air and forced me to bump into another pony at my side. Soon, the lobby filled with indignant outbursts.
"Hey, watch it!"
"The hay is wrong with you?"
"Wait your turn!"
I didn't respond. I couldn't. The crowd of ponies was swiveling to look at me already. Every head was turning towards this haggard waif of a unicorn. Soon, the guards were craning their necks too. The world was freezing; I hyperventilated and shivered.
"Uhhh..." The Mayor was finally marching sideways in front of the Princess, squinting my way. "What in blazes?"
I hissed beneath my breath, shoved a pony out of the way, and galloped forward. The world bobbed, then turned into a hazy blur as desperate tears leaked out of me. Celestia's shimmering visage was but a flickering candle in the fog. I shrieked towards her, for fear that I was losing everything already.
"Princess! Princess help me!" I shouted. "Princess, I am cursed! I am cursed and I n-need your blessing!"
"You there! Halt!" I felt the heat of their wings before the guards were on me. It was as though chunks of the ceiling had impaled my body; metal-laced hooves clamped me to the floor from all sides.
I shrieked in pain and wrestled a hoof out from underneath their muscular legs. I sobbed in the direction of the center stage. "Save me, Princess! Please! I'll be lost if you don't help me!"
"Oh brother," I heard a pony drawling from beside Twilight. "There's always one yahoo at these important events."
"Princess! I-I..." Twilight's voice stammered, though it had become an obscure murmur beyond the forest of limbs wrangling me up to my hooves. "I don't know what to say! I've never seen this unicorn in town before..."
I winced and gasped in pain as the guards yanked me back to the far end of the lobby and away from my only salvation. "No, please!" I shrieked. "You have to listen!" I tried to spot Celestia, but her glorious visage was lost in the sea of frightened faces gawking all around me. "I beg of you! If you send me away, I may never get another chance!"
"That's as far as you go, ma'am!" a guard grunted into my ear.
"Right this way!" Another hoisted me around and shoved me towards the exit where more guards were opening the door to the bright daylight. "Nopony intrudes upon the Princess!"
"Don't! Please!" I was a sobbing, hysterical mess. I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be forgotten again. "She has to hear this! Only she can lift this curse from me!"
The sunlight was blinding. I heard birdsong and cicadas and they both resembled cannon fire.
"Wait."
The world outside was drowned out by a holy glow behind me. I felt the guards stopping in their tracks. I swung like a limp pendulum as they twirled around and presented me before the most rapturous thing I had ever seen in my life. Celestia was trotting forward from the table at the end of the lobby, forcing the villagers to part so she could stand boldly before me.
"Don't take her away. Let her speak..."
A guard lurched forward. "But your majesty--"
"I care for all of my royal subjects," she said, her immaculate eyes trained on my figure. I felt loved instead of admonished, and it made me weep quietly. "If it is within my power to rid this unicorn of her distress, then such is my divine duty."
The guards obeyed. I knew this because I was falling down on all four limbs, limp with the joyous sobs coursing through me. I crawled towards the princess, shivering, relishing for once the cold of my curse, for I knew that it was just the threshold to salvation. I looked up, my face streaming with tears as I stared bravely into the source of that holy light. "Oh bless you. Bless you, your Majesty. You have no idea what I've been through..."
"Shhh..." Celestia reached forward. Her wings folded around me, embracing the distraught little foal I had become. If I could have laid there forever in her soothing grace, I just might have given in. But the cold kiss of the curse lingered beyond everything, including her warm presence. I listened as she spoke softly to me. "Be calm. It's okay. Catch your breath, my little pony, and tell me what troubles you."
I sniffled. I smiled. I stood up and opened my mouth to speak. Then my eyes caught something. I turned my head to look.
Twilight was standing there by Celestia's side, and yet she wasn't there. A purple haze fell over her, and the longer I stared, the larger she grew, like an all-encompassing shadow that swallowed the ponies in the room and threatened to consume her sister as well. In a violent flash of pale glinting light, her bony wing spokes spread out, slicing the walls of the hotel asunder. Her mouth opened, echoing with the sound of unsung bells, just before a silver helm encased her skull and my shivering vision in turn.
"Nightmare Night! What a fright!"
I gasped and jumped back from the three foals.
A princess, a lady bug, and an astronaut grinned up at me. Brightly colored paper bags hung from their necks.
"Give us something sweet to bite!" they all finished chiming.
I backtrotted into a glowing lamppost. My breath came out in foggy vapors in the cold chill of an October night. "What... Where...?" I stopped talking; my voice was a muffled noise. I reached a hoof up and found my entire body enshrouded in ivory white bandages. "Nightmare... Night...?"
"Now girls, don't go scarin' the party folks!" Granny Smith hobbled over on shaking limbs, nuzzling the three fillies towards a treehouse in the middle of Ponyville. "Yer supposed ta be askin' for treats at doorfronts, ya crazy lil' scamps! Git along, now! I don't need a fright to have me a heart attack!"
"Happy Nightmare Night!" the filly in the princess outfit sang my way.
"Yeesh!" the ladybug rolled her eyes as Granny Smith ushered her across town. "What kind of a mummy carries a harp around?"
I blinked at them. With a gasp, I reached everywhere through my leylines. I felt a velvet satchel tied to my flank. Fearlessly, I pulled the Nightbringer out of hiding. A kaleidoscopic glitter reflected the lamplight all around as I held the golden instrument up and plucked its black strings. In very little time, I successfully played "Twilight's Requiem." The chill of night melted, and a searing hot wave of purpose overwhelmed my mind. I seethed through clenched teeth, yanking a length of bandages free from my lips so I could breathe more easily.
Leaning against the lamppost in a slump, I glanced tiredly across the lengths of town. Ponies trotted happily back and forth, dressed in all sorts of random, colorful costumes. I saw Carrot Top as a devil, Applejack as a scarecrow, and Derpy as... as... well, what mattered was that I could remember their names, I guess.
"It's Nightmare Night," I murmured, then gulped dryly.
After several more panting breaths, I glanced towards the center of town where a large stage had been erected. The Mayor stood before a podium flanked by a band performing eerie folk music. My eyes traveled from her colorful clown wig to the starry nighttime canopy stretching above us all. The sun had fallen less than an hour ago. Celebrations had officially started, but none of that put me at ease.
"Where is she?" I looked across the glittering horizon.
The purple haze of evening lingered above the trees. Moonlight came in shimmering bands, resonating with her glory, but there was no sign of her to be found.
"She should be here by now." I bit my lip. "Did she... did she change her mind?"
I shook my head, feeling a few lengths of my makeshift costume coming loose. With tactful telekinesis, I wrapped the strands back around me.
"No, that wouldn't be like a princess to cancel at the last second," I said. My face morphed into a frightful grimace. "Or would it?"
I stared into the moonlight again. I thought of Princess Luna. I thought of Alabaster, of the dreadful task he had helped her with nearly a thousand years ago. Did the Goddess of the Moon ever truly commit her mind to anything, or was she just drawn to fate by the vacuum Princess Aria had left? What had inspired her to show up for Nightmare Night to begin with? Wouldn't that be the last thing Luna would want to do? And in Ponyville of all places?
"She will come," I murmured. "She will be here. I just..." I hugged the Nightbringer, quivered, and began playing the strings of the Requiem again, just like I had done for so many nights previous, nonstop, in anticipation of this moment of moments. This was my one opportunity, my last chance to spread the song to Luna, so that Luna could bridge the gap between her sister and herself. "I just need to keep playing. I just need to keep remembering."
Ponies blinked at me as they trotted by, not expecting a minstrel to be playing in the middle of Nightmare Night. Surprised by the added festivities, they smiled and waved at the mummified stranger in their midst.
I turned my head away from them and clenched my eyes shut. I allowed the music to drown out the nonstop rush of cheering voices and chanting youngsters merrily filling the lengths of town. "Stay focused. Remember who you are. You are Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings." My mind centered on my fractured memories as the world dissolved around me. "You are cursed, and you must get Aria to play 'Desolation's Duet.' You must meditate on the music. The music is everything. The melody--"
"My, what a heavenly tune!"
My eyes flashed open. I turned and looked.
"But dear, you look positively freezing!" Rarity smiled, her teeth and hair shining in the morning light. "Tell me, are you ill?"
I was shivering. With a clatter of my teeth, I glanced down. A wooden box rested next to me, glistening with the golden bits the fashionista had deposited within. I shoved the container behind the lamppost and looked at her again.
"Oh, I'm perfectly fine, ma'am," I stammered while strumming the fragmented pieces to the Threnody, only I didn't know it was the Threnody. Or did I? "My blood temperature is just... lower than the average pony's," I said, though I felt my words trailing. I looked past Rarity. I saw Morning Dew presenting a golden tulip towards a mint green unicorn on the far side of town. She blushed. She looked so shocked and enamored all at once. "Like an angel..."
"Dig the swell hoodie!"
"Huh?" I tripped over my hooves. Books went flying across the library floor. "Gah!"
"Whoah! Watch it, tangle-hoof!" Spike chuckled, having miraculously caught half the tomes in a brave dive. "Whew! And who said cleaning after all of Twilight's clutter was for nothing!" He stood up, brushed the dust off the books with his scaley elbow, and handed them towards me. "There you go, Miss..."
"Heartrstrings," I muttered; I levitated his books and several others before laying them nervously on the table beneath the sunlit window. "And there is... there is a new song stuck in my head," I murmured, staring at the scattered dust within the golden glow of the day, wondering if any of the tiny flakes had any more purpose in their drift than I had in my words. "I don't know what the point is anymore, but I know that I must... must keep pl-playing the melody."
"Are you a musician or something?"
"But of course!" I exclaimed. "You think this cutie mark means I write novels?" I turned around. My eyes twitched.
Caramel and Wind Whistler were leaning in towards each other. Their lips met under the candlelight of the decorated town hall. Several ponies cheered and stomped their hooves in the stands below the altar. Flower petals showered from a pair of pegasi hovering above the wedding.
The two ponies nuzzled each other. A tear was coming out of Caramel's eye. He glanced across the ceremony at me.
And I shouted back, "Why?!"
My mane billowed in the dying evening above the rooftops of Ponyville. I clung to the edge of the Town Hall building as Caramel stood far below.
"Why shouldn't I just jump?!" I was mad. I was a ghost. I was sobbing and laughing all at once. "Why shouldn't I just end the nightmare once and for all?!"
He looked up at me, his blue eyes like a pool I was about to jump into. Then the waves parted around his calm voice, entreating, "Because you are so special, so precious, and this world would be a lot less worth enjoying if you chose to leave it."
I panted, my sweat mingling with my tears. There was nothing more to release. I was hollow, a vessel that needed a soul to fill. I reached out to her, and her rosy eyes reflected a desperate little unicorn.
"Play your music, young one," Princess Celestia said. The hotel lobby's faces blurred into a warm sea of curiosity beyond her. "If you think it will help."
"Oh thank you," I stammered, standing up and plucking the strings of my lyre with a shivering hoof. "I promise, everything will make sense..." I stopped, my limbs freezing in place. I wasn't performing Elegy #3. This was an entirely different song. But how was that possible? I only knew three elegies. "What is this?"
"Why, it's Nightmare Night, silly filly!" A pink pony in a chicken suit grinned in my face. "Ba-cock!"
"Gaaah!" The Requiem ended as I fell back into a pile of hay. I was riding in a wagon with several other ponies under twinkling, purple starlight.
"Heeheehee!" Pinkie Pie leaned back, ruffling her white feathers as the red comb of her costume flopped back and forth. "What's the matter?! Got chicken feet?" She turned and glanced at the line of games drifting past us. "Oooh! This is our stop!" She patted a bunch of foals on their shoulders and leaned towards the front of the wagon. "Big Mac! Park it right here! We've got some super terrific games to play!"
"Eeeyup." The wagon shuffled to a stop as Pinkie Pie and her waddling little companions filed out under the exciting glitter of night.
"Now the key is to hit the bullseyes with the pumpkin launchers!" Pinkie Pie mumbled amusedly to the children. "But it wasn't always tradition! Ages ago, ponies fought wars over whether or not bullseyes themselves needed to be flung at stuff, but all of that ended with a great deal of other things beginning with the word 'bull!' Hee hee hee!"
I sat up in the wagon, panting. I glanced down at my hooves. Instead of my traditional lyre, the Nightbringer hung in my grasp. I imagined the only reason nopony noticed the majesty of the holy instrument was because of the distracting garishness of everypony's costumes.
"Okay... Okay..." I sweated clambering down from the wagon. Big Mac gave me a sideways look of concern. I trotted hurriedly from his sight and hid behind a tent full of jack-o-lanterns. "I just have to remain calm," I murmured to myself, straightening the milky white bandages clinging to my figure. "I have to concentrate. The Requiem is wearing thin. I just gotta play it more for it to work on me. But it has to work on Luna. It'll be her first time hearing it since..." I gulped.
Beyond me, crowds of ponies gathered before a large stage to hear Zecora tell a tale of Nightmare Moon. The longer I stared, the more the costumes and colored coats morphed into a thousand year old mosaic. I saw streets of Canterlot on fire, and ghostly ponies hanging themselves in order to escape from Aria's accursed voice.
Seething, I clenched my eyes shut and started playing "Twilight's Requiem" once more. "She will be here. She will hear you. It won't be like with Celestia. It won't." I gulped as I sensed a fresh wave of shivers coming over me. I plucked the strings of the Nightbringer harder, feeling my heart beat between the chords. "Focus on the song; focus on the melody. It is you. It is what you are. It is..."
"Look out!" Thunderlane's voice shouted from above. "Get away from the forest!"
My eyes flew open. I was squatting beneath a tree with my lyre in the waning afternoon. A loud vibration ran through the grassy soil. Ponies stampeded past me, breathless, dropping picnic items with each yard of ground they covered. I stood up and stared past them.
Beyond the park on the edge of Ponyville, the great emerald expanse of Everfree loomed. Emerging from the line of trees, stomping the ground with glittering paws, was the largest creature I had ever seen with my naked eyes. With translucent feral fangs, the ursa minor reared its hulking torso above a pair of innocent ponies. The two picnickers clung to each other, shivering, as the mammoth beast roared, preparing to bring its claw down and cleave them in quarters.
"Not again!" a mare shrieked from where she hid behind a tree behind me. "Why won't that thing stay in hibernation?!"
"Who cares!" a stallion exclaimed. "Those ponies are in trouble!"
"Thunderlane!" Blossomforth shouted as she flew back, breathless, from the center of town. "I just had Twilight's dragon send a warning to the Princess--" She gasped, her eyes wide. "Great heavens! It's here already!"
"What, are you nuts?!" Thunderlane shouted from above, cupping his hooves over his mouth. "Run!"
At first, I thought he was shouting at the two picnic-goers, but I realized that a third pony had suddenly joined the doomed mix. Squinting, I felt my heart jolt upon the sight of her. She calmly trotted over to the scene, willfully drowning herself in the shadow of the hulking monster. Then, the softest and most soothing of sounds filled the air.
The beast paused, holding back from eviscerating the two ponies within reach. With a sullen growl, he turned his attention towards the singing pegasus.
Fluttershy treated the Ursa Minor to a tranquil lullaby. Her vocal cords were soft and sweet, and yet even the horrified ponies watching from a distance could hear her, for all of their breaths had been drawn in from the shock and tension of the moment.
The two ponies at Fluttershy's side stood up on jittering hooves. They backed up slowly, their petrified eyes fixed upon the creature who had been warded off by a simple tune. While Fluttershy held the monster still with her soothing voice, one of the two ponies inadvertently stepped on a twig. The resulting snap broke Fluttershy's concentration, and her next note was off-key.
The Ursa shook its snout in annoyance. Hissing, it reared its claws and swung straight at Fluttershy's soft skull.
The watching ponies gasped... and yet again drew in their breaths, for the monster's swing ended just a foot from the pegasus' body. A unicorn had joined her side, compensating for the brief break in the lullaby with a melodic accompaniment of golden strings.
I stood next to Fluttershy in the shadow of the beast. The cold in my bones sent my limbs ashiver, and yet I tried my best to mimic the pegasus' calmness and bravery. Together, we serenaded the monster until his nerves calmed. We could feel the beats of his mammoth heart through the air, and they were drawing further and further apart. Eventually, he sat back, retracting his claws and breathing more evenly.
I glanced behind me and pulsed my horn like a signal in Thunderlane's direction.
His eyes lit up. He glanced at the two ponies beside me and Fluttershy. With a knowing nod, he motioned to Blossomforth, and the pegasi couple slowly flew our way. They grabbed the ponies with their hooves and hoisted them off to safety.
In the meantime, Fluttershy and I began backing away from the relaxed Ursa. As its drowsy lids lowered, we made a break for the far end of the park. Before it could notice that we had galloped away, a swarm of Equestrian guard ponies swooped down from the high heavens, summoned from Canterlot. In swift order, they spun circles around the Ursa. The celestial bear swung a few times at them, growling, but they were too fast for its swipes. Frustrated and confused, the monster eventually turned around and stormed off into the thick of the Everfree Forest. The guards remained hovering above the treeline to make sure the creature had actually retreated.
A wave of cheers flew our way as Fluttershy and I joined the rest of the group upon the grassy hill. Thunderlane and Blossomforth hovered down, and as soon as the two ponies in their grasp were deposited safely on the ground, the pair flew forward and swept Fluttershy in a tender hug.
"Oh thank you, thank you, Fluttershy!"
"We'd be goners if it weren't for you!"
"You're such a blessing to this village! A blessing!"
"Mmmm..." Fluttershy blushed and dug a hoof into the ground. "I just didn't want anypony to get hurt."
I stared, suddenly on the sidelines. I watched with momentary confusion as everypony huddled around her while completely ignoring me. Then I saw a cloud of vapors escape my mouth, and I felt like sighing. Instead, I smiled and trotted softly into the thick of the group.
"Wow, Fluttershy!" I remarked in a loud voice. "That was certainly brave of you!"
"Huh?" She looked at me as if for the first time. The redness in her cheeks doubled. "Oh, I dunno..."
"You don't know?" I grinned wide. "Aren't you the most easily frightened pony in town? I've heard that you're even scared of your own shadow!"
Several ponies around us chuckled and patted Fluttershy on the back. With a soft smile she replied, "You're right. Far too often, I'm scared for myself. But..." She fidgeted. "I guess it's different when I'm scared for others."
I blinked, feeling a soft breath escape my lips. "It really is that simple, isn't it?" I thought aloud in her direction. "To be concerned for others is enough to make you move mountains..."
"I don't know about moving mountains," she said, "but... erm... I guess it makes me sing nicely."
The ponies chuckled and congratulated her again with several more hugs and cheers.
I smiled, hugging the lyre to my chest as I murmured, "Very nicely indeed."
"Ahhhh!" Pinkie Pie screamed. "It's Nightmare Moon! Run!"
I gasped into the bandages covering my mouth. Panting, I spun and looked up at the starlight. Flashes of lightning erupted beyond the clouds, and through the tempests there rode a chariot being pulled by two sarosians in midnight armor. The air filled with sharp gasps and sullen shrieks. Then the noise shattered as swiftly as began; the chariot levitated directly above us. Descending from her seat like a black shadow, the Princess of the Night landed in the middle of Ponyville. Her hood flew back, revealing a hardened gaze chiseled by the cold lengths of time, but nonetheless frighteningly beautiful.
Everypony around me was collapsing prostrate onto the ground. I had beaten them to it, succumbing to an intense cold as my heart shuddered with every tremendous step the princess was taking. Her cloak dissolved into a swarm of shrieking bats as she spread her wings and spoke with utmost majesty.
"Citizens of Ponyville! We have graced your tiny village with our presence, so that you might behold the real princess of the night!" she bellowed, her voice shaking the fibers of my soul. I felt the trembles of everypony around me through the foundations of the village. Not a single soul dared look her in the face; Luna's glory was both resplendent and terrifying. "A creature of nightmare is no longer, but instead a pony who desires your love and admiration!"
The ringing in my ears that followed her royal speech nearly split my skull in two. I should have been shouting back. I should have been galloping straight towards her, hoisting the Nightbringer into Luna's sight, and playing the Requiem of her long lost Princess of Twilight. But I couldn't move. I couldn't feel my limbs beyond their shivering extremities.
"Together we shall change this dreadful celebration into a bright and glorious feast!" her otherworldly voice exclaimed.
For the first time since she landed, I opened my tearful eyes. I did not see her, and yet I did. Every other pony was gone, and she was standing before me, a part of the desolation and its gift to me. With her onyx wings and silver helm, she scowled my way. I was nothing, and she had arrived to make me nothing with Aria's song, as was her duty since the Nocturne transformed her, as she was banned from the terrestrial realm for doing. She was the scourge of Equestria, the murderer of the dawn, and all for the sake of preserving the breath of a sister she could barely comprehend, yet who had frozen all life and warmth within her bones.
Nightmare Moon was the shadow of Aria, an appendix to a dead goddess. She didn't know it, but that didn't stop her from singing the song to me, entreating me to become nothing.
And someway, somehow, a part of me had refused. That was why I never ended up in chains, and it was also why I couldn't stay silent forever.
"No! You must listen to me!" I shouted against the rivulets of noise and mayhem. "You must hear beyond her song! You must become something you could never afford to be!" I hissed and roared, "You must rise to a level you were too afraid to scale! You must be brave enough to remember her, so that she will be brave enough to perform the duet with me!"
Nightmare Moon said nothing. She loomed above me, and yet she was drawing away. Lightning flashed in the distance, obscuring the space between us with the freezing mists of the unsung realm. This was neither here nor there, now nor then. This was a fragment of a memory, and it was receding from me, leaving me in a cold vacuum where I shouted towards nothing but myself and the darkness.
"No!" I growled, reaching my hooves out until I grabbed the Nightbringer from the ether. I clung to it like I hugged Moondancer in my bedroom closet, dodging the branches and twigs as I carried Scootaloo through the forest and towards the flimsy shreds of all the world's warmth. "I will not forget, Nightmare Moon!" The words on Granite Shuffle's tombstone were melting away as the tears obscured the smile on Nebulous' face. I clenched my eyes shut and wailed into the maelstrom around me. "I will not be alone!" Somewhere beyond the thunderclouds, the Requiem was playing. It was hard to hear over the moans and rattling of chains. "I refuse to be alone! I refuse! I..."
"Ugh!" Rainbow Dash's voice rasped. "The last thing I ever wanna be caught dead doing is having a lame tea party!"
"Well, it matters little, Rainbow," Rarity said from behind the table at Sugarcube Corner as she finished her coffee. After daintily dabbing her lips with a napkin, she levitated a saddlebag onto her shoulders and stood up. "Hoity Toity only invited me. Normally, I'd be ecstatic to bring another friend along for the occasion. However, I'm afraid that your usual... eh... civility is not needed at this soiree. I alone must engage such a famous Canterlot socialite in this strenuous business discussion. I highly doubt you would find it remotely entertaining even if I could afford to bring you along."
"Pfft! Big deal! I've got better things to do today anyways!"
"Oh really?" Rarity smiled pleasantly as she placed two bits down onto the table as a tip. "Are you and Pinkie Pie planning on spreading jocularity and misfortune across the town yet again?"
"Er, well... no..." Rainbow Dash's ears drooped. She glanced aside, her hooves fidgeting against the tile floor as she murmured, "She's delivering a package to Trottingham for the Cakes this weekend, and she took Applejack with her so she could advertise her family's apple treats..."
"Then perhaps Fluttershy or Twilight are--"
"They're away in Canterlot, visiting Twilight's brother at some boring award ceremony," Rainbow muttered, flicking a teaspoon across the table. "Mmmf... Lousy weekend..."
"Oh? I'm so terribly sorry to hear that--"
"But it's not like I haven't got loads to do!" Rainbow Dash said, her ears perking up as she smiled mischievously. "I just learned a brand new bunch of radical tricks to try out over the north side of town! There's gonna be a brisk wind coming from the west, just in time for me to pull off the Buccaneer Blitz!"
"Oh, you mean that terribly ambiguous spectacle that is supposed to charm the Wonderbolts?"
"Awwwww yeah!" Rainbow Dash hovered close to the ceiling and grinned with bright ruby eyes. "What are the chances that you and Hot Topic would like to take a break later on and watch me split the air in two?!"
"Hoity Toity," Rarity corrected. "And I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, Rainbow Dash, but that is not his preferred means of having a good time. He is only in Ponyville to conduct business, and I am going to treat him to such." She trotted off with a gentle wave of the hoof. "Though, that doesn't mean you can't improve your chances with the Wonderbolts on your own! Ta-Ta!"
"Yeah. Uh, see ya." Rainbow Dash muttered. Her ears drooped again, and she slumped over the edge of the table. Her eyes took on a jaded quality, and she sighed into the wooden finish.
Just then, her blue ears twitched. A few seconds later, they twitched again. She blinked, her body electrified by a startlingly familiar beat. Sitting straight up, Rainbow Dash stared around the room until her bright gaze flew in my direction.
I sat on a stool with my back against the wall. My sleeved hooves were plucking the strings of my lyre, producing a lively tune that resonated through the brightly painted lengths of the eatery.
Her jaw dropped. Tilting her head aside, she raised an eyebrow and stammered, "Is th-that... is that 'The Last Flight of Commander Hurricane?'"
"Mmmmhmmm..." I smiled lightly, pretending not to be looking at her. "Just a simple little tune I like to practice from time to time."
"'Simple little tune?'" Rainbow Dash balked. "That's the opening music that the Cloudsalian Orchestra plays every time the Wonderbolts perform in their home town!" Her voice cracked, "It's the most epic song ever! How can you play it so awesomely and just call it 'practice?'"
"Because it's only warm up."
"Warm up for what?"
"'The Rise and Fall of Stratopolis.'"
In a blue blur, she zipped up to my table and hovered above me. "You mean to say you know all the songs of the 'Soaring Cirrus Symphony?'"
"Well, I'd hope so," I said, giving her a bored glance. "It's hard to know both the Hurricane and Stratopolis movements without having a basic grasp of the rest of the pegasus magnum opus."
"That's so cool!" Rainbow Dash grinned wide. "Spitfire uses the whole symphony as part of her team's act! I used to think that all that old orchestra stuff was lame, but the way they fly to it makes it seem so epic!"
I giggled lightly. "That's because it is so epic. Pegasi musicians have always had a thing for gravitas and bombastic flare. It's outright loud, obnoxious, and yet boldly confident--like most flying ponies."
"Heheheh... You got that right!" Rainbow Dash said with a sharp grin.
"However, I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting the ending to the 'Soaring Cirrus Symphony' right," I said. "I could use another pair of ears to tell me if I'm off-key. It gets rather loud at the end and I'm a bit too concentrated on the tempo to make a firm judgment myself."
"Pfft. That sounds like a lot of boring work," she grumbled.
"Oh, well, if you've got better things to do, then I won't take your time," I said.
"Huh?" She blinked, and her ears drooped again. "N-no way! I'm not..." She winced, stopped flapping her wings, and lowered herself onto the ground before me. "What I mean is, I'd b-be more than happy to help. That is, if you think you're cool enough to hang out with the likes of Ponyville's fastest weather flier! Heh heh..."
I glanced over my lyre at her. "Me? Cool enough?"
"S-sure!" she grinned awkwardly. "You look as though you could... uh... use s-some company! Yeah..."
I paused in playing. I nodded slowly with a smile. "Company sounds wonderful. It's too beautiful an afternoon to spend alone."
Rainbow said nothing. She gazed down at her hooves as her wings twitched nervously.
For her sake, I immediately spoke, "Do you know the final notes to the 'Soaring Cirrus Symphony?'"
"What, you want me to hum them or something?"
"Hehehe... Well that'd be a start."
"Well, okay then." Rainbow Dash cleared her throat and happily sat down by my side. "Here goes..."
With a dainty hoof, she slaps the drumstick over the appropriate xylophone keys. Twilight smiles proudly and glances up at me. "Like that! So that it sounds like rolling thunder!"
"Ugh!" Moondancer groans from where she reclines on my bed with a storybook full of bright, colorful pictures. "Pegasi are so full of themselves! Why does everything they make have to be so annoying and loud?"
Twilight frowns up at her from the bedroom floor. "Don't make fun of them! It's their culture!"
"Well, their culture is stupid," Moondancer says, although she's smiling devilishly. "Have you even seen the way they dress up at pageants?! Heeheehee--It's like they're trying to go to war with the clouds!"
"Hey! Those armored uniforms are really spectacular! The pegasi have a long history of military tradition, after all!" Twilight glances towards me. "You should know this, Lyra! You wrote to a pegasus pen pal last year. Tell Moondancer what you learned!"
"Suuuure! Take Twilight's side!" Moondancer flips a page of the storybook and dangles her legs off the bed. "Starswirl was always Celestia's pet, not Luna's!"
"Moondancer, we're not playing 'princesses' right now! We're talking about old Equestrian music!"
"Couldn't we be chatting about that at the doughnut shop? I'm craving sprinkles like nopony's business!"
"Ugggh... Sometimes you're a real dunce!"
"Hahahaha!"
"What?"
"Where'd you learn that word? That's a stupid word!"
"Exactly! It means 'a pony of stupid qualities who refuses to learn!'"
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"
"I was only telling you what--"
"You take that back!"
"I didn't mean anything by it!"
"You meant it!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Uh huh!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Uh huh!"
I want to break them up. I know that it is my place to. But every time I lean forward to open my mouth, I saw the train chugging away from the station, carrying Moondancer towards Fillydelphia and away from my life. I sat on the bench, hugging myself as the cold piled up all around me. It was so frigid in that dark corner of Ponyville that even my tears froze before they could fall.
"Dear journal," I stammered.
I sat inside a lonely tent besides an abandoned barn on the north edge of town. The first blank page of a book lay beneath me as I levitated a pen over its white face.
"I hear music, and I know that I'm alive. I sense melodies, and I know that I can think. There is a beat within my heart, and it fills me with a sense of purpose. But why?"
With a lump in my throat, I gazed up. I reached a hoof out and undid the zipper, lowering the flap of my tent. Outside, a magical contraption exploded, tossing Twilight Sparkle, Dr. Whooves, and Rainbow Dash onto the floor of the library.
"Am I here to save these ponies, when I cannot save myself?"
Morning Dew stirred on the floor of the greenhouse, his eyes twitching as he fell in and out of consciousness beneath my nudging hooves.
"Can I give them the music?" I gulped, almost whimpering. "Can I give them me?"
The autumn wind kicked at his handsome gray mane as Nebulous stared at me, past me.
The same tear that rolled down his cheek was rolling down mine. "I just want to go home," I said, gazing across the chessboard as Granite Shuffle fell asleep in the gathering shadows of the day. "Is th-that too much to ask?"
"This tune..." Princess Celestia remarked, her rosy eyes glossy from an emotion that had no name to it. "What... is it called?"
"'Prelude to Shadows', your highness," I said in the middle of my instrumental. The lights from the corner of the hotel lobby intensified. Ponies around me were squinting and murmuring in uncertainty. "By now, you should be noticing its magical effects."
"I most... c-certainly do sense a change in the air," Celestia said. Her wide wings quivered. "But that rhythm... that melody..."
"You should know it," I said. "You taught it to Twilight." I smiled as the tears dried on my face. "And she taught it to me."
Several ponies glanced Twilight's way. She stepped back with a look of confusion. "But... But... I-I've never seen this unicorn in my life! Princess Celestia, I--"
"Shhh..." Celestia's jaw hung open as a distant sparkle struck her eyes. Her irises shrank, and her royal complexion turned pale. "There's a segue coming up, isn't there? There... There is a song after this..."
"Yes! Yes there is!" I exclaimed, my body trembling as I broke into the next instrumental. "You should know this too! Though I doubt you've ever heard the elegies in this order!"
"The... elegies..." she murmured in a ghostly, distant voice.
"Yes! This second one is called... called..." I froze in place, for once again the melody wasn't what I expected. It was different. I knew it, and yet I didn't. "The Requiem? But..." I looked up, my lips quivering. "But where...?"
"Look out, y'all!"
A hulking pumpkin flew straight at me, blotting out the moon.
Gasping, I held onto the Nightbringer as I rolled out of the way. The large melon exploded in a sea of goop and seeds before a line of targets behind me. Wincing, I sat up and looked across the middle of Ponyville.
"The hay has gotten into you, sugarcube?!" a freckle-faced scarecrow shouted from a line of miniature catapults several yards away. Princess Luna and an effeminate Starswirl the Bearded stood by her side. "Didn't y'all see the signs?! This here's a pumpkin firin' range!"
"Sorry! I... I..." I gulped and galloped off into the background. "I didn't mean to cause any trouble."
"Ain't no trouble! We just don't want nopony getting' hurt!" Applejack turned and smiled at Luna as she loaded another pumpkin into the catapult with her royal hooves. "Coast is clear!"
"Fire away, princess!" Starswirl said in Twilight Sparkle's voice.
The catapult released. Everypony in town watched as the weaponized pumpkin flew through the air like an orange meteorite before exploding across a large bullseye.
"Huzzah!" Princess Luna chimed in a voice that was far too unbelievably joyous. "The fun has been doubled!"
Several equines cheered in a rapturous cluster behind her. The air filled once more with joy and merriment.
I only wished I could have been a part of it. I sat on the sidelines, struggling to catch my breath. How long had I been out of it? Minutes? Hours? I looked up. It was still night, but for how much longer? I was losing track of both time and myself. If I didn't act soon, I'd lose Luna as well, and then I'd have no chance whatsoever in crossing the bridge to Aria. If I even could...
"Hear me, villagers!" the Princess' voice jubilantly proclaimed, melting away my frigid shivers. "All of you! Call me Luna!"
I took a deep breath, sliding the Nightbringer into my velvet satchel. "I love you to death, Alabaster," I murmured into the bandages around my muzzle. "But I'm not about to become you."
I trotted firmly towards the sight of the Princess. She was just yards away, dipping her neck into a barrel full of floating apples as she snatched up... a tiny pirate colt? Wait...
"Aaah!" a pink chicken clucked from the distance. "Nightmare Moon is gobbling Pipsqueak! Everypony run!"
A layer of panic spread through the air, forcing the little colt to gallop away from Luna and past me. "Help! My backside has been gobbled!"
Blindly, he knocked into my rear left hoof. I lost my balance and fell onto my side with a grunt. The Nightbringer clattered to the earth beside me, its onyx strings bouncing with a discordant noise.
"Nnngh!" I winced, my head and ears splitting.
"Haah haah haah!"
I looked up, my face and mane covered in frost.
A draconequus bounced from gravestone to gravestone, pirouetting his way across the cemetery of Whinniepeg. The gray world hung in perpetual desolation all around us, and he reveled in it.
"You see, Harpo, when our backs are against the wall we really can and will do anything to get what we want," Discord sang. "Honor or no honor, the universe is full of excuses and short on shame. You want to know why cruelty exists? It's because I exist."
I frowned. I snarled. I stood up and screamed at him.
"You are selfish!" I panted and howled once more, "All the power of the cosmos in your grasp, and you choose imprisonment?! I wish I could hate you, but you're not even worth my spit! You're the one who should be forgotten! You're the one who should fade from existence!" I stamped my hoof against the ground and cracks formed in dark rivulets across the universe. "No wonder your beloved banished you from the unsung realm! Even a goddess in charge of the undead wouldn't have room in her kingdom for someone as worthless as you!"
He spun to a stop and gave me a bored gaze. "Oh come now, Minty. Now you're just being cruel."
"Cruel? Cruel?!" I hissed. "You have no idea!" With a grunt, I swung the two-by-four across his face.
Straight Edge spun from the blow, spitting blood against the brick wall of the alleyway. I loomed over his sputtering figure in the bone-gray haze of night.
"I could be so terribly, terribly cruel!" I slammed the board against his backside, forcing him to grunt in pain. The wood splintered down the middle, like my voice was cracking. "All this time! I could have haunted Ponyville! Instead, I tried to bless it! And for what?!" I raised the board high once more in the moonlight. "I'm still the same damn ghost playing the same damnable songs! And where has it brought me?!"
"I-I was so scared," she said, sniffling. Turning over, Scootaloo trembled into a pair of blue forelimbs. "Rainbow Dash, you found me! I knew you'd come and save me!"
I panted, staring wide-eyed at her from beyond the campfire Cloudkicker had made. The cold wilderness hung in a reverent hush beyond the sacred scene.
"Just relax, pipsqueak," Rainbow Dash said as she cradled Scootaloo's shivering form. "We're not out of the woods yet. I'm going to get you to Twilight. She has a trick that'll get you good as new..."
As the two pegasi soared off with the foal in their grasp, I curled into myself and shuddered--not from the cold but this time from the sobs. Tears rolled down my face as I stared into the crackling embers before me. The only reason the universe was cold was because there were so few, fragile things of warmth to be found. And yet... they could be found.
"I'm so sorry," I whimpered. It was another night surrounded by shadows, encased in the walls of my cabin. Dozens of musical instruments hung on the beams above me, and they too were useless things. "I don't know who can hear me... or who there is to apologize to..."
I wiped my tears away with the sleeves of my hoodie as moonlight wafted lonesomely through the windows of the place. A tiny orange cat padded up and leaned against me, meowing with concern. I petted him, but did not have the strength to smile.
"But I'm so very sorry, for all that I've done. Just please... please..."
Al crawled into my forelimbs. I embraced him, cuddling him to my chest as I shivered and cried.
"Forgive me. Redeem me. Take me away from here. I've learned so much. I've learned so much and I want to g-give it back..."
My eyes clenched shut as I nuzzled the tabby's warm fur.
"I want to give... I-I want to give..."
"Why? Is it somepony's birthday or something?" Pinkie said.
I glanced up from the park bench.
She stood before me, grinning wide in the afternoon light. That grin faded, though, the first moment she saw my tears. "Awwwww... Did a special unicorn not get invited to a party or something?"
I sniffled and looked away from her. Muttering, I said, "There's no party, Pinkie. It's okay. You can move along."
"Why?" She bounced in place, her smile having returned to her pastel muzzle. "I just met a perfect stranger who knows my name! That doesn't happen everyday! Heehee! What's your name?"
"Mmmm..." I wasn't in the mood to talk to her. I wasn't in the mood to do anything. I spoke because it was the only thing keeping me from wailing like a grief-stricken widow. "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."
"Heartstrings, huh? Hmmm... I guess if it was 'Cheesetrings,' then you'd be--"
"Please, Pinkie!" I snapped, frowning through my tears. "I'm fine! Just leave me alone! I..." I bit my lip as my face grimaced. The color was draining from the park before my eyes. I felt the world growing foggier, like a funeral shroud was being dragged over every minute of every day of my life. "I am alone. I am... I am s-so alone, and th-there's nothing I or you or anypony else can do about it." I choked and buried my face in my hooves. "I'm gonna be stuck here forever. Nopony can help me. It's like--"
"Like you're invisible, even though you do everything as l-loudly and as brightly as you can in their very faces. They just don't want you t-to be a part of their lives, so that even your own home feels like a cold place where you're not wanted..."
Sniffling, I glanced up. I positively gasped from what I saw.
Pinkie sat still before me like a gargoyle, and a pair of tears were streaming down her cheek. She gazed calmly into my eyes and said, "So they send you away, and it t-takes every ounce of strength in your heart and soul to go against the flow, to smile because you have to, because the only pony who can ever bring your spirits up is yourself, and you know it..."
"P-Pinkie..." I stammered, gulping a lump down my throat as I gawked at her. "You're... You're crying..."
She took a shuddering breath and slowly nodded. "So maybe I am..."
"But... But..." I squinted at her. "You never cry!"
Slowly, a smile formed to her moist lips. "It's not very fun to cry. I find laughing to be a lot n-nicer, so I do that all the time I can." She gazed tenderly at me as she said, "But you strike me as a pony who's used to crying all the time. So, I saw you, and I thought..." She shrugged, giggling slightly. "Heehee... Why not try switching for once?" She sniffled and murmured, "We c-could make a game out of it."
I stared at her, speechless, until a brave part of me chuckled, then laughed, then guffawed. I doubled over, my face going pink with the effort of my explosive outburst. I slapped the bench and nearly fell into the grass below. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed; eventually Pinkie joined me. When the tears began flowing for a different reason, I wiped my cheeks dry and squinted painfully at her.
"'Cheesestrings,'" I grunted, shaking my head. "What in Equestria would ever possess you to call me that?"
"Heeheehee!" She sniffled one last time and grinned in my direction. "Because it makes me think of how wonderful cheese can taste, especially on a grilled sandwich, and grilled cheese sandwiches make me happy inside, so that I want to smile. Heeheehee... Just like seeing you and hearing your name makes me want to smile."
"But everything makes you want to smile."
"No." She shook her head softly. "Everything makes me want to smile differently."
I smiled at her, feeling a satisfying warmth spreading over my heart. I leaned in to hug her, and she reciprocated. Her fuzzy mane was ticklish against my neck. I felt like giggling, so I did.
"Heeheehee!" I nearly fall off the chair in the center of the university courtyard. "And remember when you stuck the feather into Twilight's Astronomical Almanac--"
"And I convinced her that she had slapped her book shut on a pigeon the day before?!" Moondancer exclaims, beaming.
"Yes! Heeheehee!" I slap the table, nearly knocking my textbooks onto the floor. Fellow students roll their eyes at us before milling off towards their classes. "She never went to the park for almost a year! To this day, she gets the hiccups every time she sees birds eating bread crumbs!"
"What?! Hah! No way!"
"Would I lie to you?!" I laugh and dig the metal fork once more through my plate of cafeteria salad. "Ohhhhhhh Moondancer, you could be so cruel to the poor filly."
"So sue me! She just took everything so seriously!" Moondancer says, fanning her blushing cheeks as she leans over her saddlebag full of tutoring aids. "And at such a young age too!"
"She kind of drifted away from us, didn't she?"
"Yes," Moondancer says. "Much rather, she swam upstream. Like a fish."
"The sweetest fish," I utter with a wink.
"Hmmmm..." She stretches her neck and says, "If you ask me, leaving us morons was the best thing she ever could have done."
"The hay does that mean?"
"See for yourself!" Moondancer points at the looming royal towers of Canterlot beyond the nearby class buildings. "She's pretty much sitting at the right hoof of Princess Celestia's throne!"
"She is not!"
"Have you ever been to the throne room?"
"She's the Princess' magical apprentice, not a royal advisor!" I dig into the salad, bite a few leafy morsels, swallow, and say, "And it's not like she's forgotten us or anything. She sends us letters every month. We were her best friends, after all."
"Lyra, we were her only friends," Moondancer exclaims, droning. She plays with the straps of her saddlebag as a dull expression crosses her face. "I always bugged her to get out more, but she wouldn't have any of it. I swear, she was far more interested in collecting books than making a social network."
"To each their own. Twilight has her studies, you have your parties, and I have my music."
"Yup. Your boring, repetitive, dull-flank music."
"Hey!" I protest through a muffled mouth full of salad.
She giggles evilly. "I kid, girl, I kid." With a sigh, however, she murmurs, "Still, I suppose we were really lucky to have lasted as long as we did."
I pick at a few lasting bits of green. "How do you mean?"
"Well, you remember our little get-togethers and all," Moondancer says. "She and I made lousy princesses; we were practically at each other's throats."
"So? Foals are little demons sometimes."
"That excuse might work for me, but for Twilight?" Moondancer glances up at me. "Face it, Lyra. We were polar opposites waiting to explode at any moment. You were the glue that held us together. If it weren't for you, Twilight would just have been an annoying egghead next door instead of the amazing unicorn she is to this day."
"I only did whatever it took to make you two happy." I smile her way. "I loved having you both around. It's as simple as that, isn't it?"
"I don't think you get it, Lyra." Moondancer sits up straight. Her face is serious for once, and that's what startles me. "There's something about you, something nice and wholesome and peaceful. You're not full of hot air. I think deep down beneath that clumsy exterior of yours, there's a unicorn that really wants everypony to be happy."
"Awwww..." I grin, blushing slightly. "You're freaky when you try to be sappy."
"No, I mean it," she says with a soft smile. "You were always there for me when I needed it. I'm not sure if I ever thanked you, but I guess that's because I never really could. You went above and beyond to make me and Twilight happy and... and..."
"Yes...?"
She shrugs. "I dunno. I guess I just think music really isn't your thing, especially when you go into all of those boring, stiff-laced study courses and what not."
I roll my eyes. "Tell me something I don't know, Moondancer."
She rises to the challenge. "Well, alright." She looks me in the eyes. "I believe you're destined for great things, Lyra Heartstrings."
I take a deep breath, unsure as what to say. So I allow the first impulsive words to come from my mouth. "Well, if the great Moondancer can humble herself enough to say that, then just maybe I am cut out to make epic stuff happen."
She giggles.
I chuckle and drop the fork into my bowl. The ringing sound it makes is long and pronounced. Moondancer ignores it, still giggling. I stare at the bowl, my ears pricking towards the vibrating sound. The pitch changes, hauntingly matching a series of chords that are blossoming in the back of my young mind.
"'Twilight's Requiem,'" I murmured. The onyx strings to the Nightbringer vibrated to a stop, but I could hardly hear them at this point. As a matter of fact, I couldn't hear anything. The night sky above Ponyville was swirling with lightning and madness as Princess Luna levitated above the crowd of costumed ponies, shouting at the top of her royal lungs.
"Since you choose to fear your princess rather than love her," she roared into the twirling vortex of clouds and wind. "And dishonor her with this insulting celebration..." Her eyes glowed as she reached a fever pitch. "We decree that Nightmare Night shall be canceled! Forever!"
Her monumental exclamation was punctuated by an array of lightning. I spotted her soaring off towards the edge of town, towards Everfree.
"No!" I shrieked, and I was startled by how pronounced the echo of my voice was. I glanced around me and noticed that everypony was milling about, their shoulders hunched over in a depressed slump. The wind had been sucked out of their sails. This evening had obviously meant something else to them.
"No more Nightmare Night," a teenage colt stammered.
"That's... That's crazy," A filly said next to him.
"Shoot. We had everything goin' our way," Applejack stated next to a delapidated tent full of candy wares. "Luna was happy; everypony in town was happy. Now look at them..."
I heard a little filly sobbing. I glanced across the dismantled marketplace to see several parents trying to console their foals. Ponies began stripping off their costumes as they slowly trudged home with dejected looks on their faces. I don't know why I felt for them in the middle of my own personal peril, but I did.
As Twilight and Applejack continued talking to one another, I caught wind of the clown-faced Mayor talking to Zecora. "This is such a catastrophe! Perhaps if Princess Luna had announced her arrival, then the awkwardness of this event would have been avoided!"
"Surely she must know that we meant no insult," Zecora murmured. "The ponies were merely frightened by her voluminous tumult."
"I'm tempted to go and have a word with her, but I don't know what it would accomplish!" the Mayor exclaimed. "Her Majesty seems to have made up her mind."
"I think that such an endeavor would be for not. Luna must now be halfway to Canterlot."
"Most likely not," the Mayor said. "Several ponies told me that her sarosian guards have established a camp on the northeast side of town. I think the Princess is here to stay for a little while..."
I gasped. "You mean she's pitched a tent here?! Right in Ponyville?!"
The clown and the zebra spun to look at me. They were startled to see a mint green mummy standing within a breath's length of their conversation.
I hadn't realized how close I had gotten to them either. "Erm..." I blushed slightly and backtrotted. "Northeast side of town. Got it. Thanks."
Zecora blinked and aimed her blue eyes at the mayor. "To this day I am still startled by every sound that there is to be heard from this village's background."
"You and me both, Miss Zecora."
Their voices faded, for I had turned to gallop out of the downtown square. My teeth chattered in the biting winds of autumn night, and I felt the velvet satchel dangling from my bandaged side as I sped towards the open park beyond the buildings. Just as I threaded my way through a final alleyway, I saw the purple shapes of tents and a sarosian chariot situated beside them.
I grinned wide amidst my exhausting run. This was it! The Princess had to be there, hiding away after the haphazard events of the festival. I didn't care if everypony's dreams for Nightmare Night had been ruined; if everything worked out, I would emerge on the other side of this evening as a living pony who could console them. I could share in their laughter, in their warmth, in their friendship. I could...
"Celestia help us--Morning!" Ambrosia shouted.
I gasped. I skidded to a stop beside Rumble and an unconscious stallion. A dilapidated hotel loomed before us.
"Please, Miss!" Rumble pleaded. "You gotta help me move him!"
"The song," I whimpered to myself.
I gazed every which way in a stupor. I saw the line of construction ponies gawking at me from a distance. Explosive wiring ran under my hooves and into the building.
"I..." I seethed, shook. "I hadn't kept playing the Requiem!" I looked around feverishly in the daylight. There were no tents, no sign of sarosians. "Blast it, I don't want to be here..."
"Aaah!" Rumble shrieked.
Looking up, I understood why. The hotel was imploding, and a gigantic wall of rubble was falling our way, threatening to crush us and Morning Dew. With a heroic shout, I erected a green shield between us, holding the heavy debris at bay. It was the last thing I wanted to do.
"My lyre..." I clenched my eyes shut and hissed into the cacophony of destruction. "Where is it? I have to... have to..."
"What's the matter?! Too bashful?" sang an arrogant voice.
I gasped and glanced up at the colorful stage. "H-huh?!"
A silver-maned blue showmare grinned down at me. "I'd be quivering with humility and fear too if I were asked to perform on stage alongside the Great and Powerful Trixie!" A thick crowd of ponies chuckled all around me. "Think your musical talents are enough to overshadow the Great and Powerful Trixie's greatness?! Well hop on up here and show us all what you've got, minstrel!"
"I... I don't have my lyre..." I hissed, sweating and shivering as I backtrotted. I bumped awkwardly into several pedestrians, fighting to thread my way through the cloud. "I was so stupid back then," I whispered to myself. "I never brought my lyre out of the tent! What was I...?"
"Look at her! At first I thought she was envious!" the showmare shouted pompously towards the crowd. "But now the Great and Powerful Trixie can see that she's just green. Green in the gills, that is!"
I was surrounded by laughter and cackles. I clenched my teeth shut and galloped through the colorful bodies around me. "I just have to concentrate!" I cried as I made for the north of town. "The Requiem will come to me if I just think of what I have to do! If I just think of h-home..." I closed my eyes and whispered, "I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna..."
"Can't... nnngh... can't get home. What is... this path? A tent? Ungh..." A familiar, drawling voice mumbled a few paces away from where I squatted. "Dag blamed trophy is too darn heavy. If only... mmmff... it was m-made of feathers... eheh..."
I blinked. I stood up from beside my tent and craned my neck. An orange farm filly was trudging around the bend. Heavy tracks led from the center of Ponyville, and several apples had fallen loosely by the dirt road's wayside. I saw Applejack trying desperately to balance two big baskets full of fruit on her flanks, and on top of the ridiculously stacked bounty there was a golden trophy further adding to the merciless weight.
"Nnnngh... Gotta g-get home..." She looked exhausted. There were bags under her eyes, and her golden mane--normally gorgeous and well kempt--was a frazzled mess, bursting beyond the red ribbons that held it in place. "Big Mac and the family... n-need me..."
Her legs wobbled. Her green eyes lowered, and for a moment I wasn't sure if she was going to collapse or fall asleep. It turned out that she did neither, for a soft green cushion of telekinesis propped her back up onto her hooves.
"Looks like somepony has been working too hard," I said with a soft smile.
"Mmmmhmmm... erhm..." Her eyelids fluttered open. "Wh-what? Huh?"
"What's the trophy for? Broke the Equestrian Insomniac Record?"
"Mmmm-no... it's..." She yawned and teetered dizzily. "The prized pony pony pony award or... somethin'..." Her face drifted and her lips briefly curved in semi-conscious bliss. "Awful nice and shiny. Reckon the town was happy that I saved them from a bunch of stampedin' cows, but..." She yawned again, her freckles turning dull as her face stretched in a sleepy lurch. "I could really use more hours in the day for... f-for apple buckin'..."
Her body lifted up in the air, as if on an invisible bed, and then lowered once more. She winced, not expecting the awkward sensation of lying on a moving body.
"Hmmmf..." I'm sure that her eyes fluttered open, but I couldn't see at that moment. "What in t-tarnation...?"
"Nothing to be worried about, Miss Applejack," I said softly in spite of my strain. She was a well-built pony: athletic and muscular. However, with the right application of magical telekinesis, I was able to weather the weight of her over my back. In a solid trot, I carried her up the road and towards the glistening vista of Sweet Apple Acres. "I'm just doing something neighborly for you."
"Hnngh..." She hissed. "I dun need nopony's help! I... I..." Her protests fell short, being absorbed by an all-encompassing yawn. "I can get the apple harvest d-done all by myself..."
"Oh, by all means!" I exclaimed with a light chuckle. The trophy levitated in front of us, reflecting her exhausted face as it rested against my cyan mane like a fluffy pillow. "I'm just making sure you get home so you can get to all that work, Miss Applejack."
"Hrmmmm... and my fruit?"
I glanced back at the two baskets of apples left beside the abandoned barn. "I'll make sure they reach Sweet Apple Acres as well."
"Mmmm..." She murmured into my neck. "Dun be stealin' them or nothin'..."
I chuckled. "I wouldn't think of it. Apples are in your blood. Robbing you of them would be like ripping the foundation out from underneath you."
"Mmmm... foundation..." Applejack's freckled face curved into a drunken smile. I saw the golden reflection in the trophy turning aside to stammer against the warm winds of summer. "Every good home needs one. Just like... Just like my Pa always t-taught me..."
I smiled. "Well, he raised his daughter right..."
"He... he s-sure did..." And her voice fell before the first of many neighing snores.
I carried her down the sloping hill and towards her farm. I thought of foundations, of structure, of musical bars and arrangements. I hummed a simple tune, a mimic of something that had been stuck in my head, but slowed down to act as a soothing lullaby to the hard-working mare who was lying collapsed on top of me.
"I call it the 'Sunset Bolero,'" I said, my voice sounding low and distant. The hotel lobby hung in a hush as I performed for the Princess of the Sun. "When I hear it, it sets my heart aflutter. It's like the song was written to make ponies feel alive." I gulped and leaned forward. "How do you feel, your Majesty?"
Princess Celestia was sitting on her immaculate haunches now. Her brow was furrowed in a perpetual state of intense contemplation. I wasn't even sure if she registered the question I had just asked.
It worried me. I could see the reflection of a mint-green unicorn looking increasingly frazzled in her rosy eyes. "Your Highness?" I spoke over the lyre's strings. "Is... Is this tune at all familiar to you?"
"You taught it to me before, Princess," Twilight spoke up, looking worriedly at her catatonic mentor. "Do... Do you have anything to say on it?"
Eventually, the majestic alicorn's lips moved. "There is a structure to this, something I had never sensed before. In this order, with this flow, I feel a foundation..." She gulped hard. "My little pony, how did you come upon this?"
"It showed up in my head," I said. "The same day that a curse befell me."
"What kind of a curse?" Twilight asked.
"A curse that will make each and every one of you forget me if I spend too much time trying to explain it! Please, your Majesty!" I leaned forward, close to tears. "You must hear the third elegy. Then maybe you can explain this all to me. There is a purpose to this. There is a purpose to everything. We are all on this world for a reason, and I need to discover mine so that I can be free from... free from..."
The Princess' face was grimacing, stretched from an unnamed pain, as if she was giving birth to something.
Twilight was immediately beside herself in concern. "Your Majesty! What's wrong?"
"The song..." Celestia began whimpering, almost like a foal. Her rosy eyes flickered a color I hadn't seen before. "Her song..." she stammered.
"Huh?" Twilight exclaimed, breathless and confused.
I looked at Twilight. I thought of effluent shades of purple. I thought of stardust and desolation and the universe. Before I knew it, the golden strings of the lyre had switched places, and I was playing something else altogether. By the time the Requiem had ended, the hotel dissolved, and I was standing on a hilltop overlooking a cluster of sarosian tents. Two pegasi with leafy ears were trotting past the chariot, talking with one another.
Gasping, I ducked behind a series of crates labeled with the royal crest of Canterlot. I shivered and clung to the Nightbringer as the guards marched within just a few feet of me.
"What is Her Majesty up to now?"
"It would seem that she's given into the festivities finally." Both turned and looked towards the torchlit downtown of Ponyville beyond the dirt path. "It is very nice to see Her Highness enjoying herself alongside the civilians."
"Did it really need to involve so many screaming children?"
"You're like the Princess, brother," the other said, his fangs showing in the glistening moonlight. "You don't get out much. If you did, maybe you'd realize that some ponies enjoy being frightened."
"I've endeavored all my life to keep fellow equines from experiencing terror at the sight of me."
"That is the wonderful thing about being alive in this age. The Princess has a new chance to make things right with the ponies of the day, and so do we." He gestured towards the tents. "Come, we must prepare things for when Her Majesty decides to retire."
"I'll keep first watch, brother, if you'll check the outer perimeter."
"Done." Both took wing, circling opposite ends of the tent.
I pressed myself flatly against the body of the wooden crates. Taking several deep breaths, I cast an excited glance towards Ponyville. How long had I been out this time? Somehow, it no longer mattered.
"So she came around," I stammered, smiling. "That's fine. She'll come here eventually." I gulped and hugged the Nightbringer close. I didn't dare play, for fear of the night guard hearing me. So I hummed the tune lightly to myself, and in between the breaths I murmured aloud, "She'll come here, and I will meet her." I gulped. "But how do I avoid repeating what happened with Celestia? How do I make sure she only sends me away, and not the entire Ponyvillean landscape? How..."
"That's what I keep asking myself!" Rarity exclaimed, rolling her eyes as she trotted around a frilly red dress situated on a ponyquin in the center of her boutique. "How could I have expected this to blow up in my face?! I mean, it certainly didn't blow up in Fluttershy's face! After all, she's currently enjoying her chance to shine across all Equestria! As well she should, of course! I just never thought that her soft and demure ways would--nnnghh--steal the eye of Photo Finish!"
"Half the time, I don't think ponies steal greatness," I said with a soft, sympathetic smile. "As much as I believe greatness is thrust upon us unexpectedly."
"Oh, and how I wouldn't mind greatness being thrust upon me, again and again, to the breaking point!" Rarity exclaimed. Her elegant eyes crossed, and she pulled her needle and thread so hard that it snapped. "Whoops..." Her snow white cheeks blushed furiously. "I do suppose that last part sounded most uncouth..."
I giggled and smiled. "It's alright, Rarity. I understood you quite clearly."
"I know that you're a stranger around these parts, Miss..."
"Heartstrings."
"And I do thank you for letting me ramble on and on like an enraged war horse, but I don't know if you can truly understand!" She sat on a nearby cushion with a sigh, dangling the useless needle and thread in her pale hooves. "I don't want fame and fortune simply for the sake of having fame and fortune. I want to earn it. I want to make a name for myself. And, what's more, I want to get there by doing something that I love, something that I'm passionate about." She gazed at me, her blue eyes soft and vulnerable. "Fashion is more than just the career I have chosen for myself, it is my essence. It is my very life blood."
"It's what keeps you going," I said with a gentle nod. I took a few trots forward and sat in front of her. "It's what motivates you when everything else has been stripped from your life..." I gulped. "Including your friends."
She sniffled and gave me a bittersweet smile. "Exactly..."
"I know that if I lose everything," I said. "If all I care about is no longer attainable, I will still have an inner strength, a piece of myself that I will never let go of. For it defines me, and it drives me forward, even unto darkness." I gazed out the sunlit window and smiled warmly. "My love of music. If I don't have that, I don't have anything. It's the essence of what I am. And it's what brought me to you today." I turned towards her and smiled, my teeth showing. "Every pony's soul resonates with a different melody, and yours is absolutely addicting, though it could stand to be a bit less melancholic, I think."
She took a deep breath, fluffing her mane with a dainty hoof. "You know what? You're right! You're absolutely right!" She stood up proudly and smiled. "I shouldn't be envying Fluttershy's success! I should be celebrating it! She's my best and most dear friend, and if this is her moment to shine, then far be it from me to shun her!" She galloped across the boutique towards where a dazzling gown of royal reds and blues hung, waiting for the seamstress. "I shall attend her latest fashion show tonight and show her my support! And I will look most resplendent while doing so!" She bit her lip and blushed slightly. "Because there's... uhm... no harm in looking fabulous while applauding a friend, yes?"
I chuckled, shutting my eyes and smiling. "There most certainly isn't, Miss Rarity. There most certainly isn't..." My eyes opened to a pale mist, and my heart stopped.
The rusted length of an ancient platform stretched beneath me, marred by moaning, shackled souls. Beyond, the unsung realm billowed with undulating tendrils of water between bright flashes of lightning. High above it all, looming like a sentry, the throne of Princess Aria hovered. The cocentric spheres within spheres glittered in the twilight, echoing the thunder across the horrorscape with constant vigilance.
I shuddered, feeling the damp lengths of my hoodie as they clung to my forelimbs. The Nightbringer hung in my magical grasp, and for all its splendor I knew that it could not help me now, if ever. Quietly, with a furrowed brow of confusion, I gazed up at Aria's lofty throne.
"Is... Is this a memory?" I asked, my voice dry and lifeless. Gulping, I added, "Or is this right now?"
The spheres within spheres drifted away, avoiding me as always. The mists shifted over the platform, pelting the undead ponies for eternity.
Sniffling, I whispered gently into the distance between me and the Princess of Twilight.
"Are we memories... or are we songs? Is everything we've ever done simply a piece to add to a lengthy chronicle that none of us will have a chance to write? Or are we the chorus that keeps on singing, exulting in life and all the surprises in between?"
She said nothing. The universe stretched on for eternity, and for once it did not seem so lonesome, because I was the only pony who needed to hear what was being said.
"You are an archivist, Aria," I said, my expression sharp and rigid. "Why would you collect so many souls unless you knew there was something precious worth preserving?"
I took a few shuffling steps forward. I had no chance in Tartarus of catching up to the spheres, but I didn't intend to. At least, not this way.
"I wish to be preserved," I murmured to the air. "I wish to have my life back. Luna can't help me with that, and perhaps you can't either," I said. My eyes drifted towards the tempests and chaos beyond, threatening to consume me and everything in one fatal sweep. "Nopony can help me but myself. This is my song. I've heard its melody my entire life." I gazed up at the heavens, this time frowning. "Who are you to take that from me?"
Lightning and thunder bellowed, but I could hardly notice. Everything was a whisper compared to the booming voice coming out from between my ears.
"Who are you?" I tilted my head back, hissing, sobbing and chuckling all at once. "Who am I?!"
"A foalhood friend of mine, at least until last week," Twilight said in a wilted voice.
I tilted my head down and gazed across the table at her. "Oh?" I remarked in a warm, sympathetic breath. "What happened between you two?"
Twilight fidgeted, her hoof stuck on an open page of a book she was barely paying attention to. The candlelight of Sugarcube Corner warmed us after the fall of evening. "It... It isn't worth hearing me ramble on about it," she said with a nervous chuckle. "You're just visiting from out of town, Miss Heartstrings. You don't need to hear a humble librarian go on about her troubles."
"I'm not going anywhere," I said, leaning forward with a soft smile. "Please, do continue."
She shrugged. "I guess Moondancer and I always had our differences. Still, we somehow managed to carry on with our relationship in spite of how many times we bumped heads. Looking back, it seems crazy that we didn't strangle each other. And just now, with this study project we had to work on..." Twilight winced visibly.
I gazed down at the table, sighing through my nostrils. "It's... hard to preserve the most precious parts of ourselves, especially as we grow older. Things grow thin and become brittle. We can blame it on... things missing in our lives, but it's rarely that simple. We all stand to lose so much..."
"But what of gaining things?"
I looked up at her.
She was smiling my way. "I was distraught about Moondancer at first. Heck, I was in tears for several nights in a row." She brushed a hoof through her violet-streaked mane and glanced aside. "And that's when I found help. Rarity... Pinkie... Applejack and Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash..." She sniffled once, but her lips were curving into a gentle smile. "They were there for me. They consoled me. That's when I realized that I had lost so much, but gained so much more. Life has a way of surprising you, of giving you things when you felt you didn't deserve them or could afford them..."
"You're a scientist," I said, squinting at her quizzically. "Don't you agree that things fade over time? Don't you know that it's the nature of all things to dissolve along the means of least resistance?"
"Yes, I am a scientist," Twilight said. "But... But I'm also alive..." She glanced at me. "And I feel, Miss Heartstrings. I feel with senses, some of which can be explained, but never resolved. After so many years, I realize that it takes more than experimentation to fix a hole in one's heart or patch up a wound that time has taken away and... and..."
She shuddered, but her face became stone still as she bravely smiled in my direction.
"I believe in friendship, Miss Heartstrings." A tear rolled down her cheek, but her felicitous expression did not change. "I believe in friendship. It is the most powerful thing in the universe. It unifies while everything else destroys. It brings harmony to a discordant world. It gives us the warmth that we can enjoy until our time is up. Why else are we on this world than to make friendship together, in ways that only we can do in numbers? For so long, I lived alone in my studies and my thoughts, and I felt this great tug to my spirit." She sniffled again and chuckled hoarsely. "I w-was waiting to be born, Miss Heartstrings. I think... no, I know that there are so many of us just waiting to be born, waiting to become alive. And it's my place in this world to reach out to ponies like that, to make new friends, to spread the warmth before it's too late."
I gazed at her, and for once I couldn't feel the frigid touch of my curse. I smiled into that toasty comfort and said, "If I had the time, Miss Sparkle, if I had all the resources and blessings of this world, I would write a symphony about that."
She didn't waste any time in replying, "Why don't you write it right now? Nothing's stopping you."
"Nothing's stopping me..." I repeated, muffled by the bandages as a dark shadow flew overhead. I looked up to see Princess Luna gliding down from the sky. The horizon to the east was glowing faintly; her sister's work was nearly at hoof.
"Your majesty..." two sarosians bowed immediately upon her arrival.
"At ease, my faithful subjects," Luna spoke. For once, her voice was soft, restrained, and full of jubilation. Instead of shouting, she hummed and stood between the pair of guards standing before the entrance to her large, midnight blue tent. "This land is a peaceful land. I respect your fealty, but I do not desire nor need an exorbitant amount of vigilance this morning."
The guards exchanged glances. Their slitted, amber eyes tilted back towards the alicorn. "Would her Majesty desire to travel back to Canterlot Castle immediately?"
"Nay," she stated, marching solidly into her tent. "There are several more... festivities to be enjoyed here during the coming day."
"The day, your Majesty?"
"Affirmative. Twilight Sparkle and her friends wish to show me the corner of sugars and cubes. It would be most rude of me to refuse their generosity. Unless there is a pressing emergency, we shall remain here in Ponyville for the next day at least."
"Understood, your Highness."
"Be sure to apply your protective armor, my subjects!" she exclaimed, pausing at the entrance. "Dawn approaches! I would hate to see the daylight singe your fine coats!" That uttered, she ducked finally into the tent.
A few seconds after she was gone, the guards glanced at each other. They shared the briefest of warm smiles. Then, as commanded, they began equipping themselves with daylight armor.
I watched them, shivering--only this time with anticipation. Princess Luna had returned. There were no frightened, stampeding ponies around to impede my approach. There were only two guards, and they were busy with altering the armor on their bodies to prepare for dawn's light. As eager as I was to make contact with the Princess, I wasn't foolish enough to think I had any hope of avoiding the two sarosians' sight, no matter how distracted they may have momentarily been. At the same time, I knew that there was no chance in Tartarus that they would just let me go in and speak to Luna. I had to use any available tools to my advantage, and perhaps--just maybe--I would succeed in winning her company.
I opened the velvet satchel and tossed it to the ground beside the wooden crates. Levitating the Nightbringer in front of me, I took a brave breath and then took an even braver step out from hiding. I trotted towards the pair, approaching the tent with the golden instrument in my magical grasp.
"Halt!" they immediately jerked away from whatever they were doing and glared at me. I saw sharp blades of cold steel extending from their armor's wing-guards. I'd read from Alabaster's journal about the traditional weapons being capable of slicing through dense oak. I shuddered to think what they could do to a petite unicorn's flesh. "Who goes there?!"
"A partygoer?" the other guard exclaimed, his slitted eye studying my ropes of bandages from afar. "Last night's festivities are over, citizen! Go to your home to retire. The Princess will not be seeing anypony until well beyond daylight!"
"You d-don't understand," I murmured, holding the Nightbringer between us like a golden shield. "The Princess has been needing to s-see somepony her entire life. She just doesn't know it yet."
"What madness is this of which you speak?" one guard remarked.
The other squinted at my glowing instrument. "What is that in your grasp? Stop this instant!"
"Do not trot any further!"
I froze in my tracks, but that wasn't all I did. I had my eyes shut as I performed a tune on the ancient lyre. "Please forgive me for what I am about to do. But I need to see the Princess. You don't understand the severity of this, and I can't blame you."
"Put the instrument down! What are you--?" The guard's exclamation ended with a gasp. "What in Tartarus name?!"
"By the Matriarch!" the other's voice grunted. "I can't see!"
I exhaled sharply and opened my eyes. Upon finishing the "Darkness Sonata," their vision had been enchanted, but not mine. They were both blinded, flung into pitch-black confusion as they reeled from the loss of senses. "I'm sorry. It won't last long." I trotted briskly towards the tent. "I just need you preoccupied while I go to speak with the Princess--"
There was a high-pitched shriek, and both guards suddenly soared at me in formation.
Gasping in utter surprise, I flung myself to the grass. They just barely skimmed over me, sailing instead into the side of the chariot and rocking it off its wheels.
Panting, I glanced up at them. Sweat ran down my face in rapids as I scampered up to my hooves and tried galloping once more towards the tent.
Another shriek: they twirled about and soared at my body again.
I jumped back with a cry, barely dodging their heavy forms. A stack of wooden crates shattered beyond me, littering my body with splinters as the twin guards stood on the ground, tilting their necks in every direction.
Standing and hyperventilating, I mentally slapped myself. "Of course! These are sarosians!" I spat into the ground, growling hoarsely. "They have powers of echolocation, you idiot! You desperate, pathetic idiot!
"Cease this treachery at once!" one guard growled, craning his neck about blindly. "We need not harm you, pony!"
"Surrender yourself and this will all be over!" the other shouted.
I glanced at the tent flap, then at them. With telekinesis, I peeled half of the bandages off my body. Holding my breath in, I shifted my weight forward and explosively slapped my hoof against the ground.
With a conjoined bat cry, both sarosians spun about and soared towards me like missiles.
"Nnngh!" I flung the sea of bandages at them and dove out of the way.
The air whistled from their slicing wings as they tore into the white ribbons. One flew to the ground, tangled with the mess, wrought with confusion.
I didn't waste any time in admiring my meager victory. I broke into a full gallop, speeding towards the tent flap, anticipating Princess Luna's gorgeous face and midnight blue eyes.
A heavy pair of hooves successfully tackled me from behind.
"Unnngh!" I fell to the ground under the weight of one of the guards. "Nnngh--No!" I shrieked.
"Do not move any further!" he hissed into my ear. His voice rang through his fangs as he pressed a sharp horseshoe threateningly against my writhing neck. "You have been warned!"
"Have you restrained her, brother?!" the other cried, disentangling himself from the bandages.
"Follow my voice! She's right here!"
"Mmmmf--Gah!" I grunted under his weight. My eyes were tearing, darting every which way. I saw the Nightbringer lying in the grass just inches between me and the tent. Panting, I lifted it up with telekinesis and started strumming the strings.
"I said stop!" the guard on top of me grunted.
"I shall rid her of the instrument!" the other said, flying straight towards the sound of the elegy being played. "In the Princess' name--!" He reached for it just as his slitted eyes began to clear.
In perfect timing, I finished performing "Prelude to Shadows." The light on the east horizon intensified ten times the majesty of a normal sunrise. But I wasn't finished yet. Twisting my body around, I aimed my horn at the pair and--shouting--performed a light spell with my last ounce of my strength.
The strobing beacon that was produced blinded me. However, it undoubtedly had to have done worse to them. As the hot white flash bathed us, I was rewarded with the sound of the sarosians' unintelligible shrieks. The one guard jumped off of me, colliding haphazardly against his companion. Both reeled from the magical beam, their hoofsteps scraping loudly through the dirt until they became blissfully distant vibrations.
"Aaaugh! Sorcery!"
"Brother, can you hear her?! Where has she gone?!"
"Burning... so hot... c-can't... can't feel..."
I had very little time to sympathize with them. I was bounding up to my hooves, hyperventilating. I felt the rest of the bandages peeling off of me as I ran towards what I prayed was the direction of the tent. My rear legs tripped over several dangling strips of the costume. Yelping, I fell forward, only to plow into a quivering length of tent canvas. I gasped, feeling my way through the blinding light as I found the entrance. Rushing in, I whimpered and pleaded.
"Princess!" I gasped, I shrieked. "Princess... what... what is wrong?!"
"Mother..." Celestia murmured. Tears were pouring down her face as her eyes shrank under a wave of pure horror. "Oh blessed Mother, wh-what have we done?"
"Princess?!" Twilight exclaimed, her face pale with shock. The ponies within the hotel lobby were trembling and murmuring in alarm. The celestial guards marched up, reaching towards the alicorn with looks of worry on their faces. Twilight glanced my way, her lips quivering. "What h-have you done?!"
"I-I don't understand!" I cried, clutching my lyre to my chest. I was barely halfway through 'The March of Tides' when a noticeable reaction ran through the Sun Goddess' majestic form. She had begun trembling like a child, and even the glitter from her pastel mane had faded immensely. The walls bent with the shadows, as if the hotel was caving in all around us. I became aware of a deep bass rumble, like a giant wave of earth was rolling our way from a great distance. "I just wanted her to help me identify the music! I don't know why she's... why she's..."
The room shook. Dust and sediment fell from the ceiling. The Mayor wobbled on her hooves, gulping and asking everypony to remain calm. It was too late; half the ponies were stampeding out of the lobby, the other half were clamoring around the Princess, begging for an explanation, for help, for deliverance from something so terrible that it couldn't deserve a name.
"Sister..." Celestia murmured. "My dear sister, what happened to you...?"
"Luna?!" Twilight exclaimed. She gulped dryly, her eyes tearful with concern. "But she's fine, Your Highness! The Elements of Harmony got rid of Nightmare Moon..."
"No..." Celestia slowly shook her head, choking on a sob from a tragedy older than time. "There is no restoration. There is only imprisonment, a damnable sequestering." She hissed through clenched teeth and stammered, "Mother, you were the one who was too afraid. We should have helped her. Didn't we love her enough?" Lowering her head, her mane went limp like a surrendering flag as she growled, "Now it is too late, and I'm the one who must protect this realm. Your sorrow is my sorrow. Forgive me..."
"Your Highness!" the guards shouted.
"There is a terrible earthquake!"
"We must get you out of here!"
"Princess!" Twilight shrieked, tugging in futility on the alicorn's gold-plated hooves. "Please! We must leave! You're scaring me! You're--"
"I'm sorry," she said. Her head tilted up, and I saw a pair of eyes flashing with violet fury. They appeared to be directed straight at my gasping soul. "But I must erase this. I must protect the song." That said, her lips hung open, and a deep hum filled the room, like the mutual drone of chanting monks.
One guard began flinching. He gasped and sputtered as his armor loosened from his body. The golden material levitated into the air, broke apart, and dissolved into a swarm of multicolored little insects.
"What...?!" Twilight gasped. There was a shriek behind her. She spun around.
The Mayor was scooting away from the podium in center stage. The wooden structure split about in midair, morphing into a chirping cloud of parasprites.
Above us, the lights of the chandelier went out as the dangling instruments segmented into several winged creatures that proceeded to munch on every physical structure in sight. Soon, the entire lobby was buzzing with countless parasprites, twirling around the Princess in a frightful cyclone.
"No!" I shouted, sobbing. "Th-this wasn't supposed to happen!" I dodged a falling chunk of debris as infantile bugs flitted about overhead. "I only wanted to be freed! I don't understand! Why is--"
"Sing her song!" Celestia shouted, her breath suddenly booming with twice as much volume as the royal Canterlot voice. "Sing her song and become..." She lurched. "S-sing her song and b-become..." She grimaced, fighting the holy song until the last second. Then finally, with a thrashing of her hooves, she produced a solid wave of telekinesis that blew every remaining pony out of the lobby and into the blinding daylight beyond. "No! Be gone! It is only you who shall remain nothing!"
"Aaaugh!" Twilight shouted as I saw her being flung past me. Several guards flew after her. Finally, I too was swept off my hooves and thrown from the lobby of the hotel. The last thing I saw was Celestia's form--suddenly frail--as if she was buckling under the shadow of an alicorn ghost with her bony wings spread wide. And then the entire building exploded, sending parasprites and rubble flying all across Ponyville, along with my hopes and dreams, along with my memories.
All that remained was the song, repeating over and over in my head as I lay on the ground, trembling. I choked several times on a sob that refused to leave me. I tried to remember the melody beneath it all, the essence of myself that kept going. However, it was her voice that woke me from my fitful spasms.
"What is the meaning of this sudden intrusion?!"
Gasping, I flung my eyes open wide. I was no longer blinded. The bright light of my magic spell had gone, along with all the trailing effects of the "Prelude to Shadows." Trembling, I looked up.
Luna's chiseled frown loomed above me. Between blinks, a silver helm solidified over her onyx features, and I felt the cold shivers redoubling. "Are you here for tricks or candy? I'm sorry, my little pony, but the celebration of Nightmare Night is over now. I seek seclusion in this morning hour..."
"Your... Y-Your Majesty," I stammered. On wobbly legs, I stood up before her. "I... I-I'm so sorry, but I need to speak to you--"
"My guards," she murmured, her midnight blue eyes wandering towards the exit of her tent. "All that noise and shrieking just now..." Her gaze narrowed. A magical wind picked up in the center of the tent. Her mane billowed in a menacing fashion as she hissed down at me, "Were you responsible for their sudden disappearance?! If you have harmed a single ear on their crowns--"
"You are waiting to hear a song!" I shouted violently, suddenly glaring at her. I raised the Nightbringer up so that it floated between us. "It's a song you've heard all your life. You didn't realize it at first, but you always knew this symphony, because that song is a part of you, Luna! It's a part of Celestia as well! And it's a part of the Matriarch!"
Luna was about to retort, but a gasp escaped her lips. She leaned back from me--or, more accurately--from what hung in my grasp. "That..." Her eyes narrowed upon the Nightbringer. "I have seen..." A shiver ran through her elegant limbs, and a cold breath came out from her lips as the tone in her voice changed. "We hath seen this in our presence b-before..."
I gulped. I thought of Alabaster, and how he was no longer around to save me from what was about to happen. "There is a melody, Your Majesty," I said. "A melody that is a part of all of us. It is something we have heard since birth, defining our very nature." I quivered before her like a frightened unicorn in the center of Ponyville. But unlike the victim on the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration, I was leading the charge. "But one of us wasn't lucky enough to have heard that melody. You know of whom I speak, even though everything you've been made to believe tells you that she isn't real."
"We..." Luna's face stretched in pain. Sweat poured down her temples as her mane went limp. "We should n-not... be sp-speaking of... of..."
"Of what?" I stared firmly at her, my jaw clenched. "What is missing from your life that you must patch it together with such speech?" I took a brave step towards her, levitating the Nightbringer along with me. "You weren't born yet when she was hidden away, Luna. The song had yet to produce you. When you discovered what was missing from your life, you reacted in confusion and fright. Nightmare Moon was a fluke, a product of misunderstanding. And that's because nopony ever had the grace to let you remember, gently and affirmatively, that which has always been a part of you, that which you have been robbed of." I breathed deeply and said, "But you can win her back. You can rediscover your music."
"What hath thou brought t-to us?!" Luna wheezed, hyperventilating. "This... This is some sort of trick of thine?"
"Not a trick," I whispered. "A reunion."
Luna growled. "We hath no time for thy ridiculous speeches concerning--"
"Aria," I said.
She gasped sharply, the breath stolen from her quivering lungs.
"Princess Aria," I repeated, accompanied by a gentle plucking of strings as I began performing "Twilight's Requiem" in her presence. "It is the reason for why you weep at night, and not over guilt or regret concerning the last thousand years. That thing that's been missing from your life, Your Majesty? It's more than a song, more than a feeling. It's your sister, the Goddess of Twilight, the missing bridge between the sun and the moon!"
"Aria..." she murmured, a single tear rolling down from her wide eyes. The wind was kicking up heavily now, threatening to rip the tent up from its pegs.
"And you must provide me that bridge, Luna!" I shouted. "She has a song for you to sing! And you must sing it! We must all sing it!" I roared into the rising tumult as I stood firmly behind the shield of the Nightbringer. "F-for we are all in this world for a reason! It's to come together, not to draw apart!"
"Our beloved sister," Luna wept, her eyes glowing a bright violet. She fell back on her haunches as rips and tears formed in the midnight blue canvas rippling about us. "We... W-We must protect... must pr-protect..."
I gasped. I thought of parasprites, of Celestia's shouting voice, of a wing of Canterlot Castle exploding from a sarosian bomb. "No!" I shouted. "You will sing her song and make me nothing!"
Luna twitched, facing me with glowing eyes.
"Make me nothing!" I shouted. "For I am nothing!" Shreds of tent canvas and clumps of dirt flew into my face. I tilted against the wind, gritting my teeth, putting every effort into finishing the Requiem for Luna's twitching ears to hear. "Send me to her! One melody must find another for a duet to happen!"
"We... We must..." Luna winced, hissed, and then growled in an affirmative tone. "I must cherish her..."
"Sing it!" I bellowed into the bedlam.
And she did, opening her mouth wide, issuing forth a cannonblast of holy noise in my direction. I saw constellations forming around her, each reflecting the pale perfection of the moon. The column of disrupted air spiraled between us. As I was swept off my hooves, I heard the foundations of the firmaments being torn asunder. It sounded like a sob, the Matriarch's weeping voice, and then it was silent once again as I was propelled beyond sound and light and matter, funneled down a bar of notes that were written before the dawn of Creation. I dragged the Nightbringer with me, flowing down the kaleidoscopic niche between dimensions. Beyond my flailing hooves, I saw the lightning and madness of the unsung realm lingering through the portal. Only, I was sailing beyond the platforms, flying past the moaning souls anchored to the hellscape below. The throne of Princess Aria appeared before me. The spheres aligned, and a doorway opened. I flew through it along the breath of her sister, ripped free of my screams, entering a domain where not even memories had any substance. Regardless, I bravely thought of many things, of Morning Dew's ocean-blue eyes, of Mom and Dad leaning over me on Hearth's Warming Eve, of Twilight's smile and Moondancer's laughter.
And then I thought of nothing, for all was darkness.
Background Pony
XVIII - "Crescendo"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: theworstwriter, Warden, RazgrizS57, theBrianJ,Props, and basking sharks
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XIX - Diminuendo | "If you must know, lost one, it began with a question, and not with an exclamation. That which was once singular desired truth, and so it became many. In this quest for knowledge, the one broke itself down into many parts, each ringing with a different sound, repeated into the bowels of oblivion like a chorus. The song was born, and it was neither a sob nor a laugh; that would come later, for it hadn't yet realized that once the barrier was shattered, everything would break and break forever."
I panted, eyes darting left and right across the darkness. I heard the voice; I knew the voice. It had been whispered into my ears all my life, even before I was born. I just didn't realize it until then, until I was in that place. The beat of my heart gave meter to the words, giving them meaning and comprehension that I couldn't afford until that very second, submerged within the darkness.
"Someday, the shattered pieces will become so small, that they will lack the breath to share with each other the answer that they have so disparately learned. Then, in the great dark silence of the universe's tragic end, the many will become the one once more."
A gasp escaped my lips. Petrified, I stared as Creation unfolded before me. The swirling lines of a labyrinthine forest melted through the obsidian veil. Tree trunks formed around the scene, glorious and ancient. I saw an emerald glade stretching before me, awash in twilight. Leaves fell from the branches above, scattering across the tranquil scene. In the centermost halo of pale light, a beautiful equine figure reclined on a bed of soft earth. Her coat glittered with the aura of a billion tiny constellations. An ethereal mane of indigo shades rippled in a magic wind. The twilight caught a sheen of sweat on her neck, and it was then that I realized that she was convulsing in agony.
"She too was a part of the song, the same song that created the universe, that painted it with both joy and sorrow. For all of her power, for all her ambition and will to create, she was yet to realize that for every song of exultation there needed to be a funeral dirge. Who could have blamed her? She was carrying out the will of the music, for the music was her. Up until that moment, she wrote ballads only for herself. It never occurred to her that she would win an audience among the dead."
With a shriek that could pierce the heavens, the Matriarch raised her muzzle toward the air. A holy sound came from her, bombastic and full of purpose. The trees shook and the grass billowed in cyclonic currents. Far above, the stars quivered as the entire universe buckled in anticipation of the immortal songstress' symphony. And yet, as the minutes, hours, days, years, and eons rolled by, she thrashed and quivered upon her side, her rear legs spreading and bending with each wave of pain that soared through her.
She wasn't alone. A distraught alicorn stood at her side, pacing about her front and back end, tilting her horn forward and casting spell after spell to alleviate the Matriarch's labor pains. With a pale expression of fright, young Celestia hovered at her mother's side, powerless to make the birth transpire any smoother.
"Up until that time, lost one, she had performed her duties towards one singular purpose: to seed life. But the very reason she existed in the first place was because purpose was no longer singular. For the sake of understanding the one, the music had unraveled itself to become the many. She was an immortal, incapable of grasping the truth that the one sought. The music held a greater divinity than her. She was its unfortunate vessel, a prism through which light was bent to pierce the furthest reaches of this new and bleak universe. Between light and darkness, there had to be a barrier. Between day and night, there had to be twilight."
The Matriarch suffered a final spasm. Her face streamed with tears. Celestia knelt down beside her to perform the delivery, but what came out of the Matriarch was as silent and still as stone. A pale light rippled across Creation as the music broke into dissonant sounds, grating and off-key. Then, with the grace of an endless sigh, the fractured song echoed into oblivion. A throng of leaves fell from above while the trunks of the nearby trees withered and dried up. The grass turned to brown, wilted stalks, and the soil beneath morphed into dry, caked stone.
Celestia's eyes moistened as she looked helplessly at her mother.
The Matriarch cradled the limp foal she had just given birth to, curling up into her own mane to hide the moisture in her face. The stars in her coat dimmed and a great shadow fell over the poisoned glade.
"And so it was that I was born, and with me came death. All things that began would also have to end. As she had her purpose, and my sister had hers, this was mine: to be lost. Even before I had a consciousness to think, I knew and understood the chords of my song. I was to become the governess of the universe's forsaken things. The only audience I could afford was an audience without the ability to feel, without the ability to regret, and consequently, without the ability to remember."
The blackness spread before me again. I saw the Matriarch standing on a cliff overlooking a primordial landscape bathed in moonless night. Celestia stood several paces away, hanging her head in mourning. The Matriarch was heaving. Her pained eyes gazed down at the infant pony lying beneath her. The unmoving foal lay cradled in a bed of flowers, its tiny mane braided, its fragile wings folded like violet petals.
A sharp jolt ran through the Matriarch's body. Collapsing on all four limbs, she leaned over and nuzzled her foal's body dearly. As convulsing sobs overtook her, hot streaks of light pulsed overhead. The sky was warping, tearing at the celestial fabric, and the very constellations above were exploding with distant flashes of phenomenally hot fury.
Celestia saw this and gasped. Panicked, she galloped towards her mother. But as soon as she reached the Matriarch's side, the omnipotent entity's wings were already spread. Her mouth opened, wailing, and the landscape fell to pieces below them from the outburst of one, unfiltered chord.
"But my mother could remember. And, what was more, she could suffer. Her feelings were the brushstrokes upon this universe. She only built what she cherished. She never made a part of creation unless it was a part of her. The song had empowered her since infancy, but it had never equipped her for loss.
"Such is the consequence for seeking answers without knowing them; in the act of discovery, the destruction of things is the baptism through which truth manifests itself. For my mother, though, that destruction was all encompassing. To give up a piece of herself to death was incomprehensible. There was no scale to her sorrow, no definition for the pain and anguish she was just beginning to experience.
"The agony of losing a foal was unbearable, and so long as she remembered what she had lost, she would not have the power to continue breaking the song down, much less maintaining the Creation that she had already imparted. The song was doomed to buckle, and all of reality would collapse in on itself, giving way to eternal chaos."
Before me, the shards of the world hung in haphazard disarray. Chunks of landscape floated in a swirling nether. The song of Creation was fractured, and its unstable energy manifested itself in cyclonic torrents of liquid and bright flashes of lightning. Through sheer will, Celestia and her mother held the sundered pieces of reality together. Evidently, though, this was not enough.
The Matriarch hung in a perpetual slump. Her face was frozen in a grimace, and her tears were unceasing. Before her, the foal hovered in her immaculate cradle, frozen in the same deathly stillness that brought her to the corporeal realm.
Floating over, Celestia nuzzled her mother, sharing in her tears. She whispered several dear words to the Matriarch as the shattered world spun faster and faster around them. Soon, the Matriarch's eyes were glowing with bright power and determination. She spread her wings, frowning as she summoned the strength for what would come next.
Celestia read her mother's expression. She too spread her wings, and in holy synchronization both alicorns raised their faces to the heavens and opened their mouths. The universe froze in place, lurched, and spun in reverse. Stars were reborn; constellations were restructured. Under the orchestration of a brand new melody, another piece of the song was broken loose. It took form, bringing structure to the chaos while the Firmaments solidified into being, creating an impermeable barrier around that one solitary pocket of the cosmos.
"There was only one solution, one key to the dilemma. The quest for truth and harmony was far too important to allow for such a bleak and fruitless end. There was a universe to be made, and a cornucopia of life yet to be sculpted. To see to the blossoming and stability of Creation, the Matriarch had to go past the first case of Destruction.
"They had to have a funeral, and, consequently, they had to perform a burial. However, the foal was not to be buried just beyond sight. She was not to be buried simply beyond time and space. This was to be a burial beyond recognition, beyond knowledge, beyond remembrance. The only things that are truly buried, after all, are those which are forgotten, for that which remains to live must seek opportunity in the future without being anchored to the tragedies of the past.
"This was the case with the Matriarch. My mother had eternity at her disposal; she could not spend forever both distributing the song and mourning the first dead soul, not when it destabilized her power to such a degree. She loved me dearly, and yet she had to move on. She was an ancient piece of the singular song, simple in structure yet divine in purpose. The nature of Celestia, my sister, was smaller and a far more complex piece of the song, somepony who innately understood that existence was a matter of dealing with loss and learning to adapt from it. My mother, however, had always been incapable of this function. The true nature of a Creator was to be repetitive; it's Creation itself that had to learn, a burden that fell upon the mortals who would populate her harmonic realm."
In the middle of a broad chunk of floating earth, I watched as pieces of the Firmaments flew together, morphing into a large metallic sarcophagus. Multiple runed spheres--ten in total, one for each elegy--slid into place, layer upon layer, with porous sections of metal showing through the concentric circles. In the center of this hollow structure was a soft bed of feathers from the wings of the two alicorns. The foal's body was lain upon this, and the Matriarch leaned down to nuzzle her one last time. After a final sob, the Matriarch turned around. Celestia accompanied her as the two forlornly trotted away from the tomb.
"They crafted the 'Nocturne of the Firmaments' as a coffin--a sepulcher. The tomb's purpose was twofold: it was to serve as my resting place, and it was to be the buffer between Firmaments. If the pillar upon which the songs of Creation rested was forgotten, then it would be all the harder to destroy the roots of harmony. The world could continue to exist in peace and prosperity, not knowing what supported it into eternity, nor even having to know. I was to be the hidden melody behind all reality, the song of songs: Princess Aria, Goddess of Twilight. Even in death, I had a purpose. And, in some way, my mother and sister would always feel my presence, even if they would no longer be conscious of me. We were still a part of the same song; we had a bond that would be forever inseparable, even if forever invisible."
The spheres closed shut behind them, covering the foal in darkness. The layers of the structure rotated, powered by the elegies spelled out in metallic runes. The world outside the structure dimmed, for the Firmaments beyond had closed the dimension off completely. Untainted by the dissonant piece of the song held within, the universe outside coalesced once more with order and balance. What was forgotten was forgotten. What could not be sung remained unsung.
But then, long after the alicorns had gone, and when there was a breath of silence between the elegies to afford contemplation, a pair of eyes opened up, brimming with bright violet tears.
"What they did not know, what the Matriarch and her daughter Celestia did not think to contemplate, was that a piece of the original song--no matter how dissonant, no mater how brittle--was as immortal as they were. They did not realize that even an alicorn born unto death is not fully dead. The song can be broken down, it can be shattered and muffled and rewritten, but it can never be silenced. The universe will never die; it will only spread thin, and some parts far more slowly than others.
"It was wise of them to bury me where they did; I had no role to play in the mortal plane. The dimension of light, warmth, and beauty was not for me, for I would only be a dissonant shard of the song there, powerless and lifeless. However, in the bed of chaos, something unexpected happened. I blossomed; I became animated. My new realm was a blank canvas, and I was the one and only imprint made there.
"You see, the Matriarch had sought to fashion for me a coffin. In a way, it was a mother's last gift, a cradle for her beloved infant. She did not anticipate the fact that it would become my prison."
Crawling on bony legs, a tiny foalish figure hobbled out of the spheres and gazed lonesomely upon the chaos and fury. I watched as Princess Aria limped across the lengths of the floating platform. Between each flash of lightning, the scrawny alicorn grew taller, larger, and yet more and more haggard. Eons flew by, and her ribs remained pronounced while her knobby joints rattled with each trot. After a few more flashes of lightning, she spread forth featherless wings of exposed bone.
Her eyes strobed a hot violet, summoning lightning from the billowing sky. The sphere behind her lifted up, its many outer surfaces rotating over one another, animating with haunted purpose. Beneath the alicorn's frayed hooves, the earthen platform melted and reformed, turning to cold, immaculate steel. Dust rose from the far edges and linked together, transforming into rattling chains that stretched off towards the furthest reaches of the unsung realm. Distant chunks of earth became similar rotating platforms of metal, swimming in formation, manufacturing a grand industry in the ethereal heart of chaos.
"I made order out of my domain. What else was I to do? I was an infant, uneducated and full of curiosity. The only thing I knew was a melody, an undying tune in my head that told me to create structure and maintain equilibrium. I did not have the same universal resources as my mother, but I did have a song--albeit a tiny piece of it. My loneliness was my gift and my curse all at once. I was forgotten, and yet I had substance. The only soul who could answer for myself was myself, and over the course of thousands of years, I came to understand that there was purpose in purposelessness."
Before Aria, dozens, hundreds, and eventually thousands of pony souls washed ashore onto the metal platforms. Through the years, she trotted up to each of them, nuzzling them, gazing curiously and unemotionally at their tears, their distraught faces. She leaned in and kissed them on the forehead in a desperate attempt to ease their confused and agonized thrashing motions. When that did little to solace them, she spread her wings and--with a strobe of her eyes--fastened them to the platforms by chains and shackles. At last, they were still. They sang her song in perfect cadence, and found peace within the ether.
"Throughout the ages, I found that souls came to me, ponies touched by the song, ponies who could not be protected by the lies of pacification that my mother had reinforced through the symphony she had made. They came here because something inside them had died, something had given in to despair, something had peered into the abyss and dragged the rest of them along. These were the lost ones, just like you. When the fractures in the firmaments aligned, and not even death or exile or suicide was a means of finding solace, these ponies found their way to me, to the unsung realm, for my mother's song erased all knowledge of them from the domain of the living.
"I knew this because, as abandoned as I was, I would always be a part of the same song that crafted the goddesses of the mortal dimension. I would know when the Nocturne had consumed another soul from the universe for the express sake of keeping my existence a secret. I would feel every time something struck the fabric of reality, only to end up here. Whenever something threatened--in even the least possibility--to expose my name to the Matriarch, that something would cease to be. For if some event or circumstance was to remind my mother of my death--and even of my rebirth--she would collapse under the weight of such knowledge and guilt, and the universe would collapse with her.
"I understood this, and I knew that it was my task to prevent this. It was a somber duty, but my life had already contained its fair share of abandonment. As my mother had her immortal will to perform, so I too had mine. I maintained the unsung realm, and I policed the souls who came here to rest. I did this even as I became aware of a younger sister born from the song. I did this even as the chaos took form and cherished me, and even when I had to banish him--my beloved--to a place where he would no longer impede my holy task. I continued, unwaveringly, even as I sensed my younger sister becoming corrupt in her own attempt to salvage me from the Nocturne.
"For as long as the universe shall last, I must remain loyal to the song, and not alter myself for the sake its fragments. The song can afford to be broken down--it has to be. This universe, however, must remain whole for the grand symphony to have an audience, for the quest for truth to continue into eternity."
Just then, the scene before me went dark. The unsung realm and all its moaning populace dissolved into shadow. I gasped as I saw rotating runes blurring into focus above and around me. Through the grooves in the porous spheres, sources of cosmic light reemerged, casting an ethereal haze throughout the throne room's hollow domain. Standing across from me, stealing my breath away with a pair of glowing violet eyes, Princess Aria loomed. Her face was straight, her jaw set with emotionless lips. As thin and emaciated as the goddess was, I saw no blemish to her figure. She was truly beautiful in every pitiable sense of the term. I was lost between wanting to mourn her and worship her all at once.
Thankfully, she spoke before this shivering mortal could have said anything worthless. "My purpose for being and not being has made me wary of you all this time, lost one." Her glowing eyes narrowed on my tiny figure. "The fact that you came here through means of discovering the song, the fact that you were saved by another lost soul in disguise, and the fact that you have made it to the threshhold of my very throne room are all very intriguing things, but they are not what have interested me about you, what have made me tell you all of this." Her bony wings twitched as she said, "What interests me is that you have come here more than once, willingly, to seek something beyond the lengths of your own despair. If I would venture to guess, you are as loyal if not moreso to the song than I am."
I was shuddering. I felt something cold and metallic in my hooves. Glancing down at my naked self, I found that I was hugging the Nightbringer. I took a heavy breath and looked up at Aria, trying not to sob from every second I was exposed to her somber, glowing eyes.
"Then m-maybe you'll realize that I am not here to destroy wh-what the Cosmic Matriarch has created," I managed to say in a hoarse voice.
"No, but you come here to change," she said. "And change is the most destructive thing to the mortal realm, so long as it is dictated by the essence of an omnipotent piece of the song unwilling to change--which, I'm afraid, is an eternal prospect."
"If there's anything I wish to change, it's myself!" I exclaimed, my voice echoing off the rotating runes around us. "I don't want to illuminate the mind of the Matriarch to her sad loss! I don't want to drag you out of this place if you love it so much! I just want to become permanent again! I j-just want the song that empowers you to stop cursing me!"
"The cost for that is far too great," she said coldly. There was no emotion on her face to be read, no suggestion of anger or sorrow or dread or amusement. She simply existed, as this realm existed. I realized very swiftly that I was talking into a living abyss. "You would wish to have a name that is remembered, to leave a legacy that can be written down. Inadvertently, though, your desires--if manifested--would lead to the revelation of my existence to the Matriarch, and the universe would cease to function because of it. Already, you have risked exposing me to both of my sisters, and the song had to erase the reality of it."
"Yes! I know about the parasprites!" I said, growling slightly. "And when I spoke with Luna, I understood enough about you to ensure that she and anypony else didn't suffer from the truth! But me? I am not a goddess who's only capable of creating or stabilizing harmony!" I frowned and stood up straight as I shouted, "I am a mortal! It is my essence, my function to learn and grow from it! You said it yourself: the smaller and more diverse the songs, the more complex they are! I can live my life and not expose you!"
"There is only one way to do that," she said.
I merely stared at her, breathing heavily in shivering anticipation.
She turned and waved her hoof towards the walls. "Become a member of my choir." The spheres rotated into place, and through the porous metal we saw several hundred ponies shackled outside to a platform as it floated by. They all moaned in cadence to an eternal beat as the chords of the Nocturne repeated into infinity. "Join us in everlasting peace, in endless purpose here between the Firmaments."
I gazed sickly at her. "But I wouldn't be free."
She gazed stonily my way. "No, you wouldn't. Freedom means anguish. Freedom means chaos and turbulence. Freedom means danger and destruction. This realm is not a place for freedom, but a sanctum for tortured souls for whom death is no solace. The fate of the universe, after all, is to fall victim to endless cold. Here, my little ponies do not have to wait for eternity to run its course."
I swallowed deeply and said, "So is that why you banished Discord? If a creature like him couldn't stomach this realm, then you truly are buried here."
Her facial features shifted for the first time since she spoke to me. Her bony wings flexed and rested at her side as she trotted slowly about the circular throne room. "I knew that I smelled the scent of my beloved on you," she said. "At first, I wanted to think that it was a fragmented thought, a shadow of the past, something that crossed my mind because you were the first soul in eons to play my song without wanting to be consumed by it."
"Yes, I did meet with Discord," I said in a low voice. I shivered as she shuffled closer towards me. "He loves you very dearly, Aria. He loves you more than all his powers can convey."
"Then it is as I thought," she said in a neutral tone. She came to a stop before me, her sheer presence spilling frost into my blood. Vapors billowed endlessly from her mouth and nostrils as she murmured, "His ambition was too great. He saw in me a sliver of the Matriarch's song. It exposed him to a piece of Creation. It was the first time that such a being of chaos caught a glimpse of structure, and though he would never admit it, I suspect he greatly envied it. From then on, there was no hope for him in this realm. So long as he was here, he would not know peace, not like my choir members. He couldn't live with the purpose of this sanctum, and so he would forever be an aberration, a foil to my divine duties."
"And you sent him away?!" I exclaimed. "Aria, you may think you're just as straight-forward and eternally bound to purpose as your mother, but I sense a different truth! I heard it in Discord's words when he spoke woefully about you! I see it in your lonesome gait and twitching wings! The thought of your beloved sends a spark through your undead body! You loved him, didn't you?" I seethed through clenched teeth as I fought the urge to shiver. "You loved him, and you didn't think you were capable of such change and intimacy and feeling! You didn't send him away to protect the song! If nothing else, you only risked exposing yourself by sending him to the mortal realm! I think the real reason you sent him away was because you fear change as much as I desire it! You've been afraid of that your whole life, that your whole legacy of protecting your mother's damnable Nocturne is a lie!"
"But it is a lie," she said coolly. "A necessary lie. My beloved could not understand this, and my song wasn't enough to silence his desire to expose me. So I sent him to where the combined music of my sisters could do what I was incapable of doing."
"But they couldn't, Aria," I said. "Not forever! Discord broke free! In fact, the only reason the song ever banished him to stone and protected your secret was because he allowed himself to--" I stopped in mid-speech. My eyes widened and a deep breath escaped me. "It was me..." I fell back on my haunches, clutching the Nightbringer tightly. "I... sent him away in the end," I stammered. I felt a deep pit forming in my stomach. "I changed him, and he exposed himself to the Elements of Harmony. I made Discord remember you, and then his own hopelessness put him in permanent stasis."
Her nostrils flared as she stared down at me. "Now do you understand why it is that I am astounded by your loyalty to the song?"
I gnashed my teeth. I ran a hoof over my face and whimpered, "You... you used m-me, didn't you?"
"To master you as you are now, I would have to be capable of feeling, lost one," she said. "Until you become one of my choir, I cannot pretend to be in charge of you. It was your desire to save the stability of the universe that allowed you to survive my beloved. It was your wish to preserve my younger sister's place in the song that made you expose her to just the Requiem alone. Now, you believe it is your desire for freedom that brings you here. It is my duty to tell you that you have only earned peace. A pony who has made it to my inner sanctum by her own will deserves no less."
Sniffling, I glanced up at her. My lips quivered as I said,"How many have made it to your throneroom here before me?"
"None."
My heart sank. A painful wince flashed through my features. "In so many eons... in so many thousands upon thousands of years... I am the only one to have mastered the Nocturne and arrived here?"
"All others exposed to my song have found rest in chains, the necessary fetters of forgetfulness." The spheres around us rotated, and beams of ethereal light bled through the rune-laced hole, projecting floating images of constellations and stars and solar systems. "Throughout the cosmos, as my mother spreads the song of creation, countless Equestrian civilizations have sprouted up, and each of them continuously donate me the souls of those who are lost, those who cannot find their way home, those who cannot afford joy or hope or companionship. When they give into despair, when they are exposed to the Nocturne through the osmotic wounds in their heart, they come to my domain, and any permanent memory of them in the mortal realm is erased, as it should be."
"And... you keep track of th-them?"
"Each and every one," she said solemnly, her hoof waving across the projections as they flickered to show countless pony faces, all melancholic or deadpan. "Exiled youths, estranged lovers, lethargic victims of war, famine, or cruelty. The pain of existence stretches them to the breaking point. Pits form in their souls, crevices that are deeper and darker than the abyss between Firmaments. That is the deep layer through which the Nocturne lingers. The symphony speaks to them, and many of them answer the call of my mother's song. They become my kindred spirits, and I give them the solace that they could not achieve in life."
"Did you ever once think of helping them achieve contentment on their own?" I asked, stuck between a frown and a grimace. "Did you ever think that maybe you were robbing them of something by bringing them here?"
"Lost one, by coming here they established that they had nothing left to be robbed of."
She gazed at me sideways as she waved her hoof, producing a planetoid with a sun and moon. The projection flew into the middle of a continent and focused on a very familiar village with a very familiar town hall in the center.
"Even your own home, for all of its warmth and prosperity, is no stranger to donating souls to my choir."
Several strange faces flickered before us.
"A rambunctious white pegasus. An elegant unicorn's husband. A farm mare's infant foal. A master teleporter."
She pulled her hoof back, and the images stretched out to show a vast array of equine shapes, all frozen in sorrowful expressions.
"All of them once lived happy and industrious lives, until they became cognizant of the unsung realm, and of the essence of loss that my mother tried ages ago to bury. Consequently, they had to be buried themselves. When the time came, they did not have the desire to fight that which was not only natural, but blissful, and all shreds of evidence to suggest that they had ever walked the earth were eliminated from their planes of origin."
"Dear goddess..." I murmured, gazing up at her with moistening eyes. "All this time, I-I thought I was the only one in town..." I felt my heart beating with each horrific bit of contemplation: each day that I walked the lengths of town, there were ghosts trotting the same streets as me, living and breathing the same air as me, and the fact that we simply forgot such meetings--like ships barely missing each other in the fog--made me sick to the stomach. "Aria, how... h-how many lost souls are there besides mine?"
"There is no number."
I shuddered. I squatted down on my stomach and gazed numbly into the floor. There was no stopping my trembles at this point. "If I-I had known... if I had any idea... I w-would have tr-tried saving them as well..." I clenched my eyes shut and stifled a sob. "Alabaster, it's too much. It's all t-too much..."
"It was never your place to save them," she said. "It was never your place to save yourself. All lost ones arrive here in the realm, some sooner than others. The fact that you are the only one to show up with such self-awareness is of no consequence. Sooner than later, you will join the choir."
I let a few more tears squeeze out of my eyes before taking a huge breath, standing up on shaking legs, and frowning up at her. "I will do no such thing..."
Her retort was a cold, mechanical thing. "I am as powerless as you are to change this."
"No, you are only one song," I said, snarling. I telekinetically raised the Nightbringer. "But I am several!"
She glanced once at the holy instrument, then looked unemotionally at me. "There is nothing you or I can--"
"Some songs, I have discovered!" I continued to shout. I no longer feared the violet glow of her eyes; I no longer feared anything. "But most, I have written! The most beautiful and eloquent song is the melody of my life! Other ponies have felt it, whether they knew it or not! Unlike your mother's song, I filled them with hope! I distilled joy and meaning into their lives! I filled the void in ponies' souls that the Nocturne eagerly pilfers from! You're damn right I'm willing to change! The quest for truth doesn't happen through sheer repetition alone! You have to suffer in order to understand what true bliss is, in order to learn how to learn in the first place! I'm sorry that your mother could never understand that, Aria. I'm sorry that in her selfishness and simple-mindedness, the Creator of all things banished you to this heartless place! But it is not for me! And if you're not willing to climb your pitiful way out, then that's fine! Just don't stand in my way!"
"Lost one, you do not understand the consequences of that which you seek--"
"Play the duet with me!" I shouted, raising the Nightbringer even higher so that it caught the light coming from the runes surrounding us. A golden glitter bathed the throne room in a warm kaleidoscope, like a sunrise in the heart of darkness. "You know what this is, and you know your place! Answer your mother's and sister's song!"
She simply stared at me.
Seething, I boldly strummed the onyx strings with my magic, producing the first few notes of "Desolation's Duet." Once more, I hissed, "Play it with me. Let us sing the song together. Then, if you so wish, you can become nothing. As for me, I must see the dawn at the end of the Nocturne."
She stared at me, still as a statue, her wing-stalks framing her like a horrific emblem.
I stared back, keeping my shivers to a minimum. I remained silent; I was not about to plead.
Eventually, the goddess moved. Her horn glowed, and from every wall of the throne room, pieces of the runes lifted off and coalesced in the air before her. I watched as a metallic flute instrument formed in her telekinetic grip. She locked her eyes with me. She was waiting.
My heart leapt ahead of me. I followed it through my leylines, and the strings of the Nightbringer resonated as if on their own. I broke into the central melody, and soon I was not alone. Princess Aria lived up to her nameless name, turning the song into something beautiful with her immaculate flute. The lulling rhythm was as haunting as it was divine, like an ancient lullaby meant to usher a deceased foal into a realm beyond death.
I thought of Alabaster and Luna discovering this melody, dredging it from the black depths of the primordial cold. I thought of Octavia, Melodia, J.R. Bard, and Vinyl Scratch: none of them could have had the capacity to imagine how beautiful the actual duet would be in the company of time's forgotten Princess, or where the tune would take me. The lights beyond the spherical throne room swam through warm yellows and golds, matching the brilliance of the Nightbringer as it was accompanied by the silver shine of the flute in Aria's possession.
I heard voices beyond the domain; the rattling of chains ceased for the first time in eternity as moans turned into euphoric exultation. The unsung realm was having its first ever intermission, and I was in the spotlight, sharing the glory with the living embodiment of all that was forsaken. I thought of all of the ponies' lives that I had touched like this, just wishing to be harmonic, just desiring to spread the joy and rhythm of life. If I couldn't reach the lost souls of the unsung realm, I knew I could live with it. I had a future to earn, a second chance at existing. I could deal with loss, I could meditate upon failure, and I could serve to help others deal with such frailties as well.
I thought that I would be terrified at sharing the same room with Aria. I thought that her immense power and divinity would intimidate me. But as the Duet played through, and the alicorn endeavored to match the melody that I was leading, it occurred to me that not even a goddess could shake my countenance.
A truth had come to me, an epiphany that I had been discovering my entire life: that the will to do good was older than the holy songs themselves. Maybe this was what the singular consciousness desired when it broke into the many, but fate would have it that the Matriarch blinded herself to such lessons worth learning. Perhaps, then, it was my goal to bring that lesson to the world. If that was the one thing about me that could be remembered, then maybe it was worth all these months of lonesome hell.
So engrossed was I in the moment, that when it ended, I was the only one still playing. I opened my eyes, blinking the tears away, and gazed towards Aria.
The flute had already dissolved. In a reverent bow, she shuffled sideways. Behind her, a series of glowing violet lines solidified in the shape of a pedestal. At the very top of this, an unfurled scroll rested, bearing an ancient music sheet.
"Is..." I leaned my head forward, sweating profusely from the sight of the elusive song. "Is that...?"
"The final elegy of the Nocturne awaits," Aria said. "You bear the Nightbringer, lost one. You have earned it."
I gulped. On numb hooves, I trotted briskly over to the pedestal. My eyes darted over the bars, reveling in the notes, twitching upon sight of the final chord at the end of the sheet. "Dawn's Advent" was long. It was epic. It was melancholic and triumphant all at once. My soul rose and fell with invisible crests through my feeble mind as I simply imagined it.
"Go and see the dawn." The Princess spoke in a calm, almost whispery voice from behind me. "However, the dawn cannot see you."
I swallowed a lump down my throat as I rested my forelimbs on the edges of the pedestal. The notes began blurring as tears found their way into my eyes. "What happens next?" I asked, trembling. "What awaits me once I have played 'Dawn's Advent?'"
"You will enter the realm of the living," she said. "You will be outside the reach of the Nocturne, and you will no longer be subject to my power."
"Yes..." With quivering lips, I turned and looked back at her. "But at least you know what will happen once I am there, don't you? Please. T-tell me..."
She stared at me solidly. "Nopony who has knowledge of me and the unsung realm can enter my mother's domain and retain that knowledge. The Matriarch's power and omnipotence dominates the mortal plane. It is because of her power, and not mine, that things become lost and forgotten. You are the first and only mortal pony to have performed the entire Nocturne in full. To that end, once you have performed 'Dawn's Advent,' you will no longer be the same soul that brought herself to such a place to begin with."
"You mean..." I paused, my eyes trailing the shadows of the place. With a shudder, my gaze found its way to her glowing eyes once more. "You mean that all of my memories--?"
"To no longer be a lost one, you must lose that which flung you into the abyss to begin with. There are two types of mortals in my mother's universe: those who know, but are forgotten, and those who know not, but stand to forget. This is the result of the dichotomy that was born with me. The universe cannot afford to share both, or else the Matriarch would collapse from the forbidden revelation, and all of reality along with it."
I turned and looked once more at the music sheet. "I... I don't want to destroy all of reality..."
"Once you enter the realm in which you were born, it will no longer be a matter of choice," Aria said. "The dominance of the Matriarch's song will rob that power from you, but at least you will be permanent; you will be remembered." At last, her hooves shuffled as she pivoted to face me more evenly. "As you can see, my little pony, freedom comes at a price, as does peace of mind."
My eyes fell to the cold, metallic floor of the throneroom. "Either live forever forgotten, with only myself to remember all that I've learned..." I gulped. "Or lose all that I have gained, and enjoy the bliss of warmth and companionship..."
"As long as you possess the song"--she pointed at the Nightbringer--"and have access to 'Dawn's Advent,' it is not within my power to stop you, nor is it my place to make the decision for you. What you have now is choice: the power to change or unchange everything about yourself. It is not something that goddesses can relish; I doubt they ever will."
I gave her a sharp glance, and for once it was something of pity. I swiftly broke out of that stupor with a murmuring voice, "I only wonder if I have the capacity to become what I am again..." I felt a cold chill running through me. I clenched my eyes shut as I thought of Twilight, Moondancer, Morning Dew, Snips, Nebulous, and dozens more. "If I do this, if I free myself at the cost of all I've learned--about the Matriarch and about myself--what chance have I to grow into what I've become? Will I change from what I once was? Or will I remain a shallow, aloof, and blissfully ignorant unicorn?"
She didn't answer; she had no answer.
I sighed and ran a hoof through my mane. "There... th-there has to be another way." I gulped. "There has to be!" I looked back at her. "I promise I won't tell a single soul about the unsung realm! About you! About the Matriarch!"
"That is simply not possible..."
"At least take away only my memories of you and this place and your beloved and--"
"It is within my power to take away any memories you desire," she said. Her hoof pointed at the music sheet. "But once you play that tune and embrace the dawn, you are beyond my reach. As I said before, nopony has made it to where you have. It's quite possible that even I would forget you." Her violet eyes narrowed. "The Matriarch's power is that encompassing, and she affords no exceptions to the divine rule that forged this place. If that was not the case, would so many lost souls still be here, making up my choir?"
"Then..." I glanced at the pedestal, muttering in a low tone, "Then it's quite possible that ponies have made it this far, and you just don't remember them." I bit my lip before stammering forth, "What kind of an existence do we live in, that so many glorious and wholesome victories stand to be forgotten on the very crest of triumph? How many souls trot the landscapes of the universe, having gained so much, only to lose it all in a desperate move to preserve the idea of the self?"
"It is not my place to know," she said. "I only have the capacity to see that which chooses to be lost."
I looked at her, and I felt the muscles in my muzzle tensing. "I do not choose loss."
She bowed her horn ever so slightly. "Then perhaps you already know what you must do."
I gazed at the sheet. I was shivering so much that the notes were wavering out of place. I was just a few chords away from freedom, from warmth, from seeing my Mom and Dad, from hearing Twilight shout my name with a smile, from having Moondancer hug me, from being able to go home and sleep in a bed that belonged to me.
"It's too much to throw away," I said. I felt a haunting chill, as if the words spoken weren't mine, but instead those uttered by countless shadows that may or may not have been occupying this same space as me, that may or may not have performed the same Duet as I had, that may or may not have been making the exact same choice that I was about to make. "I've come so far. It's worth the risk," I murmured, feeling a tear trickle down my cheek. "Who's to know that I won't rediscover myself again, that I won't make the same discoveries and epiphanies, that I won't grow into a mare who's truly wholesome and altruistic?"
Aria was silent.
I sniffled, took a deep breath, and held the Nightbringer in front of me. "I've done enough thinking, enough philosophizing, enough talking and incessant rambling. I owe it to myself, I owe it to Alabaster, and I owe it to my loved ones to do this, so that I may have all those loved ones again." I smiled, if only briefly, and positioned my hooves to pluck the first strings that matched the notes on the music sheet. "I'm ready to greet the dawn."
The alicorn still said nothing, which was what ultimately alarmed me, making me turn around and glance at her.
I squinted. Aria was staring at me, waiting, patient and still as a stone. All this time, I felt that I had done enough to shun her, to defy her, and yet she was putting up no resistance? Wasn't what I was about to do an insult to her essence, a slap in the face of all she stood for?
I glanced at the chords of "Dawn's Advent." I looked at the final chord, how lonesomely it hung towards the end of the sheet, like a dagger to the throat. With a scrape of my hooves, I turned and frowned at Aria.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"The final elegy is yours," she said in a dull drone. "Perform it."
"You're hiding something from me!" I snapped at her, snarling. "What is it?"
"All that deserves to be hidden remains here in my realm," she remarked, taciturn. "You do not desire to be here. Please, go--"
"You just confirmed that everything I've learned will be undone!" I stood before her, leaning up and shouting, "You said that because of the Matriarch's power, all of my memories will dissolve into nothingness!"
"If that is your choice, then it is yours to make--"
"But what is freedom?!" My brow was furrowed, stained with sweat as I realized the enormity of it all just as I was speaking it. "What is peace of mind?! What is the cost of it all?! Discord knew it! Do you?"
"Lost one--"
"What will happen to all the ponies whose lives I have touched?!" I finally shrieked. "What will become of all the things I have done in Ponyville?!"
She gazed at me, emotionless as ever. When she spoke, it sounded like a eulogy was being read. "The Matriarch's power does not extend over memories alone. She is the creator of all things, the distributor of the holy song that governs all reality. Both time and space bow to her will." Her violet eyes glowed brighter as she said, "When you finish the Nocturne, when you enter the realm of the living, it will be as though you were never cursed to begin with. History itself must bend to prevent any knowledge of my existence from entering the universe, and the only way for that to happen is for you to not have been exposed to the Nocturne in the first place."
"Not have been exposed...?" I leaned back from her, nearly breathless. I blinked, the coldness returning to my limbs like my first lonely night in Ponyville. "I-I will never have met Nightmare Moon. I will never have built my cabin. I will never have talked to Twilight about the spells..."
She stared at me, watching silently as the knowledge imparted took root in my consciousness.
I fell back on my haunches, breathing sharper and sharper as my eyes twitched from the pounding waves of understanding. "I will... n-never have heard the elegies in my head. I will never have built that cellar, or experimented with the Nocturne, or bought sound stones." I gulped and squinted into the shadows. "I will never have talked to Rarity about her career, or bought the flute for Derpy's foal, or talked Caramel into staying with Wind Whistler." My teeth chattered and my ears drooped over my head. "I would never have saved Scootaloo from dying in the wilderness." I bit my lip before breathily producing, "Morning Dew and Rumble... Snips and Windsong... the Mayor and Scarlet Breeze..."
Just then, a shriek exploded out of my lips like a gunshot. I fell back, gripping my mouth with a pair of hooves as my eyes widened like twitching saucers.
"Mmmm...!" I panted, shuddered, and whimpered forth, "D-Discord!" I shook all over. "Oh sweet Celestia..."
I hugged myself. I clenched my teeth and hissed loudly. The tears undammed, I turned and tried looking up at her. A violet shadow loomed beyond reach of my hiccuping sobs.
"If... if I-I'm never c-cursed to begin with, wh-what happens to D-Discord...?"
Aria's head bowed. Very slowly, she uttered, "Fueled by his rage over being banished, without any lost soul to remind him of the reasons for his exile, the wrath of my beloved will outweigh his sorrow. He will never allow himself to be overcome by the songs of the mortal realm. He will wreak destruction and misery wherever he goes; not even my sisters can hold him back. His reign would not last forever, but undoubtedly for many eons. He would shape several worlds in his image until time itself makes him lethargic once more, and he gives in to the ennui that brought him there to begin with."
I clenched my eyes shut halfway through hearing this. I felt like I was frozen solid. I reached for the sleeves of a hoodie that wasn't there, so I tore at my coat and mane instead.
"How..." I hyperventilated; I heaved. "H-how could you let me go... how c-could you let me free myself, knowing what it would undo, knowing that it would bring an end to so many good ponies' lives whom I have touched? How could you willfully accept your b-beloved going on an endless rampage of chaos and d-destruction?!"
"What I do for the sake of the universe, I do here... by remaining here," Aria said. "My beloved's wrath is enormously powerful, but even it doesn't compare to the sheer annihilation of all reality that would occur if the truth of my existence was presented to the Cosmic Matriarch." Her eyes closed gently, but it was too late for her to woo me with a meager shadow of an emotion. "What happens to the mortal souls on the other side of the Firmaments is of no concern to me, so long as the Firmaments remain in place for them to hold onto, alive or not."
I hugged myself, rocking in place as I felt the throne room collapsing around me. "I can't... I-I can't..."
"It is as I said when you first arrived here, lost one," Aria softly said. "You still stand to experience bliss, to know peace, so long as you forsake the Dawn and become a member of my choir." With a strong breath, she uttered, "Sing my song and become nothing. All will be as it must be."
By that point, I was inconsolable. I shook so hard that I couldn't hold the Nightbringer anymore. So I didn't bother. With a sharp inhale, I threw my forelimbs forward, flinging the holy instrument against the floor. The unbreakable strings clattered with all sorts of dissonant chords, but that wasn't the end of my instrumental. I followed it with a massive bellowing noise, tilting my skull towards the zenith of the unsung realm and screaming for as long as my lungs could carry such torment. I yelled and howled like I had never shouted before, writhing my hooves into the air before pounding them into the metal floor where I collapsed, lost between moaning sobs and gut-ripping hyperventilation. Simply lost...
All the while, Aria stood unmoving. Not even a single bone stalk of her wings twitched from my undulating cries. I may just as well have been shouting into the abyss instead of a goddess incarnate.
My mind had been rendered a labyrinth, and every turn of the maze revealed darker and darker shadows. Not even my tears could clear the grime of hopelessness away. Several minutes had passed, during which I had curled into a fetal position, sobbing pitifully in the middle of the floor. When my eyes finally opened, the first thing I saw was an ancient bed of threadbare feathers.
I imagined what it must have been like to first awake there, in the pit of all nothingness, with nothing to rely on but one's own will and resilience. It occurred to me that Aria was always alone, and yet she was never alone. We were all born there, in the cradle of darkness, every one of us, and there comes a point when we must return, when the rules of the universe buckle against our will, and all that's left is the duty, the melody in our heads, the song that needs to be sung.
"Though the consequences either way are negligible, the choice is still yours," Aria said. It felt like it had been hours since she last spoke. I heard her skeletal limbs pacing around me as she walked the circumference of the throne room. "So long as you are lost, I can give you peace. However, once you have performed 'Dawn's Advent,' you will be free, but that freedom will have a price. The price may matter to you, but so long as the universe's structure is at stake, it is not my place to deny you that freedom, regardless of what my beloved may or may not do as a consequence of it."
"I... I c-can't decide," I whimpered, sniffling. "I can't even th-think..." I looked up at her, my mane disheveled and my face a mess. "Please. I... I need t-time. I'm mortal, and mortals need t-time..." I hid my face in my hooves once more. "Mmmmff... oh goddess... oh goddess please..."
"I am the consumer of memories. There are very few things that I can give," she murmured. "Time is one of them, though I doubt it will be of much use to you, lost one. The song has consumed enough of your mind and spirit; the mortal realm should be alien to you at this point. Surely you've noticed this. Luna wasn't the only one who required 'Twilight's Requiem' to reach me."
I panted evenly, drying my face as I reached out and clutched the Nightbringer like a crutch. I stammered, "How long... d-do I have left to live beyond the Firmaments?"
"It is not a question of the length you have left to live," Aria explained. "But, rather, the extent to which you have to remember. Life, after all, is the sum of one's memories, and you have very few to choose from now, even fewer if I let you return to stay in the mortal realm for much longer." She turned towards the pedestal, and a violet glow encompassed the parchment upon which "Dawn's Advent" was inscribed. "You've brought the piece of my mother's song, lost one. You've performed 'Desolation's Duet.' The final elegy awaits you and you alone." She looked emotionlessly down at me. "All you need to do is play the Nocturne through, from the first elegy to the penultimate instrumental, and you will return here to my presence. If you still have the soundness of mind then to make a decision, I will accept your choice either way."
I nodded, bowing my head as I hugged the Nightbringer under a fresh quiver of sobs. "For wh-what it's worth, Princess, I th-thank you..."
She leaned down until she was staring me in the face. "We both know what it is worth." And then her eyes strobed with violet energy...
And I was back.
When the first flake of snow fell onto the grass outside my cabin, I was waiting for it. I don't know how many hours, days, weeks I spent there, staring out the window, watching the world turn gray as winter descended upon the lengths of Ponyville. Those moments had no substance to them, and without substance, there was no need for memories.
I vaguely recall a schedule of sorts. Everything revolved around feeding Al, filling his dishes twice a day, and lingering beneath the shadows in between. I may or may not have fed myself.
I do remember lying in my cot, staring at the beams of my self-built cabin, counting the seconds limping by until I forgot that I had started counting to begin with. The only way I had to truly measure time was from the increasing frequency with which Al padded up to curl by my side. I petted him on each occasion, feeling his purs, his ticklish whiskers. He nuzzled me back, but I wouldn't budge. The fireplace remained unlit. The only warmth was from Al's fur, or the occasional smattering of sunlight through the fogged windows.
And then there was the snow. I gazed out as the green landscape around me turned white, like a clean slate. With a single blink, it was a year ago, and I was stumbling to learn the "Darkness Sonata." The cabin was half-finished, and I huddled inside my tent, trembling under the dim light of a glowing horn as I scribbled obscure music notes onto a piece of parchment in my lap. Another blink, and I was trotting through Canterlot with Moondancer, laughing and celebrating the end of the semester with several other mares my age. Blinking again, I was opening a present on Hearth's Warming as my parents watched. The xylophone glinted in the bright lights of the tree. It was the first time I remember having tears of joy and not because of pain or sorrow.
I suddenly realized that every winter was the same. The seasons repeated not because of faithful pegasi weather deliverers, but because time was mundane and needed a pattern to spice it up. Otherwise, there would be no substance. And without substance, cursed or uncursed, we ponies would have nothing worth remembering.
I tried thinking of the souls who were most special to me. I tried thinking of Mom, Dad, Morning Dew, Moondancer, and Twilight. I pondered whether their substance would be enough for me to go on, or if it would truly be a tragedy to let the essence of who and what they were dwindle from my consciousness. For days on end, I dared myself not to play the Requiem. I allowed my mind to reach the utter depths of desolation, that dark abyss through which I could hear the Nocturne whistling to me like a sharp, windy breeze through obsidian rock crevices.
I discovered that the only pain of remembrance was the need for remembrance. In that light, coming up to the surface of my self-awareness, Princess Aria's gift did not seem like such a horrible thing. Accepting her offer would be like returning to a natural state. After all, who would exist after all of the universe's warmth had burned out? Who would possibly hold the consciousness and wealth of knowledge to contain history's enormity of successes and failures? By then, the song will have broken into so many separate pieces that the singular source's desire for knowledge will become impossible by sheer entropy. By becoming many, that which was one doomed itself to intellectual oblivion.
Perhaps, then, that was the truth that the one had so desired?
I couldn't bring myself to hate the Matriarch. I couldn't bring myself to hate anyone or anything. Like Aria, everything was coming together, and it simply took the structure of everything around me falling apart. In the end, there was nothing worth feeling sad about, nothing worth celebrating nor regretting. Life was a downhill slalom, and as I gazed at the snow and its white baptism of all things alive and dying, I began to know my place in the grand descent.
But I was not about to make my decision based on my place alone...
I filled Al's dish up to the brim. It was a precautionary measure. There was no telling how long I'd be gone after stepping out the door. Nevertheless, in one single breath, I grabbed my hoodie and my lyre and rushed out of the cabin and into the light.
"All aboard! Express trip to Canterlot!" the conductor shouted as he marched down the depot's platform.
The locomotive engine before the long and colorful train glowed in the snowy kiss of winter. Steam billowed in hot jets as ponies rushed over with their luggage and climbed inside. Among them, a colorful group of young mares filed into the middlemost car.
"Brrr!" Applejack managed. "It's chilly enough to freeze one of Granny Smith's moles off!"
"Way to say what we're all thinking, Captain Obvious!" Rainbow Dash snapped, shoving the farm filly inside. "Now hop to it! How can I expect to play Commander Hurricane when my feathers are frozen solid?!"
"Oooh! Frozen Hurricanesicles!" Pinkie Pie chirped as she bounced in after the two. "That reminds me! Are we gonna stop by the pegasus district along the way to Canterlot Castle? They bake the best Hearth's Warming treats!"
"Ungh! Heaven forbid!" Rarity exclaimed, clad in a jacket and shawl, lugging along three bulging suitcases in her telekinetic glow. "This weather is dreary enough without having to suffer it from the rooftops of Canterlot's most elevated neighborhood! Let us simply make our way to the Castle and play our parts!"
"Wait, Rarity," Fluttershy remarked, pausing behind her.
"Fluttershy, we've been over this, dear!" Rarity tugged and tugged at her suitcases, forcefully squeezing them into the train car. "Cheerilee has been kind enough to take care of your animals. You've said 'farewell' to Angel five times already. Isn't that enough? Now quickly hop aboard this infernal train before it takes off without you!"
"No, not that." Fluttershy gazed around, trembling. "Where's Twilight?"
"Huh?"
"Tarnation! She's right!" Applejack stuck her head out a window of the car. "She ain't inside here either!"
Rainbow Dash appeared in the window next to her. "Where in the hay is she?! We can't wait forever!"
"Oh, Twilight!" Rarity called around, looking both ways across the depot. "Yoohoo! Where have you gone off to, darling?"
"Stop shouting, girls!" Twilight exclaimed through a hissing breath. "I'm... right here..." She struggled to drag one large saddlebag too bulging with items for her to carry on her dainty back. "Ughh... Just give me a minute!"
"Sugarcube, we ain't got a minute! Now move yer flank!"
"Honestly, Twilight," Rarity spoke with an amused grin. "You're the most powerful magician this side of Equestria, and you can't lift a single saddlebag with your horn?"
"That's just it! These are tomes of special enchantment! They can't be lifted easily by telekinesis!" Twilight exclaimed, her legs straining as she tugged harder and harder on the bags. "When I found out that I was to perform the role of Clover the Clever in the Canterlot Hearth's Warming play, I decided that it was best to play the part to my full potential! So here I have all the books on... nngh... Pre-Equestrian sorcery that I could find!"
"Twilight, Celestia's not expecting you to perform all sorts of flashy magic on stage!" Rainbow Dash said with a roll of her ruby eyes. "Besides, if she did, I would have volunteered from the get go!"
"You say that like this isn't gonna be fun, Dashie!" Pinkie Pie bounced in the windowframe along with her. "I can't wait to play my part! They said I can even eat the hat once the curtain falls! Eeeheehee!"
"Ungh..." Rainbow Dash face-hoofed.
"Uhm, Rarity?" Fluttershy spoke to her friend. "It is very cold. Can I go inside now?"
"Oh, by all means, Fluttershy." Rarity gave her space to crawl on board the train car. She turned and called out to Twilight. "Abandon a few of those books or ask a local workhoof to help you! Whatever it takes to get here swiftly! The train will be moving soon!" She ducked inside.
"But... I-I need... all of these..." Twilight clenched her eyes shut and grit her teeth as she pulled and pulled on the strap. "Nnnngh--Gaaah!" She lost her grip and fell back on her haunches. Twilight sat up, seeing stars. "Ugggh... Good thing Hearth's Warming only comes once a year."
Just then, a dolly rolled in towards her on green-glowing wheels. With an emerald wave of magic, the hulking saddlebag inched its way up onto the cart until it rested evenly on the gliding platform.
Twilight blinked. "Huh..." She smiled. "Now why didn't I think of that?" She accepted the hoof that was given to her and stood back up. "Thank you very much, Miss..." She looked at me and her smile faded.
Moist eyes reflected her image as I took a deep breath and said, "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings. But you will n-not remember me. You won't even remember th-this conversation. Just like with everypony else I've ever met, everything I d-do or say will be forgotten." I gulped, sniffled, and spoke in a whisper, "But I am not asking you t-to remember..."
Her mouth hung open in confusion. Steam jetted out from the train behind her, shaking her countenance. With a fitful stammer, she said, "I... I-I don't understand. Have we--?"
"I'm not asking you to remember the afternoon we first m-met on Alabaster Street, or the days we spent running through the neighborhoods of Canterlot, or the nights we enjoyed slumber p-parties with Moondancer, playing games as Celestia, Luna, and Starswirl the Bearded." I smiled painfully, adoring the innocence in her violet eyes--a color that had filled the niche in my life as it had filled an unknowing hole in Celestia's. For me, there would only ever be one Princess of Twilight, and I gazed at her as I said, "I do not ask you t-to remember the letters that you wrote to me from your room in the Royal Palace, or the stories you gave of all the wonderful feats of magic that you learned. I do not ask that you recall every sob or l-laugh or angry word you ever uttered in my presence, or the forelimbs that embraced you when you just needed to be heard, to be held, to be cherished."
I slid the cart towards her, took a few steps, and spoke in a tender whisper that only the two of us could hear.
"I simply ask, Twilight Sparkle, if... if you are h-happy with the way things are." I shuddered, sniffled the tears away, and spoke, "Are you happy with the nature of the world, with the function of the universe, with your life as it has come to pass?"
She gazed at me, at this crazed and disheveled stranger who had barely eaten anything in weeks and hadn't bathed for twice as long. She stared at the bags under my eyes, the wrinkles in my coat, and the tears that were desperate to squeeze forth into the frosty air. Twilight Sparkle looked beyond all of that, and to my joy, she saw something that neither I or Aria were capable of grasping anymore, and her words set my heart on fire.
"I... I have found a new home here in Ponyville. I have found a place to raise Spike like the sweet young dragon he was meant to be. There is a correspondence that I'm fortunate enough to maintain with Celestia on a regular basis. I am the Princess' faithful protege, and yet I'm allowed the freedom to live where I please. With her blessing, I've become not only this town's chief librarian, but its magical guardian as well. I've saved Ponyville from an ursa minor, Equestria from Nightmare Moon, and the whole world from Discord. And I..."
Steam blew again. Several female voices shouted from a car just a few paces behind her.
Twilight Sparkle chuckled. She ran a hoof through her beautiful mane and whispered forth, "I have friends. After such a long, lonely life, I... I have such dear friends--ponies who will stick by my side no matter what, ponies who adore me with a love that..." She choked on her words, hiding her gaze in the folds of her bulging saddlebag below her. "A l-love that only asks that I exist, that I be who I am, that I live up to my potential." She gulped and raised her face to smile at me. Her eyes were watering. "After all the craziness, after all the silly adventures and stressful debacles, I... am happy." Sniffling, she chuckled and smiled even wider. "I truly am. I'm the happiest I've been all my life."
I exhaled sharply and smiled. Two tears trickled down my face. "Then that is all that matters," I said in a shaking voice, my lips trembling. "That is all that will ever matter."
She tilted her head to the side, her mouth agape in concern and curiosity all at once.
"All aboard! Last call for Canterlot!" the conductor shouted beyond her. It was followed by the angry and skittish shrieks of several of her friends.
"Miss Heartstrings... was it? Uhm..." she fidgeted, leaning limply on the cart as she fumbled for words. "I just don't understand. Are you... Are you going to Canterlot? Was there something you wanted to--?"
"I can't go with you," I said. "I must remain here."
"But. But s-some of the things you said. There's... there's something about you..." She winced, squinting at me. "I feel as though there's more to know..."
"Do me a favor," I said. I leaned forward and clasped her forelimbs with mine. "Hold onto that feeling. Make it your substance, make it the warmth of your heart, the beacon of your life. Survive on it and it alone, and you need not remember anything else."
The steam engine of the locomotive was chugging to life. Everything was moving away; everything was always moving away from me.
She looked at our hooves, then up at my face. "I gotta go. I'm performing as Clover the Clever at Canterlot's Hearth's Warming pageant."
"I know," I said, nodding with a soft smile. "And I'm proud of you, Twilight." I brushed hooves with her one last time, and gently let her go. "Make it a good show."
"One that's worth remembering," she said, trotting away with the dolly in tow. She mounted the train and heaved the bag of books on board. She was so encumbered with this task that I doubt she took notice of a tiny golden lyre that had been slipped inside her saddlebag. By the time I could no longer register the heavy beats of my heart, she was flashing me one last smile. "We should talk when I get back! Will you be staying in Ponyville for a while, Miss Heartstrings?"
I waved back. In a ghostly voice, I nodded and said, "I'll be here."
The train was already moving. Her happy face faded in the gray snowfall as it carried her away, as it carried Moondancer away, as the threads of life took everything away but my breath, receding vaporously into the cold miasma like yesterday's clouds. I sat there on the station's platform, enshrouded in shivers, trying to comprehend a life spent on the horizon of crumbled dreams, realizing that I had lived the only portion of my existence that mattered there.
When I next blinked, I was leagues away, trotting along the edge of town. I looked around me. Snow had fallen over every rooftop in Ponyville. Winter had captured a frozen snapshot of the town, an image, a memory that should have been melting, and yet lingered in pristine glory before me. There was nopony in the streets, nopony but me. It was far too cold to live outside, and so I did, lurching forward as though invisible fetters were chained to my every limb. I didn't look behind me, because I knew without glancing that my hoofprints would only disappear, that the snapshot would only be perfect so long as I didn't mar it, so long as I didn't expect myself to.
Smoke rose from every chimney. The smell of burnt logs and crackling fireplaces lit my nose. Every soul with the right to live was escaping the cold, defiant against the frigid extremities of the universe that sought to drown them. They had loved ones; they had legacies to fulfill and memories to make.
I had myself.
I trudged past Town Hall, past the ghostly echoes of a wedding reception and a mad pony's ramblings. I shuffled past Sugarcube Corner, parting the waves of several mares giggling and two friends splitting up under indignant shouts. I saw the Carousel Boutique off in the blurry distance, and my eyelashes shook loose a dozen beautiful dresses while my ears rang with a chaotician's mournful testimony. For several minutes, I paused in the middle of the frost-covered town. Several bonfires were lit here. A drunken stallion was beaten here. Scootaloo was rescued and Granite Shuffle played chess and a tiny orange tabby found its way home between these buildings.
There, in the center of the town, where it was warmest, an alicorn valkyrie of the night had once landed and bestowed upon a trembling unicorn her gift. It wasn't until right then that I received it.
I marched away from the last shred of warmth. I trotted past the buildings, past the smoldering chimneys, into the park where I scaled a series of hilltops overlooking Ponyville. I heard my father's breath in the whistling wind, and I imagined him painting a picture as gorgeous as this. I wondered if he would spend the rest of his years painting snapshots of the world, forever missing the beauty he had once had, no longer able to fill that hole that sat snugly within frame: a hole shaped like me.
And then, as swiftly as I thought that, I realized that he would never find something that would replace me; he would only find something better. It was his life now, as my mother had her own life, as Twilight and Moondancer had lives to live, as did Morning Dew and Ambrosia. I had done my part, invisibly or not, and the substance of existence--the memories that were worth making--were now up to them.
A single pony can touch so many lives, but it is up to those lives to touch so many more.
And what was my life? I sat down on the hilltop and absorbed myself in it, for I had discovered it. It was not in the past, nor was it in the future. It was frozen in time, encased in frost, its contours outlined by the powdery lengths of snow coming into shape before me. Everything froze, as everything had always been frozen, and I discovered my purpose, my existence.
It was a moment, that moment, that speck of frost hovering above me, that golden ray of light locked within the grip of several leafless branches. Everything was now, my thoughts, my breath, my will to cry and my will not to cry. I chose both, and tears came out anyway, and they felt like something I faintly remembered: a little foal grasping her xylophone on the morning of another Hearth's Warming several blinks before then. And my tears fell because I realized that the memory was artificial, a shadow of something long gone, as all memories of all things are temporary and weathered, turning stale with time like bread, losing their flavor and tricking ponies into thinking that they can relive that which is dull and dead, when in fact we should all be grasping what I grasped, the moment, the one real piece of time that we only have once and will forever mourn once it's passed.
I chose not to mourn. I chose not to regret. I cried instead with joy, a joy that had no words, a joy that only comes to a pony who's realized she's slept through a pitiful dream all her life, and can now finally awake to her own righteousness. And I was righteous. I was so very righteous. With numb forelimbs, I fumbled with my hoodie until I peeled the damn thing off and exposed myself to that righteousness. I flung the stone-gray article off the hilltop. It landed somewhere beyond view, buried in snow, buried in oblivion. Aria slept in her grave, but I was prepared to dance upon mine. I spread my limbs and reveled in the cold that so long had been a curse to me. Exultation required no memory, no pretense, no craving for hope beyond the shadows of one's sight. But it did take courage, for a life lived in the absence of recollection is the bravest life of all; it's the mark of a pony who knows that she has never even bothered with living until that very moment found her.
I knew who I was, not what I once was, nor what I would ever be. What I knew, what I felt, and what I had--that moment--was something that the Matriarch's Nocturne could never take away, no matter how omnipotent or powerful. That moment was mine, and it would forever be the substance of my soul. Everything afterward would simply be a shadow, and I was more than willing to trot into endless night. Darkness itself was just a reminder of what I could never lose.
The final chords of the "Threnody of Night" played. A metal platform of the unsung realm materialized around me. I inhaled the air of the undead, opening my eyes to the lightning flashes and tempests beyond.
In the center and above me, Aria's throneroom hovered. It did not soar away, nor did it launch electricity towards my figure. As a matter of fact, it began a slow descent, and already I could sense the violet form of the Princess of Twilight taking flight to meet me.
I exhaled, hugging the Nightbringer to my naked chest. As I waited, I heard a woeful moan to my left, followed by the rattling of chains. I looked over lethargically.
A shackled pony was crawling out of a rusted hole. Animated by some animalistic instinct, she lurched towards me. Heavy cuffs covered the ends of her hooves, and a metal plate was wrapped around her eyes and muzzle, muffling her panting breaths. I could see the flutter of a few threadbare feathers; she must have been a pegasus when she was alive, when she wasn't lost, when she flew through the warm air of an unknown world countless eons ago.
Without thinking, I turned and trotted lightly towards her.
Instantly, she flung herself at me, only to be held back by her chains pulling taut. She jerked on the length of them, ultimately falling down onto the platform and clawing ineffectually towards my body.
I knelt down in front of her, quiet as a falling leaf. I gazed intently at the pony, reaching a hoof towards her. As soon as my breaths mingled with the air about us, she twitched and flung her head up with a loud wail. The siren sound ended abruptly, and she fell limp, wheezing for breath. Perhaps it was confusion, perhaps it was some form of sentient thought, but she allowed me to bring my hoof closer. I made contact with her coat; it was colder than ice. My hoof brushed along a slender mildew stain across her face, where centuries of tears had repetitively run their course, and upon my gentle touch they repeated that streak. A muffled sound came from deep beneath the metal plate, it was too full of sobs to be a word.
Effortlessly, I leaned forward and swept the freezing soul into a hug. I felt her hooves trembling in my forelimbs, like a pariah in Ponyville had shivered for so long, led forward by hope, fed by the tender morsels of bittersweet dreams between the frigid vapors of reality. She didn't fight me; she didn't try to drag me into the depths of that abyss. She simply surrendered into my embrace, breathing evenly, a different kind a sobbing, a mournful breath that she could share without having to sing.
I stroked her icy back in gentle circles, warming her for as long as I could afford to. I was so engrossed in this that I didn't notice Aria's hoofsteps until I heard them scraping around me.
"She was a soldier on her world," the undead alicorn said. "The only member of her unit to survive a terrible onslaught. She looked at all of her dear companions dead and dying around her, and she gave in to despair. Somewhere in that bleak moment, the Nocturne found her. She listened until she felt like singing, and it brought her here." Aria knelt down beside us. "Most likely, her army had no surviving records of her ever being drafted. At the same time, her parents didn't have to mourn the death of a child they never foaled."
I nuzzled her one last time before laying her gently on the platform below me. "Does she ever dream?" I asked.
"Parts of her still do," Aria said softly. "Which is why I suspect she hasn't murdered you for your warmth. But, when the chorus repeats itself, she loses more and more shreds of her past. Soon, the memory will be gone, as will the substance of herself."
"That's something we depend too much on."
"The music?"
"Memories," I said, looking up at Aria as I held the Nightbringer in one hoof. With the other forelimb, I gently stroked the slumbering body of the shackled pony between us. "Did you love your mother because you chose to? Or was it something in the song that defined your life?"
"I would be lying if I called this a 'life,'" Aria remarked. "That said, it is still the closest thing to it, and I owe that to my mother, even if she did abandon me."
I shook my head, exhaling. "Why are only the most precious lives the ones that are abandoned?"
"I don't intend to find out," she said. She reached a bony hoof out and gently stroked the opposite shoulder of the pony beneath us. "I shall never abandon the lost ones that come here."
"Princess Aria," I murmured. She looked my way as I gazed off towards the tempests, fighting the words before they dripped out of me, "What you do here, what you commit yourself to, it is a very tragic thing." I gulped. "But... but the way you put your heart and mind to it, the way you do that which you know it is your place to do..." A shuddering breath coursed through me. I forced myself to look up at her. "There is a certain righteousness to it, I think."
She nodded with a deadpan face. "And what do you feel, lost one?"
"Not envy," I said.
She took a few moments to contemplate that. If she formulated a reponse, I would never know. I watched as she stood up tall, her bony wings extending. "Have you decided, my little pony?" Her violet eyes narrowed. "Do you choose to perform 'Dawn's Advent' and enter the world of the living, or do you choose to join me and my choir in infinite bliss?"
I stared at her and boldly said, "I choose neither."
For once, the goddess of the unsung realm blinked.
With a shuddering breath, I felt the metal contours of the Nightbringer for one last time before handing it over to her. "I relinquish the piece of the matriarch's song to you, the one integral key for anypony to pursue the 'Nocturne of the Firmaments' and enter this realm."
She glanced down at my offering, but did nothing. I almost admired her restraint. She spoke, "And what of you, lost one?"
"I will go back to Ponyville," I declared. "I will exist there as I always have."
"But you will still be forgotten," Aria said, her eyes narrowing. "What's more, the curse will consume your mind, your memories, and your aspirations as you live out your years in the shadow of the opportunity I am now granting you."
"But I will live," I said. I stretched the Nightbringer further out in my grasp for her to take. "I will be myself, not the unlearned soul that I once was, and most certainly not a blissfully ignorant puppet to your thankless task of preserving your mother's song." I looked down to where I lovingly stroked the shackled pony's coat. "Discord will remain imprisoned, and Equestria will suffer neither chaos nor the collapse of reality. Everything will be as it should be." I gulped and said, "For th-this is my righteous task."
Not even the thunder of the tempests could break the silence that followed. Eventually, Aria bowed and took the Nightbringer from me. My hoof hung limply in the absence of it.
"Very well," she remarked. "But so long as you stay as you are in the mortal realm, you still pose a risk to my mother's will, to the structure of reality that the song maintains--"
"I know," I said, inhaling sharply. My eyes settled on the pegasus as I played gently with her pale ears. "And I also know that it won't be enough for you to take away my memories of this place, of what I've learned. I'm an ambitious soul, just like your beloved, and I will do whatever it takes to seek out the truth, as is the path of all things that live. If you're to grant me this request, Princess, if you're to give me the freedom that I desire, you must take something else from me."
"And what is that, lost one?"
I swallowed hard. A tear streaked down my cheek as I gazed up at her. "I need you to t-take away my love of music."
She gazed at me, her glowing eyes round with comprehension. She said, "Never before have I been given a request like this, and I suspect that I will never experience such a thing again."
Sniffling, I leaned forward and whispered, "Live in the moment. In a universe where everything else is taken, we can at least afford that."
"Agreed." Aria tilted her head down, her horn glowing vibrantly towards my brow. My body twitched upon the end of all good things as she said, "You would have made a fine addition to the chorus here, a beauty that will not be forgotten in this realm."
"It's okay," I wheezed forth. I laughed and sobbed at once, exhaling my final song through a fractured smile. "I have a lousy singing voice anyways."
Princess Aria's horn flashed, and the snow melted. I sat on the hilltop, gasping. A painting of Ponyville hovered in the wind beside me. I glanced into it, and Cheerilee's classroom laughed as I stood before a blackboard full of faded gibberish. I stammered incoherently, glancing down at my cutie mark. A golden blob melted into haze, like Morning Dew's fine coat as he raised a matching tulip before me. I tried to speak, but my voice was dissonant and off-key, and I was at a loss to understand why that was a bad thing. Scootaloo fell into my forelimbs without warning. I crawled us through the silent forest, and a cabin disassembled log by log before me. Caramel and Wind Whistler nuzzled by the bonfire, and some mad pony was shouting. I looked up, and a midnight alicorn flew high into the starlight. A black mark lit the moon, glinting through the window as I scooted my tiny self up to the Hearth's Warming Tree. I opened the gift while my parents watched, and through the violet smog a pair of roller skates appeared.
There were no tears.
"Ugh!" Moondancer groans from where she reclines on my bed with a storybook full of bright, colorful pictures. "Pegasi are so full of themselves! Why does everything they make have to be so annoying and loud?"
Twilight frowns up at her from the bedroom floor. "Don't make fun of them! It's their culture!"
"Well, their culture is stupid," Moondancer says. "Have you even seen the way they dress up at pageants?! Heeheehee--It's like they're trying to go to war with the clouds!"
"Hey! Those armored uniforms are really spectacular! The pegasi have a long history of military tradition, after all!" Twilight glances towards me. "You should know this, Lyra! You wrote to a pegasus pen pal last year. Tell Moondancer what you learned!"
"Suuuure! Take Twilight's side!" Moondancer flips a page of the storybook and dangles her legs off the bed. "Starswirl was always Celestia's pet, not Luna's!"
"Uhhh..." I stammer, gazing numbly into the Wonderbolt nightlight hovering above my bed. "Pegasus... pen pal..."
"Did she teach you anything about the traditional 'Soaring Cirrus Symphony?'"
I turn and gaze directly at Twilight. I blink a few times and then scrunch my nose up.
"Why would I care about some stuffy old song?"
My face brightens as I lean over and speak.
"Wanna hear about some of the air stunts they performed during the Best Young Fliers' Competition?"
"I'd love to!" Twilight exclaims.
"Ooooh!" Moondancer drops her book and scoots off the bed. "Now this, I'd like to hear!"
"Oh, don't pretend you weren't having fun until just now!" Twilight exclaims.
"Yes, only now I'm having more fun!" Moondancer giggles and grins wide. "Tell us about the pegasus air stunts!"
"Ugh! Quit horsing around!"
"Girls, girls..." I chuckle, smiling warmly at the two. "Can't we just enjoy this moment together?"
Background Pony
XIX - "Diminuendo"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Props, theBrianJ, RazgrizS57, theworstwriter, Warden
Cover pic by Spotlight |
Background Pony | XX - Denouement | Dear Journal,
Where did the seasons come from? Did the alicorns decree that they were to exist so that nature could take a break from time to time? Were the first ponies who walked this earth in need of a schedule for doing their harvest? Could it be that the ancient goddesses were just bored?
It's snowing outside; snowing hard. What month is it now... November? December? I don't really know. I haven't gone out in a while.
There're plenty of goods in the cabin. Al has lots of food and water, and there's enough wood to keep the fireplace going. I think I can last inside here for a while.
I can't say why, but I'm just not in the mood to go outside. I was never a big fan of snow, or winter as a whole. This time of year makes me think of the holidays, and that makes me think of Mom and Dad.
I think I'll lie down and get some sleep. It's so quiet around here. Even Al isn't purring like he normally does.
Not sure what I'll do when I wake up. It would be nice to have something to read. What do I normally do to pass the time? Oh well, I'm sure it'll come to me.
Dear Journal,
I've been sleeping too much. My mind is reeling from serious cabin fever.
So, today, I felt like doing some work, even if I had to find myself some labor worth the attention. I decided to gather more lumber for the fire. I fetched the axe and went into the backyard. While there, I discovered something peculiar.
There's... a cellar behind my cabin. I have no better word to describe it, really. In the backyard, a lone wooden shack sits. Once the door to the tiny building is open, the interior reveals a series of earthen steps leading deep underground.
I lit my horn and followed the passageway down. To my awe, I discovered a rectangular enclosure--a little room, if you will--about ten feet wide and twenty feet long. There was an unlit lantern hanging from the middle of the ceiling, and I found a metal stand and a stool resting next to one another.
What is that place for? Not only that, but where did it come from? I certainly don't remember an underground chamber being here when I built this cabin. Was it part of the old barn that Rainbow Dash tore down? If it's supposed to be some kind of storage room, I can't imagine how it'd be of any use. And why would there be a shack covering it? It's too small a door and passageway to carry things down.
This discovery has been troubling me all afternoon. I abandoned the search for firewood; I think I can go for another night with the lumber I've currently got. This will give me time to peruse my journal. Maybe somewhere in my past writings I can find out where the cellar came from. I mean, it's entirely possible I simply forgot about it. My mind's been preoccupied lately. I suppose it can explain all the time I've spent sleeping.
Al wants more food. I need to stop writing. Blessed Celestia, there's so much snow. I really wouldn't mind seeing some grass and leaves again.
Dear Journal,
I resumed the hunt for more firewood today. It was the least I could do to feel better. Chopping wood really helps me relieve stress, even if the exercise is all in the mind.
Where do I begin? I went back and read through the journal. It's the first time I've done so in months. What I discovered was that I had left several pages blank. Quite literally, there were moments when I would finish a journal entry on one page, and instead of continuing it on the next sheet, I'd skip two, three, sometimes even four or more pages and continue from there.
What stresses me out is that I can't figure out what would have possessed me to do such a thing, and on multiple occasions for that matter. I have always had a thing for neatness and conservation; it's a trait that Twilight infected me with, I suppose. Even back in grade school, a wasted sheet of paper lying smack-dab in the middle of a written manuscript bothered the heck out of me. As a matter of fact, my hoofwriting is typically small and compact, precisely because I like fitting as much onto a single page as possible.
So why would I have left so many sheets blank? This is pestering me to no end. I'm certain I didn't slack off that much while I was in college. My professors would have hung me from the highest bell-tower.
Come to think of it, I only had two or three professors, but that doesn't make sense. Surely, if I graduated from my university, then I must have taken over twenty courses. How could only three professors teach twenty separate subjects?
The fireplace is going to be bright tonight.
Dear Journal,
Ever feel so cooped up that you're absolutely certain you'll go insane? Ever try to amend that by going outside? Ever follow through with that plan, only to end up in a worse place than when you started?
That happened to me today. I decided it was time to stop sitting around in my cabin, staring out at the dreary weather. I seemed to have lost my hoodie, but that was no big deal. I put on Rarity's sweater and trotted into town.
Imagine my surprise when I saw ponies taking down huge bundles of bright red and green decorations from the rooftops and storefronts of Ponyville. I asked them if there had been a parade in town of some sort. Everypony just looked at me funny and said that they were trying to get a leg up on things. When I asked them to explain, I got quite a shock.
This is not November. Nor is it December. We are in January. New Year's was six days ago. There was a great pageant in Canterlot, supposedly the best of its kind in decades. Twilight and all her friends were playing the parts. There was even a famous article about it in the Equestria Daily. I read it with my own eyes, feeling the blood in my veins freeze over.
How could I have missed Hearth's Warming? For that matter, how could I have missed two whole months? I now look back at all those days I spent sleeping in my cabin, and I wonder if there was something wrong with me.
I was in sour spirits all afternoon. I wandered through the snow-laden streets limply, watching with a lethargic gaze as ponies carried fake, giant candy canes and huge heaps of garland into yearly storage. It wasn't that I wanted to feel mopey or anything. It's just that Hearth's Warming is a special time of year, and though I know nopony around here has the wherewithal to remember me for long, it still would have been nice to share in the cheer somehow, if even for a little bit.
I haven't been feeling very cheerful lately, so I decided to do something about that. Before sunset, I stopped by a store downtown that sold novelty toys. I found a little squeaky mouse on a string for Al. As I paid the mare at the counter, we broke into pleasant conversation. She made several jokes in her Stalliongrad accent that cracked me up. There was something warm and happy about her voice; I kept smiling, hoping she would never stop.
Her name is Bon Bon, and apparently she owns a confectionery shop two blocks down. The novelty store, as it turns out, is an expansion to her business. She hopes one day to own a chain of candy and toy stores from here to Canterlot. I hope that her dreams come true; it makes me happy just thinking about it. Nonetheless, night was coming, and I left, but not without giving her my well wishes. If only a small part of her would remember my words...
Dear Journal,
Al loves the toy mouse on the string, and I love it when he loves things. His fur is so warm as he sleeps against me. Even now, I have to lean over him as I write this.
Not sure why I'm making an entry here. I guess it's because my mind tends to wander in strange directions these days. I feel as though my thoughts might disappear if I don't write them down. Now that I think of it, it is rather odd that I keep a journal. After all, I'm not exactly a creative unicorn. It's strange to think that I ever summed up enough sentences to fill such a thick diary.
It's really dusty in this place, and cluttered too. Goddess knows why I've collected so much junk over the last year and a half. For instance, why do I even have all of those musical instruments on the wall? Maybe a mule's trash cart collapsed in the road outside the cabin one day and I just went crazy.
It's not like I can afford a job in this town; I think I'll take the instruments to the marketplace and pawn them for bits. I'd best remember to do one item at a time. If the broker doesn't remember my face, then there's less chance of the instruments' value depreciating. It's cheap of me, I know. But how else am I going to earn money?
Come to think of it, how did I afford these clothes, the firewood, or this cabin? Are the ponies of Ponyville really so generous?
I'm tired of writing so many questions; it's not like they'll be answered anytime soon. I figure it's best not to dwell on it. Al's starting to purr. I think I'll follow his example and go to sleep.
Dear Journal,
Something strange happened today. I heard a loud noise, and next thing I knew I was standing in the center of Ponyville, watching with gawking eyes as Big Mac pulled Berry Punch's house clean off its foundation. He accomplished this quite absurdly, leaping forward in great bounds while having chains affixed to his body.
Believe it or not, that is not the strange thing that happened. What's strange is that after I witnessed this, I stumbled about as if coming out of a dream. I grew alarmed at the loss of snow. Had winter stopped already? Was there a heat wave out of nowhere?
I thought I had grown accustomed to asking ponies strange questions. Nevertheless, I trembled as I marched up to one of the spectators of the Big Mac debacle and awkwardly inquired what day it was. I was told that it was Hearts and Hooves Day.
How is it February already? Just yesterday, it was still blistery, dreary January. Wasn't it?
I immediately thought of Al. I galloped home in a blur. When I arrived, not only was he okay, but his dish was overflowing with cat food, as if some mindless automaton had dumped the edibles there without rhyme or reason.
In a panic, I whipped open this journal and looked at the previous entry. The last time I wrote about anything, it was in regards to pawning a bunch of dusty musical instruments I had lying around the cabin.
Musical instruments? Why would I be carrying those around? I checked my bit bag; sure enough, the thing was brimming with golden coins. The money surely had to have come from somewhere, but it just doesn't make much sense.
That isn't all either. I discovered a trap door beneath my rug in the center of my cabin. There was a wooden hatch, and beneath that was a velvet satchel that looks large enough to fit two dozen horseshoes. What was I using that for? I'm certain at this point that I had a use for it, only I can't remember it now.
How many other things can't I remember? Maybe I should think about perusing my old journal pages...
Dear Journal,
The weather is getting warm. Where did the winter go? I feel like it was September just yesterday. My only regret is missing Hearth's Warming. It makes me think of Mom and Dad. It's been so long since I've seen them.
I need a hobby. My days lately are spent sitting in the shadows, staring at the fireplace. It's almost spring, and I have fewer and fewer excuses to light a fire. Maybe I should go out on walks more, but whenever I do, the weather feels like winter again. I should really look into getting a sweat jacket or something. This red sweater Rarity made for me is nice, but I always feel like I should save it for a nice occasion. Besides, it looks rather bright and festive, and I'm not exactly a "festive" unicorn these days.
It's no use staying here. Even writing this journal is a waste of time. I have a bag full of bits for some reason, but I know that it won't last forever. I need to find a way to earn money, to get food without reducing myself to a homeless beggar. I wish I could read back to one of my journal entries and find an example of what I did to make money in the past, but I can't find anything. Besides, I'm too irritated by all those blank pages. Why did I even bother writing anything to begin with if I was only going to slack off?
It just started raining. I've left the window open. It's nice to have something besides the fireplace to stare at. A smell fills the room, and it tastes of April afternoons. For some reason, that frightens me. Why should it? I like April. I would like April even more if I could find a way out of this town, out from under this curse. I wonder what Mom and Dad are up to.
Perhaps what I need is a hobby, or I should consider going on walks more. Still, the thought of it makes me shiver. Maybe I can look into getting a sweat jacket. I like this sweater of Rarity's, but I've been wearing it far too much. Besides, it looks "festive," and I'm not exactly feeling "festive" lately.
Why am I staying here? Even writing this journal is taking me nowhere. I have a bag full of bits, but I don't know from where. How did I get them? Do I have a job?
It's raining. Feels like April. I could have sworn it was February... or maybe September? What ever happened to Hearth's Warming Eve--Twilight had a pageant, or was that last year? I got roller skates. Mom and Dad were so happy. I guess I was happy too.
Rain.
I think something is wrong. I think...
Dear Journal,
I couldn't find my way home tonight. I swear, there are so many country roads, so many forests, so many wooded thickets bordering this town that it gets confusing at times. I must have wandered about the north edge of Ponyville for hours. It got very cold. My red sweater had fallen apart. I don't think it was ever made to handle any situation that wasn't delicate. Still, it looked expensive while it lasted. I'm not sure what to do with it now. Maybe make a blanket out of it. What I need, though, is a jacket of sorts.
Anyways, I kept walking for hours, but then a mare ran into me. I pleaded with her to help me look for my house. Naturally, she asked me what it looked like, and I could only gaze at her with a stupid expression. I wasn't sure how to answer her.
Somehow, I was able to change the subject of our conversation, which wasn't very hard to do. She kept rambling for minutes on end about apples, filling my ears with stories of her "Ma and Pa" and some huge apple grove north of where we were trotting in circles. Sooner than I realized it, we were strolling by the cabin. I realized the house was mine because I could see Al peering at me through the window, meowing his head off. I told the mare I had to go, but she was suddenly looking at me with a foggy expression. I felt a chill, and I galloped away from it--away from her--and shut myself inside.
Al practically pounced at my legs. His food dish was empty. There was barely any water left for him to lap from. I fumbled around for his food, but I couldn't find it. I started to panic. A part of me wanted to rush back into town and buy some more cat chow before closing hours, but I was terribly afraid that I might forget the way home by the time I got there and Al would end up starving.
Well, I did find the food, only because I heard it crunch beneath my hooves. Al had torn into the bag beside my cot at some point while I was away. I soon discovered that his litter box was full, and he had made several messes outside the bin.
I really, truly don't know how long I was gone for. I'm not sure I want to know. I just want to hold Al. He won't leave my side; it's hard to write with how heavily he's purring. He's just happy to see me.
I want to be happy too. I really do.
Dear Journal,
Everypony in town was talking about the Royal Wedding. At first, I thought it meant that Princess Celestia was marrying some lucky stallion. I then heard that there was a ceremony in Canterlot honoring the engagement between Shining Armor and Princess Mi Amore de Cadenza. I couldn't believe it; Twilight's brother was getting married!
I had to congratulate her right away. I searched all through town for hours. To my luck, I caught her just as she was exiting her treehouse with a bunch of other mares. I told her how happy I was that her brother had fallen in love and met his future bride. I wished them luck, and that their days together might be long and happy.
Imagine my shock when Twilight simply stared at me in confusion. I asked her jokingly if she hadn't heard the news of her brother getting hitched. She told me that she had; she just didn't understand why I of all ponies was congratulating her on Shining Armor's marriage. I laughed and suggested that if Moondancer was there, she'd be sobbing from all the salt in her wounds. After all, that unicorn always did have a thing for Shining Armor.
For some reason, Twilight's ears drooped, and I swore I saw tears in her eyes. My heart fell, and I tried to hug her to make her feel better. That's when these colorful mares beside her shoved me away. They were angry, outraged, even. They told me to get lost and bother some other innocent pony. I watched in shock as they ushered Twilight away, hugging her and telling her not to pay me any mind.
Was it something I said? I was just teasing her slightly. It's no worse than what Moondancer would do. Why would Twilight treat me like I was a total stranger?
From then on, as I trotted home, I looked at everypony funny. None of them were looking at me; it was as if I had become completely invisible. I hoped that it might have been a bad dream, but then I came home and started hoofing through my journal. I could read my older entries, and you're not supposed to be able to read legible hoofwriting in a dream. At least, I think that's the case. Twilight taught that to me once.
Twilight, what have I done to anger you? It's so cold here, so very cold. The last thing I want is to alienate you. Just what did I do?
Please, somepony, anypony, tell me what I've done to deserve this.
Dear journal,
What are changelings? I was gardening in front of the cabin, minding my own business, when a pair of pegasus guards wearing royal armor walked up and started asking me several questions. Many of them were personal too: inquiring about my age, my name, my place of birth. I was somewhat ashamed that I couldn't answer them half of the time, and I winced when I saw them squint at me suspiciously.
Well, they trotted off. But then, within an hour, they stopped by my cabin again. They questioned me once more, as if we had never had the first interrogation to begin with. Was this some practical joke?
I humored them to the best of my ability. When they left, I ran inside the house and slammed the door shut. I watched, hiding from behind the windows. They strolled by a third time, looked at the cabin, and approached the door to knock on it. I hid for as long as I could. Eventually, they went away, muttering and griping about some sort of search that they and several other members of the royal guard were performing across Equestria.
Later on, I stopped by the town and I heard villagers talking about the guards. Apparently, there's a scare throughout the kingdom about a potential invasion of "changelings." Everypony has been on edge ever since the royal wedding took place.
Royal wedding? I don't understand. Did Celestia get married? Or Luna?
Just writing about it hurts my head. I think I should stay inside for a while.
Dear Journal,
I occasionally read newspapers. I don't know why I do. Even if it's good news, it's not something that can help me. Word of Mom or Dad would only be on the first few pages if something horrible had happened to them, or at least to their neighborhood. I'm not sure I could handle that. I'm not really good at handling much of anything lately.
For instance, there's talk of a newly discovered place just north of us: a Crystal Kingdom. Who ever heard of an entire country made of crystal? Or is it that the ponies who live there are made of crystal? I don't know, and I don't care.
I wish I could care. I wish I could be on the forefront of discovering new things. I wish I could talk to somepony and have it be a conversation I've never had before. I wish I could say something that another soul might remember, another soul might smile about, another soul might quote.
No, I suppose "quote" isn't the right word, but I'm running out of them: words, that is. It's getting harder and harder to write, or at least I think so. My head hurts trying to get all of these sentences together. Maybe if it was warmer. The farm mare trotting by my cabin this morning told me that it was July. It's too cold for July. My teeth chatter at night. I'd light the fireplace, but I don't want to draw attention from the smoke coming out of my chimney, not that it would embarrass me this time of year--I just don't want to have another starting conversation with anyone again.
I just want to stop beginning. If only once.
Dear Journal,
Something's wrong. I saw Twilight Sparkle's name in the newspaper. According to the headlines, she's been granted executive power as the newly appointed Steward of Canterlot. The paper says nothing about Princess Celestia, but it claims that "Luna is helping the new royal administrator with her place of office." Do they mean "Luna" as in "Princess Luna," as in the Mare in the Moon, Nightmare Moon?
This isn't right. I came here to Ponyville looking for Twilight. She was supposed to be setting up the Summer Sun Celebration for Princess Celestia's annual arrival. Now she's suddenly sitting upon the throne as Steward of Canterlot? When did that happen? Moondancer is going to eat her own mane.
I swear, it's gotta be some kind of practical joke. Why do I feel so scared, though? I'm petrified of asking anypony for explanations. Every time I step outside, it feels so terribly cold, even in the full light of day.
I should just stay here. This cabin is nice and cozy. I should just stay here until things become clear. This has to be a mistake. This whole thing has to be some crazy, giant mistake.
Dear Journal,
There are empty pages in this journal. I think I know why. I have this book open. I'm staring at this page. I know I should be writing about something--but what?
I woke up today. There was a nice breeze in the air. I walked places. I heard laughter. I listened to conversations. I imagined being a part of them.
Afternoon came. I sat under a tree until the stars came out. I had a silly thought that made me smile--that I was the only pony on earth that could see the constellations twinkling. I wonder how many ponies bother to look at the sky, and how few of them actually see anything.
It's a large sky, but I should savor it over the nights to come. I suspect that there will be many of them.
Dear Journal,
It was cold tonight, but it was a different kind of cold. I saw ponies bundled up. I heard the crunch of snow below me. I looked into a storefront window. There were all kinds of pretty lights. I blinked, and I imagined seeing ponies carrying those decorations away into storage. I blinked again, and I was unwrapping a gift. Something bright and glistening hung in my hooves. Roller skates. What kind of a foal wants roller skates in December?
I just paused writing to look at the fireplace. It relaxed me. Just now, I glanced up at the window. Somehow, it is morning already. I can't stop giggling. I think the stars are playing hide and seek with me. I'll catch them tomorrow, I'm sure of it.
Dear Journal,
Somepony gave me a flower today, a tulip. He called me "angel." I just stared at him. His eyes were the same color as the Canterlot rooftops beyond the balcony where Dad stood to paint his landscapes. I told him that, and he looked at me with confusion, but there was something else in his soft face. I wanted to kiss it. I wanted to kiss him. But it was too cold.
In the next blink, I was home. The blankets caught my tears. I wish it was his beautiful yellow coat instead. I didn't know him, but now I wonder: if I had stayed there long enough, could he have told me who I was?
Dear Journal,
I had never seen so many bonfires. They called it the Summer Sun Celebration. A young couple giggled at my awestruck expression. I told them that I wanted to learn all about it, so they let me sit by their side. They had two little foals with them, and their bright, glistening eyes couldn't stop staring at me.
The fire was warm. I reached my hooves forward like I was bathing them in starlight. I laughed like a little filly.
I listened to them talk about their beautiful little lives and their beautiful little children. They said that they fell in love at a Summer Sun Celebration much like this one, long ago, about a year before they got married.
I asked them to tell me all about it, but they looked at me funny. I had goosebumps; how could it feel so cold right in front of a bonfire? I asked them if they felt a cool breeze; they giggled nervously like I was a drunk stranger.
Their children still stared at me, their eyes forever glistening and innocent. I smiled and leaned down to see my reflection in their gaze. That's when their father got angry. He asked me to find another bonfire. I walked away, confused. Fireworks went off, startling me. The flashes were bright, but for some reason I couldn't see my own shadow.
I walked home alone.
Dear Journal,
I just realized that the moon is different. It's so smooth, spotless, pristine. I can't look at the stars so long as it's there.
I feel my blood freezing. Something is outside my cabin, lingering in the woods. It makes a noise, like the rattling of chains. Every time I breathe, it stops. Every time I pause, it starts again.
Something's watching me. I know it. I can feel it all over my coat, like the weight of a grand ocean, vibrating with ethereal thunder as it presses in on me from all sides. The only thing I'm scared of is that once I'm done writing this, I will forget that it's outside. But if it comes in and strangles me in my sleep--I wonder--will I regret it?
Dear Journal,
Nopony sees me, and yet they do. In tiny gasps--like the meeting of sunlit bridges--their eyes meet mine, and I am real again. So many of these villagers smile. They're so happy. I want to scream at them, and yet I don't want them to go away. I spend hours sitting in the park, watching them trot by, watching them talk to one another, watching them wave to me. They're so bright, and yet so distant. I could just as well be looking at stars.
Dear Journal,
I understand why there are blank pages in this book. They're waiting for me; they are mine. Maybe if I go back and write in them, I will change the past, or I will change tomorrow. I'm not that sure, but it's worth a try. I have to think about what I can fit on so few pages. How many friends can I invent? How many laughing conversations or stories or adventures? I wish I was creative. It would make all of this easier. It might even make the shadows go away.
Dear Journal,
Am I ugly? Do I smell? I was in downtown earlier this afternoon. I was trying to scrounge up a bite to eat. A unicorn trotted by. She had two guard pegasi with her. I imagined she was very important, or at least wealthy. I didn't expect her to stop and look at me.
It wasn't just any look that she gave, but a smiling expression. She asked if I lived around here. I told her that I thought so. She chuckled and said that if I needed any help getting a job, any help earning food, that I was report to the Social Services in Town Hall. I thanked her, though I didn't understand why she was being so generous. And then I saw the reflection of a haggard mint-green creature in her eyes, and I jumped with a start.
The guards flinched, but the unicorn calmed them down. She walked forward and soothed my jittery nerves with a gentle hoof to my shoulder. She smelled like lavender and books. I wanted to cry, and I think she saw it. She said that she cared for all of her royal subjects, and that everypony deserved to be happy in this life.
I calmed down. I maybe even smiled. I asked her who she was, and she introduced herself as "Steward Twilight Sparkle" before trotting off toward some important royal duty or another.
Twilight Sparkle... such a beautiful name.
I wonder what mine is.
Dear journal,
I was gardening today. I stumbled upon a wooden stake shoved into the ground. It lay beneath a tree outside my cabin. I didn't exactly know what it was, not until I saw a wreath of decaying flowers lying at its base.
Stepping back, I squinted at the name on the grave. It read "Alabaster."
Who was Alabaster? Was it a pony I knew? Was it someone who had helped me before? Could there be other ponies who have helped me, who I've made friends with, who could still help me now?
Good heavens, how long have I been here?
Dear Journal,
It's winter already. I could have sworn it was August. I stare at the snow as I walk over it. I blink, and the hoofprints disappear. I try to imagine roller skating over the powdery white frost. My head hurts.
I found a shawl in the closet. It's bright red and threadbare. The pony who sewed it together was a poor seamstress, but it warms me nonetheless.
Ponies were talking about the Hearth's Warming pageant in Canterlot. My ears began ringing. I expected steam to begin whistling from the trees, bushes, storefronts. Nothing happened. Nothing ever happens.
I wonder who I would be in the Hearth's Warming pageant. Does Starswirl the Bearded star in the reenactment? If not, he should.
I hate snow. It's white and blank, like an empty page. There aren't enough poets in this world. The path to and from home is too short. Maybe I should stop trotting it, but I don't know where else to go.
Dear Journal,
This cot smells like me, but it's not my bed. How could it be? There should be a nightlight beside the dresser, but the dresser is gone too.
I hear rain, but I don't look outside. The last time I glanced, the rooftops of Canterlot weren't there. I don't know why I'm sitting here writing in this diary, but if this is part of the dream, then maybe I should keep doing what I'm doing until it ends.
Unless it begins again, in which case I'll just shut my eyes. It's worked before, or at least I think so.
Dear Journal,
There was a funeral in the center of town. Everypony was gathered in droves. I watched from afar, and I listened too. Several ponies delivered eulogies, most of them in hysterical bits. Then, as the service came to conclusion, a pony was introduced as the daughter of the deceased. I witnessed an adult unicorn marching up to the stage. She magically lifted a flute to her mouth and began to play a sweet, lonesome tune. It was a remarkable performance, considering the degree to which the tears flowed from her eyes.
I listened until the song came to its conclusion, and the many guests quietly mingled to share stories of the pony who had passed. All the while, I stared at the mare, at her bravely smiling face as she shared several hugs and nuzzles with her kin.
The sound of the flute still echoes in my ears. I'm not sure why, but it makes me feel sad, and there aren't many things that still do.
Dear Journal,
When did I go out for groceries? Was it yesterday? It's so hard to carry food with me these days. I don't know if it's the cold, but my horn feels numb. It's a weight on my head, and I have to hunch over to carry it, even though it's been a part of my body all my life.
Mom says that if I study for exams at the last second, all of my knowledge will go straight to my horn instead of staying in my head where it belongs. I think she's silly. I don't even know what I'm studying for. Besides, this isn't Canterlot.
This isn't Canterlot... so why does my head hurt? I have to catch a train ride. There's an important event somewhere. A friend? Why doesn't Dad speak to me? I can't see him in the hallways. There are no hallways. What is this place?
So cold. Should add some more wood to the fireplace. But I need to get my studies done. Maybe after I get some groceries first. My horn feels so numb.
Dear Journal,
It was very bright outside, and yet I couldn't stop shivering. I leaned against a street sign just to catch my breath. What I really wanted to do was lie down.
That's when he came to me. The first thing I saw was his young smile, then his handsome lips moving as he spoke gently to me like a colt might address a puppy. He introduced himself as "Pound Cake." I thought it was a stupid name, but I wasn't about to say anything mean, especially when he kindly took me by the hoof and helped me gently cross the street. I didn't realize how terribly wide the road was until we were halfway across it.
I thanked him as swiftly as I could, for fear that I wouldn't get a chance to if I delayed the gesture. Still, I couldn't get over how gently he was treating me, like I was a fragile infant. He smiled, bowed, and told me that he could be reached at Sugarcube Corner anytime whenever I needed some "assistance." I watched him leave, and immediately turned towards the first storefront window I could find.
I looked for my reflection, but was too distracted by a wrinkled, pale green mare on the other side. Then my eyes twitched in time with hers, and I saw something familiar in the style of her gray mane, something recognizable in the texture of the mottled skin lining her brow.
Was I always this old? I faintly remember--no, I taste--morning breakfast on the veranda. Mom's perfume as she prepares to go to the office. Dad's color palette resting on the window as it catches a spring breeze. If I stretch my hoof high enough, I just might reach his brush. I want to draw roller skates all across the tile floor of my bathroom. Yes, that's it, roller skates, bright violet and everywhere. I'm on my knees, drenched in the pastel fluids, making my masterpiece, humming while I do so. Why am I humming? I never hum.
And then they rush in. Mom's the first to scold me, as always. I'm sobbing from the fresh swat to my blank flank. I don't know what I did wrong, but I'm starting to realize what isn't right. I'm not creative. I never have been, and I never shall be. All I will make is a mess, like this mess staring before me, with wiery hair coming out her ears and drool lining her wrinkled lips.
I turn away from it, and the world spins with me. My horn becomes even heavier. I have to lean against a post box to keep from fainting. My heart throbs. I have a heart, and it is fleeting. How did I get here? My hooves can barely move on their own. How can anypony move anywhere so slowly? Is this living? Is this what my life has always been?
I'm home somehow. I don't know how I got here, I don't know how I'm sitting here and writing this, but I very seriously doubt I can cross those lengths again. I'm not even sure I would want to. The next time I see a reflection, there might be nothing looking back.
Dear Journal,
I must eat. I know I must eat. But every time I put food inside me, it hurts. Something's wrong with me. I tried talking to nurses in town, but after a few minutes, they just look at me like I've never entered the clinic to begin with. Everypony is so young. So young and foolish. It's not like I want to be this needy. It's not like I enjoy being so weak. I'd help myself if I could.
I want to tell them that they'll be like me someday. But I get this gnawing feeling. Something burns at me: burns and bites and breaks me apart inside. I think that I may be the only pony who is like this. I see their smiles and their grins and their dancing canter.
I think I may be the only pony who hurts.
Dear Journal,
So cold. The sky outside my window is a bright haze. I think there were once stars there. I turn over in bed. The nightlight's gone. An elder pony is coughing, wheezing. She stops making noises everytime I hold my breath. I need to get up. I need to move. This sheet weighs a ton, and my horn even heavier. Who shoved burning coals into my stomach? I'm not laughing, not crying. I'm just here. I am always here. Why is nopony else here? Why am I the only one? When did this start? When did I agree to this? Why can't I go home? I just want to go home. I just want to go home so bad...
Vapors. I see them. Like shadows outside my room. Mom? Dad? Is that you? It's so dark. It's so cold. Did I make you angry? Did I chase you away? I promise that I will study more. I don't know what I'm learning, because I'll lose it as soon as I write it down. Am I writing? So many blank sheets. I have to fill them. Maybe I'll find the two of you somewhere in there, just like I'll find the stars. When I blink, I see lights, and it's like you're there hovering behind me. What is this that you got me? It makes such a rattling noise. Roller skates. You can't use roller skates on the snow. Where are you? Please don't be mad. I like them. I really, really like them.
Mom? Dad? Please. Please, if you can read this, I am not lost. I am still your daughter. I'm waiting for you here. I don't know where here is. It's dark outside, and it's so very cold. I tried lighting a fire, but I can't move very well, and whenever I do, it feels like a knife is being dragged through my stomach. I don't remember the last time I've eaten. Maybe that's it. Now I'm not saying this to worry you. I'm sure if you see this, and you read this, you can find me. I'll be in a hospital somewhere, most likely, because this town has good ponies. They're sometimes forgetful and they often get hung up on silly little things, but they're good. They're good and they're kind and in spite of all the awkward moments, they've treated me well. I can't think of a particular scenario, but I just know that things have been good here. But I can't wait here for much longer. The darkness is spreading. I can't see the stars anymore. Dad should know about the stars; he paints them all the time. Sometimes from the rooftops. Sometimes from hilltops. Sometimes from...
I had him. I had him, and I sent him away. Oh sweet heavens, why did I send him away? What was I thinking? Was I even capable of thinking? His mane was as gray as mine. It danced in the wind like a comet. I understand now. I understand, and I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to send you away. Please, come back. Everything else has left me. Shadows and glints of moonlight are all that remain, fragments of an eggshell life that I have never opened. Every time I touch the pale sheen of it all, I only shiver all the more, like the rattling of chains in the distance. There's a pain I should be feeling, but it's drawing away, just like the lights, just like the warmth of your grinning faces. It's okay; I love the roller skates. I love them like tulips, like red sweaters, like violet streaks in a deep purple mane. If only I could have loved you as much, if only I could have shared it with you like a poet would, like a novelist, like something that touches this world with more than words, that knows how to paint with them, that knows how to introduce color to one's ears, that can turn tears to butterflies, maybe then I would not have sent you away, and maybe then you would not have left me when I did. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so very sorry. Please come back. I ask you, I beg you, I plead with you. Come back to me. Come back to me. Come back to me, so that I can be young in your arms again.
I can't be the only one. I can't be. These words came from somewhere. They are greater than me. They are greater than all of us. I know that there is something collective, something plural, something that I should be sharing with, since I am sharing it in the first place. I know that there is movement. I can feel it pressing against me, squishing me against the impenetrable darkness. There is light somewhere; I remember it in my dreams. I have those: dreams. I don't have a name in them, but I do have a face, and it reflects in the eyes of souls, the eyes of ponies, the eyes of friends. I can't possibly be this alone. It just isn't right. It just shouldn't be. And yet it is. Why is it? Why am I so alone? Where am I going? Where are my words taking me? Is it where the stars went? Is it where my parents are? Are they waiting for me, or will they forever recede away? When I breathe, it comes in spurts, and if there is a beginning to everything, then there must be an end to everything. I don't know whether I'm heading towards it or away from it. Maybe both. Maybe it's always been both. Maybe it will tear me apart. Then again, maybe I will like what I find lying inside. Maybe it will talk to me, and the two of us can be one together.
There is nothing, and yet there is everything. I am beginning to understand, in that I don't understand. I exist to comprehend, yes, for how else would I be able to know that I don't comprehend? I place forth a thought, and the thought stares back at me. We are even with each other, me and the thought, and that's how I know that I am standing over the abyss and not inside it. I have yet to take the plunge. I have yet to take the final gasp, nor the first one. Everything is on the brink of happening, everything is on the brink of becoming everything. I see it like a river in my mind, coalescing from the many back into the one, and I am at the mouth of it, drinking and vomiting all at once. I exist, of that much I am certain. But have I always existed, and will I exist in the future? All I know is now. All I know is
I think that I have finally found you. In the dark, hiding behind the shadows, cowering from me your entire life. You were just a brave step away, beyond my cot, beyond the noise of my breaths.
I can't imagine why I was so reticent to embrace you until now, to caress your cheek, to make the contact that needed to be made. After all, you have been following me all this time, it's only fitting that I turned around and let you join me in the trot.
Of course it's you. It's always been you. In my tears, it's been you. In my laughter, it's been you. In my parents' breaths, in my dreams, in the stars of my friends' eyes; they were yours all along. These words are for you: they are drab and they are dismal and they are dull, but they are yours to make poetry with.
For what else would I be writing this if not for you? Because though I don't know you, I know that you are there. I feel your presence, in that I feel the lack of your presence, the indefinable other that makes us more than darkness and dust. I don't know who you are, but I write this to you, and I love you, because what else is there for us to do in this life but reach out and connect, to remind ourselves of things that can't be said, but only felt? For life begins and ends in a blink, and all that is certain is the choice to be certain.
I love you. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, wherever you're going, I love you.
I love you and adore you and cherish you, with my dying heart, with my fleeting mind, and I wish you the absolute best in joy and harmony. The darkness is so grand, so hungry and so enormous, that it is a sin to fill it with anything but friendship. For we are many, and yet we are one, and no division, no barrier, no wall of any sort can separate us, can tear asunder the commonality that allows us to shower beautiful sparks into the black pits of desolation.
We exist, and we are gorgeous, and I love you because I do, not because I did, and not because I'm going to, but in this moment, in this tear, in this howl of joy from the bottom of my heart, I reach forth into the frozen ether and I worship you.
We are the solidarity and the divide all at once. Together, we find truth, and I think it is a beautiful sound. How about you?
There is sunlight. A faint thing.
I can.
I can see it.
Through a window. Through a fog.
How long have I been here? I'm tired of being here. Tired of being tired.
I think I want to go somewhere.
Yes, a walk would be nice.
See the town.
See the ponies.
See their smiles.
It's a shame to go alone. I think I will take this journal with me.
It certainly has many pages left.
So bright in town.
Neither hot nor cold.
Is this snow? I'm not quite sure.
I smell candied sweets. It's a delicious scent.
I remember when I used to grin. It doesn't compare to how I'm grinning now. Nothing will ever compare to how I'm grinning now.
There's a hill, out beyond the park. I bet the view is fantastic.
I wonder if I still have the strength to climb it.
I can hardly move.
Legs are numb.
My horn. Is it there? Vapors and vapors.
But I think this is it. Yes. The top of the hill and...
Oh...
Oh my...
It really is a glorious town. So many colors. So many ponies.
I know they can't see me, but I can see them, and I can see how pretty it all is.
Such a wonderful memory, even if it's a new one.
It is now.
I think I'll just sit for a while.
I think I will just...
Just breathe...
So beautiful
It really is so beautiful.
I wish...
Yes...
I almost wish I could write a song.
Background Pony
XX - "Denouement"
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: Props, theBrianJ, theworstwriter, Warden, RazgrizS57, and Ponky
Cover pic by Spotlight
This Fanfic Would Not Be Possible Without the Help, Editing, and Support of the Following Individuals
Spotlight
You are the essential reason why I began writing this story. It all started with that fateful, late-night conversation where you challenged me to think of a way to make Lyra interesting beyond her usual fandom tropes. I meditated on it, recollected an obscure X-Men mutant ability I read up on ages ago, and decided to make a story around it with my mint-green obsession as the subject. Since then, your cover art has made the Lyra of "Background Pony" stand out from all the rest, and I attribute much of the story's success to the individuality you gave it. Thank you for your creativity, for your intelligence, for your brutal honesty, and for your loyal friendship.
Spanish Announce Table Goes First
I am not a good writer; I am just a person who writes a lot. The quality and legibility of "Background Pony" owes itself to you fine lemurs of SATGF, who have loyally tackled the rough drafts of these chapters without being paid in anything but gratitude, week after week. This story would be in the pits if it weren't for all of you. I thank you from the bottom of my nihilistic heart.
Props
I can't count how many times I've gotten sucked into intense, creative, and felicitous conversations with you. Everyone in SATGF gave their all, but you were able to provide a little bit more. By letting me share with you the future of "Background Pony" before proper exposure, I was able to gauge where exactly I was going in the story. This fic wouldn't have ended so poetically if it weren't for your input. Thank you for your support, your ideas, and your girlfriend's fanart... f'naaaa.
TheBrianJ
When "Background Pony" became popular, there were several marsupials on Fimfiction who were quick to praise it. Of them all, you were the most vocal, and you took the conversation out of the site and into places like Ponychan. I was instantly flattered by your appreciation of the fic, and greatly inspired by your intelligent critique and analysis. I was happy to have you on board the editing team, and your input has been insanely helpful. Thanks for your attention to detail, your tendency to make me feel good when I've been down, and your appreciation of the Straight Edge Lifestyle.
RazgrizS57
For a while there, I would have sat on my high horse and not let a bunch of editors filter the chapters of "Background Pony" for all its detritus. But then you messaged me with your story ideas, your input, and--most importantly--your list of chronology flubs in the fic. I had to change a few things in the story because of you, and it helped save my fic from being an utter mess. I've been proud to have you on the editing crew, and I thank you for your attention to the fic's thematic elements.
theworstwriter
Of all the editors I've had the grace to work with, you have been and continue to be the most meticulous. Your experience and gift in writing goes far beyond that which you give yourself credit for, but we both know that. I felt safe with the knowledge that if any of the other editors missed stuff in my crapola, you would always find it with the fine eye of a burning laser. More often than not, I can tell that we share the same innate understanding of how language can be bent to deliver a good story. Thank you for supporting me through End of Ponies, and thank you for saving "Background Pony" from embarrassment on several occasions.
Warden
Whenever the editing process takes place, I know that the true baptism by fire doesn't happen until it is you who gets your hands on the manuscript. Even in the End of Ponies days, you always looked at things from a conceptual angle, making me think twice about presentation and theme. Thank you for constantly being by my side, for making me think, for poking me in all the right places so that I could get stuff done, and for not sending me a check in the mail... yet.
Seattle_Lite
Back in the primordial days of "Background Pony," you helped me sew together a chapter that was falling apart. You helped pierce my ego and remind me that I need editors like I need a second pair of eyes cuz holy crap am I messy. To me, you embody the friendly and volunteering spirit of Ponychan's /fic/ group, and I thank you for helping get "Background Pony" to get its act together.
Vimbert
What do you say about the Candle-stick Head who needs no introduction? I know that you weren't part of the editing team of this fic, but you are instrumental to its success in every way. I was surprised that this story made it as big as it did, especially since the first chapter was something I submitted without any editorial support. But then when you read and reviewed chapter one, I recall you stating that I desperately needed to complete this story. As elated as I was with the fic's immediate success, I wasn't truly happy until I got that "blessing" from you, and I may not have continued the fic at all if you hadn't given the suggestion your green light. In general, I owe everything about my fanficcing success to you, as well as to your burning crucible of a vindictive induction into the brony literature community, and I thank you ever so much for it.
Demetrius
You have always been a great source of criticism and ego-stroking all rolled into one. I admire your intelligence, your sincerity, and your creative spark. You contribute so much of your precious time to the community, and it truly helps us. With "Background Pony," your advice has helped me immensely in the editing and color coding process. You have my thanks and my respect.
Jake Heritagu
Though I never did do that side-story to Silent Ponyville, the ideas that you inadvertently made me come up with led to the skeletal structure of what would eventually become "Background Pony." In short, it wasn't for your contributions to this universe, I would never have become Lyra!obsessed. You have my thanks, good sir.
Belgerum
I should never have written "Background Pony," because I have no knowledge in music. Tons of marsupials messaged me saying that they would like to tackle the composition of the elegies. I nodded my head stupidly, not truly knowing what to expect. In the end, you were the one and only mofo to do it all. Not only that, you did it beautifully, and the muzak now sits in my head as the canon nature of the story's central device. I listened to your symphony over and over again while writing BP19, and it helped. Thanks for adding culture and beauty to a story that was pretty clueless before someone gave it music.
needthistool
When you told me that you were doing a read-through of "Background Pony," I was beyond flattered. Imagine my surprise when I heard how good and incredibly well-ranged your vocal talent was. I'm proud to have your voice acting as the funnel through which the story's beauty and melancholy is expressed. The fic has always felt like a quiet and heartfelt adventure, and your contribution has more than conveyed that.
Dawnmistpony
You've always struck me as one of my most pronounced fans, and that one exceptional fanart you made way back when "Background Pony" first started helped make bronies become aware of my story. Thanks for contributing your visual talents to the substance of the story on more than one occasion.
Ponky
The only thing sadder than "Background Pony" is the fact that you'll be leaving for another part of the world over the next two years. Thanks for giving me the idea of a heart and mind to write the legacy of Lyra for. Your talents and creativity helped make the atmosphere surrounding "Background Pony" an enjoyable one, and I wish you the best in all of your endeavors abroad.
Equestria Daily
I shall always have uber respect for you guys (and gals?). The explosive popularity of "Background Pony" on Fimfiction has amazed me, but I knew that if my story made it on your guys' site, then it was a true testament to its excellence. Thank you for the exposure that you have given me, the quality of presentation you aim for, and the patience all of you have had with me in my multiple chapter submissions. "Background Pony" would not have spread as far and wide as it has without you.
Noble Jury
You know what you've done.
Raefire
I first became a brony because of exposure to the fandom at the Fugworld.com message board. During the time that I lurked there, you were the biggest and most charismatic voice. When I began writing fanfic after fanfic, you would constantly provide links for the Fugsters to follow the stories of shortskirtsandexplosions. I was always flattered that someone was acting as a bridge between the two communities that were so important to me, and seemingly out of the kindness of his heart and his respect for the stuff I've written. I regret that you are no longer in this world, and I hope that wherever you've gone, it is peaceful.
To the rest of the marsupials who have read my stuff, much thanks and appreciation for your attention. Live long and dash apples. |
Aegis | pre | "Carrot dawgs!" the cheerful voice of her mother rang out behind her back.
Fast Bun could hear the clinking of plates and the hissing of fat as the carrots were taken out of the pan, two very anticipated sounds. Her stomach grumbled again, eager to fill itself with the delicious treat.
More clinking found its way into her ears, then the hoofsteps of her mother finally approached the table. The mare with the blue mane and the white coat presented her daughter with a wide and warm smile as she put a huge plate filled with carrot dogs in the middle of the table. Having put down the plate safely, she gave her daughter a noogie, bringing her mane in disarray. "Now grab dem while dey're hawt," she said, then took seat opposite of her daughter.
It was nothing she needed to tell Fast Bun, of course. Eagerly, the filly reached for the plate and pulled one of the carrot dogs into her hooves. Without a moment of hesitation, she lifted it to her mouth and bit off a huge chunk. As soon as the taste of the carrot and the mayonnaise that was on top of it caressed her tongue, Fast Bun began to feel better. She barely chewed the bit in her mouth before swallowing it. It made her belly feel nice, full and warm, and she let out a comfortable groan as the pain began to vanish.
Her mom and her dad watched her, both wearing huge grins in their faces, then they reached for a carrot dog, as well.
"I had, like, da wawst' nightmare," Fast Bun began to tell, feeling better. She bit off another chunk.
"Oh, a nightmare, really?" her mother asked. She smirked, then looked at her husband and both shared a chuckle. An exuberant sigh left her mouth. "What was yawh nightmare, my little honey?" another question rolled from her lips. It sounded sickly sweet.
The second warm bit slid down Fast Bun's throat, then she answered. "We were trapped in da mawll!" she exclaimed. "Me, Babs, Curtain, Pops and Starlet. We were playin' hide and seek, but forgawt how late it was, so da mawll clawsed befawre we could get out. And Starlet was mean and nasty, she hurt Curtain and den she hurt Pops!"
Her face became serious for a moment, but then she remembered the carrot dog and a third bite disappeared in her mouth. She chewed with satisfaction, cheeks red.
"Oh....." her mother answered. "Oh, little honey, I'm sure Starlet didn't mean it dat way."
"Right so," her dad agreed. "Starlet is ar filly with her heart at da right place."
"Um-hm." Fast Bun nodded, moments before swallowing again. "She was, like, just upset and said she misses heh parents. You should've seen heh cryin', I felt bad for heh." She lowered the carrot dog, but only a little.
"Oh, deah, sure she does!" her mother gave Fast Bun confirmation. "Every fawl would, isn't it?" She exchanged a smile with her husband. "You would miss us, I bet."
"I..... yeah. I did. I missed you." Fast Bun cocked her head now. "Mommy? Is everythin' ahrite?"
"Oh, deah, sure it is, little honey! I'm sawrry for wawrryin' you....." Suddenly, there was concern in her face.
Fast Bun looked over to her dad, who eyed her with a stern expression. Some fear creeping onto her face, she looked back at her mother. "Mommy? Why are you and daddy lookin' like dis?"
"Oh, it's nothin' serious..... Daddy and me are just ar little wawrried. It looks like da food is spoiled, little honey."
"Spoiled?" This came as a surprise to Fast Bun, but now she noticed how neither her mom, nor her dad had started to eat their carrot dogs. Resting in their hooves completely untouched, they looked the same as they had when they were taken from the plate.
"Why spoiled, mommy? I just ate it, it tastes good!" Fast Bun looked down at her own carrot dog, intended to demonstrate that her parents must be mistaken. As her eyes fell on it, all the color drained from her face.
Instead of a fresh, orange carrot inside a nice, long and soft bun, there was now a green and squishy, moldy piece that barely resembled a carrot anymore. The bun around it was hard and it was covered in a pelt of white spores. Yet, this was her definitely her carrot dog, the one she grabbed from the plate earlier. Despite the mold, she could still see her bite marks on it. Shrieking, Fast Bun dropped the carrot dog.
"See?" her mom asked. "It's spoiled. I'm sawrry I didnt, like, nawtice earlia." The sickly sweet tone in her voice was back.
Fast Bun looked up. Now the carrot dogs in the hooves of her parents looked just as rotten and so did the others on the large plate. The beloved taste on her tongue suddenly changed. It now tasted foul and old. Fast Bun retched a little. How did she not notice any of this?
"Let's thraww it away," her mom said. She grabbed Fast Bun's carrot dog and put it back on the plate. Then she and her husband did the same with theirs. The mare carried the plate over to the bin and let the carrot dogs glide inside, then she put the plate into the sink.
Fast Bun shivered. Her stomach started to turn itself upside down and a loud grumble emerged from it. Her face took on a slightly green color. She wrapped her hooves around her body and fought back the urge to vomit, while her mom opened the fridge and took out a couple of sandwiches. The mare placed them on two smaller plates and carried them to the table. She put down one in front of her husband, then sat down with the other one.
It was just then that the food poisoning became too strong for Fast Bun's little body. Finally failing with her efforts to keep herself from throwing up, Fast Bun leaned forward and vomited the contents of her stomach on the table in front of her. She started to breathe heavily. Her face was red now. "I'm sawrry," she said, embarrassed.
The sweet smell coming from the combination of the rotting food and a bit of stomach acid that drifted into Fast Bun's nose made her retch. A second later, another stream of vomit came from her mouth until her stomach had emptied itself. The liquid parts of the green, stinking mass trickled over the table's edge, some drops landing on Fast Bun's legs.
Weakly, Fast Bun leaned back in her chair and started to breathe in and out repeatedly. She felt ill, both from the process of vomiting her food and from the hunger that had returned now.
"Can I have ar sandwich, too, mommy?" she asked between two breaths.
Her mother and her father exchanged a furtive glance.
"Oh, little honey, no." Her mother shook her head. "You should, like, go into yawh room, lie down and get some sleep."
"Um-hm." Fast Bun nodded weakly. "I just need to, like, get dis taste out awf my mouth first. Please give me ar sandwich." Her voice was pleading now.
Her mother's face took on a more serious expression as she shook her head a second time. "No. Food poisonin' isn't to be taken lightly. You need to rest up." The voice of her mother had become very strict all of a sudden. Hearing it made Fast Bun shiver.
"But I'm hun-gry again....." Fast Bun moaned, gripping her stomach stronger. She frowned.
Her mother did not respond. She concentrated on her meal and her father also ignored her.
Feeling suddenly weaker than before, Fast Bun slumped down in her chair even more. She closed her eyes for a moment and as she opened them again, they widened in horror as she observed how her stomach began to swell. It grew and grew, until its size had become tripled. Fast Bun held her hooves at her cheeks, looking in despair at the monstrous growth. Her cheeks felt squishy and bloated now and she felt the same as she touched her lips. Terror building in her face, she stared at her mother.
"Mommy?! What's happenin'?!" Fast Bun trembled and began to cry.
"Oh, nothin', deah." Her face was rigid and cold as she answered. "You are just, like, starvin' to death, dat's awll."
"Starvin'? T-To death?" More fear invaded Fast Bun's mind and she held her hooves in front of her face, ready to cover her eyes and to wet them with her tears, but then she flinched away from them. Just moments earlier they had looked strong and sturdy, but what she saw now was pitiful. Her forehooves appeared thin and fragile, the skin looking like it had been wrapped directly around her bone. She could not spot any muscles or fat on them.
The fear gave her new energy. Fast Bun stood up in her chair and climbed on the table. She reached to the plate in front of her mother, weezing, and tried to grab one of her sandwiches. Her mother, though, swiftly pulled the plate out of her reach.
"Ah, ah!" she said, lifting a hoof. "Be ar nice filly, Fast Bun. Dis is mommy's food, I did nawt allow you to have somethin' awf it."
Fast Bun sniffed and slumped down on the table. She was crying without restraint now. "But..... Mommy..... Why? Why do you nawt let me eat?" She lifted a hoof to her face. It twitched uncontrollably and it took her three attempts before she could wipe away the tears that blurred her vision.
"Awww....." her mother said, once again in the sickly sweet tone. "Don't cry, little honey. See, dese sandwiches are, like, da last food left in da house and mommy and daddy need to eat, too." She gently stroke over the edemas in her weeping daughter's face.
Fast Bun lowered her eyes, her glance now fixated on the surface of the table. Her eyes looked glazed. She swayed slightly.
"It's awnly been, like, ar month, little honey, I'm sure you can hawld out until mommy bawght new food tomawrow. And even if nawt....." Her voice became colder. "You love yawh mommy and yawh daddy, right? You wouldn't want us to starve, righ't?"
Fast Bun did not respond. Suddenly, she felt like the words came from far away. Her vision blurred even more and her swaying became stronger. Only as she felt a sharp pain flaring up on her right cheek, she was reminded where she was. Confused, she looked up and into her mother's face. It expressed rage and hatred now.
"Will you listen to me!" her mother shouted into her face. "What if yawh mommy and yawh daddy are goin' to die? What would you do den?" She gave her daughter another slap in the face.
This time, Fast Bun's lip popped open from the impact and blood spilled on the table. She barely felt the pain.
Her mother grabbed her at the shoulders and shook her violently, while her father just watched with a disappointed glare. "Do you nawt want to sacrifice yawhself so yawh parents can live, Fast Bun?! Do you nawt love us, you disgustin', little FREELAWDA?!" She screamed the last word.
Fast Bun twitched as the words washed over her, but she still didnt respond and her eyes kept their glazed look. Emotionlessly, she continued to stare into her mother's rage-filled face.
As her mother had finally stopped shaking her, Fast Bun lowered her eyes again. More spasms made her hooves twitch now and she could barely see the table under her anymore. A second later, Fast Bun fell over. With a thump, her head hit the surface of the table. The food right in front of her eyeballs now, she breathed laboriously and her heartbeat became slower. Now she was too weak to try and reach for any of it.
Something hard coming down on her head with full force was the last thing Fast Bun felt before her vision turned black and she stopped to perceive her surroundings..... |
Aegis | Comfort V̷ͩ̔ͧ̆͆̾͛a͝nͪ̏i̛͋͆̑̏́t̨̒͒ͤ̎ͨ̚y҉ | . .
Comfort V̷ͩ̔ͧ̆͆̾͛a͝nͪ̏i̛͋͆̑̏́t̨̒͒ͤ̎ͨ̚y҉
The air in the dinner was filled with deep and loud growls. The lamps on the ceiling flickered, as if the light tried to flee from the sounds in terror. Mixed into the growls were long-stretched moans, coming from a table in the middle of the diner and being emanated by one lonely colt.
Curtain Call had his head placed on the table, his lips pointing downwards and his eyes radiating a piercing sadness. It was more than half an hour since he had seen Fast Bun, Corn Pops and Starlet Radiance the last time and the hunger almost drove Curtain Call nuts. His stomach hurt, yet there was nothing he could do about it, as the food he had left mysteriously vanished.
He moaned again and turned his head around, facing the other side of the diner. The open door came into the edges of his view, but Curtain Call had no energy to trot outside and search for his friends. Another painful growl came from his stomach. Whimpering, Curtain Call closed his eyes. As he opened them again a few seconds later, when the current wave of pain lessened, he found himself staring at something.
A reddish glow had attracted his attention and where it came from, on the counter, Curtain Call could see a large hayburger resting on a plate. Hayfries and a cup of soda stood right next to it. Curtain Call swallowed in anticipation and began to drool on the table. New strength forming in him, he lifted his head off the table, taking a closer look. The delicious meal that greeted his eyes sat right in the middle of the strange glow. The back of his mind wondered how it got there but the thought was suppressed by the active part of it, the one that craved the food to sate his enormous hunger.
The young colt slid off the chair, then he let this chubby legs carry him over to the counter. The smell coming from it made him drool more and his stomach responded to it with another growl. As he had arrived at the counter, Curtain Call reared up. He placed one forehoof right next to the plate and reached for the burger with the other one. He was close to touch the tasty treasure he had discovered as suddenly, he felt his hoof slapped away with full force.
"He', kiddaw!" a deep, angry voice to his right bellowed into his ears. "Whoser foo' dor you touchin' hea?"
Scared, Curtain Call twitched and retracted his hoof. He looked into the direction the voice had come from. A brown stallion sat there, on one of the high, black stools, and he looked at him grimly. Too confused to say anything, Curtain Call just stared, his mouth opened wide. All of a sudden, he felt grabbed at the neck and pulled away from the counter.
"O', I'm sawry, mista, m' littler Suga' enjawys ar goo' hayburga ar bi' toor much!" a voice coming from behind increased Curtain's confusion tenfold. It sounded nervous and hectic and a little ashamed. "Now finally comer, Curtain, your ha' youh mea' ahready!" the voice continued as somepony kept dragging him away from the counter and out of the diner.
It was a voice Curtain knew well. He reached behind his neck and shoved the hooves that held him away. "I can wawl' alawner, mommy!"
Free, Curtain Call turned around and, indeed, there was his mom, Bubblegum Blossom. The mare with the blue and slightly curly mane glared down at him disapprovingly. She was wearing a small, yellow bow in her mane and a pink earring in her left ear. Both accessoires vibrated slightly as she shook her head.
"Your can' jus', liker, gor for oda ponies' foo', Suga'," she said, a reprehensive tone in her voice. She looked down, sighing. "Your ain' sti' hungr', arer your?" She reached out with a hoof and rubbed over his mane, gently.
Curtain Call did not respond. He just stood there, staring, while a ton of different impressions came down on him at once. The mall was full of life again. The hallway they stood in was brightly illuminated and ponies were rushing by left and right, the air filled with their chatter and the clopping of their hooves. Another impression got added as Curtain Call noticed the feeling in his stomach. Irritated, he reached down to it and stroke over it with a hoof. It was round and felt full and it was then that Curtain Call realized that he wasn't hungry anymore.
The colt looked around, letting his eyes fly over the various shops, all of which had opened, and the ponies who bustled in and out of them. As he looked back at his mom, only one question left his mouth.
"Wh' isn' it nigh' anymawer?" He blinked at his mom, dumbfounded.
"Nigh'? O', suga', it ain' nigh' anymawer for, liker, ten hour'!" Her face distorted into concern. "Arer your ahrite, Curtain? Your loo' liker your ha' ar ba' drea', or sometin'."
Curtain Call blinked again, then he shook his head. He did not understand what was going on but with his hunger gone and the mall suddenly not being a dark, scary place anymore, this explanation was as good as any for the little colt. Besides, he did feel very tired this morning. So his mom had to be right, he figured. He didn't get locked up in the mall with his friends, it had all just been a nightmare.
"You're righ'. I tin' I fe' aslee' a' ta tabler, mommy." Following a sudden impulse, he approached his mom and wrapped his hooves around her for a hug. Fluttering up a little, he snuggled his face against his mom's cheek.
"Aww, suga', dat must've bee' ar rea' nightmarer," Bubblegum Blossom said in a soothing voice. "Bu' now it's awva, don' wawr'." She placed a hoof on Curtain's back and squeezed her son.
"Hmm....." Curtain cooed, enjoying the moment of intimacy. Feeling better now, he let go of his mom a few seconds later and fluttered back down. He gave her a cute, thankful smile, heart full of relief that everything was alright again.
"Now comer, Suga'," his mom waved him closer. "Wer sti' gaw', liker, somer stuff tor bu'." She laid a hoof on Curtain's back in a slight embrace and together, they began to move down the hallway.
While they trotted, Curtain Call suddenly realized that he had absolutely no memory on why they were here, or, how they had entered the mall today. The little colt taxed his brain to retain these memories, but nothing came to him. Once more confused, Curtain looked over to this mom.
"Mommy? Wha', uh, wha' elser dor wer bu'?" he asked carefully, feeling like he shouldn't make the situation even more strange.
"O', naw' much anymawer, Suga', jus' smaw' stuff. Wer awlmaws' gaw', liker, everytin' for youh cousins' Heart's Wawmin' presents!" She gave Curtain a smile.
"Huh?" Curtain Call stared at his mom. "Heart's Wawmin' present'? Bu' isn' Heart's Wawmin' Eve sti', liker, twor monts awa', mommy?"
Now it was Bubblegum Blossom who became confused. She stopped in her tracks and looked into her son's eyes. "Uh, no, Suga'. Your know it's nex' wee' ahready." A new expression of motherly concern built on her face. She removed her hoof from Curtain's back. "I hoper your don' haver, liker, feva, Suga'." She laid her hoof on Curtain's forehead, then moved it over his face, touching his chubby cheeks and then his neck. "Hmm....." she murmured as she could not feel any increased temperature.
Curtain Call shook his head. "Um-um. Nor, I'm feelin' oka', mommy. I tin' I'm jus' tire'." He let out a demonstrative, semi-believable yawn.
"Aww, Suga', don' wawr'! We're doner hea, liker, an' minuter, den wer gor hawmer!" She stroke her son's face affectionately.
As they continued their way through the mall, his mom occasionally stopping at a shop to buy something, Curtain tried more to squeeze the memories he needed out of his brain. After a couple of fruitless attempts, his head began to feel cloudy so he stopped. Clueless what to do now, the colt decided to distract himself.
Curtain Call moved his eyes over the various shop windows he and his mom passed, looking at the various goods he saw. The window shopping did its job to get him away from thinking about how strange everything, especially his loss of memory, was. But it was ultimately the window of a toy shop that took Curtain's thoughts off the entire mystery.
Gasping, the little colt stopped, his eyes fixated in awe at a huge, red fire truck. Like hypnotized, he moved closer to the window and pressed his nose flat on it while he took in every detail of the massive toy. His eyes sparkled at this sight.
Ahead of him, Bubblegum Blossom noticed that her son was not at her side anymore. She turned around and looked at him. "Suga'?" she asked. "Comer alawng, wer sti' nee' ar few tings."
Hearing the voice of his mom, a thought began to form in Curtain's head. It quickly gained domination. Curtain Call removed his face and hooves from the window and whizzed into his mom's direction, wings buzzing.
"Can wer ge' dis, mommy? Can wer, pleeeeeeeaser?" He shoved himself into his mom's face, squeaking adorableness leaving his throat.
Bubblegum Blossom followed the direction her son had come from with her eyes, until they rested on the firetruck behind the window. She scrunched her face as she looked back at Curtain. "I don' know, Suga', mommy ahready bawgh' ar Heart's Wawmin' presen' for your....."
"Pleeeeeeeeaser!" the colt squeaked even louder. "If your bu' it, I won' nee' ar presen' nex' yeah! Pleee-" his pleading stopped abruptly, as his mom her held a hoof at his mouth.
"Ahrite, ahrite....." she said. "I supposer wer can ge' awner mawer if wer coun' it as nex' year's presen'." She rolled her eyes, but smiled.
"Um-hm, um-hm!" Curtain's head bopped up and down, then he whizzed into the toy shop. His mom followed, sighing slightly.
A few minutes later, the mare and the colt came out of the shop again, Curtain clasping the package with his new toy truck tightly. A cute, satisfied smile was plastered on his face.
They trotted through the mall once more, silently, until his mom started to speak again. "How abou' your bu' mommy ar snack, Suga'?"
Curtain Call removed his gaze from his new toy and looked up to his mom. Her hoof pointed at a sandwich in the vitrine of a small food stall and Curtain followed it with a confused look. Then his gaze went back to his mother, who was wearing a greedy and lusting expression. She licked her lips. "Now, Suga'?" A tiny, barely audible growl came from her stomach.
"Buyin' your ar sandwich?" Curtain Call asked. "Wh'?" He blinked.
"O', mommy ha' gotte' ar littler hungr', Suga'. Can your dor dis for mommy, pleeeaser?"
"We', yea', bu' wh' dor your wawn' mer tor bu' it? Wh' dor your naw', liker, bu' it yawsel'?" Curtain Call scrunched his face.
"O', Suga', becauser mommy jus' bawgh' your an expensiver to', sor wh' won' your bu' mommy sometin' in retur'?" There was a slightly sarcastic tone in her voice and Curtain was not sure if his mom was teasing him or not.
"We'...." Curtain put down his toy truck and rubbed over the back of his head. "I'm naw' surer....."
Bubblegum Blossom quickly bent down down to her son and pressed his face against his cheek. "O', pleaser, mommy jus' wants tor haver, liker, sometin' fraw' your for awncer, Suga'! Can your dor dis for mommy, please, please, pleeeeeeeease?" She pressed harder and nuzzled him.
Curtain Call scrunched his face more and answered the stares some ponies who trotted by gave them now. "Uh..... Oka'. I-I tin' I can," he said then. Pondering the request by his mom more, his unsure expression turned into a smile. Why not? She just bought him another Hearth's Warming present, the least he could do was paying her back with a little favor. He nuzzled his mom's face.
"O', tan' your sor much, Suga'!" Bubblegum Blossom squeaked. She put her hooves around her little colt's neck and squeezed him tightly.
Curtain Call turned around, opened his left saddlebag and pulled out a green wallet with the picture of a frog on it. He unzipped it and looked inside. Ten bits of his pocket money were still left, he observed. Curtain looked back to the sandwich in the vitrine, the price tag saying "10 Bits". He sighed a little as he saw that buying the sandwich would use up all of the money he had left for this month but regardless, he took out the bits, placed the wallet back in his saddlebag and then cantered up to the food stall.
As he had finished the purchase, he quickly zipped back to his mom, carrying the sandwich in one hoof. Bubblegum Blossom took the sandwich with a grateful smile. She rubbed over Curtain's mane appreciatively, then took a bite from the sandwich. As Curtain had picked up his toy truck again, they continued their way.
It wasn't long after she had finished her snack, that Bubblegum Blossom looked down on her son again. She directed his attention to a shop window located to their left. They stopped in front of it and as Curtain followed the hoof of his mom again, his eyes landed on a watch. It was golden and tiny diamonds where embedded around the numbers on its face. They glistened seductively in the lights of the window.
"Wha' dor your tin' awf dat watch, Suga'? Wawnna bu' dat for mommy?" She looked at him and grinned, her face forming another greedy expression.
"Wha'?" Curtain Call did not understand. "How, mommy? I haver, liker, nor pawcke' money anymawer an' your don' giver mer enough." He pointed at the price tag, which said "2,000 Bits". Huffing now, he put down his truck and placed it at the side of the window.
"O', I know, Suga'. Bu' if wer user aw' youh pawcke' money unti' you're grawn up, your can pa' mommy da money backr." Her eyes took on a pleading expression.
"Bu'....." Curtain's ears flattened and he began to look sad. "Bu' den I won'' ge' pawcke' money anymawer unti' I'm, liker, eightee' year'!" he cried out, voice sounding whiny.
His mom's expression did not change. She leaned down and crushed her son with a hug. "O', now comer on, Suga'!" she wailed, sounding disappointed. "Mommy ha' bawgh' your sor much awvapriced stuff, wh' can' your dor da same jus' awncer?" If Curtain would have been able to look at her face, he would have seen how her lip quivered.
A few sobs rang into his ears and he lowered his eyes. The little colt wrapped his forehooves around his mom's body and sniffed. "O-Okay," he said. "I dor it for your, mommy, I don' wan' tor maker your sa'." His heart stung over the thought that he would never get pocket money again now, but he was determined to keep his promise.
Together, Curtain Call and his mom trotted into the jewelry store. His mom ordered and the stallion behind the counter brought the watch she wanted. Bubblegum Blossom emptied her wallet demonstratively, pulling out two one-thousand bit bills and hoofing it to the jeweller. The stallion nodded and gave her a receipt. Bubblegum Blossom put the watch around her right foreleg immediately, then she left the shop with her son.
Curtain let his head hang, still wearing the sad expression. The picture of the toy truck on its package coming into his view did nothing to change how he felt.
After a few minutes, he sighed and looked up to his mom. She was holding up her right foreleg and looking at the watch with a dreamy expression.
"Di' I maker your happy, mommy?" the colt asked, expectation in his voice.
"O', surer, Suga'. Your mader mommy ver' happy," Bubblegum Blossom answered. She gave him a quick kiss on the head, then returned her attention to the watch.
"Okay....." he whispered, looking on the floor again.
Curtain Call was trapped in his thoughts, pondering the events that had transpired just now, as his mom suddenly poked him in the side. "Curtain!" she said. "Loo' at dis beautifu' purser in dat shaw' awva derer!" She pointed excitedly across the hallway, to yet another shop window. "Mommy woul' reall' liker tor haver dis awner!"
Curtain gave the black purse with the white patterns on it only a short look, then he eyes his mom. "Bu' aw' m' pawcke' money is ahready used u'....." His eyes looked slightly wet.
"O', ye', Suga'. An' mommy doesn'' haver an' money wit heh anymawer now." She bent down and brought her mouth close to his ear. "Dat's wh' mommy woul' liker your tor stea' dis purser for heh."
Curtain's eyes became wide and he gasped. "Stealin', mommy?! Bu' I can'', stealin' isn'-" He felt a hoof shoved onto his mouth.
"Pss'!" his mom said, lifting a hoof to her mouth. "Don' sa' it sor lou', Suga'!" She looked around nervously, but none of the ponies who trotted by payed them any attention. She grabbed Curtain's neck and pulled him into a corridor that branched off to the left.
"Mommy wi' wai' hea," she said, bending down to him. "Your jus' gor ova derer an' stea' da purser I showed your!" She pointed at the shop, which was now directly opposite of them.
Curtain's expression was full of concern as he looked into his mom's face. "Nor, mommy," he said. "I lover your, bu' wer shouldn' stea' sometin'. Your scolde' mer whe' I awlmaws' too' da hayburga of da mista in da dina."
The argument rolled off his mom's shoulders, like he hadn't said anything. "O', Curtain, don'' ber such ar spoilspawt! Mommy awnl' ask' for dis awner las' tin' in retur'!" She nudged him, playfully.
"Bu', mommy..... Wha' if somepon' see' mer? I don' wawnna gor tor priso'....." There was fear in his eyes now.
"O', Suga', don' ber sill'! You're ar, liker, fiver years ol', your won'' comer intor priso', da law doesn' wor' dat wa'." She smiled at him, reassuringly, and petted his mane.
"Bu' it's sti' naw'-"
"Pleeeeeeeaser, Suga'!" Pleading returned into her voice. She bounced up and down in excitement. It looked ridiculous for a grown mare like her.
"For awncer, mommy awlsawr want' tor haver ar few nicer tings! I prawmiser it's da las' timer!" She kissed his cheek.
Curtain shuddered. "F-Finer..... I' gor. Bu' is it reall' da las' timer your as' mer for sometin'?"
"Suga', awf cawser! I sweah I won' as' for anytin' elser afta dis!" She crossed her heart.
"O-Oka'....." Curtain nodded and put down the package with his toy truck. "I wi' dor it fas'," he said, determination mixed with fear visible in his face.
"O', ahrite, Suga'! Jus' gra' it an' comer backr. Mommy wi' ber hea whe' your retur' wit her purser!" She nudged him into the direction of the shop.
Curtain nodded again. He turned around and gulped, then started trotting across the hallway.
He entered the shop as casually as he could and looked around. The purse was hanging from a low rack right next to him, just two steps away. There were a few customers in the shop, but they were at the far end of it. Too far away to notice, he concluded. And the shop assistant was nowhere to be seen right now.
Curtain let his eyes glide over the entirety of the shop a second time, then he quickly trotted to the purse, pulled it down and marshed for the exit. Just as he passed it, a howling alarm rang out. Red lights flashed up around him and he twitched.
"Hey, young colt!" a voice came from behind. A second later, Curtain felt grabbed and turned around. He looked into the face of a young stallion, who frowned at him grimly.
"A foal your age is stealing something?!" he asked, shocked. "Where are your parents?"
Hemming and hawing, Curtain tried to think of an excuse while looking around nervously. Before he could find one, he heard the voice of his mother and her approaching hoofsteps from behind.
"Curtain Call!" her horrified voice pierced into his ears. He felt a sharp pain as his mother grabbed his ear and pulled him over to her with force. "Wha' arer your doin', littler mista?!" her angry face shouted at him.
Bubblegum Blossom huffed, pressing the toy truck package against her body with her free hoof. "Ha' mommy naw', liker, tawgh' your dat stealin' ain' oka', naw' eve' if your reall' wan' tor haver sometin'?! Brin' dis purse backr righ' now!"
A few tears showed up in Curtain's eyes. He obeyed and went back to the rack, his chubby, little legs trembling.
While he was on the way, Bubblegum Blossom gave the shop assistant an apologetic smile. "I'm sawry, I awnl' lef' hi' ou' of m' eye' for ar minuter. I mentioned how much I liker dis purser, her prawbabl' trie' tor ge' it for mer as ar presen'."
The shop assistant's stern expression cleared up only slightly. "Bring your son away from here, ma'am, or I will call the police!"
"Awf courser," Bubblegum Blossom said, meekly. She grabbed Curtain's ear once more as he had returned. "I'm ver' sawry," she apologized again and bowed her head a little before turning back to Curtain. "An' your comer wit mer," she said sternly and dragged him with her.
Curtain Call whimpered over the pain in his ear, but his mother did not acknowledge it. "Awncer we're a' hawmer, you're goin' righ' tor be' an' I' haver tor tin' if your reall' deserver ar presen' for Heart's Wawmin' Eve dis yeah!" she shouted instead, loud enough for the shop assistant to hear.
Only as they were out of his hearing range, she stopped scolding her son and let go of him. Curtain rubbed over his now reddened ear, still flinching in pain. "Ooooow!" he wailed.
"Dat wa' ar rea' failurer, Suga'," his mom said, her voice accusatory. "I should've expecte' your can' dor it....."
"Bu' your tawl' mer tor dor it!" Curtain complained, still rubbing his aching ear.
The mare ignored the remark. Instead, she set herself into motion again and pulled him into a different direction. "Don't wawry, Suga', mommy knows how your can maker dis u' tor heh!"
Curtain Call just frowned.
As his mother had finally stopped pulling at him, Curtain Call found himself inside a furniture store. Around him stood numerous beds in various shapes and sizes, all of them covered in clean, white bedding. Curtain was angry now, but the newly risen confusion over this sight pushed back the anger quickly.
"Wha' arer wer doin' now?" he asked, some dread in his voice. He scrutinized one of the beds. "I can' stea' a' entirer be', mommy, it won' fi' trough da dooh!" he then added, quieter.
"O', Suga', no!" His mother laughed. "I'm naw' askin' your tor stea' ar be'," she said as her laughing fit was over, her voice low. "Dis timer, mommy want' sometin' elser....." The lusting, greedy expression was back in her face.
All of a sudden, Curtain Call felt very uncomfortable. He did a step back. "W-Wha' is it?" he asked. There was caution in his voice.
His mother came closer, then she brought down her face in front of his. "Dis timer, mommy want' your, Suga'!"
For the umpteenth time on this day, Curtain Call blinked at his mother in utter confusion. "Mer? Bu', mommy..... Your ahready haver mer. I'm hea."
"Nor, naw' liker dis, Suga'. Mommy want' tor haver ar ki'. Woul' your giver mommy awner?"
Curtain's face cleared up. "Ooooooh! Surer, mommy, I've kissed your befawer!" He smiled. Leaning in, he gave his mother a kiss on the cheek.
"Awww, thank', Suga'! Bu' dat's naw' wha' I mean'. Mommy want' tor haver ar ki' on da mout dis timer."
This was weird. Curtain raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, simultaneously. He had kissed his mother a dozen times before, but she never asked him to kiss her mouth.
"Hmm....." his forehead in wrinkles, Curtain pondered the request. He knew what his mother asked for was unusual and thinking of doing that felt somehow wrong. But at the same time, he could not come up with a reason why it was wrong, no matter how much he taxed his little brain. The mouth was really close to the cheek, so it wouldn't be a real difference, he figured.
Having come to that conclusion, he nodded. "Oka', mommy!" the colt said, smiling.
"M' goo', littler bo'....." Bubblegum Blossom looked over the store. Unlike the one with the purse, this was one was crammed with customers. She placed a hoof over her son's neck and pulled him gently into a corner of the store. They stood behind a large bed with a white curtain at the sides now, shielded from the eyes of other ponies. She put down the toy truck there, freeing her hooves.
Curtain Call felt a sudden, inexplicable excitement rising in him. "How does ar ki' awn da mout fee', mommy?"
"Aww, your wi' seer now." Bubblegum Blossom chuckled over the innocent question. "Mommy wi' show your."
She didn't waste any more time and leaned in on her son's face, pressing her lips on his. A moan left her throat. As she felt how Curtain opened his lips, surprised by the new experience, she stretched out her tongue and let it glide into his mouth. Curtain Call's eyes shot open wildly as he felt the intruder.
A sultry look on her face, Bubblegum Blossom moaned again. She played with her son's tongue for a few seconds, before she released the kiss and retreated from the colt.
Curtain Call gasped for air as he was free. His heart was racing and he felt weird emotions rising in him, somewhere between curiosity and the desire to gag in disgust.
His mother looked down at him, wearing a satisfied expression. She licked her lips. "How di' your liker it, Suga'?"
"It....." Curtain Call tried to decide for a word to describe the experience. "It wa' slim'." He spat out a little. "I'm sawry, mommy..... I-I didn' liker it." A shudder went down his spine.
"Awww, it's oka', Suga'! Your wi' liker mawer wha' mommy is goin' tor dor nex'!" Bubblegum Blossom grinned at her little colt.
"Doin' nex'?" The uncomfortable feeling from earlier returned. Curtain Call stepped away from his mother. "I don' wawnnar dor anytin' nex', mommy..... Can wer gor hawmer now?" His eyes looked at her in sadness, once more fear mixed in them.
"Aww, Suga', nor, naw' ye'. Mommy need' jus', liker, awner las' tin' firs'." She turned to the bed and lifted up the curtain next to them, then placed it in the bed and pushed it back a little. There was now some free space, just enough for a little colt like Curtain to sit on. His mother turned back at him.
"Si' dow' dere, Suga', it won' taker lawng," she chirped.
Curtain did not follow the prompt. Instead, he did another step back. "W-Wha' mommy?" he asked. "Wha' dor your wan' tor dor?"
"Notin' bi', Suga'. Jus' anotha ki'." The mare smiled widely.
"O-On da mout agai'?" Curtain Call shrunk a little, eyeing his mother with a good portion of wariness now.
"Nor, Suga'. Now, mommy is goin' tor ki' youh peer peer."
A wave of heat flared up inside Curtain Call. "Bu', mommy, your tawl mer dat nopon' is allowed tor touch mer dere!" Curtain felt bewildered hearing his mother suggesting something she had always told him was wrong to do. Feeling his little world view getting shattered, the colt remained still in a state between surprise and confusion.
His mother refused to explain her sudden change of mind. "Mommy want' tor ki' an' lickr it.," she said, her eyes looking as dreamily as they had when she admired the watch earlier. "Awva and awva agai'....."
Somehow, Curtain Call could feel that her eyes were directed between his hindlegs. A very faint blush was in the colt's face now. "B-Bu' your can', mommy! If you dor dat, da oda ponies in da stawer wi' nawticer!"
He turned around and ran a few steps to the other side of the bed, to direct his mother's attention back to the many ponies in the store. But when he stepped out from behind the bed, nopony was here. Suddenly, Curtain Call noticed that it was completely still around him. All the sounds of chattering and bustling ponies that had found their way into the furniture store were gone. A second later, the lights suddenly turned off and it got instantly dark around the colt.
"M-Mommy?" he asked and winced. The mall was the same as before now, like he had seen it in his nightmare..... But his mother was still here, as her voice soon confirmed to him.
"Suga'! Comer backr hea, mommy jus' want' tor haver somer fu'!"
Curtain Call understood nothing anymore. But now that the darkness had returned, he was afraid, so he turned on his hooves and went back to his mother behind the bed. Her face greeted him with the same lusting and greedy expression still. Behind her, a word was written on the wall all of a sudden, the letters red and crooked. "Mommy?" Curtain Call asked. "What's dis wor'?"
Bubblegum Blossom turned around, then back at her son. "I don' know wha' your mea', Suga'. Dere's jus' a waw'.
Curtain Call scrunched his face. He could clearly see the word. And, as much as he could tell with his underdeveloped ability to read, the word on the wall was "Aegis". It made no sense to him, so Curtain Call turned to the next thing that surprised him.
He was not supposed to see his mother's face in this darkness, but then he noticed something that had slipped his attention earlier. There was a nightstand next to the bed and on it stood a small lamp. It glowed brightly, so his mother must have turned it on after the lights went out. The shine of the lamp fell on the bed, right on the spot his mother had freed there. And this was the spot his mother patted now.
"Come, Suga', si' dow' hea," she spoke the same prompt again.
Curtain Call still felt unsure about the situation. He looked around in the mostly dark store, the shapes of the furniture looking creepy and scary in the darkness. He heard a rustling somewhere in the store and he could not tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him or if it was real. Curtain Call looked into his mother's eyes.
"D-Dor your sti' wan' tor dor dis?" he stammered, fearfully.
"Suga', awf cawser mommy want' tor! Now si' dow', finally!" There was impatience in her voice now.
Curtain Call heard something dripping on the floor. As he followed the source of the sound, he saw a small puddle under his mother, right between her hindlegs. His youthful mind wondered if his mother was scared in this darkness, too, so much that she had peed herself.
"I-I'm scared, mommy....." the colt whimpered. "C-Can wer gor hawmer awncer your....." He trailed off mid-sentence, unable to complete the weird sentence immediately. "Awncer your.... Awncer your kissed an' licked m' peer peer?"
"I prawmiser, Suga'!" his mother reassured him. "Awncer mommy ha' heh fu', wer leaver dis dar' placer an' gor hawmer tawgeda."
"O-Okay....." a small smile formed on his lips. Obediently now, he came closer to his mother and the small, lit-up corner. He sat down on the free space of the bed, then looked up to his mother expectantly. All of this still felt weird to the colt but in his fear, he was willing to do everything to leave the creepy, dark mall as fast as possible.
"Wha' now, mommy?" he asked, sounding impatient himself now.
"Now, Suga', sprea' youh leg', liker, reall' wider, so dat mommy's mout can ge' tor youh peer peer," she instructed her son.
Curtain Call followed her words and spread his legs apart. Looking down, he saw that his pee pee was a little stiff all of a sudden, just like when he had to pee. But right now, he felt no urge for this.
Her mother looked down at the slightly stiff penis of her son, licking her lips once more, while a grin formed on her face. She kneeled down in front of him, admiring the sight more.
Curtain Call watched how his mother rested her sight on his pee pee. He desired to bring this behind him as fast as possible. But the longer his mother stared, the more uncomfortable the colt became. Beads of sweet began to trickle down his forehead and his face began to show more and more uncertainty.
As his mother finally brought her mouth closer to his pee pee, after minutes of lustful staring, the second thoughts Curtain had developed reached their peak. He squirmed, inching back a little.
"Mommy, nor," he suddenly said. "I-I don'' wan' tor dor dis. Pleaser, let's gor hawmer!"
His mother followed his movements, ignoring the pleading request. "Jus' ar littler, Suga'! Mommy is jus' gettin' heh rewaw' for alway' bein' sor nicer tor your."
Curtain Call started to grind his teeth. "Mommy..... Pleaser sto'." Cold fear began to rise in him.
This time, the mare did not respond. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. After she brought it close to the stiff, little penis in front of her, she let it hover above it, increasing the tension for herself.
Curtain Call's tension increased, as well. He was shuddering all over his body now, in fearful anticipation what would happen soon. He tried to plead to his mother again, but only whimpers managed to escape his mouth. He shook his head, fast and repeatedly, while he starred in horror at the scene between his legs.
Finally, his mother did not want to wait any longer. Curtain Call watched her lowering her tongue and bringing it in front of his pee pee. When she let it leap forward and did the first, quick lick across the tip of it, Curtain started to protest again.
"NOR!" he shouted loudly. He inched further back in sheer panic, almost getting tangled up in the curtain that hang down the bed. "MOMMY, STAW' IT NOW AN' GOR HAWME!" he pleaded.
As his mother didn't listen and came closer again, his left hindleg twitched beyond his control. With all the strength that was in his little body, it came down on his mother's face. The mare howled in pain and covered her face. As she removed her hooves, Curtain Call could see that her nose was drenched in blood. It looked flatter than before and new blood was steadily trickling out of the nostrils. Small, red dots appeared on the white sheets as it dripped down from her chin.
For a moment, the shock dominated but then Curtain saw what he had done. "Nor....." he whimpered, tears now flowing down his face. "Mommy..... I'm sawry." He inched a bit closer again, while covering his pee pee with one hoof, intended to give his mother a hug. But as her face became distorted in sudden anger, he flinched and moved away again.
His mother showed her teeth to him. "YOUR!" she let out a scream of hatred. "MOMMY JUS' WANTE' TOR GE' AR REWAR' FOR ALWAY' DOIN' EVERYTIN' YOUR WAN'! AN' DIS IS HOW YOUR TAN' MOMMY?!" She reached for his face. "COMER HEA!"
Curtain Call jumped on all four hooves. In panic, he tried to escape through the curtain on the other side of the bed, ripping it down in the process. He fought and kicked to get rid of it and as he had managed, he jumped down the bed and began to run. Hearing the furious hoofsteps of his mother following him, Curtain Call ran through the store and right to the exit. Without stopping, he pushed the door open with his head and leaped outside.
The hallway outside was as dark as the store, but Curtain kept running, the fear letting him find the way somehow.
"STO' AN' TUR' AROUN'!" the hate-filled voice of his mother came down on him from behind. "DOR WHA' YOUH MUDDA WANT', YOUR BEGGIN' FREA'! LE' MER BER YOUH WHAWE, I DESERVER IT!"
Curtain Call's heart began to race faster and faster, both from the fear he felt and his increasing exhaustion. His mother was faster than him and he only could stay ahead of her because of the fear that controlled his legs. But now, his sides began to hurt and he felt how he got slower and slower. Knowing that he would have to stop running soon, Curtain did the only thing he could think of. He took a sharp turn to the left and ran into the corridor under the familiar, blue-glowing signs. Huffing, he reached the door of the nearest toilet and began to pull it open. But before he could slip inside, he felt the strong hoof of his mother coming down on his neck and pulling him back.
Bubblegum Blossom stared down at her son with her bloody face, unrestrained anger all over it. "You're naw' escapin'," she whispered. "Mommy wi' ge' wha' sher WANT'!"
Curtain Call choked. "Mommy, nor..... P-Pleaser....." His face was thick and red from crying and his usually happy expression replaced by deep fear and desperation.
"YE'!" his mother shouted. She spat into his face. "Mommy wi' ki' an' lickr youh cawck an' ge' your da firs' awgas' awf youh lifer, Suga'!" She let her tongue lap over her lips. "Den your arer goin' tor lick mommy an' repay da favaw, da times wherer mommy di' ting' for your witou' askin' for sometin' in retur' arer AWVA, Curtain!"
She moved closer to the frightened, crying colt and pushed him down, exposing him once more. "An' afta dat, your wi' user dis-" She stopped and poked against the, now limp, penis of her son. "- an' FUCK mommy into heh CUN' as lawng as sher want' your tor!" A greedy cackle left her mouth.
Curtain Call tried to scream, but his throat felt like he was getting strangled. His mother had used new words, words he never heard before, and it increased his fear tenfold.
"Now, let's STAR'!" his mother announced, licking her lips once more. She came close to his penis once more, tongue already sticking out now.
The fear in Curtain Call increased once more. Giving him new strength, it let him turn around and reach for the door again. "NOOOOOOOR!" he screamed. His mother grabbed his flank and held him in position, too tight for him to escape. Curtain flailed his forehooves around, desperate to find something to hold on to. Suddenly, he heard something splinter, and sharp pain flashed through his forehooves, making him scream again.
As he looked up, he saw something to the left ot the toilet's door. A faint outline of something that hadn't been there before. He was unable to make out what it was, but in his panic, the colt reached for it. It was strong and sturdy and as soon as he had pulled it out and held it firm in his hooves, he swung it against his mother's head.
Immediately, the pulling at his flank stopped. He felt the hooves letting loose and used the time to get up on all fours, protectively holding the object in front of him. Regaining his breath, he waited for his mother to lunge for him again. But nothing happened. The corridor lay silent and dark in front of him. Hesitantly, he let the object sink. As he had done, he could suddenly hear voices. Busy chatting once more, as well as the sound of many hoofsteps. The lights went on around him and, just like that, the mall had its life back.
Ponies were bustling and hurrying around in the hallway outside of the corridor. And in front of him, in bright light, Curtain Call could see his mother. She stared at him, eyes wide open, and her mouth still showed the same, greedy expression. There was no sign of blood in her face, nor of a broken nose. Her face looked pristine. But on her head, on the right side of it, gaped a large hole. Blood came out of it in streams and dropped down on his mother's shoulder, then on the floor.
The little colt, still scared and now additionally shocked over this sight, removed one hoof from the object he clasped and held it as his mouth. "M-Mommy?" he whined. As he looked down by instinct at the object he was holding, he finally saw what it was. His left forehoof was bleeding from cuts and in it was a large, red fire axe. The darker blood of his mother was still discernable from its colored surface.
Then, a sharp scream pierced the air and Curtain looked up. A mare had stopped at the entrance of the corridor and pointed at the corpse that laid there. She was screaming and screaming. Other ponies stopped at her side to check up on her and their eyes had to see the same. Their glances wandered from the dead body to Curtain Call and the bloody axe in his hoof. The ponies gasped.
"D-Did you do this?!" a stallion asked in disbelief. Curtain Call noticed him, it was the shop assistant who had caught him stealing earlier.
"N-Nor....." he stammered. "I-I mea', y-ye', b-bu'..... I..... I....." He did not know how to finish the sentence and stopped. A stream of fresh tears began to run down his face. He dropped the axe in disgust.
More ponies came and soon, a crowd had gathered. All of the ponies reached the same conclusion. They pointed hooves at him and then, the crowd started to shout.
"Her is ar murdara!" a mare shrieked.
"This colt killed his own mother! Wasn't stealing enough, you creepy, little bastard?!" the shop assistant shouted.
"Lock hi' u' in Tartaru'!" several ponies demanded.
The entire crowd agreed. Collectively, the gathered ponies started to shout the same word over and over again. "Tartaru'! Tartaru'! Tartaru'! Tartaru'!"
Shocked, confused and still scared, Curtain Call's hooves gave in and he collapsed to the floor. He covered his ears trying to drown out the word, without success.
"Mommy....." he whimpered. "Pleaser comer backr....." . |
Aegis | Comfort V̷ͩ̔ͧ̆͆̾͛a͝nͪ̏i̛͋͆̑̏́t̨̒͒ͤ̎ͨ̚y҉ ----- Accent-reduced version | . .
Comfort V̷ͩ̔ͧ̆͆̾͛a͝nͪ̏i̛͋͆̑̏́t̨̒͒ͤ̎ͨ̚y҉
The air in the dinner was filled with deep and loud growls. The lamps on the ceiling flickered, as if the light tried to flee from the sounds in terror. Mixed into the growls were long-stretched moans, coming from a table in the middle of the diner and being emanated by one lonely colt.
Curtain Call had his head placed on the table, his lips pointing downwards and his eyes radiating a piercing sadness. It was more than half an hour since he had seen Fast Bun, Corn Pops and Starlet Radiance the last time and the hunger almost drove Curtain Call nuts. His stomach hurt, yet there was nothing he could do about it, as the food he had left mysteriously vanished.
He moaned again and turned his head around, facing the other side of the diner. The open door came into the edges of his view, but Curtain Call had no energy to trot outside and search for his friends. Another painful growl came from his stomach. Whimpering, Curtain Call closed his eyes. As he opened them again a few seconds later, when the current wave of pain lessened, he found himself staring at something.
A reddish glow had attracted his attention and where it came from, on the counter, Curtain Call could see a large hayburger resting on a plate. Hayfries and a cup of soda stood right next to it. Curtain Call swallowed in anticipation and began to drool on the table. New strength forming in him, he lifted his head off the table, taking a closer look. The delicious meal that greeted his eyes sat right in the middle of the strange glow. The back of his mind wondered how it got there but the thought was suppressed by the active part of it, the one that craved the food to sate his enormous hunger.
The young colt slid off the chair, then he let this chubby legs carry him over to the counter. The smell coming from it made him drool more and his stomach responded to it with another growl. As he had arrived at the counter, Curtain Call reared up. He placed one forehoof right next to the plate and reached for the burger with the other one. He was close to touch the tasty treasure he had discovered as suddenly, he felt his hoof slapped away with full force.
"Hey, kiddaw!" a deep, angry voice to his right bellowed into his ears. "Whose food dor you touchin' hea?"
Scared, Curtain Call twitched and retracted his hoof. He looked into the direction the voice had come from. A brown stallion sat there, on one of the high, black stools, and he looked at him grimly. Too confused to say anything, Curtain Call just stared, his mouth opened wide. All of a sudden, he felt grabbed at the neck and pulled away from the counter.
"Oh, I'm sawry, mista, my little Suga' enjawys ar good hayburga ar bit too much!" a voice coming from behind increased Curtain's confusion tenfold. It sounded nervous and hectic and a little ashamed. "Now finally come, Curtain, you had youh meal ahready!" the voice continued as somepony kept dragging him away from the counter and out of the diner.
It was a voice Curtain knew well. He reached behind his neck and shoved the hooves that held him away. "I can wawlk alawne, mommy!"
Free, Curtain Call turned around and, indeed, there was his mom, Bubblegum Blossom. The mare with the blue and slightly curly mane glared down at him disapprovingly. She was wearing a small, yellow bow in her mane and a pink earring in her left ear. Both accessoires vibrated slightly as she shook her head.
"You can't just, like, go for oda ponies' food, Suga'," she said, a reprehensive tone in her voice. She looked down, sighing. "You ain't stil hungry, are you?" She reached out with a hoof and rubbed over his mane, gently.
Curtain Call did not respond. He just stood there, staring, while a ton of different impressions came down on him at once. The mall was full of life again. The hallway they stood in was brightly illuminated and ponies were rushing by left and right, the air filled with their chatter and the clopping of their hooves. Another impression got added as Curtain Call noticed the feeling in his stomach. Irritated, he reached down to it and stroke over it with a hoof. It was round and felt full and it was then that Curtain Call realized that he wasn't hungry anymore.
The colt looked around, letting his eyes fly over the various shops, all of which had opened, and the ponies who bustled in and out of them. As he looked back at his mom, only one question left his mouth.
"Why isn't it night anymawe?" He blinked at his mom, dumbfounded.
"Night? Oh, suga', it ain't nigh't anymawe for, like, ten hours!" Her face distorted into concern. "Are you ahrite, Curtain? Your look like you had ar bad dream, or somethin'."
Curtain Call blinked again, then he shook his head. He did not understand what was going on but with his hunger gone and the mall suddenly not being a dark, scary place anymore, this explanation was as good as any for the little colt. Besides, he did feel very tired this morning. So his mom had to be right, he figured. He didn't get locked up in the mall with his friends, it had all just been a nightmare.
"You're right. I think I fell asleep at ta table, mommy." Following a sudden impulse, he approached his mom and wrapped his hooves around her for a hug. Fluttering up a little, he snuggled his face against his mom's cheek.
"Aww, suga', dat must've been ar real nightmare," Bubblegum Blossom said in a soothing voice. "But now it's awva, don't wawry." She placed a hoof on Curtain's back and squeezed her son.
"Hmm....." Curtain cooed, enjoying the moment of intimacy. Feeling better now, he let go of his mom a few seconds later and fluttered back down. He gave her a cute, thankful smile, heart full of relief that everything was alright again.
"Now come, Suga'," his mom waved him closer. "We sti'll gawt, like, some stuff to buy." She laid a hoof on Curtain's back in a slight embrace and together, they began to move down the hallway.
While they trotted, Curtain Call suddenly realized that he had absolutely no memory on why they were here, or, how they had entered the mall today. The little colt taxed his brain to retain these memories, but nothing came to him. Once more confused, Curtain looked over to this mom.
"Mommy? What, uh, what else do we buy?" he asked carefully, feeling like he shouldn't make the situation even more strange.
"Oh, not much anymawe, Suga', just smawll stuff. We awlmawst gawt, like, everythin' for youh cousins' Hearth's Wawmin' presents!" She gave Curtain a smile.
"Huh?" Curtain Call stared at his mom. "Hearth's Wawmin' presents? But isn't Hearth's Wawmin' Eve still, like, two months away, mommy?"
Now it was Bubblegum Blossom who became confused. She stopped in her tracks and looked into her son's eyes. "Uh, no, Suga'. You know it's next week ahready." A new expression of motherly concern built on her face. She removed her hoof from Curtain's back. "I hope you don't have, like, feva, Suga'." She laid her hoof on Curtain's forehead, then moved it over his face, touching his chubby cheeks and then his neck. "Hmm....." she murmured as she could not feel any increased temperature.
Curtain Call shook his head. "Um-um. No, I'm feelin' okay, mommy. I think I'm just tired." He let out a demonstrative, semi-believable yawn.
"Aww, Suga', don't wawry! We're done hea, like, any minute, den we go hawme!" She stroke her son's face affectionately.
As they continued their way through the mall, his mom occasionally stopping at a shop to buy something, Curtain tried more to squeeze the memories he needed out of his brain. After a couple of fruitless attempts, his head began to feel cloudy so he stopped. Clueless what to do now, the colt decided to distract himself.
Curtain Call moved his eyes over the various shop windows he and his mom passed, looking at the various goods he saw. The window shopping did its job to get him away from thinking about how strange everything, especially his loss of memory, was. But it was ultimately the window of a toy shop that took Curtain's thoughts off the entire mystery.
Gasping, the little colt stopped, his eyes fixated in awe at a huge, red fire truck. Like hypnotized, he moved closer to the window and pressed his nose flat on it while he took in every detail of the massive toy. His eyes sparkled at this sight.
Ahead of him, Bubblegum Blossom noticed that her son was not at her side anymore. She turned around and looked at him. "Suga'?" she asked. "Come alawng, we still need ar few things."
Hearing the voice of his mom, a thought began to form in Curtain's head. It quickly gained domination. Curtain Call removed his face and hooves from the window and whizzed into his mom's direction, wings buzzing.
"Can we get dis, mommy? Can we, pleeeeeeease?" He shoved himself into his mom's face, squeaking adorableness leaving his throat.
Bubblegum Blossom followed the direction her son had come from with her eyes, until they rested on the firetruck behind the window. She scrunched her face as she looked back at Curtain. "I don't know, Suga', mommy ahready bawght ar Hearth's Wawmin' present for you....."
"Pleeeeeeeease!" the colt squeaked even louder. "If you buy it, I wont need ar present next yeah! Pleee-" his pleading stopped abruptly, as his mom her held a hoof at his mouth.
"Ahrite, ahrite....." she said. "I suppose we can get awne mawe if we count it as next year's present." She rolled her eyes, but smiled.
"Um-hm, um-hm!" Curtain's head bopped up and down, then he whizzed into the toy shop. His mom followed, sighing slightly.
A few minutes later, the mare and the colt came out of the shop again, Curtain clasping the package with his new toy truck tightly. A cute, satisfied smile was plastered on his face.
They trotted through the mall once more, silently, until his mom started to speak again. "How about you buy mommy ar snack, Suga'?"
Curtain Call removed his gaze from his new toy and looked up to his mom. Her hoof pointed at a sandwich in the vitrine of a small food stall and Curtain followed it with a confused look. Then his gaze went back to his mother, who was wearing a greedy and lusting expression. She licked her lips. "Now, Suga'?" A tiny, barely audible growl came from her stomach.
"Buyin' you ar sandwich?" Curtain Call asked. "Why?" He blinked.
"Oh, mommy has gotten ar little hungry, Suga'. Can you do dis for mommy, pleeease?"
"Well, yeah, but why do you wawnt me to buy it? Why do you naw't, like, buy it yawself?" Curtain Call scrunched his face.
"Oh, Suga', because mommy just bawght you an expensive toy, so why won't you buy mommy somethin' in return?" There was a slightly sarcastic tone in her voice and Curtain was not sure if his mom was teasing him or not.
"Well...." Curtain put down his toy truck and rubbed over the back of his head. "I'm naw't sure....."
Bubblegum Blossom quickly bent down down to her son and pressed his face against his cheek. "O', pleaser, mommy jus' wants tor haver, liker, sometin' fraw' your for awncer, Suga'! Can your dor dis for mommy, please, please, pleeeeeeeease?" She pressed harder and nuzzled him.
Curtain Call scrunched his face more and answered the stares some ponies who trotted by gave them now. "Uh..... Okay. I-I think I can," he said then. Pondering the request by his mom more, his unsure expression turned into a smile. Why not? She just bought him another Hearth's Warming present, the least he could do was paying her back with a little favor. He nuzzled his mom's face.
"Oh, thank you so much, Suga'!" Bubblegum Blossom squeaked. She put her hooves around her little colt's neck and squeezed him tightly.
Curtain Call turned around, opened his left saddlebag and pulled out a green wallet with the picture of a frog on it. He unzipped it and looked inside. Ten bits of his pocket money were still left, he observed. Curtain looked back to the sandwich in the vitrine, the price tag saying "10 Bits". He sighed a little as he saw that buying the sandwich would use up all of the money he had left for this month but regardless, he took out the bits, placed the wallet back in his saddlebag and then cantered up to the food stall.
As he had finished the purchase, he quickly zipped back to his mom, carrying the sandwich in one hoof. Bubblegum Blossom took the sandwich with a grateful smile. She rubbed over Curtain's mane appreciatively, then took a bite from the sandwich. As Curtain had picked up his toy truck again, they continued their way.
It wasn't long after she had finished her snack, that Bubblegum Blossom looked down on her son again. She directed his attention to a shop window located to their left. They stopped in front of it and as Curtain followed the hoof of his mom again, his eyes landed on a watch. It was golden and tiny diamonds where embedded around the numbers on its face. They glistened seductively in the lights of the window.
"What do your think awf dat watch, Suga'? Wawnna buy dat for mommy?" She looked at him and grinned, her face forming another greedy expression.
"What?" Curtain Call did not understand. "How, mommy? I have, like, no pawcket money anymawe and your don't give me enough." He pointed at the price tag, which said "2,000 Bits". Huffing now, he put down his truck and placed it at the side of the window.
"Oh, I know, Suga'. But if we use awll youh pawcket money until you're grawn up, you can pay mommy da money back." Her eyes took on a pleading expression.
"But....." Curtain's ears flattened and he began to look sad. "But den I won't get pawcket money anymawe until I'm, like, eighteen year'!" he cried out, voice sounding whiny.
His mom's expression did not change. She leaned down and crushed her son with a hug. "Oh, now come on, Suga'!" she wailed, sounding disappointed. "Mommy has bawght you sor much awvapriced stuff, why can't you do da same just awnce?" If Curtain would have been able to look at her face, he would have seen how her lip quivered.
A few sobs rang into his ears and he lowered his eyes. The little colt wrapped his forehooves around his mom's body and sniffed. "O-Okay," he said. "I do it for you, mommy, I don't want to make you sad." His heart stung over the thought that he would never get pocket money again now, but he was determined to keep his promise.
Together, Curtain Call and his mom trotted into the jewelry store. His mom ordered and the stallion behind the counter brought the watch she wanted. Bubblegum Blossom emptied her wallet demonstratively, pulling out two one-thousand bit bills and hoofing it to the jeweller. The stallion nodded and gave her a receipt. Bubblegum Blossom put the watch around her right foreleg immediately, then she left the shop with her son.
Curtain let his head hang, still wearing the sad expression. The picture of the toy truck on its package coming into his view did nothing to change how he felt.
After a few minutes, he sighed and looked up to his mom. She was holding up her right foreleg and looking at the watch with a dreamy expression.
"Did I make you happy, mommy?" the colt asked, expectation in his voice.
"Oh, sure, Suga'. You made mommy very happy," Bubblegum Blossom answered. She gave him a quick kiss on the head, then returned her attention to the watch.
"Okay....." he whispered, looking on the floor again.
Curtain Call was trapped in his thoughts, pondering the events that had transpired just now, as his mom suddenly poked him in the side. "Curtain!" she said. "Look at dis beautiful purse in dat shawp awva dere!" She pointed excitedly across the hallway, to yet another shop window. "Mommy would really like to have dis awne!"
Curtain gave the black purse with the white patterns on it only a short look, then he eyes his mom. "But awll my pawcket money is ahready used up....." His eyes looked slightly wet.
"Oh, yes, Suga'. And mommy doesn't have any money with heh anymawe now." She bent down and brought her mouth close to his ear. "Dat's why mommy would like you to steal dis purse for heh."
Curtain's eyes became wide and he gasped. "Stealin', mommy?! But I can't, stealin' isn't-" He felt a hoof shoved onto his mouth.
"Psst!" his mom said, lifting a hoof to her mouth. "Don't say it so loud, Suga'!" She looked around nervously, but none of the ponies who trotted by payed them any attention. She grabbed Curtain's neck and pulled him into a corridor that branched off to the left.
"Mommy will wait hea," she said, bending down to him. "Your just go ova dere and steal da purse I showed you!" She pointed at the shop, which was now directly opposite of them.
Curtain's expression was full of concern as he looked into his mom's face. "No, mommy," he said. "I love you, but we shouldn't steal somethin'. Your scolded me when I awlmawst took da hayburga of da mista in da dina."
The argument rolled off his mom's shoulders, like he hadn't said anything. "Oh, Curtain, don't be such ar spoilspawt! Mommy awnly asks for dis awne last thin' in return!" She nudged him, playfully.
"But, mommy..... What if somepony sees me? I don't wawnna go to prison....." There was fear in his eyes now.
"Oh, Suga', don't be silly! You're ar, like, five years old, you won't come into prison, da law doesn't work dat way." She smiled at him, reassuringly, and petted his mane.
"But it's still nawt-"
"Pleeeeeeease, Suga'!" Pleading returned into her voice. She bounced up and down in excitement. It looked ridiculous for a grown mare like her.
"For awnce, mommy awlsaw wants to have ar few nice things! I prawmise it's da last time!" She kissed his cheek.
Curtain shuddered. "F-Fine..... I'll go. But is it really da last time you ask me for somethin'?"
"Suga', awf cawse! I sweah I wont ask for anythin else afta dis!" She crossed her heart.
"O-Okay....." Curtain nodded and put down the package with his toy truck. "I will do it fast," he said, determination mixed with fear visible in his face.
"Oh, ahrite, Suga'! Just grab it and come back. Mommy will be hea when you return with her purse!" She nudged him into the direction of the shop.
Curtain nodded again. He turned around and gulped, then started trotting across the hallway.
He entered the shop as casually as he could and looked around. The purse was hanging from a low rack right next to him, just two steps away. There were a few customers in the shop, but they were at the far end of it. Too far away to notice, he concluded. And the shop assistant was nowhere to be seen right now.
Curtain let his eyes glide over the entirety of the shop a second time, then he quickly trotted to the purse, pulled it down and marshed for the exit. Just as he passed it, a howling alarm rang out. Red lights flashed up around him and he twitched.
"Hey, young colt!" a voice came from behind. A second later, Curtain felt grabbed and turned around. He looked into the face of a young stallion, who frowned at him grimly.
"A foal your age is stealing something?!" he asked, shocked. "Where are your parents?"
Hemming and hawing, Curtain tried to think of an excuse while looking around nervously. Before he could find one, he heard the voice of his mother and her approaching hoofsteps from behind.
"Curtain Call!" her horrified voice pierced into his ears. He felt a sharp pain as his mother grabbed his ear and pulled him over to her with force. "What are you doin', little mista?!" her angry face shouted at him.
Bubblegum Blossom huffed, pressing the toy truck package against her body with her free hoof. "Has mommy nawt, like, tawght you dat stealin' ain't okay, nawt even if you really want to have somethin'?! Brin' dis purse back right now!"
A few tears showed up in Curtain's eyes. He obeyed and went back to the rack, his chubby, little legs trembling.
While he was on the way, Bubblegum Blossom gave the shop assistant an apologetic smile. "I'm sawry, I awnly left him out of my eyes for ar minute. I mentioned how much I like dis purse, he prawbably tried to get it for me as ar present."
The shop assistant's stern expression cleared up only slightly. "Bring your son away from here, ma'am, or I will call the police!"
"Awf course," Bubblegum Blossom said, meekly. She grabbed Curtain's ear once more as he had returned. "I'm very sawry," she apologized again and bowed her head a little before turning back to Curtain. "And you come with me," she said sternly and dragged him with her.
Curtain Call whimpered over the pain in his ear, but his mother did not acknowledge it. "Awnce we're at hawme, you're goin' right to bed and I'll have to think if you really deserve ar presen for Hearth's Wawmin' Eve dis yeah!" she shouted instead, loud enough for the shop assistant to hear.
Only as they were out of his hearing range, she stopped scolding her son and let go of him. Curtain rubbed over his now reddened ear, still flinching in pain. "Ooooow!" he wailed.
"Dat was ar real failure, Suga'," his mom said, her voice accusatory. "I should've expected you can' do it....."
"But you tawld me to do it!" Curtain complained, still rubbing his aching ear.
The mare ignored the remark. Instead, she set herself into motion again and pulled him into a different direction. "Don't wawry, Suga', mommy knows how you can make dis up to heh!"
Curtain Call just frowned.
As his mother had finally stopped pulling at him, Curtain Call found himself inside a furniture store. Around him stood numerous beds in various shapes and sizes, all of them covered in clean, white bedding. Curtain was angry now, but the newly risen confusion over this sight pushed back the anger quickly.
"What are we doin' now?" he asked, some dread in his voice. He scrutinized one of the beds. "I can't steal an entire bed, mommy, it won't fit through the dooh!" he then added, quieter.
"Oh, Suga', no!" His mother laughed. "I'm nawt askin' you to steal ar bed," she said as her laughing fit was over, her voice low. "Dis time, mommy wants somethin' else....." The lusting, greedy expression was back in her face.
All of a sudden, Curtain Call felt very uncomfortable. He did a step back. "W-What is it?" he asked. There was caution in his voice.
His mother came closer, then she brought down her face in front of his. "Dis time, mommy want' you, Suga'!"
For the umpteenth time on this day, Curtain Call blinked at his mother in utter confusion. "Me? But, mommy..... You ahready have me. I'm hea."
"No, nawt like dis, Suga'. Mommy wants to have ar kiss. Would you give mommy awne?"
Curtain's face cleared up. "Ooooooh! Sure, mommy, I've kissed you befawe!" He smiled. Leaning in, he gave his mother a kiss on the cheek.
"Awww, thanks, Suga'! But dat's nawt what I meant. Mommy wants to have ar kiss on da mouth dis time."
This was weird. Curtain raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, simultaneously. He had kissed his mother a dozen times before, but she never asked him to kiss her mouth.
"Hmm....." his forehead in wrinkles, Curtain pondered the request. He knew what his mother asked for was unusual and thinking of doing that felt somehow wrong. But at the same time, he could not come up with a reason why it was wrong, no matter how much he taxed his little brain. The mouth was really close to the cheek, so it wouldn't be a real difference, he figured.
Having come to that conclusion, he nodded. "Okay, mommy!" the colt said, smiling.
"My good, little boy....." Bubblegum Blossom looked over the store. Unlike the one with the purse, this was one was crammed with customers. She placed a hoof over her son's neck and pulled him gently into a corner of the store. They stood behind a large bed with a white curtain at the sides now, shielded from the eyes of other ponies. She put down the toy truck there, freeing her hooves.
Curtain Call felt a sudden, inexplicable excitement rising in him. "How does ar kiss awn da mouth feel, mommy?"
"Aww, you will see now." Bubblegum Blossom chuckled over the innocent question. "Mommy will show you."
She didn't waste any more time and leaned in on her son's face, pressing her lips on his. A moan left her throat. As she felt how Curtain opened his lips, surprised by the new experience, she stretched out her tongue and let it glide into his mouth. Curtain Call's eyes shot open wildly as he felt the intruder.
A sultry look on her face, Bubblegum Blossom moaned again. She played with her son's tongue for a few seconds, before she released the kiss and retreated from the colt.
Curtain Call gasped for air as he was free. His heart was racing and he felt weird emotions rising in him, somewhere between curiosity and the desire to gag in disgust.
His mother looked down at him, wearing a satisfied expression. She licked her lips. "How did you like it, Suga'?" "It....." Curtain Call tried to decide for a word to describe the experience. "It was slimy." He spat out a little. "I'm sawry, mommy..... I-I didn't like it." A shudder went down his spine.
"Awww, it's okay, Suga'! You will like mawe what mommy is goin' to do nex!" Bubblegum Blossom grinned at her little colt.
"Doin' next?" The uncomfortable feeling from earlier returned. Curtain Call stepped away from his mother. "I don't wawnna do anythin' next, mommy..... Can we go hawme now?" His eyes looked at her in sadness, once more fear mixed in them.
"Aww, Suga', no, nawt yet. Mommy needs just, like, awne last thin' first." She turned to the bed and lifted up the curtain next to them, then placed it in the bed and pushed it back a little. There was now some free space, just enough for a little colt like Curtain to sit on. His mother turned back at him.
"Sit down dere, Suga', it wont take lawng," she chirped.
Curtain did not follow the prompt. Instead, he did another step back. "W-What mommy?" he asked. "What do you want to do?" "Nothin' big, Suga'. Just anotha kiss." The mare smiled widely.
"O-On da mouth again?" Curtain Call shrunk a little, eyeing his mother with a good portion of wariness now.
"No, Suga'. Now, mommy is goin' to kiss youh pee pee."
A wave of heat flared up inside Curtain Call. "But, mommy, you tawl me dat nopony is allowed to touch me dere!" Curtain felt bewildered hearing his mother suggesting something she had always told him was wrong to do. Feeling his little world view getting shattered, the colt remained still in a state between surprise and confusion.
His mother refused to explain her sudden change of mind. "Mommy wants to kiss and lick it.," she said, her eyes looking as dreamily as they had when she admired the watch earlier. "Awva and awva again....."
Somehow, Curtain Call could feel that her eyes were directed between his hindlegs. A very faint blush was in the colt's face now. "B-But you can't, mommy! If you do dat, da oda ponies in da stawe will nawtice!"
He turned around and ran a few steps to the other side of the bed, to direct his mother's attention back to the many ponies in the store. But when he stepped out from behind the bed, nopony was here. Suddenly, Curtain Call noticed that it was completely still around him. All the sounds of chattering and bustling ponies that had found their way into the furniture store were gone. A second later, the lights suddenly turned off and it got instantly dark around the colt.
"M-Mommy?" he asked and winced. The mall was the same as before now, like he had seen it in his nightmare..... But his mother was still here, as her voice soon confirmed to him.
"Suga'! Come back hea, mommy just wants to have some fun!"
Curtain Call understood nothing anymore. But now that the darkness had returned, he was afraid, so he turned on his hooves and went back to his mother behind the bed. Her face greeted him with the same lusting and greedy expression still. Behind her, a word was written on the wall all of a sudden, the letters red and crooked.
"Mommy?" Curtain Call asked. "What's dis word?"
Bubblegum Blossom turned around, then back at her son. "I don't know what you mean, Suga'. Dere's just a wawll.
Curtain Call scrunched his face. He could clearly see the word. And, as much as he could tell with his underdeveloped ability to read, the word on the wall was "Aegis". It made no sense to him, so Curtain Call turned to the next thing that surprised him.
He was not supposed to see his mother's face in this darkness, but then he noticed something that had slipped his attention earlier. There was a nightstand next to the bed and on it stood a small lamp. It glowed brightly, so his mother must have turned it on after the lights went out. The shine of the lamp fell on the bed, right on the spot his mother had freed there. And this was the spot his mother patted now.
"Come, Suga', sit down hea," she spoke the same prompt again.
Curtain Call still felt unsure about the situation. He looked around in the mostly dark store, the shapes of the furniture looking creepy and scary in the darkness. He heard a rustling somewhere in the store and he could not tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him or if it was real. Curtain Call looked into his mother's eyes.
"D-Do you still want to do dis?" he stammered, fearfully.
"Suga', awf cawse mommy wants to! Now sit down, finally!" There was impatience in her voice now.
Curtain Call heard something dripping on the floor. As he followed the source of the sound, he saw a small puddle under his mother, right between her hindlegs. His youthful mind wondered if his mother was scared in this darkness, too, so much that she had peed herself.
"I-I'm scared, mommy....." the colt whimpered. "C-Can we go hawme awnce you....." He trailed off mid-sentence, unable to complete the weird sentence immediately. "Awnce you.... Awnce you kissed and licked my pee pee?"
"I prawmise, Suga'!" his mother reassured him. "Awnce mommy had heh fun, we leave dis dark place and go hawme tawgeda."
"O-Okay....." a small smile formed on his lips. Obediently now, he came closer to his mother and the small, lit-up corner. He sat down on the free space of the bed, then looked up to his mother expectantly. All of this still felt weird to the colt but in his fear, he was willing to do everything to leave the creepy, dark mall as fast as possible.
"What now, mommy?" he asked, sounding impatient himself now.
"Now, Suga', spread youh legs, like, really wide, so dat mommy's mouth can get to youh pee pee," she instructed her son.
Curtain Call followed her words and spread his legs apart. Looking down, he saw that his pee pee was a little stiff all of a sudden, just like when he had to pee. But right now, he felt no urge for this.
Her mother looked down at the slightly stiff penis of her son, licking her lips once more, while a grin formed on her face. She kneeled down in front of him, admiring the sight more.
Curtain Call watched how his mother rested her sight on his pee pee. He desired to bring this behind him as fast as possible. But the longer his mother stared, the more uncomfortable the colt became. Beads of sweet began to trickle down his forehead and his face began to show more and more uncertainty.
As his mother finally brought her mouth closer to his pee pee, after minutes of lustful staring, the second thoughts Curtain had developed reached their peak. He squirmed, inching back a little.
"Mommy, no," he suddenly said. "I-I don' want to do dis. Please, let's go hawme!"
His mother followed his movements, ignoring the pleading request. "Just ar little, Suga'! Mommy is just gettin' heh rewawd for always bein' so nice to you."
Curtain Call started to grind his teeth. "Mommy..... Please stop." Cold fear began to rise in him.
This time, the mare did not respond. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. After she brought it close to the stiff, little penis in front of her, she let it hover above it, increasing the tension for herself.
Curtain Call's tension increased, as well. He was shuddering all over his body now, in fearful anticipation what would happen soon. He tried to plead to his mother again, but only whimpers managed to escape his mouth. He shook his head, fast and repeatedly, while he starred in horror at the scene between his legs.
Finally, his mother did not want to wait any longer. Curtain Call watched her lowering her tongue and bringing it in front of his pee pee. When she let it leap forward and did the first, quick lick across the tip of it, Curtain started to protest again.
"NO!" he shouted loudly. He inched further back in sheer panic, almost getting tangled up in the curtain that hang down the bed. "MOMMY, STAWP IT NOW AND GO HAWME!" he pleaded.
As his mother didn't listen and came closer again, his left hindleg twitched beyond his control. With all the strength that was in his little body, it came down on his mother's face. The mare howled in pain and covered her face. As she removed her hooves, Curtain Call could see that her nose was drenched in blood. It looked flatter than before and new blood was steadily trickling out of the nostrils. Small, red dots appeared on the white sheets as it dripped down from her chin.
For a moment, the shock dominated but then Curtain saw what he had done. "No....." he whimpered, tears now flowing down his face. "Mommy..... I'm sawry." He inched a bit closer again, while covering his pee pee with one hoof, intended to give his mother a hug. But as her face became distorted in sudden anger, he flinched and moved away again.
His mother showed her teeth to him. "YOU!" she let out a scream of hatred. "MOMMY JUST WANTED TO GET AR REWARD FOR ALWAYS DOIN' EVERYTHIN' YOU WANT! AND DIS IS HOW YOU THANK MOMMY?!" She reached for his face. "COME HEA!"
Curtain Call jumped on all four hooves. In panic, he tried to escape through the curtain on the other side of the bed, ripping it down in the process. He fought and kicked to get rid of it and as he had managed, he jumped down the bed and began to run. Hearing the furious hoofsteps of his mother following him, Curtain Call ran through the store and right to the exit. Without stopping, he pushed the door open with his head and leaped outside.
The hallway outside was as dark as the store, but Curtain kept running, the fear letting him find the way somehow.
"STAWP AND TURN AROUND!" the hate-filled voice of his mother came down on him from behind. "DO WHAT YOUH MUDDA WANTS, YOU BEGGIN' FREAK! LET ME BE YOUH WHAWE, I DESERVE IT!"
Curtain Call's heart began to race faster and faster, both from the fear he felt and his increasing exhaustion. His mother was faster than him and he only could stay ahead of her because of the fear that controlled his legs. But now, his sides began to hurt and he felt how he got slower and slower. Knowing that he would have to stop running soon, Curtain did the only thing he could think of. He took a sharp turn to the left and ran into the corridor under the familiar, blue-glowing signs. Huffing, he reached the door of the nearest toilet and began to pull it open. But before he could slip inside, he felt the strong hoof of his mother coming down on his neck and pulling him back.
Bubblegum Blossom stared down at her son with her bloody face, unrestrained anger all over it. "You're nawt escapin'," she whispered. "Mommy will get what she WANTS!"
Curtain Call choked. "Mommy, no..... P-Please....." His face was thick and red from crying and his usually happy expression replaced by deep fear and desperation.
"YES!" his mother shouted. She spat into his face. "Mommy will kiss and lick youh cawck and get you da first awgasm awf youh life, Suga'!" She let her tongue lap over her lips. "Den you are goin' to lick mommy and repay da favaw, da times where mommy did things for you without askin' for somethin' in return are AWVA, Curtain!"
She moved closer to the frightened, crying colt and pushed him down, exposing him once more. "And afta dat, you will use dis-" She stopped and poked against the, now limp, penis of her son. "- and FUCK mommy into heh CUNT as lawng as she wants you to!" A greedy cackle left her mouth.
Curtain Call tried to scream, but his throat felt like he was getting strangled. His mother had used new words, words he never heard before, and it increased his fear tenfold.
"Now, let's START!" his mother announced, licking her lips once more. She came close to his penis once more, tongue already sticking out now.
The fear in Curtain Call increased once more. Giving him new strength, it let him turn around and reach for the door again. "NOOOOOOO!" he screamed. His mother grabbed his flank and held him in position, too tight for him to escape. Curtain flailed his forehooves around, desperate to find something to hold on to. Suddenly, he heard something splinter, and sharp pain flashed through his forehooves, making him scream again.
As he looked up, he saw something to the left ot the toilet's door. A faint outline of something that hadn't been there before. He was unable to make out what it was, but in his panic, the colt reached for it. It was strong and sturdy and as soon as he had pulled it out and held it firm in his hooves, he swung it against his mother's head.
Immediately, the pulling at his flank stopped. He felt the hooves letting loose and used the time to get up on all fours, protectively holding the object in front of him. Regaining his breath, he waited for his mother to lunge for him again. But nothing happened. The corridor lay silent and dark in front of him. Hesitantly, he let the object sink. As he had done, he could suddenly hear voices. Busy chatting once more, as well as the sound of many hoofsteps. The lights went on around him and, just like that, the mall had its life back.
Ponies were bustling and hurrying around in the hallway outside of the corridor. And in front of him, in bright light, Curtain Call could see his mother. She stared at him, eyes wide open, and her mouth still showed the same, greedy expression. There was no sign of blood in her face, nor of a broken nose. Her face looked pristine. But on her head, on the right side of it, gaped a large hole. Blood came out of it in streams and dropped down on his mother's shoulder, then on the floor.
The little colt, still scared and now additionally shocked over this sight, removed one hoof from the object he clasped and held it as his mouth. "M-Mommy?" he whined. As he looked down by instinct at the object he was holding, he finally saw what it was. His left forehoof was bleeding from cuts and in it was a large, red fire axe. The darker blood of his mother was still discernable from its colored surface.
Then, a sharp scream pierced the air and Curtain looked up. A mare had stopped at the entrance of the corridor and pointed at the corpse that laid there. She was screaming and screaming. Other ponies stopped at her side to check up on her and their eyes had to see the same. Their glances wandered from the dead body to Curtain Call and the bloody axe in his hoof. The ponies gasped.
"D-Did you do this?!" a stallion asked in disbelief. Curtain Call noticed him, it was the shop assistant who had caught him stealing earlier.
"N-No....." he stammered. "I-I mean, y-yes, b-but..... I..... I....." He did not know how to finish the sentence and stopped. A stream of fresh tears began to run down his face. He dropped the axe in disgust.
More ponies came and soon, a crowd had gathered. All of the ponies reached the same conclusion. They pointed hooves at him and then, the crowd started to shout.
"He is ar murdara!" a mare shrieked.
"This colt killed his own mother! Wasn't stealing enough, you creepy, little bastard?!" the shop assistant shouted.
"Lock him up in Tartarus!" several ponies demanded.
The entire crowd agreed. Collectively, the gathered ponies started to shout the same word over and over again. "Tartarus! Tartarus! Tartarus! Tartarus!"
Shocked, confused and still scared, Curtain Call's hooves gave in and he collapsed to the floor. He covered his ears trying to drown out the word, without success.
"Mommy....." he whimpered. "Please come back....." . |
Aegis | Company L̵̡̓͐̊̈́̂̐͡o̶ͥͩ̀n̡ͦ̓͒ͨ̃ͩe͂ͬ̒lͥ̆̒̋͊̋̚͡i̎̚͘͝҉n̂̋́e̛͌̏ͬ̄̒͆͆s͌̌͝҉s̡̿͆ͫͪ͜ | . .
Company L̵̡̓͐̊̈́̂̐͡o̶ͥͩ̀n̡ͦ̓͒ͨ̃ͩe͂ͬ̒lͥ̆̒̋͊̋̚͡i̎̚͘͝҉n̂̋́e̛͌̏ͬ̄̒͆͆s͌̌͝҉s̡̿͆ͫͪ͜
Starlet Radiance was sitting upright in her chair. She was quiet, not filling the diner with any sounds except for the incessant knocking on the table by her right forehoof. Starlet was staring at the window of the empty diner; stoically, patiently. Like something was about to happen outside, something that wasn't to be expected late at night in a deserted mall. Nothing was happening, of course, but the filly kept staring regardless. The sound of her hoof on the table rang hollow throughout the diner. It sounded eerie and creepy, but Starlet Radiance did not twitch.
It was after a while, maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty (Starlet had nothing with her to count the time, as the clock above the counter had mysteriously stopped), that Starlet Radiance gave in. She arranged her forelegs neatly on the table and placed her chin on them. Bored, she kept staring. The darkness behind the window began flickering the longer she looked at it and Starlet did not know whether it was her mind that tried to entertain itself to ease the crippling boredom or..... something else. The possibility of something else did not unsettle her, as one might have expected. On the contrary, she stayed rather calm about the prospect that something else might come to try and get her.
After a few more minutes, the flickering turned into swirling, then the swirling formed a picture, then the picture started moving. A mare appeared. Tall, with a pink coat and a dark, blue mane. Her appearance looked strict, because of the size of her body and the clothes she was wearing, but her face was graced by a caring expression, that felt mismatched in comparison.
More swirls appeared as the mare leaned over something. They formed a rectangular structure, with soft and comfortable curves at the top. The part of the structure that was directly under the mare's face looked like the faint outline of another face and as all of this got colored, Starlet Radiance recognized and remembered.
The structure turned out to be a bed and inside of it, Starlet saw herself. Her face was red and puffy, her eyes bloodshot and she was coughing loudly. The mare, who she now finally recognized as her mom, sat down at the side of her bed and brushed a gentle hoof over her sweaty mane.
"My poor daughter," Starlet heard her speaking. "I'm so sorry. If only I had known you would become sick, I would not have went into the office today."
The illusion of herself managed to form a smile between the coughs. She wrapped her tiny hooves around her mother's forehoof and nestled her face into it.
New tears ran down the face of the real Starlet Radiance. The filly got up from her chair, hastily, and staggered towards the window. "Mommy, don't go away!" she cried out. The movements of her lips were strangely simultaneous with those of her image, that spoke the same sentence.
"I'm here now, Starlet, don't worry." Her mother gave the image of her a kiss on the forehead. It caused Starlet's heart to sting and she began to cry louder.
"Daddy will be home in an hour and until then, I will make some tea and hot soup for you." The mare stood up and trotted to the other side of the bed, where she fiddled around with something. "I turned up the radiation for you," she said. Then she turned around and trotted away, until she had disappeared. A second later, the bed and the image of herself fell apart and turned back into swirls.
"Mommy, NO!" Starlet cried at the now empty window. It burst in front of her, a shower of glass splinters raining down on the floor of the hallway behind it. Starlet twitched and stumbled back, fright appearing on her face now.
The glass was gone, but the swirls remained in its place. They wafted outside into the hallway, like they got blown at by an invisible gust of wind. Starlet still couldn't figure out if they were actually there, or just products of her imagination, but she followed them. Haste in her step, she climbed through the now broken window and stepped into the hallway. The swirls had a headstart, they were floating above ground level just at the height of the filly's eyes in a couple meters distance. Starlet Radiance hurried after them in a fast trot, as they began to take on a concrete form again.
They turned into solid, erect structures, with a poofy-looking extension at the top of them. Others formed much smaller structures, long in shape and each of them right next to one of the other manifestations. Starlet Radiance began to hear sounds around her, singing and laughing of other foals that got interrupted by the occasional excited squeal. More swirls appeared and the mare with the pink coat and blue mane, her mother, returned into Starlet's view. The swirl at her side took on the form of a stallion, his coat of a turquoise color and his mane a fiery red.
"DADDY!" Starlet cried as loud as she could, but the stallion did not look up at her.
He was sitting on a bench, his wife closely held at his shoulder. He kissed her mouth tenderly, which she redeemed with a passionate and comfortable sigh of pleasure.
"DADDY!" Starlet's voice rang out again. But her lips hadn't moved this time. In the distance, the swirls had formed a playground. Once more, Starlet saw herself. She was standing at the start of a long slide, waving ferociously. "Daddy, Mommy! Look what I can do!"
The parents looked over at their daughter, smiling gratefully.
The picture of herself above the slide waved one last time, then she suddenly flopped onto the floor, gave herself a push and slid down, face-forward and on her belly. She squealed and squeaked from joy all the way down. At the bottom, she jumped off elegantly, pinwheeled in the air and landed on monkey bars at the other side. She turned around, her hooves not once slipping from the strut she stood on, and threw her forehooves into the air. "Tadaa!" she shouted over to her parents.
"Oooooooooh!" her parents voiced their astonishment from their puckered lips. They sat up and clapped their hooves together in awe, giving their daughter a bombastic applause.
The illusion of herself bowed down gracefully, bathing in the applause, then the entire scenery vanished all of a sudden and the mall around Starlet Radiance was just darkness again.
Starlet gulped and her body started shivering. Unable to stay on her hooves, she sat down, then covered her face. "MOMMY!" she shrieked, loud enough to produce a resounding echo that seemed to reach through the entire mall. Her tears soaked the coat on her forehooves.
"DAAAAAADDY!" a second, longer shriek followed from her throat. "Why did you leave me alone?" she added then, her voice noticeably weaker. The distraught filly expected an answer. She hoped to get one. But nopony answered her question.
For a good amount of time, because of the crippling loneliness Starlet Radiance felt since this memory had flooded her mind, she was too weak to get back up. The swirls were still there, in the air around her, and they seemed to beckon her to follow them. But Starlet was lacking the motivation for anything that required more energy than crying bitterly and kept sitting at her spot, wetting the floor and herself with more and more tears. It wasn't until she heard something that called for her attention that Starlet Radiance finally found the strength to get back onto her hooves.
"Staaaaaaarlet!" she heard her name getting called. It was undoubtedly and unmistakably the voice of her mother again.
Albeit still crying, the little filly trudged ahead once more. The swirls were now far away and she could only catch a small glimpse of them before they disappeared behind a corner on the left side. Still too exhausted to run, she approached the corner in a slow tempo and with rising desire to catch up with the swirling, wild patterns.
"Staaaaaaarlet!" she heard the voice again, louder this time. Closer. "Starlet? Mommy is here for you. Come! Come and follow my voice, my sweet, little pie!"
Each word let Starlet's heart race faster, as her yearning became stronger and stronger. "Mommy?" she managed to ask as she had almost reached the corner, but it came out only weakly.
Having turned around the corner and looking into another hallway now, Starlet could finally see her mother again. She was entering one of the side corridors, the ones that led to the elevators and the staircases, and Starlet increased her tempo as she chased after her. "Mommy! Wait!" her voice rasped, still impaired from all the crying.
Her mother did not turn around, then got swallowed up by the darkness of the corridor. As Starlet arrived in it, she was greeted by nothing than this darkness. Her mother was nowhere to be seen and as she rasped another cry for her, she once again received no response. Starlet wiped over her eyes, rubbing old tears away while new ones came streaming out. She was close to collapsing again, as she heard her name getting called behind her.
"You can open your eyes now, Starlet!"
She turned around and found herself looking at another large scenery. It had become built up quietly behind her, while she had been looking for her mom. She saw herself again, sitting in the middle of many scattered gift packages. Behind her image towered a large Hearth's Warming tree and she could hear the crackling of the fire in the chimney at the left side of the illusion. The colorful dress she had put on for the occasion and the red ribbon in her mane almost made her look like a gift herself.
Starlet sniffed up and bit her lip, another fresh torrent of tears running down her cheeks, as she witnessed yet another memory, projected by her mind or maybe unseen forces around her.
She saw herself squealing and holding her cheeks in awe, with hooves that were even tinier than Starlet's hooves currently were, looking around and trying to decide which of the packages she should try as the first one.
"Open this one!" her dad said after a minute had passed without a decision. He put one of the larger gifts right in front of her image.
Eagerly, her younger self flopped on her flank and pulled the package closer. With zeal and a wild strength that seemed uncommon for a toddler, she ripped off the wrapping in large scraps. Mere seconds later, she had uncovered a large, blue package. Through the transparent front, a filly made of plastic and in the cheesiest pink colors smiled at her. To its left and right, it was framed by an assortment of dresses and other clothes, differently-sized brushes and several other accessories. White shutters were painted around the transparent plastic, making it look like the items could be seen through tiny windows.
The image of herself opened her mouth widely, shock and surprise written on her young face, eyes gleaming at the discovery. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to find any words, then she suddenly jumped into her dad's lap, wrapped her tiny hooves around his waist and snuggled into his chest.
"Daddy, Daddy!" she shouted in glee. "Thank you, Daddy, it's the doll I wanted! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She rubbed her face into his coat, a few tiny tears of joy trickling out of her eyes.
Her mother came into view. She sat down behind her and stretched out her hooves, wrapping both her little filly and her husband into a tight embrace. Squeezed by her beloved parents, her image cooed and smiled in comfort while the real Starlet erupted into yet another round of sniffing, whimpering and crying.
"Just what our best daughter deserves!" she heard her dad speaking, his hooves grasped around the back of her projected image. He laughed.
The image of Starlet moved her tiny head and looked into her dad's face. "Am I, really? I'm really the best daughter?" Her eyes started gleaming even more.
Her mother turned her head slightly and the parents exchanged a grateful glance.
"Yes, Starlet," her mother answered softly. "You are the best daughter in all of the wide, wide-" Her mouth stopped moving abruptly and the words fizzled out.
Starlet gasped. The body of her mother was completely still all of a sudden. She did not move anymore and neither did her dad. The color vanished from their bodies and they suddenly appeared dull and gray. Only the image of herself was still colorful and still in motion. Tenderly, her younger self kept snuggling into her dad's chest without noticing any change around her.
"Why?" Starlet whimpered. She sniffed up again.
Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a bang and, like it was a signal, the grey bodies of her parents dissolved into tiny flakes. Once more, it was like there was an invisible gust of wind as they got blown up into the air, until Starlet could not see them in the darkness above her head anymore. Only the image of herself remained for a little while longer, snuggling the air in front of her. Then it disappeared, too.
"Why?" Starlet whimpered another time. Her head started to hurt and her tear-filled eyes were barely able to follow the swirls in the darkness that proceeded further down the corridor and aimed for another corner.
"Starlet!"
She twitched as she heard the voice of her dad coming from the darkness.
"Come to daddy! You don't have to hide, it's just me! Please, come to me, Starlie!"
Cold shivers crept down Starlet Radiance's spine. This was a nickname only her parents called her with. She was sure, no, she knew, that she didn't tell any other pony about this nickname, not even her friends. But her parents weren't here, there was no way how they could be here and they had no reason to be looking for her at this place. Starlet was young, but she could put together that her parents searching for her inside the mall was impossible.
"Starlie!" the voice of her mother chimed again. "Come, Starlie, Mommy is here, Mommy wants to see you!"
Starlet looked around, now fear rising and fighting for dominance with her loneliness. Both feelings swirled around inside her.
"Starlie!" "Starlie!" "Staaaaarlie!" "Starlie?" "Staaaaaaaaaaaaarlie!"
The voices seemed to come from all sides and from all distances. Starlet could not figure out if the closer ones were echoes or really near her, but her fear gave her a boost and she trotted down the hallway, still following the shadowy swirls. The fear of the voices and the dread of what could be around the corner let Starlet alternate in her trotting speed, but she managed to reach the corner faster than the one before. As she went around it, she almost wished she hadn't reached it.
The entire corridor in front of her was filled with colors. Left and right, in the small side corridors, inside the shop windows, even on the galleries above her and on the ground, several scenes were playing at once. It looked like somepony had built up multiple, magical screens and activated them all at once. From her position, Starlet could identify different locations on almost each of them; there was her favourite playground, the living room of her home, her bedroom, other rooms in her house and pretty much every place in Manehattan she had went to with her parents in the past. And one thing was always the same, she was there with her parents and could see a happy moment she had spent with them.
Starlet did not dare to venture further. She shuddered as sobs, that caused her entire body to shook and tremble, rang out of her throat.
"Stop it," she whimpered, voice stiffled by the tears. "Please stawp."
Behind her, in the vast darkness of where she had come from, she suddenly heard a loud gasp, then somepony talking. "Starlie! Starlie, turn around!" There was some shivering in the voice.
The young filly did not listen. Instead, she screeched and jumped. Then she started galloping at full speed. The scenes rushed past her, most of them having become a blur, and her mind was too busy with her fear to reminisce about the ones she could still identify. Starlet ran to the end of the corridor, then took a sharp turn to the left. She tripped over a bench, almost fell, caught herself and kept galloping. By now, she had started to scream. She could hear hoofsteps behind her and nothing in her desired to stop and check if they were real or not.
It was when she approached another corner, that giggles and laughter filled her ears. Starlet twitched, but she was running too fast to stop before the corner. She skidded around it and her eyes widened at the sight in front of her.
Another scene was playing there, but something was different this time. She could see herself, sitting on one of the benches. There was another filly at her side, happily dangling her cream-colored legs over the edge of the bench. She could hear her bright, blue pigtails rustle in the silence around her every time she moved her head. Her parents were there, too, as it was to expect. They sat on the bench next to them and were talking, but not without sending the occasional glance into the direction of her image and the other filly. But unlike all the other scenes, this one did not show a different place.
Starlet noticed how the images of the benches she saw herself, the other filly and her parents sitting on appeared white and bright. The real benches, that were merely intimidating shadows in the darkness, were covered up by the illusions. Only a tiny bit of the darkness on them could be seen behind the images, not quite enough to make them look grey.
The cream-colored filly giggled again. It sounded muffled and now Starlet could see that she was holding a brush in her mouth. A set of watercolors lay to her left and a strong, thick piece of paper was on her knees. It showed paintings of trees and buildings. The lower part of the picture showed tiny figures, ponies that were cheering and clapping. The filly drew a few more ponies right in front of the trees and buildings. They were holding each other's hooves and bowed down with smiling faces, the other ponies undoubtedly an audience of some sort.
The filly took the brush out of her mouth. "Now it's finished," she spoke in a low, timid voice. She put down the brush and placed it on the box with the watercolors. "I think that's how the stage should look. What do you think, Starlet?" She turned around expectantly.
Starlet could observe how her image clapped with her hooves. "Dis looks so great!" she cheered. "I'm sure she will like it!"
The eyes of the other filly started glowing. "Really? You really think so, Starlet?"
Her image nodded, wearing a confident smile. "I bet! She will choose your design once she sees it!"
The other filly squeaked from joy and she fell around her neck. "I am so glad you helped me, Starlet, thank you! I'll owe it to you if my design wins!"
Her image grinned widely and wrapped her hooves around the other filly. "I'll always help you, Pommy, no matter what!"
Starlet was staring at the scene for a few more seconds, shaking and crying stronger than before. Then she broke down right in front of the bench, to the hooves of her image who was still hugging the other filly. From tear-filled eyes, she could see how, once more, the image of her parents turned gray and stopped moving, their mouths frozen mid-sentence. It was the same for the pigtailed filly, frozen in the embrace of her image and her entire body gray. The gray bodies were reminiscent of ash that remained of burnt paper.
A sob left Starlet's throat and she averted her eyes. Looking down on the floor, she gripped her head with both forehooves. "Make it stop!" it escaped her. "Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it STOP!" she yelled and let her hooves come down on her head, while the bodies of her parents and the cream-colored filly dissolved into flakes and floated into the air. Her image remained, giggling happily and hugging an invisible filly, just like the last time. After a minute it disappeared, as well, and the corridor fell silent again.
Nothing could be heard anymore, save for Starlet's sobbing and the thumps when her hooves knocked on her skull.
The breakdown lasted for a couple of minutes, then Starlet's energy left her and she let her hooves drop to the floor. She breathed heavily while she tried to recover from the attack. Her eyes were dry now. They hurt as she looked ahead and, much to her surprise, found herself looking at the diner she had left earlier. The shards on the floor glistened in the moonlight that shone through a window. In her distraught state, and with all the sadness, fear and panic she had felt, Starlet hadn't noticed that she had been going around in a circle. It must have been half an hour since she left, she estimated, and now she was back from where she started.
Trembling, she slowly brought herself into an upright position. Her wobbling knees made it likely she would fall again, but Starlet managed to keep standing. Weak and tired, and exhausted from all the running and crying, she motioned back to the diner.
It was where she belonged. |
Aegis | Solace T̴̑ͤ͐ͥͨ̂̌ͬͯ̓̋ͨ̔̈́ͥͤ̆̚͏́é̏͒̽̃ͩ͌ͩ̅͗͋ͥ̊̓ͨͫ̉̂̀͢͏͟ŗ̷̏̆͂̓̌̑̀ͮ͛ͪ͜r͛ͯͧ̈́͋ͫ̌̇ͩ͑͆̌̋͝͡ǫ̴̵ͧ͊̓ͫ̈̾ͭ̀́҉r̴̊͂̏ͯ̎͂ͬͣ͑̎̀̃̃͂ͦ̒̆͡ | . .
Solace T̴̑ͤ͐ͥͨ̂̌ͬͯ̓̋ͨ̔̈́ͥͤ̆̚͏́é̏͒̽̃ͩ͌ͩ̅͗͋ͥ̊̓ͨͫ̉̂̀͢͏͟ŗ̷̏̆͂̓̌̑̀ͮ͛ͪ͜r͛ͯͧ̈́͋ͫ̌̇ͩ͑͆̌̋͝͡ǫ̴̵ͧ͊̓ͫ̈̾ͭ̀́҉r̴̊͂̏ͯ̎͂ͬͣ͑̎̀̃̃͂ͦ̒̆͡
Corn Pops did not dare to move. It was around him, he could sense it. Something, whatever it was, stared at him. He did not open his eyes, nor look around. But the little colt could feel the eyes on his body, burning, like they wanted to set him on fire.
His whimpers still filled the air around him. There was something here with him in the diner, something that hated him, and it frightened Corn Pops more than anything that had ever frightened him. Trapped in this disastrous state, his mind began to drift off, to flee into a more pleasant world.
Behind his closed eyelids, in his imagination, Corn Pops could suddenly see himself. He was sitting on his tricycle and rode it over a gravelly path. He could hear the shouts and giggles of other foals playing in the park where his mental image was driving around. He could see them, chasing each other and playing Hide & Seek between the trees. It was a soothing scene. His lips curled up into a smile and he began to forget where he was. "My tricycle," he whispered.
Suddenly there was his mom. She ran behind him, playfully slow, while he turned around and smiled and laughed. "Catch me, mommy!" he shouted and the darkness outside the diner swallowed the words.
With the scary atmosphere around him and the eyes that still rested on his body, it was not hard to flee into another reality inside his mind. Corn Pops had done this before when something scared him a lot. But this time it was different. He was used to see and to hear things in his imagination but, so far, he could never feel them. Now he could feel something.
His eyes were still closed, but under his flank was something hard. He felt eruptions coming from a few inches under it. A breeze hit his mane. "Flowers," he whispered. He could smell them. Then the voice of his mom rang out. "Corn Pops, open your eyes! You know that driving with closed eyes is too dangerous!"
For a moment, Corn Pops felt so confused that he forgot his fear. He opened his eyes.
What he saw made him gasp: He was not in the diner anymore. He was in the park of his imagination. And as he looked down, he saw his tricycle under him. He was sitting on it, his forehooves were holding the steering rod and his hindhooves were pedaling. His fear disappeared lightning-fast and he began to feel comfortable and happy. As he turned around, his mom was standing behind him.
"Look where you're driving, Corn Pops," she warned him. There was a stern, but benign, expression on her face.
Corn Pops could not explain this situation. Why had his eyes been closed? Had he fallen asleep while driving? And had he even managed to dream such a horrible nightmare, all while his hooves kept pedaling? Was it even possible to sleep and dream and to ride a tricycle at the same time? Corn Pops felt irritated. But given that the park was so much better than the mall at night, what was there to complain about? He was safe now and that's what counted.
Carefree and happy, Corn Pops increased his tempo. He looked behind him again and laughed. His mother became smaller in the distance, he easily left her behind now. Then he closed his eyes, knowing well that his mom could not see it. He felt the breeze tugging at him and the vibrations of the graveled path giving tiny shooks to his body. Laughing, he removed his forehooves from the steering rod and spread his arms wide.
Corn Pops kept pedaling and increasing his tempo, until the wheels of his tricycle hit something. He felt it tilting and his heart jumped. The colt opened his eyes, but it was too late. The tricycle leaned to the left, then fell over and buried him under it. Crashing like this at full speed and on a path scattered with tiny pebbles, he soon felt a searing pain in his left hindleg. Instantly, Corn Pops' face turned red and he started crying loudly.
Having witnessed the accident, his mom galloped closer. She hastily pulled the tricycle off of his body, fear in her eyes. "Corn Pops!" she gasped. "Oh my goodness, are you okay?!"
Corn Pops did not answer and kept crying as she turned him around to inspect his body. A long abrasion shimmered through his yellow coat; tiny, bloody dots that covered his entire left hindleg.
"Oh, Corn Pops, see? This is what happens when you close your eyes while riding your tricycle!" she scolded him. The mare shook her blonde, curly mane and sighed.
"Mommy, mommy, mommy, it hurts so much!" the colt whimpered and looked at his mother from tear-filled eyes.
Her face fell apart at the heartbreaking sight. "Oh, I know, I know, Popsy." She only called him with this nickname when he really needed it. She leaned down and kissed his mane with a loud and exaggerated smack.
Corn Pops sniffed repeatedly and closed his eyes. "Make it stop, mommy! It hurts saw much, make it stop!"
"Aww, Mommy will! Mommy will make the hurt stop once we're at home, Popsy! You just need to wait a little longer, we'll be back at home soon!"
"No!" he shouted. "Not later, now mommy, now!" His crying increased in volume.
Corn Pops' mom reached down to her crying son and sat him on her back. Then she raised the tricycle and set it upright. "Let's go home, Corn Pops. Mommy will patch this up in no time!" She turned around and nuzzled his wet, reddened face.
The apartment complex she lived in with Corn Pops was right next to the park. While she moved the tricycle down the path and towards it, she did not speak more words. Only the crying of Corn Pops persisted in the same volume and intensity, drowning out the noises from the foals and their parents around them.
As they were inside the apartment complex, the mare parked Corn Pops' tricycle in an alcove. On the way to the stairs, she opened the mailbox of their apartment and took out a few letters, that had been in there since the morning, before heading up the stairs.
Arrived at the apartment door, she unlocked it with her keys and trotted inside. The door got closed with a bang by her and she locked it again. Then she tossed the keys and the letters carelessly into a corner and turned around to her colt.
"Okay and now we take care of you!" she spoke. Corn Pops' eyes were still closed while he kept crying and so he could not see that the face of his mom had turned grotesque. She plucked him off her back and sat him down on the floor, face pointing at her.
Startled by the rough impact with the cold, marbled floor, Corn Pops opened his eyes. His vision of her face was blurry, as the tears had formed a thick film over his eyeballs. He pointed down at the injury. "Mommy, can you kiss it?" he sniffed up. "Make it good again!"
His mom clicked her tongue. "Awww....." it came from her mouth. "You are such a mommy colt, Corn Pops!"
Corn Pops looked at her, bottom lip quivering. His mom lifted a hoof and slapped him in the face. His head got yanked and a sob rang out of his throat.
"BUT NOT ANYMORE!" his mom screamed. "Corn Pops, it's time we make a strong colt out of you!" Her voice had a shrieking tone suddenly, one between madness and conviction.
Corn Pops looked at her and, almost instantly, began to crawl back in panic. But it wasn't long until his back hit the wall behind him. "M-Mommy?" he whined. The slap had swept the tears out of his eyes. The face of his mother scared the little colt. He gulped.
"Mommy, mommy!" the mare mocked her son by imitating his voice. She moved close to his face. "What if mommy wouldn't be here? What would you do? Huh? HUH?" She brought a hoof down on his forehead and pushed it back.
"I tell you what would be," her shrieking continued. "You would die! DIE, Corn Pops! Hahahahahahahahahaha!" She exposed her teeth to him. Her skin was pale suddenly. There were wrinkles in her face, far too many for her age. It looked worn and old.
Corn Pops tried to move further back, only to get reminded of it that the wall was still there.
"There is nothing you can do alone!" his mother hissed. "You want something from the fridge, mommy has to get it for you! You want something cooked, mommy has to cook it for you! You want to go to the park, mommy has to go with you!" Her voice raised in volume and tone with each sentence.
"And then you are dumb and hurt yourself and mommy has to disinfect the wound and patch you up! Really, Corn Pops, there is nothing you can do alone. You are a worthless, little scumbag!" She pointed at his injured leg, demonstratively. "But we can change that!" She grinned at him, exposing her teeth once more.
In front of her, Corn Pops started crying again as little worms suddenly crawled out from under his mom's lips. The slimy, fleshy worms wiggled their yellow bodies disturbingly as they crawled over her teeth.
"I have to help you again with it, as always. But once we are done, you will be a new colt, Corn Pops!" the wicked mare shrieked and pressed a hoof down on his injury with force.
The little colt started screaming, fresh tears running over his cheeks instantly.
"STOP YOUR FUCKING CRYING!" His mother slapped his face again. Her other hoof did not let go of the wound.
"You need to endure this, Corn Pops, it's the only way! Do you want to be a pussy forever? If we don't get you fixed, you will be an adult and I will still have to feed you!" She increased the pressure and Corn Pops cried out.
"I said STOP!" She slapped him again, harder this time.
Now it worked. The shock of the impact silenced Corn Pops instantly and he just looked at his mom anymore, fear in his eyes.
"That's better," the mare said. "Maybe we can make a strong, brave colt out of you." She released his leg.
His mother got up. "Now wait here. I'll go and get something for that leg." She scurried away and opened a door.
Corn Pops heard his mother rummaging in something inside another room. Hearing this scared him and he started to whimper again, but he did not dare to get up. The sounds stopped and his mother appeared in the doorframe again. She was holding a large drinking glass, filled with water, in one hoof and a sharp kitchen knife in the other one.
Corn Pops shrunk back against the wall. "Can you get band-aid, mommy?" he whispered.
His mother growled as she scurried closer. "You don't need band-aid," she hissed. "What you need is a treatment that makes you a tougher boy." She put down the glass and the knife, both objects just out of his reach.
Corn Pops didn't dare to imagine it, but he knew what this meant. "No more hurt, mommy," he pleaded. "Please, mommy."
"SHUT UP!" the shrieking was back in her voice. She grabbed the knife and held it in front of his eyes. "Shut up or this will become more painful than you think!"
He shrunk back a little more, gulping. Now the back of his head almost touched the floor. Corn Pops nodded, not leaving the knife out of his sight.
She gave him the wormy grin again. "Good boy." The knife was put back on the floor.
Corn Pops crouched there silently, as he watched his mother reaching for the drinking glass instead
"Now let's get started and make a tough, little boy out of you." She smiled at her son, then poured some of the water over his abrasion.
The result became apparent immediately. "WAAAAAAH!" Corn Pops wailed.
"That's some good salt-water-solution, isn't it? Just what you need, my son." She poured some more on it, then put the glass away. It was still half-full.
Eventually, Corn Pops' wails became reduced to a series of sobs and whimpers. "M-Mommy..... Why are you doing dis?" he spoke as the pain had begun to wear off and he felt the strength to speak again.
His mother brought a hoof to his face and stroke it. "To make a strong colt out of you, Corn Pops!" She grinned. "But we can't waste time with talking. You need a lot of work before we can call you 'strong'!"
Next, she reached for the knife again.
"NO!" Corn Pops cried and finally tried to get up. But his mother pushed him back down and held him in place.
"Oh, I look forward to the moment you stop being such a wimp, Corn Pops. Then I can finally do this without making you CRY!" She broke into a series of hysterical giggles, then cut the knife deep into his left foreleg.
Corn Pops threw his head back and a gurgling scream filled the room.
His mother forced the knife deeper and moved it around in the flesh wound, uncaring. "There we have it," she said after a while. She put the bloody knife next to Corn Pops' leg. Reaching into the wound with both hooves, she spread the flesh apart until something white could be seen in the center of the hole in his leg. "There is your bone, Corn Pops," she said, looking into the face of her son. "Doesn't it look nice?"His heart constricting in fear, Corn Pops forgot the pain and looked down at his leg. His pupils shrunk as he saw his own bone.
"M-My bone? W-Why, mommy? Why?" He felt cold panic rising in his chest.
"I already told you why, you idiot!" his mother shrieked again. "By the princesses, stop asking me the same question all the time, Corn Pops!"
Corn Pops wanted to respond something, but got distracted as he heard a loud bang. He looked at the apartment door, where it had come from. His mother didn't seem to have noticed anything.
"What are you doing?!" a male voice spoke. It sounded stressed. "You can't go inside there, you know that's where she....." The voice suddenly trailed off.
A few seconds of silence followed, then a female voice rang out. "And what else would we do?" the voice shot back, sharply. "This might be our only chance, we must save her!" The voice sobbed.
Corn Pops' mother still noticed nothing. She took the knife again. With the methodical movements of a doctor, she left more cuts in Corn Pops' leg.
"Please, help me!" Corn Pops used the chance and shouted at the door in tears.
"Who are you talking to, son?" his mother asked, confused. She did not look away from his leg. "We are the only ones here."
Corn Pops ignored her. "HEEEEEEEEEELP!" he screamed at the door now.
"Did you hear this?" the female voice said.
"Yes."
"I'm going inside there with or without you. She needs our help and maybe somepony else does, too."
Corn Pops heard hoofsteps and the male voice cursing. A door creaked as it got opened. He stared at the apartment door expectantly, desiring salvation. But it stayed closed.
"Please help....." the colt whimpered, weakly.
His mother looked up at him, grinning. "What? Are you losing your mind already? Save that for later, we aren't done here yet," she said and kept slicing into his leg.
Corn Pops heard somepony gasping and shivering. It was the female voice. "What is this?" she said. "Who are these foals?"
Hoofsteps could be heard again and the door creaked a second time. Another gasp followed. "What are they doing here?" the male voice asked. A few seconds of silence passed. "There are two more over here, fillies. One of them is unconscious, the other just stands there and stares at this table. What is going on?!"
Corn Pops could hear more hoofsteps. They moved into his direction, yet he could not see anypony.
His mother put the knife away and reached for the glass with the saltwater again. Corn Pops' left hindleg was covered in cuts now, so many, that the abrasion could not be seen anymore. He felt somepony grabbing his shoulders and starting to shook him, just as his mother brought the glass close to one of the bigger cuts.
"Enjoy it, Popsy. This is just for you from your mommy." She giggled hysterically again as she began to tilt the glass.
"No, mommy, no. Please, no!" Corn Pops whimpered. "No! No! No!"
"Hey, wake up!" The male voice rang out again and the shaking became stronger. "Wake up, young colt!"
Drawn in by the voice, Corn Pops opened his eyes. The blue face of a stallion looked at him. The stallion looked away. "This one's awake!" he shouted back behind him. Corn Pops could not see who was there.
"Hey, how do you feel?" the stallion asked him. "What are you doing here at night?"
Corn Pops did not answer. He only stared at the stallion, shocked and confused. |
Aegis | Protection Ņ̴̨̛̜͔̻̮̼̫̙̹͍̖̞̜͕͗̃̐̐͋͐̊ͮ͗̽ͭͬͤ͐̾ͤ̎̒̊ë́̆̅͗̾̅ͣ̈ͭ҉̷̪̯͙̭͕̘͔̲̥̝̳̳͍̮̮̯́g̷̴̡̦̳͔̭̤̣̱͆ͧ͗ͬ͆͗̿̓́͂́͛ͣ̾ͬͤ̑̚̚͠ͅl̢̡͈̦̘̀̏̊̑͗ͩ̽ͬͤ̅͟e̸̬̺̜̣̟͎̭̜̙͍̱̻͛̓ͭ̂ͬ́ͪ͢c̶̨̨̟̪̭̰̩̻̲̼̤͐ͮ͛̂ͣ̊̌́̿͑̾ͩͬ̉ͨ͘͠t̴̨̛̓ͤͯͭ̍͜͏̺͍̜͓̬̞͚̣͓͚̠̞̺͕̤̻̥̮͖ | . .
Protection Ņ̴̨̛̜͔̻̮̼̫̙̹͍̖̞̜͕͗̃̐̐͋͐̊ͮ͗̽ͭͬͤ͐̾ͤ̎̒̊ë́̆̅͗̾̅ͣ̈ͭ҉̷̪̯͙̭͕̘͔̲̥̝̳̳͍̮̮̯́g̷̴̡̦̳͔̭̤̣̱͆ͧ͗ͬ͆͗̿̓́͂́͛ͣ̾ͬͤ̑̚̚͠ͅl̢̡͈̦̘̀̏̊̑͗ͩ̽ͬͤ̅͟e̸̬̺̜̣̟͎̭̜̙͍̱̻͛̓ͭ̂ͬ́ͪ͢c̶̨̨̟̪̭̰̩̻̲̼̤͐ͮ͛̂ͣ̊̌́̿͑̾ͩͬ̉ͨ͘͠t̴̨̛̓ͤͯͭ̍͜͏̺͍̜͓̬̞͚̣͓͚̠̞̺͕̤̻̥̮͖
"Guys?" Babs kept staring at the empty table as she heard the echo of her own voice fading away in the darkness. "Where did dey go?" She tilted her head and scrunched her face, displeased about the absence of her friends.
Unsure what to do now, Babs trotted back to the entrance of the diner and peeked outside. "GUYS!" she shouted out into the hallway. Once more, her voice got reflected off the walls and echoed back into her ears. As she didn't get an answer again, Babs trotted out of the diner completely. "Dey mus' have gone to seach for an exi', bu' why witou' me?" she mumbled as she proceeded down the hallway back into the direction of the sleeping night guard.
Around her, the mall was still quiet. There were no sounds of her friends, neither their voices nor their hooves on the tiled floor. The silence made it all the more easy for Babs to hear the sound of shattering glass that suddenly sliced through the darkness. A second later, she could hear thumps. One, two, three, four and five. Babs followed the sounds, perking up her ears in attentive concentration. She didn't have to go far before she saw small, black silhouettes and the light of the moon shining into the mall through a broken window.
"Are you nuts?!" a voice found its way into her ears. "This mall has a night guard, if he hears us, we're going to get busted!"
The voice gave Babs chills. Before she could step into the moonlight and reveal herself, she stopped in her tracks and immediately trotted backwards. Her effort was in vain, though. Before she could hide, lights flashed up and pointed right at her. A collective gasp of surprise from five different throats rang out.
"Babs Seed!" the voice from earlier addressed her, making her flinch. "What is the foul and dirty excuse of a filly that you are doing here?!" The voice was searing and its eagerness to insult her was proof for it that its owner was quite used to doing that.
Babs kept stumbling backwards, but the five colts in front of her followed her swiftly.
"I-I go' jus' lawcked in hea by acciden' when the mall clawsed!" she spoke in her defense. "Bu' wha' are you doin' hea, huh? You brawke intaw the mall!" Immediately, Babs cursed herself for voicing her observation so carelessly. She brought her forehooves to her mouth and pressed down on it tight.
"Sher ha', liker, see' evehytin'," another colt leaned in to the one who had just spoken to her.
The colt at the top of the group nodded grimly. "Oh, I know already!" he snarled. "But she's not going to tattle on us, peeps! Flashing a vicious grin, he reached behind his back and zipped open a backpack he was carrying, not leaving Babs out of his sight. Babs' eyes widened in horror as she saw how he pulled a long, sturdy metal chain out of it. It glistened menacingly as the moonlight fell on it.
"N-No!" Babs almost tripped over her hooves as she stumbled backwards faster. As the other four colts pulled objects out of their backpacks, as well, one of them a similar chain, the remaining three a long knife, a club with crooked nails in it, a lighter and a can of hairspray, Babs did not waste any more time with flinching in horror. Instead, she did a leap forward, which surprised the five colts, and galloped past them in the fastest speed she managed. "They're no' gettin' me, they're no' gettin' me!" she thought in panic as her hooves thundered over the floor.
Behind her, though, the could hear that her hooves weren't the only ones that tormented the floor. "Don't be scared!" it came from behind. "You already know some of these weapons from the schoolyard, Babs, not like you aren't familiar with them!" Mocking laughter rang out in response to the statement.
Babs increased her pace. "I jus' need to ge' to the nigh' guard, I hope I can wake him up now!" she muttered under her breath.
Luck wasn't on her side, though. One of the five colts, their leader, was clearly faster and soon, he had galloped past her. He cut off her path and Babs skidded to a halt, fear dictating her reaction as he swung the chain through the air, menacingly. A moment later, the four other bullies caught up with her. One pushed her down to the floor immediately, his club leaving a sharp pain on Babs' flank as it came down on it.
The colt wielding it sat down on her. His weight pressing her down, it was impossible to escape for the young filly. "L-Le' me go!" Babs whimpered. "Guys, I swea, I won' be tellin' anypony!"
The colt who was sitting on her laughed loudly. "Where woul' ber dar fu' in da'?" he asked. To underline his words, he lifted his right hindleg and brought it down hard on Babs' head. It got pressed down onto the floor by the colt's hoof and pain began to spread out in her face.
"P-Please!" Babs pleaded, tears streaming down her face now. "I won' tell anypony wha' happened, I swea, I swea!" Her voice sounded muffled now, but the panic still came through clearly.
The colt laughed again. He lifted his hoof off her head for a second, only to bring it down again much harder. He proceeded with smashing her face against the hard floor, repeatedly. Waves of pain flashed through Babs' face and nose. Eventually, she felt a warm puddle soaking her face as blood began to shoot out of her broken nose. Her injury created amusement among the bullies, as all five were laughing loudly now. Gone was their fear of alerting the night guard, it was too much fun for them to see her suffer.
As their laughing fits had subsided, the leader trotted closer to Babs, still swinging his chain. He gripped her head under her chin and pulled up her face so she had to look at him. His mouth twisted into a wicked grin as he saw the blood that was smeared over her face and the fresh supplies that were still leaking from her nose. It increased as he heard the drops hitting the floor.
"Maybe you will tell somepony or maybe you will just piss your coat and be quiet," he deducted. "But why would we take the risk? We're not going to youth prison because of you freak!" After the last words had left his lips, he spit into her face. A gooey mess of spit and yellow snot got mixed in with the blood. Then he punched his hoof onto her right eye, making her cry out from the impact. Her eye turned black immediately and began to swell shut. "You're not going to tell anypony. You're not going to tell anypony anything ever again."
Babs' eyes widened in horror as the colt began to cackle in glee. As he was finished, he turned around and waved one of the other colts over. It was the one with the lighter and the hairspray. "Let's have some more fun before we blow her lights out," he commented the gesture. The other colt nodded. He bent down to Babs, turned on the lighter and brought it close to her face. Letting it linger there for a minute, he gave Babs the opportunity to watch the flickering of the flame. As he deemed that it had been long enough, he held the flame at her cheek. Babs screaming, he watched in delight how the flame was burning the short hairs on it and how her skin turned brown, then black afterwards.
He was just about ready to move the lighter to a different spot of her face, as he saw a shadow coming closer from the corner of his eyes. The others saw it, as well, and the bullies moved their heads into the direction of the unwanted visitor.
Babs did her best to crane her aching head into the same direction. As she had succeeded with the task, her eyes lit up with hope and joy, recognizing the two ponies that stood there.
"Mom! Dad!" she shouted. "I'm so glad you're hea! Dey trapped me and hur' me!"
Her dad nodded. "We've seen, Babs. We are here for a while already and have watched."
The meaning of the words not yet dawning on her, Babs smiled as the voice of her dad washed over her. "Te' dem to stop!" she shouted.
Now her mom talked and she shook her head while she did so. "No, Babs, we won't."
The answer came so swiftly and was spoken so naturally, that the sheer surprise over it knocked the fear out of Babs. "Why no'?" Babs asked, her response sounding just as natural. "Don' you see wha' they're doin'? Dey broke my nose, gave me a black eye and burned my cheek!"
"We have seen it." It was her dad again who spoke now. "We just don't care, Babs."
Only now, Babs noticed how apathetic and emotionless his voice sounded. It brought the fear back and it creeped down her spine like somepony was moving an icecube over it.
"W-Why?" Babs asked, new tears shooting out from her eyes. Her parents did not respond anymore, they only stared, with cold eyes.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" the leader of the bullies broke out in unrestrained laughter. "Looks like there isn't any help to expect from them, huh, Babs? What did you do? Forgotten to clean up your room?" The remark found broad approval and once more, the group erupted into laughing fits. At the peak of his mood, the leader punched Babs' lip with his hoof. It popped open immediately, letting a fresh stream of warm blood pour out.
Whimpering loudly, Babs looked at her parents again, but they still didn't move. Their eyes showed no emotion and no care. They did not even blink. Babs buried her face in her forehooves and erupted into loud cries. She could not look at them anymore.
Noticing the movement, the colt on her back climbed off and freed her. To him, it was clear she wouldn't try to run away anymore now. The colt with the knife approached her now. "I hawper wer can sti' haver, liker, somer fu' wit littler Babs befawrer wer finish heh awff!" He snickered.
"Sure thing!" his leader confirmed. "What do you want to do?"
"Sometin' specia'." He grinned and licked over his lips. Gripping his knife harder, he brought it down on Babs' back and sliced it open, cutting deep wounds into the flesh. Then he stepped away and reared up. He reached between his legs and grabbed his member with one hoof. "Hawldin' it in for ar whiler ahread'," he said simply, then a stream of warm, yellow piss left the tiny hole at the tip of his member. It soaked Babs' coat and filled up the bloody trenches the knife had left.
The urine burned in her wounds and Babs cried out in pain. Feeling helpless, she looked at her parents again, her eyes pleading them to help. But they just turned around, wordlessly, and began to trot away in a slow, pathetic tempo.
Behind her, the colt was finished with using her as a toilet. Babs retched as she smelled the stench of his piss on her coat. "Ahrigh'. No' your ca', liker ki' heh," the colt announced, his voice sounding just as careless as the voice of her parents had sounded before.
His friends nodded collectively.
"You heard him," their leader spoke to Babs. "Time to blow out your lights before you become a snitch."
Babs' eyes widened in horror once more, but now, she had lost all energy to fight back. She buried her face in her forehooves, quietly accepting her fate.
The leader stepped away from her. "Alright, let's end this bitch and then do what we came here for. Let's just make sure there is nothing left to identify her." Next to him, the colt with the hairspray and the lighter nodded.
Her heart just as broken as her nose, Babs felt no care for herself anymore. She had resigned to her fate by the time two metal chains and one club came down on her head repeatedly. She whimpered and cried out in agony automatically as the weapons teared out flesh and parts of her mane, as her head popped open at different spots and gave free look to the bone of her skull, but something inside her had died already.
The last thing she should feel was fire. As her head was nothing but a bloody, almost unrecognizeable blood pool anymore, the colt with the hairspray and the lighter stepped up last. Holding the lighter close to her mane, he set it on fire by spraying over the flame. As it was burning brightly, he did the same with her tail.
Babs wasn't feeling much. As the flames began to devour her face, her legs and her upper body, she had nearly passed out. The laughs of the colts who had succeeded with torturing her to death became quieter and quieter, as her parents kept trotting away, still not looking back at their daughter who burned alive behind them..... |
Aegis | Protection Ņ̴̨̛̜͔̻̮̼̫̙̹͍̖̞̜͕͗̃̐̐͋͐̊ͮ͗̽ͭͬͤ͐̾ͤ̎̒̊ë́̆̅͗̾̅ͣ̈ͭ҉̷̪̯͙̭͕̘͔̲̥̝̳̳͍̮̮̯́g̷̴̡̦̳͔̭̤̣̱͆ͧ͗ͬ͆͗̿̓́͂́͛ͣ̾ͬͤ̑̚̚͠ͅl̢̡͈̦̘̀̏̊̑͗ͩ̽ͬͤ̅͟e̸̬̺̜̣̟͎̭̜̙͍̱̻͛̓ͭ̂ͬ́ͪ͢c̶̨̨̟̪̭̰̩̻̲̼̤͐ͮ͛̂ͣ̊̌́̿͑̾ͩͬ̉ͨ͘͠t̴̨̛̓ͤͯͭ̍͜͏̺͍̜͓̬̞͚̣͓͚̠̞̺͕̤̻̥̮͖ ----- Accent-reduced version | . .
Protection Ņ̴̨̛̜͔̻̮̼̫̙̹͍̖̞̜͕͗̃̐̐͋͐̊ͮ͗̽ͭͬͤ͐̾ͤ̎̒̊ë́̆̅͗̾̅ͣ̈ͭ҉̷̪̯͙̭͕̘͔̲̥̝̳̳͍̮̮̯́g̷̴̡̦̳͔̭̤̣̱͆ͧ͗ͬ͆͗̿̓́͂́͛ͣ̾ͬͤ̑̚̚͠ͅl̢̡͈̦̘̀̏̊̑͗ͩ̽ͬͤ̅͟e̸̬̺̜̣̟͎̭̜̙͍̱̻͛̓ͭ̂ͬ́ͪ͢c̶̨̨̟̪̭̰̩̻̲̼̤͐ͮ͛̂ͣ̊̌́̿͑̾ͩͬ̉ͨ͘͠t̴̨̛̓ͤͯͭ̍͜͏̺͍̜͓̬̞͚̣͓͚̠̞̺͕̤̻̥̮͖
"Guys?" Babs kept staring at the empty table as she heard the echo of her own voice fading away in the darkness. "Where did dey go?" She tilted her head and scrunched her face, displeased about the absence of her friends.
Unsure what to do now, Babs trotted back to the entrance of the diner and peeked outside. "GUYS!" she shouted out into the hallway. Once more, her voice got reflected off the walls and echoed back into her ears. As she didn't get an answer again, Babs trotted out of the diner completely. "Dey must have gone to search for an exit, but why without me?" she mumbled as she proceeded down the hallway back into the direction of the sleeping night guard.
Around her, the mall was still quiet. There were no sounds of her friends, neither their voices nor their hooves on the tiled floor. The silence made it all the more easy for Babs to hear the sound of shattering glass that suddenly sliced through the darkness. A second later, she could hear thumps. One, two, three, four and five. Babs followed the sounds, perking up her ears in attentive concentration. She didn't have to go far before she saw small, black silhouettes and the light of the moon shining into the mall through a broken window.
"Are you nuts?!" a voice found its way into her ears. "This mall has a night guard, if he hears us, we're going to get busted!"
The voice gave Babs chills. Before she could step into the moonlight and reveal herself, she stopped in her tracks and immediately trotted backwards. Her effort was in vain, though. Before she could hide, lights flashed up and pointed right at her. A collective gasp of surprise from five different throats rang out.
"Babs Seed!" the voice from earlier addressed her, making her flinch. "What is the foul and dirty excuse of a filly that you are doing here?!" The voice was searing and its eagerness to insult her was proof for it that its owner was quite used to doing that.
Babs kept stumbling backwards, but the five colts in front of her followed her swiftly.
"I-I got just lawcked in hea by accident when the mall clawsed!" she spoke in her defense. "But what are you doin' hea, huh? You brawke intaw the mall!" Immediately, Babs cursed herself for voicing her observation so carelessly. She brought her forehooves to her mouth and pressed down on it tight.
"She has, like, seen everythin'," another colt leaned in to the one who had just spoken to her.
The colt at the top of the group nodded grimly. "Oh, I know already!" he snarled. "But she's not going to tattle on us, peeps! Flashing a vicious grin, he reached behind his back and zipped open a backpack he was carrying, not leaving Babs out of his sight. Babs' eyes widened in horror as she saw how he pulled a long, sturdy metal chain out of it. It glistened menacingly as the moonlight fell on it.
"N-No!" Babs almost tripped over her hooves as she stumbled backwards faster. As the other four colts pulled objects out of their backpacks, as well, one of them a similar chain, the remaining three a long knife, a club with crooked nails in it, a lighter and a can of hairspray, Babs did not waste any more time with flinching in horror. Instead, she did a leap forward, which surprised the five colts, and galloped past them in the fastest speed she managed. "They're not gettin' me, they're not gettin' me!" she thought in panic as her hooves thundered over the floor.
Behind her, though, the could hear that her hooves weren't the only ones that tormented the floor. "Don't be scared!" it came from behind. "You already know some of these weapons from the schoolyard, Babs, not like you aren't familiar with them!" Mocking laughter rang out in response to the statement.
Babs increased her pace. "I just need to get to the night guard, I hope I can wake him up now!" she muttered under her breath.
Luck wasn't on her side, though. One of the five colts, their leader, was clearly faster and soon, he had galloped past her. He cut off her path and Babs skidded to a halt, fear dictating her reaction as he swung the chain through the air, menacingly. A moment later, the four other bullies caught up with her. One pushed her down to the floor immediately, his club leaving a sharp pain on Babs' flank as it came down on it.
The colt wielding it sat down on her. His weight pressing her down, it was impossible to escape for the young filly. "L-Let me go!" Babs whimpered. "Guys, I swea, I won't be tellin' anypony!"
The colt who was sitting on her laughed loudly. "Where would be da fun in dat?" he asked. To underline his words, he lifted his right hindleg and brought it down hard on Babs' head. It got pressed down onto the floor by the colt's hoof and pain began to spread out in her face.
"P-Please!" Babs pleaded, tears streaming down her face now. "I won't tell anypony what happened, I swea, I swea!" Her voice sounded muffled now, but the panic still came through clearly.
The colt laughed again. He lifted his hoof off her head for a second, only to bring it down again much harder. He proceeded with smashing her face against the hard floor, repeatedly. Waves of pain flashed through Babs' face and nose. Eventually, she felt a warm puddle soaking her face as blood began to shoot out of her broken nose. Her injury created amusement among the bullies, as all five were laughing loudly now. Gone was their fear of alerting the night guard, it was too much fun for them to see her suffer.
As their laughing fits had subsided, the leader trotted closer to Babs, still swinging his chain. He gripped her head under her chin and pulled up her face so she had to look at him. His mouth twisted into a wicked grin as he saw the blood that was smeared over her face and the fresh supplies that were still leaking from her nose. It increased as he heard the drops hitting the floor.
"Maybe you will tell somepony or maybe you will just piss your coat and be quiet," he deducted. "But why would we take the risk? We're not going to youth prison because of you freak!" After the last words had left his lips, he spit into her face. A gooey mess of spit and yellow snot got mixed in with the blood. Then he punched his hoof onto her right eye, making her cry out from the impact. Her eye turned black immediately and began to swell shut. "You're not going to tell anypony. You're not going to tell anypony anything ever again."
Babs' eyes widened in horror as the colt began to cackle in glee. As he was finished, he turned around and waved one of the other colts over. It was the one with the lighter and the hairspray. "Let's have some more fun before we blow her lights out," he commented the gesture. The other colt nodded. He bent down to Babs, turned on the lighter and brought it close to her face. Letting it linger there for a minute, he gave Babs the opportunity to watch the flickering of the flame. As he deemed that it had been long enough, he held the flame at her cheek. Babs screaming, he watched in delight how the flame was burning the short hairs on it and how her skin turned brown, then black afterwards.
He was just about ready to move the lighter to a different spot of her face, as he saw a shadow coming closer from the corner of his eyes. The others saw it, as well, and the bullies moved their heads into the direction of the unwanted visitor.
Babs did her best to crane her aching head into the same direction. As she had succeeded with the task, her eyes lit up with hope and joy, recognizing the two ponies that stood there.
"Mom! Dad!" she shouted. "I'm so glad you're hea! Dey trapped me and hurt me!"
Her dad nodded. "We've seen, Babs. We are here for a while already and have watched."
The meaning of the words not yet dawning on her, Babs smiled as the voice of her dad washed over her. "Te' dem to stop!" she shouted.
Now her mom talked and she shook her head while she did so. "No, Babs, we won't."
The answer came so swiftly and was spoken so naturally, that the sheer surprise over it knocked the fear out of Babs. "Why not?" Babs asked, her response sounding just as natural. "Don't you see what they're doin'? Dey broke my nose, gave me a black eye and burned my cheek!"
"We have seen it." It was her dad again who spoke now. "We just don't care, Babs."
Only now, Babs noticed how apathetic and emotionless his voice sounded. It brought the fear back and it creeped down her spine like somepony was moving an icecube over it.
"W-Why?" Babs asked, new tears shooting out from her eyes. Her parents did not respond anymore, they only stared, with cold eyes.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" the leader of the bullies broke out in unrestrained laughter. "Looks like there isn't any help to expect from them, huh, Babs? What did you do? Forgotten to clean up your room?" The remark found broad approval and once more, the group erupted into laughing fits. At the peak of his mood, the leader punched Babs' lip with his hoof. It popped open immediately, letting a fresh stream of warm blood pour out.
Whimpering loudly, Babs looked at her parents again, but they still didn't move. Their eyes showed no emotion and no care. They did not even blink. Babs buried her face in her forehooves and erupted into loud cries. She could not look at them anymore.
Noticing the movement, the colt on her back climbed off and freed her. To him, it was clear she wouldn't try to run away anymore now.
The colt with the knife approached her now. "I hawpe we can still have, like, some fun with little Babs befawre we finish heh awff!" He snickered.
"Sure thing!" his leader confirmed. "What do you want to do?"
"Somethin' special." He grinned and licked over his lips. Gripping his knife harder, he brought it down on Babs' back and sliced it open, cutting deep wounds into the flesh. Then he stepped away and reared up. He reached between his legs and grabbed his member with one hoof. "Hawldin' it in for ar while ahready," he said simply, then a stream of warm, yellow piss left the tiny hole at the tip of his member. It soaked Babs' coat and filled up the bloody trenches the knife had left.
The urine burned in her wounds and Babs cried out in pain. Feeling helpless, she looked at her parents again, her eyes pleading them to help. But they just turned around, wordlessly, and began to trot away in a slow, pathetic tempo.
Behind her, the colt was finished with using her as a toilet. Babs retched as she smelled the stench of his piss on her coat. "Ahright. Now you can, like, kill heh," the colt announced, his voice sounding just as careless as the voice of her parents had sounded before.
His friends nodded collectively.
"You heard him," their leader spoke to Babs. "Time to blow out your lights before you become a snitch."
Babs' eyes widened in horror once more, but now, she had lost all energy to fight back. She buried her face in her forehooves, quietly accepting her fate.
The leader stepped away from her. "Alright, let's end this bitch and then do what we came here for. Let's just make sure there is nothing left to identify her." Next to him, the colt with the hairspray and the lighter nodded.
Her heart just as broken as her nose, Babs felt no care for herself anymore. She had resigned to her fate by the time two metal chains and one club came down on her head repeatedly. She whimpered and cried out in agony automatically as the weapons teared out flesh and parts of her mane, as her head popped open at different spots and gave free look to the bone of her skull, but something inside her had died already.
The last thing she should feel was fire. As her head was nothing but a bloody, almost unrecognizeable blood pool anymore, the colt with the hairspray and the lighter stepped up last. Holding the lighter close to her mane, he set it on fire by spraying over the flame. As it was burning brightly, he did the same with her tail.
Babs wasn't feeling much. As the flames began to devour her face, her legs and her upper body, she had nearly passed out. The laughs of the colts who had succeeded with torturing her to death became quieter and quieter, as her parents kept trotting away, still not looking back at their daughter who burned alive behind them..... |
Aegis | Vengeance | . .
Vengeance
"What are you doing here at night?" The question rang through Corn Pops' head again. He could not see who asked it, his vision was blurry. Corn Pops looked to the right. As the milky-white fog disappeared and his sight cleared, he could see Fast Bun. A mare kneeled in front of her. Carefully, she helped her up and back on her hooves. Fast Bun leaned forward and retched, gripping her stomach with both hooves. "Fast....." Corn Pops whispered, then the fog in front of his eyes returned. His eyes rolled over, revealing the white of his eyeballs, then closed.
The stallion who was holding him felt his body go limp as he passed out.
The mare noticed it and looked over. "What's with him?"
"He is just unconscious." The stallion lifted Corn Pops and rested him on the nearest table.
The mare approached the table, supporting Fast Bun while they trotted. As she was in front of it, she moved a hoof over the colt's short mane, sunken in thoughts and eyes lowered. "Do you think she did this?" Her voice sounded broken.
"Sher, whor?" Fast Bun asked. The filly patted her head, checking it for any injuries.
Before she could get an answer, a piercing scream cut through the air. In front of the diner's exit, Babs had woken up.
Startled, the three of them shot their heads at her. At the same time, Curtain Call woke up. In contrast to Babs, he just stood there, shaking and tears leaking from his eyes. "Mommy," he whimpered.
"You check up on the other filly!" the stallion shouted and turned around. Hasty steps carried him at Curtain Call's side.
To his right, the mare who had come with him approached Babs, who was still screaming, in the same way. She reached for her shoulders. "Whatever happened, you need to calm down! Everything is-"
"DON'T TOUCH HER!" A shriek suddenly made her stop in her movement. A second later, Babs got lifted up by an invisible force and thrown against a shelf behind the counter. Glass shattered and her screaming immediately stopped. Babs fell down and she left the mare's view before she hit the floor behind the counter with a thud.
The mare shot her head at the entrance of the diner, dread building up inside of her. She saw exactly what she suspected.
In the door stood Starlet Radiance, her mouth sputtering with rage and her eyes bloodshot, the air around her flickering. Her face was so distorted, that the mare did not recognize her own daughter anymore.
Behind her, Starlet's dad took position in front of Curtain Call and pushed the colt behind him. "Does this answer your question, dear?" He gritted his teeth as his own eyes fell on Starlet.
Pushing Curtain along, he trotted backwards to the table Corn Pops was lying on. More instinctively than planned, Curtain Call slipped behind the chair at the far end of the table.
Fast Bun reached for Corn Pops and pulled him off the table and into their hideout. Her eyes brushed over Starlet Radiance only for a brief moment, but it was long enough to count 1 and 1 together.
"Wh' is Starlet doin' dis?" she shouted. "An' how?" She cowered behind the table and lowered her head as a large bottle hit the table's surface and broke into pieces.
Neither of Starlet's parents answered the question. "Starlet, sunshine, stop!" her mother pleaded, trotting into her direction. "You have to leave, you can't stay here anymore!" Her voice shivered, ripe with desperation and fear.
The eyes of Starlet flared up as the words washed over her, suddenly adorned with an otherworldly fire. She shoved her mother out of the way and closed the distance between her and the table. She didn't hesitate and in the blink of an eye, the table caught fire and burnt to ashes. Yelping, Fast Bun grabbed Corn Pops and pulled him away from the flames that reached for his legs.
Now they had free view of Starlet. She came closer, until her face almost touched Fast Bun's. "How was the feeling of starving to death? Did you know it was similar with me?"
"Wha'?" Fast Bun gasped, but her face was full of confusion.
Starlet came closer, pressing her face so hard against the one of her friend that Fast Bun felt forced to retreat. "I want dat you feel the same as I do," her voice hissed. "Now you will burn."
As fire began to shoot from her eyes, something pushed her out of Fast Bun's view. To her left, Starlet's mother was holding her down. Her dad left the side of the three foals. Following his wife's example, they held their daughter in place.
"Dis won't save dem." Starlet closed her eyes. She didn't try to fight herself free.
Feeling that there was a moment to breathe, Fast Bun and Curtain Call moved into a more relaxed position. Tears glistened in the eyes of both foals. Their faces asked the questions that were on their minds.
"We know that Starlet is your friend. But she shouldn't be here," her mother began to explain.
It deepened the confusion of the foals. "All of us shouldn't be here anymore. It's night," Fast Bun spoke.
Starlet's dad shook his head,slowly. His face was grief-strucken. "Not in this world."
The faces of Fast Bun and Curtain Call gave the parents another confused look, then the confusion slowly vanished from their faces as they began to realize. They lowered their eyes and fixated them on their trapped friend.
Starlet's mom looked down on her daughter, as well, and her hoof moved over the strains of her mane, gently. A gesture in stark contrast to the violent incapacitation, yet fitting at the same time.
"Starlet was always allergic to peanuts, but we didn't know about it until this day. She died here," Starlet's dad completed for his wife.
Shivers went through Fast Bun and Curtain Call, who now knew the truth about their friend.
"Dis won't save dem," Starlet repeated. "Dey will die, too. I've been alone here for so lawng, but not for much longer." She opened her eyes and instantly, the hooves of her parents grasped air. Her body became nebulous and she was free of her parents' grip.
Starlet grinned as she approached her friends. "Now you know how it feels when dere are no parents who care for you. And you will die with dis feeling." She began to laugh, wickedly.
"Wh'? Aw' awf dis becauser you'rer jealou'?" Curtain Call asked as they retreated. The grin in Starlet's face was enough answer for the colt.
"Your can' dor dis!" Fast Bun shouted, dragging Corn Pops with her. "Should wer en' u' herer, toor? Dor your wan' da samer for u'? I tawgh' we'rer friend'!"
"SILENCE! BE SILENT!" Starlet shouted her down. She was gripping her head, like she was in pain all of a sudden. "You just stumbled intaw my trap and now you will feel the same as I do, forever!" She forced them further back, until a wall blocked their escape route.
"And now you can't get away anymore." She began to close the last distance.
"B-Bu'....." Curtain Call's eyes shifted around, looking for a way out. "Bu' I awlway' liked youh actin', Starlet!"
The vengeful filly stopped in her tracks, but only for a moment.
"E-Eve' youh las' perfohmancer! Your tricked u' aw' b' pretendin' tor ber ouh frien' an' your werer grea' a' it!"
Starlet stopped again. Only the hint of a smile appeared on her face, before her expression turned cold again. "I know what you're trying. It's not working." She sat herself into motion again, but the short pause in her movement was exactly what her parents needed.
Starlet had just taken on a more physical form again, as she suddenly felt a ribbon getting wrapped around her body. It ignited, hit by a burst of magic from behind, just as she turned around in surprise.
Her parents looked at her with grieving expressions, yet with a small smile of relief on their faces.
As she looked down, Starlet noticed that her body dissolved quickly. She shot her parents a hateful glare. "You betrayed me!" she hissed.
Their expressions resisted her glare. "Keep waiting for us, Starlet. We'll see us again one day." Then their daughter vanished completely, nothing but smoke remaining at the place she stood.
Curtain Call and Fast Bun eased up. "Wi' sher ber oka'?" Curtain Call asked.
"Now she will be," Starlet's mother said while she draped Corn Pops over her back.
Her husband did the same with Babs, who was thankfully just unconscious and the wound on the back of her head wasn't too bad.
Starlet's parents cast a last glance into the diner, joined by Curtain Call and Fast Bun, then they closed the door and left the fateful place behind them. |
Aegis | Vengeance ----- Accent-reduced version | . .
Vengeance
"What are you doing here at night?" The question rang through Corn Pops' head again. He could not see who asked it, his vision was blurry. Corn Pops looked to the right. As the milky-white fog disappeared and his sight cleared, he could see Fast Bun. A mare kneeled in front of her. Carefully, she helped her up and back on her hooves. Fast Bun leaned forward and retched, gripping her stomach with both hooves. "Fast....." Corn Pops whispered, then the fog in front of his eyes returned. His eyes rolled over, revealing the white of his eyeballs, then closed.
The stallion who was holding him felt his body go limp as he passed out.
The mare noticed it and looked over. "What's with him?"
"He is just unconscious." The stallion lifted Corn Pops and rested him on the nearest table.
The mare approached the table, supporting Fast Bun while they trotted. As she was in front of it, she moved a hoof over the colt's short mane, sunken in thoughts and eyes lowered. "Do you think she did this?" Her voice sounded broken.
"She, who?" Fast Bun asked. The filly patted her head, checking it for any injuries.
Before she could get an answer, a piercing scream cut through the air. In front of the diner's exit, Babs had woken up.
Startled, the three of them shot their heads at her. At the same time, Curtain Call woke up. In contrast to Babs, he just stood there, shaking and tears leaking from his eyes. "Mommy," he whimpered.
"You check up on the other filly!" the stallion shouted and turned around. Hasty steps carried him at Curtain Call's side.
To his right, the mare who had come with him approached Babs, who was still screaming, in the same way. She reached for her shoulders. "Whatever happened, you need to calm down! Everything is-"
"DON'T TOUCH HER!" A shriek suddenly made her stop in her movement. A second later, Babs got lifted up by an invisible force and thrown against a shelf behind the counter. Glass shattered and her screaming immediately stopped. Babs fell down and she left the mare's view before she hit the floor behind the counter with a thud.
The mare shot her head at the entrance of the diner, dread building up inside of her. She saw exactly what she suspected.
In the door stood Starlet Radiance, her mouth sputtering with rage and her eyes bloodshot, the air around her flickering. Her face was so distorted, that the mare did not recognize her own daughter anymore.
Behind her, Starlet's dad took position in front of Curtain Call and pushed the colt behind him. "Does this answer your question, dear?" He gritted his teeth as his own eyes fell on Starlet.
Pushing Curtain along, he trotted backwards to the table Corn Pops was lying on. More instinctively than planned, Curtain Call slipped behind the chair at the far end of the table.
Fast Bun reached for Corn Pops and pulled him off the table and into their hideout. Her eyes brushed over Starlet Radiance only for a brief moment, but it was long enough to count 1 and 1 together.
"Why is Starlet doin' dis?" she shouted. "And how?" She cowered behind the table and lowered her head as a large bottle hit the table's surface and broke into pieces.
Neither of Starlet's parents answered the question. "Starlet, sunshine, stop!" her mother pleaded, trotting into her direction. "You have to leave, you can't stay here anymore!" Her voice shivered, ripe with desperation and fear.
The eyes of Starlet flared up as the words washed over her, suddenly adorned with an otherworldly fire. She shoved her mother out of the way and closed the distance between her and the table. She didn't hesitate and in the blink of an eye, the table caught fire and burnt to ashes. Yelping, Fast Bun grabbed Corn Pops and pulled him away from the flames that reached for his legs.
Now they had free view of Starlet. She came closer, until her face almost touched Fast Bun's. "How was the feeling of starving to death? Did you know it was similar with me?"
"What?" Fast Bun gasped, but her face was full of confusion.
Starlet came closer, pressing her face so hard against the one of her friend that Fast Bun felt forced to retreat. "I want dat you feel the same as I do," her voice hissed. "Now you will burn."
As fire began to shoot from her eyes, something pushed her out of Fast Bun's view. To her left, Starlet's mother was holding her down. Her dad left the side of the three foals. Following his wife's example, they held their daughter in place.
"Dis won't save dem." Starlet closed her eyes. She didn't try to fight herself free.
Feeling that there was a moment to breathe, Fast Bun and Curtain Call moved into a more relaxed position. Tears glistened in the eyes of both foals. Their faces asked the questions that were on their minds.
"We know that Starlet is your friend. But she shouldn't be here," her mother began to explain.
It deepened the confusion of the foals. "All of us shouldn't be here anymore. It's night," Fast Bun spoke.
Starlet's dad shook his head,slowly. His face was grief-strucken. "Not in this world."
The faces of Fast Bun and Curtain Call gave the parents another confused look, then the confusion slowly vanished from their faces as they began to realize. They lowered their eyes and fixated them on their trapped friend.
Starlet's mom looked down on her daughter, as well, and her hoof moved over the strains of her mane, gently. A gesture in stark contrast to the violent incapacitation, yet fitting at the same time.
"Starlet was always allergic to peanuts, but we didn't know about it until this day. She died here," Starlet's dad completed for his wife.
Shivers went through Fast Bun and Curtain Call, who now knew the truth about their friend.
"Dis won't save dem," Starlet repeated. "Dey will die, too. I've been alone here for so lawng, but not for much longer." She opened her eyes and instantly, the hooves of her parents grasped air. Her body became nebulous and she was free of her parents' grip.
Starlet grinned as she approached her friends. "Now you know how it feels when dere are no parents who care for you. And you will die with dis feeling." She began to laugh, wickedly.
"Why? Awll awf dis because you're jealous?" Curtain Call asked as they retreated. The grin in Starlet's face was enough answer for the colt.
"You can't do dis!" Fast Bun shouted, dragging Corn Pops with her. "Should we end up here, too? Do you want da same for us? I thawght we're friends!"
"SILENCE! BE SILENT!" Starlet shouted her down. She was gripping her head, like she was in pain all of a sudden. "You just stumbled intaw my trap and now you will feel the same as I do, forever!" She forced them further back, until a wall blocked their escape route.
"And now you can't get away anymore." She began to close the last distance.
"B-But....." Curtain Call's eyes shifted around, looking for a way out. "But I awlways liked youh actin', Starlet!"
The vengeful filly stopped in her tracks, but only for a moment.
"E-Even youh last performance! You tricked us awll by pretendin' to be ouh friend and you were great at it!"
Starlet stopped again. Only the hint of a smile appeared on her face, before her expression turned cold again. "I know what you're trying. It's not working." She sat herself into motion again, but the short pause in her movement was exactly what her parents needed.
Starlet had just taken on a more physical form again, as she suddenly felt a ribbon getting wrapped around her body. It ignited, hit by a burst of magic from behind, just as she turned around in surprise.
Her parents looked at her with grieving expressions, yet with a small smile of relief on their faces.
As she looked down, Starlet noticed that her body dissolved quickly. She shot her parents a hateful glare. "You betrayed me!" she hissed.
Their expressions resisted her glare. "Keep waiting for us, Starlet. We'll see us again one day." Then their daughter vanished completely, nothing but smoke remaining at the place she stood.
Curtain Call and Fast Bun eased up. "Will she be okay?" Curtain Call asked.
"Now she will be," Starlet's mother said while she draped Corn Pops over her back.
Her husband did the same with Babs, who was thankfully just unconscious and the wound on the back of her head wasn't too bad.
Starlet's parents cast a last glance into the diner, joined by Curtain Call and Fast Bun, then they closed the door and left the fateful place behind them. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | pre | Heart Strings flinched at the accusation, "How dare you, I'll have you know I came all the way from Canterlot with an orders from the Princess to bring him there!" Quickly she realized what she had said and covered her mouth.
"Wait what?!" Pinkie said.
"Okay that's it! I'm done with this." Star yelled as the lights in his cutie mark grew brighter. "I am so tired of everybody telling me what to do! From here on out I make my own choices!" He then point a hoof over to Twinkle, "And I'm gonna to live with her. Not because of the pink cotton candy pony but because Twinkle offered me a place to stay... and invited me to be part of her family." He began to scan the room until his eyes landed on Heart Strings, "And you, I appreciate what you did for me, but who are you, really? And who the hell is this so called 'Princess'!" Star yelled as his legs began to shift under the covers.
"Star you should really calm down." Twinkle replied.
"No." Star said firmly, "I have been calm this whole time... I want answers!"
"Then allow me to enlighten you." A female voice said from behind Twilight and the others.
"Princess Luna!" |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 6: Need Input... That's information. | "Star you should really calm down." Twinkle replied.
"No." Star said firmly, "I have been calm this whole time... I want answers!"
"Then allow me to enlighten you." A female voice said from behind Twilight and the others.
"Princess Luna!" Twilight exclaimed.
Star looked around the room as everypony began to bow their head to a large winged dark blue unicorn. He eyed the blue mare carefully; she looked so familiar to him.
"Please Our Little Ponies, tho does not need to bow in our presence." The dark blue mare gently spoke as she pointed to Star. "Is he the young colt you spoke of to us, Twilight Sparkle."
Quickly Twilight clumsily trotted to the large winged unicorn, "Yes Princess Luna."
Everypony remained where they were as Luna walked through the room towards Star's hospital bed. With a quickly fluff of her wings she sat in front of the young colt, as all he could do was stare up at her. "We are Princess Luna." Star tilted his head as if a different angle would help remind him of where he had last encountered this mare.
"The one in the books?" Star asked.
"The one and the same." Luna replied.
"But that means that you're over a thousand years old or something and that's not... possible... is it?" Star stated only to lose to confusion.
"And so we are." Luna stated back with a raised eyebrow.
Suddenly his 'new' younger sister came out from behind him, her wings all stretched out and her chest all puffed out. "Mine!" Solar Ring said as if trying to defend her new found brother.
Luna turned her attention to Solar, and as she did her mane shifted, falling towards the bed. "Brave one aren't we?" Luna asked only to notice the little pegasus' attention on her ethereal mane. Cautiously Solar moved her hoof into Luna's star filled mane.
"Pretty..." Solar said mesmerized by Luna's mane.
With a gentle giggle Luna smiled and then turned her attention to the young colt, who now was also staring into her mane. Solar then tried to climb Luna's muzzle to get a better view of the Lunar Princess's mane.
"Solar Ring! Get down from there!" Golden whispered loudly.
"Tis fine, she's only a child and she mean no harm." Luna replied her eyes looking over his metallic and bandaged covered body. "Will somepony please explain to us why this colt is so injured?" Luna asked raising her brow.
"Timberwolves..." Silver muttered.
With a look of horror Luna turned to the green Pegasus, "Twas you job to look after the colt! What were you doing that made you neglect your duty!?"
But before Heartstring could reply she was interrupted. "I remember you..." Star murmured. Luna blinked and shifted her head, "I remember seeing you before the books... with another that looked like you. She also had wavy magic hair... You two saved me." Star said raising his eyes to meet Luna's. "You were also in the story books... The mare in the moon."
Luna nodded, "You're knowledge and memory is impressive, still it is a half-truth... you saved our life as well little fallen star." Star blushed as he could feel Luna's breath upon his muzzle. "Pray tell... what is your name?"
"I wonder..." Solar whispered as she reached to nibble some of Luna's mane, losing her balance and slipping off the Princess's muzzle pulling her down. Star flinched before he could answer shutting his eyes, and in a moment he felt a warm wet sensation against his lips. Curiosity worked on the colt's mind forcing him to reach out and lick what was pressing against his lips; only to find the sweet taste of strawberries. Quickly he opened his eyes to find that he in fact was lip to lip with the large dark blue winged unicorn.
"Princess Luna is trying to eat my new brother!" Solar Ring yelled releasing some of Luna's mane from her mouth.
"Solar!" Twinkle exclaimed pulling the young filly from the bed, "We are so sorry you highness."
With a loud 'pop' Luna separated from Star, her cheeks completely flushed and visible through her coat. "Ahem... Tis nothing to apologize for... Star are you alrii..." Luna began only to notice the blank expression on Star's face.
The sounds of several loud clicks were heard from Star's body, and suddenly his body began to relieve pressure like a train. Loud hissing sounds erupted from the metal plates opening to release the built up pressure. Even his Cutie Mark Star popped on inch from his flank release pressure.
"Awww, Horseapple!" Solar exclaimed throwing her hooves up, "She broke him!"
"Solar, language!" Golden exclaimed. As Solar quickly hide under the covers.
"Sorry Mom..." Solar replied.
"Solar I don't think..." Twinkle began as a wave of energy exploded from the young colts body.
"Epp!" Several of the mare yelped as the lights turned off.
A dim glow began to brighten the room, "Is everyone okay?" Twilight asked.
Everypony replied stating that they were okay, "Than you very much so dear Twilight, for the illumination spell." Luna replied
"I didn't... Twinkle?" Twilight asked looking over to her cousin.
Slowly raising her hoof she pointed to Star, or to be more accurate, his cutie mark. It was glowing in the colors of the night sky. Luna tilted her head to get a better look only to find that in inside image of his cutie mark was indeed glowing and was displaying the night sky littered with stars just like her ethereal mane. Suddenly another pulse of energy exploded out from Star's cutie mark, causing the lights above to flicker brightly and a few to blow out.
Luna vision was blurred by the sudden flash of energy and light, when her vision was restored the first thing she caught was an unconscious colt on the bed in front of her. "Star?" Solar whimpered, then she turned her anger to Luna, "What did you do to him?!"
"ENERGY DISPERSAL COMPLETE: UNKNOWN PARTICLES HAVE BEEN PURGED." The text displayed in Star's vision stated.
Luna gasped she had done nothing to the young colt expect what this young mare was responsible for, but before she could reply Star mumbled in his sleep about delicious strawberries. The Lunar Princesses blushed and turned to Twilight, "Everything seems in order here... please keep us informed of young Star condition as the days progress." Twilight nodded and with that Luna stepped out of the room calling out the Heartstrings and continued down the hall Heartstring close behind.
"So Twinkle... are you really going to keep Star?" Twinkle nodded and trotted out to the bed. Solar gave her mother a pouty face as if asking to with her eyes if she could keep her new brother.
"Of course we are going to keep him--" Twinkle began only to see Star's body glow in a purple aura. Quickly pulling Star out of Twilight's magic with her own she stared at her cousin, "What are you doing?"
With a apphensive giggle Twilight bowed her head in apology, "Sorry it's just I've never seen anypony like him so I wanted to--"
"No!" Twinkle exclaimed, "He is my son, the son of this herd." She said gesturing to her family, "No experimenting, no analyzing, and no anything scientific. He is a young colt and will be treated as one!" She stated stomping her hoof.
"But science is fun..." Star murmured.
Twinkle looked down at Star then at Twilight, "You..."
Twilight gave a toothy smile, "Sqee! He like science... when he was at the library we were discussing dark matter."
"Great, we have an egghead in the family now." Silver commented from the other side of the room. Which in turned earned her three glares... one from her aunt Twilight, and the others from her two mothers.
"What's dark matter?" Solar asked as Star started to fully regain control over himself.
"Dark matter is a kind of matter hypothesized in astronomy and cosmology to account for gravitational effects that appear to be the result of invisible mass." Star said as he put a hoof to his head, "And can someone tell me what just happened? And why do I taste strawberries?"
Everypony looked at Star and then at one another shaken their heads, "It seems you got a little light headed." Twinkle said.
Earning a sigh of relief from everypony, "Yep! Princess Luna almost ate you, but I saved you." Solar said in smug heroic tone, "All she got was your muzzle."
The memories flooded Star's head which caused him to blush furiously, which in turned caused his new younger sister to come in closer to visually inspect her brother full face blush.
"So an egghead and a Princess snoot bumper, gotta admit, not bad for a ground pounder." Silver said with a grin, which earn her a wing slap on the muzzle from Golden Ring.
"Don't tease your brother." Golden Ring said in a stern and gentle voice.
"Pfft, whatever. If you need me, I'll be outside hanging out with Sparkler and Rising." Silver Streak replied heading out the door.
"So.., what do we do now?" Star asked his now mothers, but before he could reply a white pony walked in with a nurses cap.
"Hello! It's time for all extra visitors to go home, except for the child's immediate family, they can stay." Nurse Redheart said as she walked passed.
*****
Everypony except Twinkle Shine and Solar Ring left the hospital room leaving it large and empty. Twinkle was sleep in a chair with her hoof on the mattress, while Solar was busy hiding under the blankets. Slowly Star lifted the blanket, his fore hooves giving a slight glow. Looking under, he discovered his little sister shaking with her eyes tightly shut.
"You okay?" Star asked.
She gave a quick nod.
"Scared of the dark, huh?" Star said as he made his way under the covers and nuzzled his sister. She quickly relaxed and nuzzled back, she let out a small sigh of relief as Star felt dumbfounded. He had just nuzzled this young pony, not out of habit but out of instinct? He could not get a proper grasp on his emotions; he was trying to figure out why... or how. Was it like when he fought the timber wolves... no that was the auto-defensive sub-routine installed the weapons software. As he though Solar opened her eyes to catch her new brother's face of thought and confusion.
"You okay?" Solar asked.
"Huh?!" Star replied looking at his sister, "Fine just... thinking, I think?"
Solar gave a giggle, "My friend Mango Blossom says that earth ponies need to work hard or fiddle with something to think hard... maybe you should try that."
"Maybe... except I'm not an Earth Pony." Star replied.
Sitting up straight Solar looked over her brother, "If you're not an earth pony, and you don't have a horn or wings... what kind of pony are you?"
"I don't know..." Star replied with a shrug, "But I know I can't be the only one... right?" Star said looking down at his little sister.
"Yeah!" Solar replied excitedly sleepy, "Maybe we can find others like you... and then we can find out what kind of pony you are." She said as she yawned laying against Star's warm side.
"Yep..." Star replied letting out a gentle yawn and also began to lower his new body down.
Twinkle watched her two foals slowly cuddle up to each other and fall asleep, the gentle glowing of Star's fore hooves slowly fading into the darkness of the night.
"Good night my precious little ponies." Twinkle said gently.
"Good night mom..." Solar muttered.
"Sleep gently... mama." Star replied barely above a whisper, but still loud enough that a tear slipped from Twinkle's eye.
> Chapter 7: Malfunction
It had been two day since Princess Luna's visit and Star was final going to be released from the hospital that morning. Still the last two days would be best described as, "The most boring-est days ever!" Solar sighed as she trotted around the hospital room. Star watched his little sister pace around the room kicking a small ball around. Then a sudden knock at the door grabs their attention and both sets of eyes lock onto the ivory unicorn who walks in.
"Hey guys... I bring Sugar Cube Corner muffins and Apple Acres juice!" Twinkle said levitating the items in her magic.
"Yay!" Solar yelled, her wings buzzing as she was trying to take into the air.
"More sugar... is there anything with more protein that maybe I could eat... I keep staying hungry..." Star asked with a pleading look upon his face.
Twinkle felt a pang of guilt; she was trying to spoil the colt not realizing that all he might want is something a bit more normal. Star on the other hand was unaware that his new body came with new instruction, thankfully his instincts where guiding him, making him crave eggs, beans... and even meat.
"Sure I'll get you some eggs, okay honey?" Twinkle replied, only getting a getting sleepy nod from Star.
As Twinkle was about to leave the room, Nurse Red Heart appeared with a large plate of eggs, beans and nuts. "Don't worry about it dearie." Red Heart said as she placed the plate in front of Star. He immediately torn into the food, muzzle first, his table manner just as bad as Solar's. "Miss Shine... may I talk to you a moment, outside."
The two mares swiftly walked out of the room as the two foals ate their meals. Twinkle was the first to speak, "What is it Red Heart?"
"Ohh, I don't know where to begin..." She said as she began to pull out Star's file. "What have you heard or know about your... son's condition?"
"Other than possible sexual trauma and abuse nothing really..." Twinkle said as the thought finally hit her. What had happen to the colt? Why does he have metal fused onto his body? And what is with the advance technology all over his body?
"There are a lot of guess and rumors, but the most probable is that he is an alicorn... a male Alicorn." Red Heart said as she pulled out an X-ray, "His bones are hollow like that of a Pegasus, his thaumologic system is on par with powerful unicorns and his body is strong like that of an earth pony."
"If that's true then?" Twinkle began only to be cut off.
"We don't know, it's a theory... and with the arrival of Princess Luna a few nights ago, I don't know because if it's true, somepony out there is a monster." Red Heart said as she put the files away, "But there is another option." She began as she leaned in close to Twinkle. "This is just another theory but... he could be a new race of pony or something. With all the weakness his body has... like the need for iron."
"What should I do?" Twinkle began as she felt anxiety crawl up her back.
"For now, watch him; take care of him... be a mother for the little guy. That is what he needs most..." Red Heart said looking into the room as Solar tackled Star onto the bed. "He is a foal after all." ***
After an embarrassing moment of being wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair exposing himself, and a fight about wearing thicker clothes to keep Star warm; Twinkle Shine, Solar and Star headed into town. The town was covered in snow, with several ponies already clearing the roads and skies. As they walked Twinkle and Solar met several of their friends and introduced Star to them.
"Where are we?" Star asked.
With an explosion of confetti and streamers Pinkie Pie erupted next to Star, "Well, you're in Sugar Cube Corner!" She exclaimed his family sat with a parent and child already at a booth.
"Hello Ditzy, how are you and your family doing?" Twinkle asked the grey Pegasus mare as the group sat down inside a gingerbread-like house.
"Hello Twinkle, I doing fine... waiting for Berry and well, Sparkler doing great, she'll be going away to the University soon and my little Dinky is doing... well as you can see..." Ditzy replied looking at her unicorn daughter Dinky and Solar wrestling on the floor.
"So who is the new colt? Say Uncle!" Dinky asked as she had Solar Ring partially pinned to the ground.
With a quick tug and a hooked foreleg around Dinky's neck, Solar pulled her to the ground and the two began again, "He is my new big brother... Gotcha!" Solar exclaimed as she placed Dinky into a submission hold.
"New... arghhh! Uncle! Uncle!" Dinky yelled as Solar released her. Shifting her shoulders until she heard a pop she turned to Star. "So you can just pick up new older brothers and sisters."
"Huh?!" Star said looking down at the little grey unicorn. "Solar... you can't pick up siblings at the store, I hope." Star said looking up at Twinkle, with a gentle shake of her head his suspicions were answered.
"Well, where do brothers and sisters come from?" Dinky asked as she dusted herself off.
"Ohh! Yes, Star is super smart! Tell us!" Solar exclaimed as both her and Dinky sat down in front of Star.
"Wait a minute... what exactly are you two asking me?" Star asked a hint of red blush appearing across his cheeks as he slightly raised his head.
"Where do foals come from? Duh!" Dinky replied.
Just as Star began to stuttered, four more ponies walked into, two of which he recognized. "Apple Bloom, Apple Jack hello!" Star yelped out with a wave.
"Hello Berry!" Twinkle said.
"Pina!" Dinky shout as the tackle her friend.
"Star!" Apple Bloom exclaimed as she glomped Star to the ground nuzzling his cheek.
Star hesitated but hugged back, "Hey Bloom, I want you to meet my... family." Star said in a loud and monotone voice and he gestured to Twinkle and Solar.
"Family?! Ya mean ya got adopted and you're stayin' in Ponyville?!" Apple Bloom asked excitedly. Star put a hoof to his chin, thought about it, and then nodded. "WOHOO!" Apple Bloom exclaimed and glomped Star again giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Suddenly both Star and Apple Bloom became aware of several eyes upon them, as well as several grins and frowns.
"What is it with everypony kissing on my brother?!" Solar exclaimed as she threw her hooves into the air, both Pina and Dinky patting her back as if they understood her pain.
"WHA?!" Apple Bloom yelled.
"Not what you think... it was Solar Ring's fault!" Star shouted pointing to his sister.
"It's not my fault, the bat pony mare who kissed you last night was already in the room when I came out of the bathroom." Solar replied as she puffed up her chest.
"No I am talking about Prin..." Star stopped and then looked off in thought and then returned his gaze to Solar. "What bat pony mare?"
"Last night... she was about your size and nuzzling into your neck and making all sorts of noises." Solar replied.
Eyes wide opened Star began to panic, "Solar.. why didn't you say something earlier?!" Star asked in a gentle manner.
"Because she told me not to say anything, and when I asked her what she was doing she said she was kissing you." Solar said relaxing while everypony listen was staring at her wide eyed.
"Solar, sweetie, are you sure you weren't dreaming or something?" Twinkle asked as she lifted her daughter into the air and placed her down next to her.
"Well great... now something else is going to happen to me." Star said collapsing on the ground.
"Nothing is going to happen to you." A strong female voice replied.
Everypony turned to the new voice, "Mama!" Solar exclaimed as Star watched his 'new' other mother walk towards them.
"Golden... what brings you here?" Twinkle asked.
"Silver left me home alone to hang out with Sparkler... then." Golden began only to have Twinkle scoot in and tap the spot next to her.
"Come on and sit down." Twinkle said.
Golden trotted over and sat down next to Twinkle giving her a gentle nuzzle on her cheek. Star looked up to watch the exchange of affection between his mothers.
"So ummm... Nothing weird is going to happen to me?" Star asked slightly tugging on Golden's tail for her attention.
"Nothing, more than likely it was a hungry bat pony." Golden replied.
"Bat... Pony? What the heck is that?" Star asked confused... "Did it suck out my blood?!"
Golden looked down at Star, "You have a lot to learn kid."
"Eh... what... of course I do, I've been stuck in a hole in the ground for the last few years, and this is my first week talking to someone who isn't behind a screen!" Star said somewhat flustered and agitated.
"Sorry." Golden replied, "I'm not good when it comes to talking to foals... that with Bringer."
"Bringer?" Star mumbled .
"There are two different types of bat-ponies; flesh, and fruit eaters. The flesh eaters are well flesh eaters, but sometimes they require more iron from their food so they might drink some from a sleeping creature, and fruit eaters just drink and eater fruit... sometimes you get a mix of both." Golden replied.
"Wow Missus Ring... did you know of other types of ponies?" Dinky asked from behind Star giving him a scare.
"Bringer use to tell us stories, of other night-time ponies such as Umbracorns, and Lupus Ponies, and of mer-ponies, kelpies, kirins, draphons, and of a weird ghost like pony he saw once..." Golden said as she leaned against Twinkle, "Bringer said that the world is full of ponies and creatures... all we had to do was to open our eyes and reach out to them... and maybe they would reach back out to us."
"So if I got bit by a Bat-pony... nothing is going to happen to me?" Star asked.
"Nothing at all..." Golden said looking down at the copper colt, and then over to Dinky, "And no... you don't turn into a Bat-Pony either."
As Star was about to ask more on the subject, child curiosity got ahold of yet another foal in the room.
"Hey I just noticed this... but what is wrong with his legs?" Pina asked, tapping Star's metallic hooves.
Solar jumped out from between her mother and then swatted Pina's nose, "That is rude, if you have a question ask him!" Solar stated pointing a hoof at Star.
"It's okay Solar... You don't have to hit anybody for me." Star said trying to calm the situation.
"Nope she needs to apologies and a colt shouldn't let a filly trot all over him." Solar replied.
"Sorry Sta..." Pina began only to be interrupted by Star.
"Wait a minute..." Star mumbled as he began to think... the comment about 'colt things', then the stories, and finally the history books... "No." he thought out loud. Then he looked up at the table... filled with females, and then at the restaurant... the math slowly being worked out in his head.
"Is being a colt a bad thing?" Star asked Dinky.
"Well... no, but you do have to treat colts gently... that's what Carrot Top tell me." Dinky replied, "Cause you know... cause colts aren't something to have... or something... I don't remember."
"No it's cause you'll never win a colt's heart that way... take them out to dinner, by them things... stuff like that." Pina added, "That's what Carrot Top says."
"Star are you okay?" Solar asked reaching out to him with a wing, his body shuttered at her touch.
"Who is Bringer?" Star asked his voice cracking with nervousness.
"Ohhh! She's talking about my dad Star Bringer, he's not here anymore but according to my moms he was a great stallion." Solar replied.
"He was married to both of them?" Star questioned.
"No... he was married to mama Golden Ring, Twinkle Shine, Ivory Wind, and Shimmer Breeze... but Ivory Wind and Shimmer Breeze left to join another herd. My sister Silver Streak her birth mom was Ivory Wind but her new herd didn't want her with a child so... I got to keep my sister."
Star looked at Solar, tears rolling down her eyes and he pulled her into a hug. As Twinkle made her way out of the booth, the realization of what had been there all along hit him, and as much as he ignored it, it was a sign that he truly was lost somewhere out in the universe with no means to get home. With eyes like pinpricks he looked up to Twinkle Shine, which caused her to freeze as she was about to pick him up.
"Twinkle Shine, what type of society do we live in?" Star asked already knowing the answer.
"A matriarchy..."
"And what is the ratio of female to males...?" Star asked his breathing becoming erratic.
"10 to 1, but Ponyville is about 14 to 1... Star, are you okay?" Twinkle asked.
"Do... Will I have to marry into a herd one day?" Star asked, his voice trembling with fear.
"What are you..." The realization of Star's question hit here, "No honey, you never be forced to do anything you won't want to do." Twinkle replied.
Star lowered his head as the information beginning to officially settle in; his old fear from his human youth began to rear its ugly head. Several warning messages began to appear in his vision; Star was to frighten to even react to these messages. As Twinkle approached he was able to smell her... he was able to smell every adult pony who was close... and their musk.
"Uhh, Star you okay?" Apple Bloom asked as she got closer.
Suddenly he reached out and grabbed the little yellow filly and pulled her into a hug as well, his snoot buried into her apple scented neck.
"Star?" Apple Bloom began only to be cut off by the sound of an energy shield going up around them. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 8: Stand By... | Chapter 8: Stand By.
Somewhere on a hidden island, west of Equestria a set of white Alicorns sit around a large table discussing events of things to come below a whisper. Suddenly a white stallion with a light blue mane appears in the room in a flurry of snow.
"Frost!" One of the alicorns with a blonde mane exclaim.
"Report!" The Alicorn with a red mane said with a stern monotone voice.
"Project 'Star Bright' is under way... he has settled in Ponyville. I think the law of attraction that we spoke of is in play here." The white stallion spoke bowing his head revealing a large bluish-white gem on his forehead.
The red mane Alicorn turned to the blonde mane Alicorn, "Is this your doing... or theirs?"
"More than likely theirs... you know how they like to play these events." She replied.
"We cannot intervene with the current history... Magic has yet to show herself." The red Alicorn spoke as the white stallion looked on confused.
"Magic... I seem to remember... damn!" Frost replied stomping his hoof causing ice to form on the floor. "I can't remember..."
"Little brother do not concern yourself with your old memories... it has been several millennia for them. Let them be forgotten for now and focus on your tasks." The red mane Alicorn spoke trying to calm the stallion.
"Sorry sist... your majesty. It has been a long day filled with... problems for me." Frost replied.
"Problems what sort of problems?"
"Nothing to be concerned with your majesties..." Frost replied forming a wing of snow to hide behind.
Suddenly very interested in his problems both alicorns trotted up to the white stallion, "Please Winter Frost... don't not tell me that they can see you?"
"See me... no, No! That is not what troubles me... it is a matter of the heart." He said putting a hoof to his chest.
The red mane Alicorn looked down to Frost with a smile, "So another mare has caught your fancy... please, do tell us her name Season Spirit so we may assist you."
Frost eyes opened in surprise and fear, slowly remembering every time he had asked her for help. "No I am good... I shall return to Ponyville, the last I saw of Star he was hiding behind an energy shield similar to ours."
"Star?" The blonde Alicorn asked.
"Yes, did I not mention... he has chosen the name Star Circuit." Frost replied as he headed to the window.
"No you did not... Now then, go Frost and watch over Star Circuit... the Endlings must not find him." The red mane Alicorn commanded.
"Yes, your majesty." Frost replied. Quickly forming wings of snow and ice he took to the air and exploded into a flurry of snow.
Looking backing into the room the red mane Alicorn stared at the blonde Alicorn, "One piece of five have entered our game against the end and into the world beyond our borders..."
"Yes, but what of the other four?"
"We have time... magic is far from ascension, and Triek is still bound in Tartarus... we have time."
"But do they..." The blonde Alicorn asked looking out to Equestria which lay in the coming sunrise.
"I hope so..." The red mane Alicorn walked to a large double door and opened it catching a stallion dressed in silver armor standing outside of the door.
"Your majesty!" The stallion replied bowing his head.
"Quick Silver, I need you to summon the rest of counsel of immortals." The red mane Alicorn commanded. Quick Silver nodded and took off down the hall.
"I must say sisters you are quite the busy bunch." A male voice spoke from the shadows of the room.
"Prince Chaos!?" The blonde mare stuttered.
"You sure are quick aren't you?" The red mane Alicorn replied.
"Quick no, punctual yes." Chaos smirked, "Speaking of punctual, the second of the five is already here... well not here... but underground, deep in the Everfree Forest... with his daughter."
"The second is in the Everfree?"
"The second is a father?!"
"Yes, yes... but I must warn you, he is like the others. Different from the norm..." Chaos spoke as he walked to his sisters; his bright green mane and tail moving in a non-existent breeze, his coat a flat-black and his yellow eyes with red pupils.
"By the love of me, I swear sometimes I wondering why you look like such a horrible 'OC' Chaos." The red mane Alicorn said while the blonde laughed.
"Screw you! I never had an imagination for this kind of thing..." He exclaimed as he sat on his haunches.
"So... You know the location of the second." The red mane Alicorn asked.
"Yes... and she know where the third is." Chaos said pointing at the blonde Alicorn.
"Destiny!" The red mane Alicorn exclaimed. "Is this true?"
Quickly looking for an exit the blonde mane Alicorn dashed to a set of double doors only to be blocked off by Chaos. "No escape dear sister."
"Traitor!" Destiny shouted.
"No... I'm Chaos." Chaos spoke with a toothy grin.
"Destiny... where is he?"
"Please sister... he is too young. This burden will be too heavy for him." Destiny pleaded.
"Oh please, he is a Draphons, I doubt he is too young." Chaos replied earning a hiss from Destiny.
"The third is a Draphons... hmmm." The red mane Alicorn began to murmur. "Chaos what is the second?"
"A Lupus Pony my dear Faust."
"So a Technomage, a Draphon and a Lupus Pony... so the fourth is the same as the other three... A sea pony? Umbracorn? What?" She asked no pony in particular as she stomped her hoof.
"Dear sister patience... time is on our side at the moment. Chaos is balanced... and I will do my best until harmony arrives." Chaos replied. "Plus it is kind of exciting not to know who or what the fourth and fifth are... it has a slight hint if Chaos." He said with a smile.
"You are right... so, if I maybe so bold to ask... what are their names?"
Chaos and Destiny looked at one another, Destiny looking for comfort in the eyes of Chaos, in which he replied with a gentle nod. Turning to Princess Faust, Prince Chaos was the first to speak.
"His name is Thorne Fright."
Destiny closed her eyes and turned to Faust, "His name is Solar Rider... or it will be."
"What do you mean it will be..." With a sudden gasp she turns to Destiny, "He has not gone through the 'Hestr-vili'?" Faust asked.
Shaking her head Destiny sat down, looking out the window to the west.
"Worry not dear sister, he will be fine." Chaos said comforting his sister with his wing.
"Like your failed acolyte Discord?" Destiny said with a hiss towards Chaos' comfort.
"Do not speak to me of Discord when your three fates defy you and rewrite the destinies that you have written." Chaos spat.
"SILENCE!" A dark voice shouted from the doors.
"Princess Morta..." Chaos muttered.
"Let us not speak ill of those who we chose to fulfill our will." Morta spoke.
"Thank you Morta." Faust said as she walked over to the grey-ash Alicorn mare.
"You are most welcome dear sister..." Morta said as she tried to smile, "We are trying to be more... social. Your trusted Seasons Spirits, Spring Time and Autumn Fall have been very helpful to us... me."
The two hugged one another and looked to the other two alicorns in the room. "So back to business... Are we sure that End is coming." Faust asked.
Morta and Chaos looked at one another and nodded, "Souls that have arrived to us, without the light of their soul... it has been difficult to restore them." Morta said.
"And I have to keep pulling chaos from certain regions to keep the balance of harmony." Chaos replied. "The End is coming and I think 'she' is behind it all."
"Let us speak of the rest of this behind closed doors." Suddenly several more creatures and Alicorns appeared from nowhere and began entering the room. Then all the doors and windows glowed several colors and slammed shut.
*****
Everypony in Sugar Cube Corner watched in awe as three foals hugged one another under some sort of 'magical' dome shield.
"He's curse!"
"He's possessed!"
"RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
Three mares yelled as they ran out of Sugar Cube Corner; Apple Bloom stared hard at the three flower mares as they ran out, and then back to the colt who was hugging her. Slowly she lifted her hoof to push him away but stopped, instead she moved her muzzle into his neck. With a big whiff she caught his scent... it was the smell of new tools?!... and something else, the night sky. A smile ran across her muzzle, he smelled just like her favorite things. She shook her head, "Come on Star... it's okay. Nopony is going to hurt you."
"..what about whe... der." Star whispered back.
"Wha' was that sugarcube?" Apple Bloom asked as she nuzzled Star's cheek.
"What about when I'm older... what will I do? Mares will force me to do..." Star started only to find a hoof over his mouth.
"Then you can stop them... you'll be a big stallion, and judging by your legs ah seriously doubt any filly or mare could tell you what to do." Apple Bloom said.
Slowly Star pulled away his legs retracting the shield generators, his emotions more under his control. "Sorry Abby..."
"Abby?" Apple Bloom asked, scrunching her muzzle.
Semi-panicked, Star was about to apologize when Apple Bloom shook her head, "Ah like it... but only you can call me that." She said lightly punching his shoulder.
"Well will ya look at that... ya called him Sugarcube, Sugarcube." Apple Jack said pulling her younger sister into a hug. "Way to defuse the situation Apple Bloom."
"Thanks..." Apple Bloom replied, then turning her attention back to Star. "Are you gonna be okay?"
"I think so..." Star said only to be lifted up by his adopted pegasus mother, her hoof strong and rather comforting.
"No." Golden Ring said.
"No?" Star answered back looking confused as the pegasus fluff out her feathers, her wings twitching as if she was about to take flight.
"Mom means you shouldn't hide when you're scared." Solar Ring said looking as if she was about to smack Star on his muzzle.
"No." Golden said pulling Star tighter into a hug away from the oncoming hoof. Looking surprised she looked at her mother Golden, then to her other mother Twinkle looking for answers.
"Remember honey... Star is a little delicate." Twinkle said pulling Solar into a similar hug that Star was in.
Eventually the foals were put down, and continued to play as the adults continued to talk. Afternoon turned into evening as each of the families said their farewells and headed home.
"So Dinky... what did you think of Star?" Ditsy asked as her and the Apples walked to their homes.
"He was... pretty nice... to nice and polite for a colt... I also like how shiny his legs were, actually why was his legs like that mommy?" Dinky asked,
"Well muffin, ummmm... someponies are different and aren't as lucky as you and your friends... and well..." Ditsy began remember what Twinkle Shine told her about Star.
"He's jus' a pony who needs a littl' extra taken' care of." Apple Jack added.
"Yep, that's right." Ditsy agreed with a smile.
"So does this mean I have to treat him different?" Dinky replied.
"Ummmm...." Ditsy began, only to look forward and smile, "Treat him like you want to be treated and stop if he tells you... in any way... stop whatever you're doing that might be making him uncomfortable."
"He likes hugs! He calms down a lot when you hug him!" Apple Bloom added. Suddenly three pairs of eyes found themselves on Apple Bloom. "Wha?!"
"Sugarcube... Ah think he only likes your hugs..." Apple Jack said bumping her little sister as they walked. Quickly Apple Bloom found herself looking at the snow covered ground with much interest as she walked on with her sister.
Somewhere on the other side of town, Pinkie sat under a tree watching the new foal in town walk home with his new family.
"You know watching ponies walking home is kinda creepy~!" Pinkie said to no one in particular. The sound of snow shifty beside her and a light outline of snow floating above her head was all she got as Pinkie continued to watch the herd. "I know, I know... but I can't hear, see or touch you either... wait. . . . . I'm the creepy looking one!" She blurted out from under her hat and scarf. She then stood up and trotted off to her home waving back to the invisible figure that was watching the family enter their home. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 9: Are you sure you want to eject? | Four ponies walked home as the sun began to set on this winter evening. A large female Pegasus, a small female Pegasus, a average sized female unicorn, and a metal legged earth colt. Star looked around trying to keep his new child-like emotions in check, his sudden urge to duck between one of his adopted mother's legs at any unfamiliar sound was starting to bother him.
"I'm so excited!" Little Solar said as she fluttered into the air, her wings buzzing with her excitement. "How about you Star, are you excited to see your new home?"
Both Twinkle and Golden let their ears swivel to hear Star's response.
"I think so... I'm just afraid I'll be in the way though." Star replied lowering his head.
Twinkle was about to reply when Solar slammed into Star, "Are you kiddng me?! I have a big brother now, how are you going to be in the way? This is so totally awesome especially since we're sharing a room!"
We're sharing a room?" Star asked.
"Sorry Star, I know you probably want your own room but right now we're using the spare room for... storage." Twinkle said as she let the foal catch up to her.
"No, I'm good, I never shared a room with anyone... I mean, anypony before, it might be fun." Star said as they reach a small two story house.
"Were here." Golden said as she opened the door only to find Silver and some unknown Pegasus stallion making out on the sofa.
"Mom!" Silver exclaimed as she tossed the brown coated stallion to the floor, "What are you doing here so early?"
Golden gave her daughter a sharp upset look, then pointed to the clock on the wall.
"Oh... it's that late already?" Silver said as she giggle nervously.
Twinkle had her hooves around Solar and Star's eyes, preventing them from watching the scene unfold before them. "I think it's time you left young colt, we have a pair of foal that need to get to bed and a young mare who might not get to see the outside world for a long time."
"Okay." The brown stallion said as he quickly trotted to the door, "I'll see you in school Silver..."
Golden gave the young stallion a look that sent shivers up his spine and his flank into the clouds.
"Mom!" Silver said as she stomped her hoof, both Twinkle and Golden gave her a look. "How am I ever supposed to find the right one, if you keep scaring them off!?"
"Simple." Twinkle stated as she, Solar and Star moved into the living room, "He'll come back tomorrow and introduce himself."
"You guys know nothing about stallions!" Silver said as she began to trot upstairs.
Both Golden and Twinkle looked at one another and sighed, "Did she really she that to us?" Golden just looked at Twinkle and shook her head in disappointment. "Seriously how do you think you were born!" Twinkle yelled up stairs.
The sound of somepony stumbling was heard as Silver yelled, "Argh... MOM!"
The rest of the evening went on as a normal evening should, they ate dinner at the table together, the foals took their bath... though Star was the most difficult. Everypony was afraid he would break in the shower. Finally Star was lead to Solar's room...
"So this is where you sleep Star!" Solar said as she jumped on his bed.
"Solar, no jumping on the bed." Twinkle said as she levitated Solar and Star into their beds.
"Bedtime story!" Solar exclaimed.
"Sorry honey, no story tonight, it's already late. If you wanted a story you have to get to bed earlier." Twinkle said as she tucked Solar into bed. Twinkle then kissed Solar on the forehead and nuzzled her, and then gave Star a gentle nuzzle. "Good night you two." Twinkle whispered as she turned off the lights and closed the door.
As the room began to darken Star began to give into his sleep slowly, that was until Solar began to whimper. "Star... Star are you there?"
"Star..."
"Star..."
"I'm here." Star replied.
"Oh good." "..." "..."
"...Star, are you still there?"
"Star?"
"Star?"
"Solar... what's wrong?" Star said as he opened his eyes in the darkness.
"I'm... I'm scared of the dark..." Solar replied. A muffled thump was heard from Star's bed, "Star what happen... what was that?"
"Ow... remind me that face to hoof is bad... ow..." Star said as he rubbed his muzzle wondering what he could do to help. Suddenly a set of green letters began to appear in is field of vision.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE YOU'RE 'A.R.T.I.E.'?
"A.R.T.I.E.... Artie! Yes, deploy Artie!" Star said in an excited tone.
"Who's Art-ty?" Solar asked.
"My assistant... you'll see." Star said.
ONE MOMENT PLEASE...
Star watched as the bar began to fill, suddenly his head started making all sorts of whirling clicking sounds, and a few seconds later something detached from his forehead plate. A small blue glowing metal ball with three pyramid pieces began to float around Star's head.
"Hello Sir, my name is ARTIE... how can I help you?" The floating robot said.
Solar stared in awe as the small orb landed on Star's forehead, "What is it?" Solar asked.
With a smile Star looked up at Artie and then a Solar, "Artie can you watch and look after us while we sleep?"
"Yes Sir." Artie replied his blue glowing dimming enough that only he was visible.
"You mean..."
"Yep, Night Light... that can do something." Star replied.
"Awesome, Good night Artie, Good Night Star." Solar said and with that she covered herself in the blanket.
"Good nig..." Star began only to be cut off by Solar's snore. Shaking his head he laid his head back down. "Good night Artie."
"Good night Sir." ***
Later the next day in Canterlot the sun began to rise, and Celestia was having one of her mornings.
"Dear sister what worries you so?" Luna asked as she arrived for her dinner that morning.
Celestia looked up, her eyes showing her exhaustion as winter took its toll on her. "That young colt, is he the one you spoke of, is he truly the one?"
Luna bowed her head as her ears flatted back against her head, "Yes, 1000 years ago in my madness of Nightmare Moon we looked to the stars and found one calling out to us, wishing... for something... we do not remember to well."
"But why does he appear now, and why so young?" Celestia asked as her eyes caught a window slightly open to the far corner of the room.
"We do not know, but we do know that the purpose of his summon was to help us defeat you and the elements of harmony." Luna said as she stared at her pancakes with guilt. "Sister why do we not just..." The wall exploded with magic far behind Luna, Celestia's horn slightly smoke from the blast of magic she released. Luna turned around to gaze behind her, as the smoke cleared the area was unphased from the blast. "Sis sis sister, have we ange..."
"Shh! Silence Luna... he's here." Celestia whispered.
Luna began looking at her sister as if she had lost her mind, "Who is here, sister?"
"Something that show up every winter... it hides in the shadow, stalks me through my daily chores and sits in the far back of our throne room as we conduct court." Celestia hissed her horn slightly glowing gold with magic.
"Surely you jest sister, what could hide from." Luna quickly turned as her ears began to hear the sound of ice forming by the window, her eyes telling Celestia everything she need to know.
Blue magic quickly sealed the windows in the dining room as, another blast of magic shot through the dinner room towards the window. As the smoke cleared from the blast, a barrier of ice stood where the blast would have hit. "Come out and fight us you cur!" Celestia bellowed.
Luna slowly moved to her sister as the two stood in the center of the room, back to back, waiting for any sign of movement. "Sister what sort of creature are we dealing with? What could be strong enough to protect itself from you?" Luna spoke as her ears swiveled and her eyes jumped across the room.
Suddenly a burst of wind exploded from nowhere, a snowstorm was quickly forming in the dining room. The winds howled loudly, the snow quickly began to blanket everything in the room, then the wind was gone.
"Where? What...?" Celestia began to look around the room only to find all the windows open, "No!" She quickly galloped to the nearest window only to find the rest of the world covered in last night's snowstorm.
"Sister what was that?" Luna asked as she neared her sister.
"That has been following me every winter, since I banished you to the moon. I always thought it was some form of guilt or something, punishing me since I could not save you." Celestia said as tear began to roll down her eyes.
"Sister..." Luna began but could find no words to lift her sister's spirits. Then the sound of crunching snow was heard behind the sisters. Luna turned but found nopony, but the sound continued, that is when she caught it, as she turned she noticed the snow shifting as if somepony was writing in the snow. Her eyes opened wide as she realized it was a message, "Sister... look." Luna said.
Celestia began to turn and notice the stunned looking in her sister's face, and then noticed the out-stretched hoof pointing to the ground. Her eyes followed and also widened as she began to read the message aloud.
"Dear Daughters of her Majesty Faust, Please forgive me and my actions. I meant no harm. I was only following the orders given to me a couple of millenniums ago. Sigh the Season of Winter..." Celestia looked to her sister, a tear filled smile across their face. Celestia looked up to see a set of hoofprints in the snow heading to the window. "Please don't go!" Celestia voice pleaded, the hoofprints stopped. "Is it true, did you know our mother?"
A moment went by, then four hoof prints settled infront of the sisters, followed by the words in the snow, "I still know your mother."
"That's not possible... our mother is gone, isn't she?" Celestia asked looking to her sister.
Sudden the snow began to shift and change, as a new message appeared, "I was told never to interfere with the lives of mortal ponies outside the veil. Only to watch, but your mother gave me instructions and a spell for the day you two discovered me, but you will need the third Alicorn for the spell to work."
"Third? Who does this season speak of sister?" Luna asked.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza she appeared in Canterlot about 15 years ago, a foal at the time." Celestia began, and then looked over to her sister. "The very same one seeing our dear Captain of the Guard, actually she did appear on the first day of winter... did you have something to do with it..." Celestia asked as she notice several large symbols beginning to be drawn in the snow, a sort of triangular symbol with four circles.
A quill and parchment appeared in front of Celestia, she quickly wrote something, and burned the paper away. Suddenly in a flash of light blue magic Cadance appeared with the dining room. "Auntie what was so important that I had to be here?" Candance then realized she was in the presence of both sister, both of her 'Aunts'.
As Luna was going to question, the snow began to shift as another message appeared in the snow. "Please be quick, my time is limited. Stand in the circles with your cutie mark and focus your magic into the circle into the center, focus trying to teleport me there."
"What is that?!" Candance yelled.
"A creature known as... 'the season of Winter' is asking us to assist him with a spell." Celestia said quickly moving to the circle with her cutie mark. "Well?"
"Wait you're telling us to trust something that has been 'stalking' you this whole time, it gives an apology and you want to do what it says!" Luna replied.
"Luna we could finally learn about our parents... about mom." Celestia said with a pleading voice.
"I'm with her on this; no way I'm trusting a stranger that appeared out of nowhere." Cadance replied pointing to her aunt.
With a grunt Celestia looked towards the center of the symbol, a large snowflake decorated the center circle, "If you're not willing to help me then..." Celestia's horn began to glow a bright gold. The whole symbol began to glow gold and white. With wide eyes filled with fear and horror, Luna and Cadance galloped to Celestia in hopes to stop her, but it was too late. A bright flash filled the room and Celestia was gone. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 10: Hoof Prints to follow... | Slowly the world came back into view for Celestia, the haze of the bright flash clearing from her eyes. Carefully she stood up and checked her surrounding, she was still in the dining room, still standing in the circle of snow, but something felt off... different... she felt an unusual, yet familiar weight of magic upon herself. She then notices Cadance and Luna rushing around the dining room, their mouths moving but no sound.
"Welcome to behind the veil, Princess Celestia."
Celestia quickly turned and caught a white stallion, with a light blue mane and tail standing in the center circle. "Season of winter?" Celestia asked her voice filled with confusion. Celestia looked down at this average sized stallion, still confused... what was he. Instead on a horn upon his head, a sky blue oval gem, other than that he looked like any other earth pony in Equestria.
"Yes I am the season of winter, but you may call me Winter Frost... little Tia." Winter replied bowing his head as he produced wings of ice and snow.
A memory flashed in her head, the same pony in front of her watching over her in her cradle; calling her 'Little Tia'. "Are you an Alicorn?" Celestia asked as she walked towards him.
Shaking his head, Winter looked up to Celestia, "No, I am a 'Season Spirit' an immortal like you, but with far less power. I am an acolyte for Princess Faust and Princess Gaia."
"My mother and... who is this Princess Gaia?" Celestia asked looking down into Winter's light blue eyes.
Winter gave a weary sigh, "Sadly I cannot answer many of your questions, but know everything will be revealed in time... Patience is something that our kind carries with ease, we have much to discuss." Winter said as a shoulder bag appeared out of the snow. "And I am short on time, but first a present for the little princess who can't stand my cold winters." Winter said as he pulled out a purple gem from his bag.
*****
On the other side of the veil...
Luna, Cadance, and Shining Armor stood in the snow covered dining room with several guards searching the room.
"Why would Princess Celestia just do that?" Shining said as he walked over to the other two princesses.
"Our mother's name was mentioned..." Luna whispered, "Tia becomes... she is like a lost filly when our mother's name is mentioned..."
"You guys have..." Shining bellowed before he put a hoof over his mouth as several of the guards turned to look at him, "You two have parents?" Shining said aloud so that only Cadance and Luna could her him.
"Yes, but only our sister can remember them properly; we were too little to remember." Luna replied her head lowing enough that her muzzle could touch the ground.
About an hour later of searching later two guards walked up to Shining Armor. "What do you have to report?" Shining asked.
The two guards shook their heads, "We're sorry sir, but me and my teams could find nothing... no unusual magic, no signs of a struggle, nothing... just a small amount of Princess Celestia's teleportation magic lingering in the air."
"Well... where does it lead too?" Shining barked showing his impatience to the situation.
"Nowhere Sir, it just pops in and out of the same place."
"Well, don't just stand there! Go bring in the Mages!" Shinning barked.
"SIR!" The guard's ponies replied heading into the hall.
"Relax Shiny... we will find Celestia soon." Cadance cooed as she rested a wing on Shining's withers. He gently turned smiling back to Cadance, suddenly the room began to fill with wind... the snow erupting off ever surface and into the air. The snow began to swirl where Celestia had stood before she disappeared. As the snow began to clear, a tall pony silhouette began to appear. All the snow in the room condensed onto the silhouette and then exploded, leaving a tall white Alicorn standing in the middle of the room.
"SISTER!" Luna exclaimed as she glomped her sister, followed by Cadance. Celestia found herself on the floor being hugged by what she now knew as her sisters.
"It's alright, I'm fine." She said. Lifting her head she caught a glimpse at Shining Armor who was staring wide eyed at something in front of them. Slowly they all turn to see a snow white stallion slowly faded out from existence.
"Who or... what was that?" Cadance asked.
"Nothing to be concerned about; now we have many things to do, and not a lot of time to do it in." Celestia said in a chipper excited tone.
Luna then noticed that her sister's magic had risen higher than she had ever felt. "Sister, where does this new found energy and excitement come from?" Luna asked as they all stood up.
"Come we have much to do." Celestia said as she walked out of the dining room. Luna and Cadance had much time to talk and get to know one another while Celestia was gone and now busy with 'Plans'. It was early that evening that Celestia called down Luna and Cadance to her room.
"Dear Sister, why have you... youuuuoooo..." Luna yawned, "Called us here?"
"Luna and Cadance I had a lot of time to think about many things today, but two things stood out to me the most. Your requests." Celestia said as she gave Luna and Cadance a calm and regal look.
"Sister it's okay, I understand about the guard..." Luna began, as Cadance began to talk at the same time.
"My travels to the north, I know it was asking a lot and I'm sorry..."
"Granted." Celestia said.
As the two began there apologies, they stopped and stared at Celestia.
"You agree with us... our request?" Luna questioned raising an eyebrow at her sister.
"Yes, I believe that both of your requests have merit, but I do have requests of my own." Celestia said as she poured herself, Luna and Cadance some tea.
"Our course Aunt Tia, but we can we do?" Cadance asked as the tea cup was placed before her.
"When you venture to the north I want you to take a team of six of my best guards, including Shining Armor, but before then I want Shining Armor to teach Luna everything about our current guard... this may take a few weeks and I am afraid you will have to miss a few events, but fear not all will come together..." Slowly and almost out of nowhere Celestia pulled a book into existence.
"Sister?" Luna questioned.
"A gift from our old foal sitter..." Celestia said as she placed the open book down, and staring back at them was a black creature, with several knife like legs.
"Is that..."
*****
"Endlings." Artie replied as his single monocle eye stared at the metal plated colt that had been unable to sleep all night.
"So what are they?" Star asked trying to pull as much data as he could.
"I am unsure... the data is there but corrupted. It is a creature that marks the beginning of something, and each light represents a life... taken." Artie replied as he looked outside spotting several of the creatures walking about the town, invisible to the townsfolk. "You should sleep now sir."
As Star was about to argue he felt his eyes get heavy, and what felt like a pull on his being... his soul. In an instant he was out, suddenly the star on his flank began to glow brighter and brighter... sending pulse after pulse of energy out of his body. These pulses were invisible, just like the Endlings, and began pushing the Endlings... farther and farther from the town, until not a single one remained in town.
"Sleep tight Star Circuit..." Artie said as he began to float and bob through the room, humming a lullaby.
Outside of the room sat two ponies who overheard everything, Twinkle and Golden stared at the door as the thoughts of the little colt fighting invisible creatures.
"No matter how you cut it... it makes him sound crazy." Twinkle said
Golden looked at Twinkle and shook her head no, "The Princesses fight them too."
"That's right! He mentioned that... and... that explains why the Princess came to see him." Twinkle smiled at this realization, "Tomorrow I ask Twilight to send Princess Celestia a letter to see if she can..." A hoof fell over her lips.
"No." Golden replied, "They might try to take him away again, we keep him, raise him, and train him... just like how he would have wanted to raise his son." Golden replied looking at the picture of their fallen husband that hung on the wall. "We raise our son." Golden return her eyes to Twinkle with a smile.
With a nod Twinkle smiled back and got up along with Golden and headed to their room; tomorrow was a new day, filled with new surprises, and new adventures. With a sense of renewed passion the two began to set up a routine for Star the newest member of their herd. Unbeknownst to them another figure crept into the room where Star slept hidden behind the veil.
"Please identify yourself or be met with brute force." Artie said in a low enough tone as to not wake up the children.
Slowly he passed a hoof over the small floating machine presenting it with an SD card, "I am a friend, but tell no one that I was here."
"Understood Winter Frost." Artie replied as he continued his humming.
"So you are him... or you will become him." Winter chuckled at the sight of the small copper colt sleeping in bed. "Be strong... Princess Destiny and Princess Fate have many things in store for you." Frost said as he turned to wind and snow and disappeared out the window towards Canterlot. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 11: Would you like to save? | As Winter Frost blew through Ponyville, he stopped and watched a pink mare play in the snow, building snow ponies.
"Hello Pinkie." Winter spoke, knowing the mare wouldn't hear him.
Quickly Pinkie turn, feeling a twitch in her chest. "Winter?!" Pinkie asked as she scanned the ground, noticing the hoof marks that appeared out of nowhere. She reached out to hug him, only to fall through him.
"Hi Pinkie, I still don't get how you know I'm here." Winter wrote in the snow.
Pinkie dug herself out of the snow and looked at the writing, "That's easy, you're here cause you're here!" She said as she sat down next to him. "I miss you, you know. Even though I can't see you or anything, I miss you..." Pinkie spoke softly, scooting closer to where Winter was sitting.
"I missed you too, but you shouldn't be out here so late." Winter wrote.
"I'm a big pony. Plus if I don't play with all this snow who will?" Pinkie asked, "Also thank you for the great snowfall this year, you out did yourself again."
A smile grew across Winter's face, he then turned and placed a small kiss on Pinkie's cheek, and for a moment he could feel her soft warm fur underneath his lips. "Sorry love, I have to go." Winter spoke, writing only a simple 'Goodbye' in the snow.
As Winter flew into the air, Pinkie waved goodbye, it was the only thing she could do because sher was in a slight bit of shock. Because for a moment, in the blink of an eye she saw the face of her childhood friend for the first time. She felt his cool lips upon her cheek and her heart skipped a beat.
"Bye my Winter." Pinkie whispered
*****
Star sat in a very familiar room, but it was his first time there. The smell of chalk and wax filled his nose.... This was a place full of horror that he knew he was bound to return too. He looked down at the paper in front of him; a general knowledge test. Star's eyes then shifted up to the front of the room where Twinkle Shine, Twilight Sparkle, and a pink earth pony named Cherrilee sat talking to one another. He had finished the test quickly and was waiting for the timer to run out, so he began talking with Artie whom was currently charging in his face and appeared as a squared unicorn horn-like stump.
"So... have you figured out where that SD card came from?" Star whispered.
"Not at all, there are some unusual markings... like a language, but I am still trying to figure that out." Atrie replied from inside Star's head piece giving a glow when he spoke.
"Markings?" Star asked.
A small window opened in his HUD displaying the image, "Yes, I am running them against every language in our database."
On the other side of the room Twilight, Twinkle and Cherrilee were discussing Star and what his past could have possibly have been like.
"How horrible... the poor little thing." Cherrilee replied to the suspicions Twinkle was informed of on how Star could have possibly showed up in their town.
"But don't let that fool you he is remarkably intelligent!" Twilight spoke up, "The other day we were talking about the effects of thaumaturgical properties on a non-thaumaturgical environments..." Both Cherrilee and Twinkle looked at Twilight with an odd look on their face.
That is when Star walked up to them and dropped the test in front of them. "Sorry, I finished a bit ago and was tired of waiting for the timer... Also, 'how magic would effect a world that has never had magic'... that is what me and Twilight were talking about. I would guess magical poisoning, but Twilight disagrees."
"You're done?! But that test should have taken you at least 2 hours, not..." Cherrilee looked back to the clock on the wall, "20 MINUTES?! You finished the exam in 20 minutes..." She replied dumbfounded.
"Yep! Can I go outside and play? Or Does Twilight want to go for round 2 about thaumic poisoning?" Star asked as he sat in front of the three mares.
"You are so o...mhhhhh..." Twilight began only to have a hoof shoved in her mouth.
"Go play outside sweetie. Just be careful." Twinkle replied as she held her hoof over Twilight's mouth.
With an affirmative nod, Star stood up and began heading to the door as Twilight pointed over to him removing the hoof from her mouth, "Magical poisoning seems farfetched!"
"Farfetched for only with those who have a system to process the magic... what if they didn't to begin with~" Star sing-song as he stepped out the door.
"Wait... but..." Cherrilee began but realized it was too late.
"Process... but... no... there can be no such thing... right" Twilight muttered as she knew Star had stumped her yet again with his theories.
As Star exited to the playground, Cherrilee began grading the test, all the while Twinkle and Twilight sat nervously waiting. Quickly Cheerilee grading the test, flying through the pages almost as fast as Star when he was taking it.
*****
Outside, Star was sitting on the grass, his cutie-mark and body had already beginning to melt the snow around him.
"Artie..., you can come out now." Star said as he closed his eyes.
Suddenly his face had a slight sound of clicks and whirls as it began to hiss, as Atrie was released and Star's horn was gone.
"I still agree with you on your theory." Artie said as he floated above Star, his little light eye glowing as he spoke.
"So we have no idea, where it came from or how it got to you?" Star asked.
"Well..." Artie fins and shape turned into something that looked sad... "Will you promise not to get made at me?"
"Mad, why would I get..." Star looked up at his cybernetic partner, "Okay." He sat down, "I won't get mad."
Artie stared at his master, his single eye blinking with light. "It was given to me by somepony, but I was sworn to secrecy not to tell."
"Artie..." Star looked up to Artie with a blank expression on his face.
"I'm sorry!" Artie said as he backed away and gave Star a sad look.
"Artie..." Star looked at Artie, then back at himself, and before he let his emotions get the best of him; his intelligence with mischief reared its head. "Artie, you and me are one in the same."
"Huh?"
"We share this body and our thoughts, I already know what you know." Star said with a smile.
"What?! Really?" Artie began to think, his pieces sliding over his bulb eye. "But... this does not make sense."
"Yeah, I totally saw who gave it to you." Star said as he trotted passed his floating companion.
"But that is not possible, I checked you were asleep." Artie replied thinking harder, "Winter said you were asleep."
'Bingo' Star thought to himself, "You think this Winter knows me like I know you... or like you know me?"
Artie stopped moving and turned towards Star, "How did you his name?"
Just as Star was about to continue his charade, a ball of snow knocked Artie down. Quickly Star turned, but bumped into nothing... something. Reaching out his hoof he touched something, was it invisible.
"Aren't you the smart one?" Star heard as a voice echoed in his head.
"Who are you?" Star yelled as he got into a defense position.
"Your guardian angel." Winter said, "I'll give you an 'A' for tricking your construct, but be patient. Get use to your life here before asking questions about your old life."
"What if I don't want to? What if I want to go back to earth?! Back to being human!" Star spoke up to the point of shouting.
"Earth was engulfed in an unknown spatial wave shortly after you arrived here, which caused all the humans on earth to vanish." Winter said bluntly.
Star fell back onto his hunches, the shock that his world was gone was a massive blow, then one thought occurred to him.
"How?" Star whispered.
Winter looked down at this small colt, "I told you spa..." Winter was cut off as Star spoke up louder.
"How do you know what happened?" Star said, his face on the verge of tears.
"Jacob Paxton." Winter spoke.
"What?"
"My name was Jacob Paxton... or at least it was when I was human. I really don't remember anymore, it was a long time ago." Winter said looking down the troubled colt. "In time you will know the truth about humanity's last days on earth. Till then, play with your friends, grow with your family, live, love, be happy... I wish I could." Winter spoke as he took to the air, leaving a small colt covered in snow.
*****
Twinkle, Golden, Twilight and Cheerilee stepped out of the school house.
"College... he has a college level education." Cheerilee said completely dumbfounded.
"Of course! A child who can make me rethink the way I look at magic..." Twilight began as she was interrupted by a blur of copper and brown which tried to bury itself between Twinkle and Golden.
"Star... Star are you okay?" Twinkle said as she began to hear the sniffling and faint sound of crying from the little colt. As she began to pull away Golden stretched out her wing and pulled Twinkle closer.
"He'll come out when he is ready, he wants to be here, let him." Golden said as she squeezed the little colt.
Star was thankful for his new mothers, mothers that would be there for him, and he hugged a little tighter. Suddenly he felt more pressure, and he could see that purple fur had join the hug.
"Twilight, what are you doing?" Twinkle asked.
"Hugging family? I mean, you are my cousin soooo..."
"Thanks Twilight." Twinkle said as she pulled Twilight in closer.
A few minutes later...
"Too hot! Let me out!" Star yelled as he popped his head out from Golden's wing, only to be pulled back down. "Mom, I am okay... you can let me out!"
"No." Golden said as she began to nuzzle Star.
"Should we help him." Twilight asked.
"Nope, she is doing her mom pegasus thing. Best to not try to pull them apart right now." Twinkle said.
"Well as I was saying before, I would like him to attend school normally, but get some tutoring in some college level education... that is if you wouldn't mind Miss Sparkle." Cheerilee asked.
"I would love and be honored, that is if it is okay with his parents." Twilight said.
Both Twinkle and Golden nodded.
"Good, I will draw up the paperwork... and Star?" Cheerilee spoke up.
"Yes?!" He yelped from underneath the wings that kept him held prisoner.
"I'll see you at the end of winter break!" Cheerilee spoke as she trotted off. |
Star Bright, Star Light. | Chapter 12: Kilo, Mega, or Gigabyte? | Winter Frost spread his icy wings as he flew closer to his home city. As the sun began to rise you could see a mirage of an invisible something in the distance. His body met no resistance as he passed through a veil of magic... The Big Barrier; a magical wall which forced those on the outside to see nothing, but fear. A force field which kept everything out, and almost everyone in. In front of Winter stood large towers that reached the heavens, a city to dwarf all cities.
"The Fallen City... Cecidit Stella." Winter whispered as he flew through the streets of the city. Gryphons, therastral, hippogriphs, merponies, kelpies, kirins, small dragons, and so many other species walking, trotting, swimming, and floating around. And as he flew by he caused more snow to fall on the streets, causing adults to look at him in discontent while the kids cheered for tomorrow was now a snow day. With a great flap of his icy wings he flew higher to the palace. Looking down, he wondered, "How much longer can we hold out here?" He landing outside the throne room, and quickly headed in to see a very bored set of Alicorns sitting at the thrones, one on her smartphone and the other playing the latest portable video game console.
"Princess Destiny, Prince Chaos... where is Princess Faust?" Winter spoke as he looked at the two.
"Faust is..." Chaos began to speak extending a hoof to the other side of the room as a Red mane Alicorn entered the room.
"Has Winter reported... Oh! Winter... report!" Princess Faust said with a smile.
With a sigh Winter began telling the three what had happened since he was last in their presences. "...and so I lied to him as per Prince Chaos order."
"He will soon realize it's a lie..." Chaos interrupted, "And when he does he will try to find out the truth... and in doing so... he will..."
"Begin on his path to his destiny!" Princess Destiny interrupted, "Sorry."
Prince Chaos waved it off, "No worries... it's your role your cutie mark that makes you this excited, trust me, I understand... and to you Winter Frost. I must extend an apology, I do not enjoy making others lie for me." Chaos spoke as he stood up and trotted over to the Winter season offering him a hug.
Winter simply bowed away, refusing the hug. "I just don't understand, why can't we tell him the truth, that he was... nevermind, I am going to lay down." Winter said as he took off to a tower off in the distance.
Chaos looked over to Faust, "I apologize, I know how difficult this is for you... manipulating the outside world using the season spirits... but they are the only ones that can pass through the Big Barrier."
"I know... the last thing we need is a repeat of Discord." Faust said looking over to Winter's tower.
*****
Winter Frost the season spirit of Winter, an immortal. His purpose, like his name entitles, to bring winter to the world... alone. Looking around his spacious room at all the ponies and creatures he had known, his eyes fall on the other seasonal immortals...
Spring Love, he was a green season with a yellow gem on his forehead... He was responsible for most of the races going into heat as well as bringing spring. He was your typical stallion, even after so many years, waking up in a different mares bed every morning. He should be getting ready to bring spring...
Summer Rain, she was a wonderful mare with a blue coat, and a white mane that matched her gem. She had been in a relationship with Autumn Fall for over a few centuries...
Autumn Fall , a reserved mare, with an orange coat, brown mane, and a green gem... She dated Spring until she found out he couldn't be trusted...
Winter then turned to the wall closest to the window, a new picture hanging on the wall. It was of a pink mare with cotton candy hair... Pinkie Diane Pie. Another mare who could sense him, who he had fallen for, who would never see him, and would pass away becoming just another picture on his wall, another memory that would fade over time.
*****
"That Asshole!" Star yelled a he came to a realization in the middle of his bath.
"Language." Golden spoke holding a bar of soap.
"Sorry..."
"What happened?!" Twinkle yelled as she ran into the bathroom. Looking at Golden for an answer.
"Sorry... I swore because I realized I was lied to... and I was to stupid to put two and two together." Star replied his head slowly sinking into the tub trying to look as cute as he could to avoid punishment. Only to have Solar burst out of the water next to him giving him a scare.
"Isn't that adorable." Twinkle said, "Silver... bring the C-A-M-E-R-A." Twinkle spelled.
"NO!" Star yelped as he dove under the water's surface.
Quickly a brown muzzle dove in to find him underneath the foam and bubbles and pulled him out.
"SanTuRY!" Yelped Star and a camera floated in Twinkle's magic, snapping several shots.
Star squinted as his mothers looked over the pictures, "Revenge, REVENGE!" Star yelled as he looked to the hallway, "ARTIE!"
"Yes Star?" Artie replied as he floated into view, "How can I be of assistance?"
"Access your media controls, Video camera." Star grinned as his lower half began to transform slightly. "All hail the lord of bubbles!" He yelled.
After a few hours of cleaning up a house full of suds and bubbles, Twinkle, Golden and Silver sat in the living room looking at the copper colt who caused the mess, laughing at what appeared to be nothing.
"Star, I know it was funny... but how can you still be laughing about it?" Silver asked as she decide it was time for another soda.
"Cause I am still watching it..." Star snickered. "Artie, project the video bubble bath of horror on the wall."
"You got it." Artie replied and began to project the entire fiesco on the living room wall, along with silly funny music. The forms of Twinkle and Golden fighting through a wall of bubbles, the sight of Silver running away covered in bubbles, yelling how she is going to smell of fruity-tutti for a week. How Solar became encased in bubble filled with bubbles, yelling that she was melting.
"How are you doing this?" Twinkle asked, "Is it some sort of magic?"
"Magic? No... If you guys want, I can hook this up to a TV or something." Star replied only to realize his mistake.
"Tee-bee?" Golden replied.
"A television set... I know we don't have one." Star realizing his mistake was bigger than he thought.
"What's a television set?" Silver asked.
Star covered his mouth, wondering how technologically advanced is pony society.
"A television set works on the same concept as a radio, but instead of receiving sound only, it can receive moving pictures or movies." Artie replied.
Star looked at Artie in horror, what damage could that piece of technological information do to this civilization.
"Sounds like a wonderful device." Twinkle replied
"Star are you okay?" Golden asked as she saw Star's face.
"Yeah... ummm, can I ask you guys a few questions?" Star asked, "But first, is there anyway we could get Twilight here. I mean she did live in Canterlot, right? So she might know more about these answers?"
"That might be a good idea, but instead let's head over to the library. So this place can dry out." Twinkle replied, while everyone else nodded in agreement.
*****
Later at the Library! Came a knocking on the door. "Why does every pony knock?" Spike said as he walked over to the door.
"Cause it's after hours and we want to speak to Twilight?" Star replied pointing at the hour of operation sign in the window.
"Heh, heh... sorry." Spike mumbled as the ponies all walked into the warm library. "Twilight you have company!" Spike yelled as the last of the group walked in.
"Coming!" Twilight yelled back from somewhere upstairs, appearing in a flash of light as she teleported downstairs. "Hey! Twinkle! How is it going?"
"We're fine." Twinkle replied as Golden nodded in agreement.
"Hey mom, I'm going to hang out with some of my friends, I'll see you at home later." Silver said as she hugged everyone on the way out.
"Soooo, what brings you here?" Twilight asked as the moved into the reading room and sat down.
"This one, he wanted to ask us some questions but wanted you to be present." Twinkle replied. Everypony in the room was watching Star now, "So... ask?"
With a deep breath and a sigh, Star began. "Do you know what a telephone is?"
For the next hour, Star asked about the technology and technological advancement in Equestrian history. Twilight looked like she was going to exploded, in asking most of his questions he had to explain what the devices did or how they worked. Twinkle was surprised at how much more intelligent Star was in comparison to Twilight, and Golden was nodding her head as if she understood everything that was said.
"I can ask Princess Celestia about most of these device, ideas or concepts to see if anypony as ever come up with something like this, but if not... these ideas can move Equestria into a new Era. I'm so excited, so Star would you care if I helped you in the construction and implementation of your technology?"
Star looked over to Twinkle and Golden, then back over to Twilight while Artie floated behind her. The future of Equestria was just placed before him, "Only if we can restrict the flow of traffic of this new technology... and we start simple."
Twilight nodded in agreement, "Sure no problem." She replied as Spike burned the letter for Celestia.
"Also I want to start slow, I want to make sure everything is safe before we send anything out to anypony."
Suddenly the air hummed with energy followed by a large flash of light, in front of everypony stood one of the co-rulers of Equestria, Princess Celestia. As everypony began to bow out of respect Solar Ring walked over and sat in front of Star.
"I won't let this Princess try to eat you." Solar said with a proud smile. |
A Dash of Passion: The Applethology | pre | That hurt. And I couldn't get it out of my mind.
That was Sunday. I guess that was part of the reason why I was looking at Spitfire's office door Tuesday morning. I didn't really mess up the routine the previous night, but I wasn't anywhere near my best. I think most of the audience couldn't tell, but Spitfire and the others sure did.
I knocked, waiting for Spitfire's "Come in," then pushed the door open. She looked up from all the paperwork, and frowned as she saw me. I don't think that's a good sign.
"I'll be blunt," she said. "What the hay was that all about, Rainbow?"
"I dunno," I said. That just earned me a glare.
"Oh for-Do not do this, rookie," she said, practically growling the last word. "The entire team could see it, and I bet a few tabloids did too."
My ears went flat, and I couldn't help but look down at the floor. "It's private, Ma'am." I mumbled.
Apparently I was channeling Fluttershy, 'cause Spitfire clearly hadn't heard me. "Louder, rookie. I can't hear you." When I didn't say anything, she started tapping a hoof on the table. "I'm waiting."
"It's private, Captain." I growled back, glaring daggers at her. To my surprise, her eyebrows went up and her expression softened. She glanced behind me, and seemed to make a decision.
"Close the door, Rainbow," She ordered. I blinked, but did it anyway. When I turned back to her, Spitfire had gotten much closer. Practically within touching distance. "Off the books. Mare to mare. What's going on?" She asked. "Is Applejack alright?"
If my ears weren't already flat, they would have been now. I should've figured that wouldn't throw her off. Applejack had gotten to know the rest of the team after a while - it was kinda a given, since we were married, and she followed me - and the team - to every new venue. She'd hit off really well with Spitfire, something about a shared farming upbringing. Never would've figured a flying ace would have come from farmers, but hey. Weirder things have happened.
But anyway, she'd zero'ed in on the issue pretty quickly. "Sh-she's fine." I said. I was still hoping I could still walk out and deal with it myself.
No such luck, though. "Yeah, and my name is Soarin'."
I couldn't help myself. "What, he finally proposed?" I asked. The blush on her face was worth it. They'd been dancing around the subject for years, and the rest of the team heckled them all the time. Heck, I was guilty of it myself.
"Oh, shut up," she said, stomping the floor with a hoof. "Focus."
"I..." Okay, this wasn't easy. I barely even knew what was going on myself, much less trying to explain it. "She's kinda clamming up on me."
"Really?" Spitfire asked. Her eyebrows had shot up. "You guys are usually so disgustingly happy with each other," she said, grinning as I stuck my tongue out at her. But the grin vanished as she kept looking at me. "Did you guys fight?"
I shook my head. "No! Well... No. Maybe? I dunno." I shrugged. I still didn't know how to describe what that was.
Clearly, I hadn't done a good job describing it to Spitfire either, because she just gave me a flat look and scooted closer. "Okay. Just start from the beginning. Figure this out."
So I did. Or at least, I tried. "She said she misses the farm." Spitfire raised an eyebrow. "I know! That's all she's said! But..."
"But?"
"She makes this face when she's talking about it. It's like she's... sad, I guess." I shrugged. "She won't tell me why. Kinda pushed me away too," I said, looking away.
"Well, that's easy," she said. "She's homesick."
I stared at her in annoyance, my ears twitching. "Duh. I got that. I miss the place too, but I'm not moping. There's something else."
Spitfire was silent for long enough that I turned back to look at her. She was just staring at me with this... contemplative expression.
Yeah, yeah. I hung out with Twilight just as much as the rest of the girls. Between her and Rarity, it rubs off on ya.
Anyway. Spitfire just looked at me, then leaned back, tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling. She had this far off look, like she wasn't actually looking at the ceiling, but something else.
"When I first started as a 'Bolt, I was completely dedicated to the job."
"Like you aren't now?" I asked.
She just chuckled, and glanced at me. "I've mellowed out some. Trust me on that."
"I'd pay to see you mellowed out," I said, grinning. But I frowned right after. "Wait, what's this have to do with-"
"Humor me, Dash." She interrupted, straightening herself to stare at me. "Just listen."
As much as I wanted to quip back at her, I kept my mouth shut. Seemed like a good idea.
"Like I was saying, I was completely dedicated. I stayed on board for months and months. Years."
I wanted to interrupt. Say something about-
"I even skipped vacation time."
... Yeah. That. Every 'Bolt, from the seniors to the rookies, and even the academy cadets, got some vacation time during their tours. Usually enforced, even if you didn't want to.
Spitfire just grinned at me. "I know what you're thinking. I'm the reason they're enforced now." She closed her eyes, smirking to herself. "I ran myself ragged. D'you know why?"
I shook my head. She'd never talked about this before.
"I thought I was doing it to be noticed. To be the best. And I was," she said, puffing her chest out a teeny bit. "But the longer I did it, the more it was to try to get away from this... this ache."
"Ache?" I asked, unable to hold it in anymore.
She nodded, pointing at her chest. "Yeah. Right there. Just got stronger with time. Only went away when I was exhausted. Docs said I was in perfect health though." She shrugged. "At least until I showed up so tired I fell asleep on my hooves."
She chuckled, and I fought back a grin of my own. I knew exactly what she meant.
"They sent me home for a week. Forced vacation under threat of expulsion, actually." Okay, maybe I didn't. I'd never taken it that far. "So I visited my family, back at the farm." She smiled, staring me in the eye. "And just like that, the ache went away."
I blinked, and tilted my head at her. "Wait, how? I don't get it."
She stared at me incredulously, and I had to duck to avoid a hoof swatting my head. It still flicked an ear though. "Damnit Rainbow, think. How long has Applejack been following us?"
"Uh, six months? Give or take a few weeks?"
"And how often has she gone home?"
I shook my head. She knew as well as I did. Why was she even asking? "She hasn't."
"There's the problem, then." She said. "She's just reached the end of her rope."
This was just confusing me even more. "But why now? What's different?"
Spitfire shrugged. "She's not you, Rookie. Different ponies act differently."
"I could've figured that part alone, thanks," I said, earning an eyeroll from her. "I just... why isn't she talking to me?" My wings twitched, as I fought to keep them from flaring. "She could go home if she's hurting!"
Unfortunately, Spitfire didn't have the answers. As much as I wanted her to. "Don't know what to tell you. She's probably got her reasons."
"Yeah?" I grunted. "What are those?"
"That's not my job to find out, Rookie." Spitfire smirked, and made a shooing motion with a hoof. "You go figure it out. With your wife."
"But-"
"Dismissed."
I ground my teeth, but snapped off a salute and marched off. I had a mare to find.
I giggled to myself as I flew to the hotel room Applejack and I shared. I'd just realized I'd just left an orange-maned yellow pony to find a yellow-maned orange pony. No wonder they'd hit off so well.
Once the hotel came into view, I sobered up pretty quick. For the second time that day, I was rooted in front of a door. Part of me hoped that she wasn't there, maybe still off with some of the other Apples. I never liked arguing with her.
The other half yelled at me to face the problem. We'd gotten through so much together, this wouldn't be that hard to deal with.
Right?
My hoof definitely wasn't shaking as I grabbed my key and let myself in.
There she was, lying on the bed. She'd been reading a book, but was smiling at me. Must've heard me come in. "Howdy, Sugarcube."
I couldn't help but smile back. Her voice just did that to me. "Hey." She leaned in as I trotted closer, nuzzling into my neck as I returned the favor. But all too soon, I pulled back and stared her in the eyes. She looked curious, and a bit confused. "What's going on back home, Applejack?"
The confusion vanished as her eyes widened. "Wh-What're you talkin' about?"
I stared at her and huffed. "Oh come on, we both know you've been clamming up about it. I even had Spitfire on my backside about it."
"What?" Applejack gasped. "Oh horseapples, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you in tr-" I stopped her with a hoof, shaking my head.
"She's the one who figured it out, dummy. She's cool." I dropped my hoof and looked into her eyes. "You weren't this bad until recently. What happened?"
She broke eye contact as she looked down. She took a moment to speak, then nodded towards her hat, sitting on the desk. "I got a letter from Apple Bloom a few days ago."
Immediately, my eyes went wide. "Is she okay? Big Mac? Granny?" I grabbed her by the shoulders. "Oh Celestia, Granny's finally bought it?"
"Wha-No!" she said, pushing my hooves off. "Dash, d'ya think if that happened I'd still be here?"
I blinked, and actually thought about it. "Huh. Probably not."
"Nice to know y'worry." She smirked, punching me lightly in the shoulder. "Everyone's fine. Better than fine, even."
"Eh?"
"Sweetie Belle got her cutie mark."
My mouth dropped open, then split into the biggest grin. "No way! How'd she get it?"
Applejack gave me a strange look. "Really, Dash?"
"Oh. Right." I grinned sheepishly. "I kinda meant where! Gimme details!" I said, jumping on the bed and leaning into her.
"Some school thing. A fundraiser concert or somethin', and she got the main event. Bloom said the crowd went wild when she finished."
"About time!" I cackled. My laughter died as a thought struck me. "What's that gotta do with you moping?"
"I wasn't mopin'!" She glared at me, but it faded as I stared back with a deadpan expression. "Okay, maybe a lil'," she said, a sheepish grin on her face. "It's just... I don't wanna miss Apple Bloom's. Feels like I'm missin' so much."
"That's it then. Y-you've gotta go home," I said. My voice hitched a second, but I hoped she wouldn't notice. I didn't actually want her to leave.
Unfortunately, she knew me too well to let that slip. "Ya sure you want me to go?"
"Yeah... Totally sure."
She stared back at me. "That don't sound too sure, hon."
"I-I just want you to be happy, A.J. You gotta go." I tried grinning, but it felt weak. She just shook her head, looking determined. I knew that look.
"I ain't going."
I couldn't stop a frustrated sigh. "Why not?"
She poked me in the nose with a hoof. "'Cause you need me here, silly."
"I don't! I'm fine without you!" I said, before my brain caught up to what I said. "That didn't come out right."
"No, really?" Applejack asked, smirking at my slip up. I smiled back, thankful that she understood me even when I ran my mouth off.
"I can be on my own, A.J. I'm a big pony."
"I always thought you were kinda lanky and petite, m'self," she said, nudging me in the side.
I smirked back, swatting her in the cutie mark with my tail. "Yeah, well, one of us's gotta be skinny. All those apple fritters go right to your flanks."
"Are you callin' me fat?"
"I was thinking 'cuddly' instead."
That got a chuckle out of her. "I'll take that."
My smile faded as I looked at her. "Seriously, though. I'm okay. I just want you to be happy."
I could see she was still conflicted. "Y'sure? I feel like I'd be leavin' you behind."
"I'm okay. Your-" I paused. "Our family needs you."
She frowned again. "I'm your wife, Dash. I gotta be there for you."
"And I'm your wife too, A.J. And I gotta make my wife happy."
"I dunno..."
I huffed. "Look, I get ya. I really do." I looked at her, hoping she'd understand. "I don't want to miss Scoots getting her cutie mark either. But I will, and I've accepted that. Doesn't mean you have to, though."
"Dash..."
"One of us should be there. And I'm kinda busy here," I said, pointing a hoof at the goggles that still hung from my neck. I'd just realized I still had them on. "Please, A.J.? For me?"
Applejack sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, I knew she'd made a decision.
"Okay. I'll go. But just promise me one thing?"
"Anything!" I said, smiling wide. She caught me by surprise as she leaned in and kissed me again, even harder than before. We were both breathless when it stopped.
"Come see us as much as you can."
I nodded. "Every chance I get."
"Good." She smirked, and stood up on the bed. Before I could say anything, she pushed me over until I lay on my back, staring up at her. Her eyes were half lidded as she grinned down at me, straddling me. "Lemme show you what'll be waitin' at home..."
And she did.
Lemme tell you, my next vacation couldn't come soon enough. |
A Dash of Passion: The Applethology | Rated PonyStar and TwilightUCrazy | Our Tree, by Rated PonyStar
It was almost time. The weeks of planning and gaining courage were about to pay off tonight. It would be the hardest thing she would ever say, but if everything turned out right it would be worth it. At best, their relationship would go further than she ever dreamed. At worst, they would never speak to each other ever again.
Applejack wished she had a watch or even an hourglass. The passing seconds were unbearable. How long till nine o'clock? Would she even come or remember that Applejack wanted her here? Maybe it would be best to postpone her plan for another night? All these doubts and more made Applejack cursed herself for being such a coward now of all times.
Her eyes glanced over to the tree that stood only a hoof away from her. It was different from all the other trees in their orchid, no apples or other types of fruit grew on it. Yet it was special to not only her, but to her entire family. On the trunk, in the light of the full moon above, there was a carved heart with an arrow going right through it. Inside that heart were initials: "CA + GA 4+ever."
The initials stood for Cortland Apple and Ginger Apple.
Her parents.
Applejack heard the familiar sound of wings flapping through the air that made her heart pump faster than any rodeo ever did. She resisted the urge to turn around, even when she heard the owner of those wings land behind her. She really came...
"Hey, AJ. I'm here like I promised. So why did you want me to come all the way over here this late at night?"
Applejack gulped and turned around; coming face to face with a mare she had grown to know over the years quite well. Rainbow Dash, the self-proclaimed fastest pegasus in Equestria. A friend, rival, and comrade when the Elements of Harmony were involved in some saving Equestria adventure they always seemed to have every year or so. But besides all those titles, she was more than that to Applejack then that, much more.
"Hey... Rainbow Dash... glad ya made it," Applejack answered, fumbling with her hat. She kept silent for a short while, her nerves only increasing as was the bored expression on Dash's face. Clearing her throat, she said, "Ah wanted to show ya somethin'... take a look."
She stepped back and presented the tree like it was a prize won at a fair. Rainbow Dash tilted her head and walked up to the tree, leaning closer to see what made it so special. Her magenta eyes then landed on the carving and she snorted. "Who's the cheesy couple that made that?"
"That would be me mah Pa and Ma," Applejack answered, deadpan.
Rainbow Dash's eyes widen and she quickly turned around, her face apologetic. Scratching the back of her neck, she looked down regrettably, and muttered, "Sorry... didn't mean to... you know..."
Applejack sighed. She was a bit peeved that Rainbow had said what she did, but remembered that nopony besides her family had known about this. And she knew Rainbow Dash would never intentionally say anything bad about her departed folks. Keeping her mind focuses, Applejack said, "It's alright, sugarcube. No harm no fowl. But there's a reason why Ah brought ya to the farm and why Ah wanted to show this here tree." She took a big breath. "This here is where mah Pa confessed to mah Ma that he loved her. They came here every night since then as their special place, even when they got married."
"Okay, I get that but what does... this have... to do with me?" asked Rainbow Dash nervously as her cheeks began to turn red.
Seeing no point in delaying the inevitable, Applejack turned to Rainbow Dash and stared at her straight in the eyes. "Because Ah promised mahself Ah would do the same thing to the pony Ah fell in love with. At this very tree too."
To Applejack's credit, she kept her cool instead of just trotting up to her crush and kissing the life out of her like those romance novels Rarity always went on about. Instead, she waited for a reply as Rainbow Dash expressions changed from shock to confusion. Her worries only increased as she begged for a sign, even a small one that showed Dash felt the same way.
Finally, Rainbow Dash opened her mouth, "Applejack... I... I don't know... I need to think about this."
Feeling the bottom of her chest slowly turn into ice, Applejack reluctantly nodded. "O-okay. Go ahead. Take all the time ya need. Just... meet me here when ya got an answer."
"R-right," Rainbow Dash answered. With that said, she was gone in a flash, a streaking rainbow left behind her wake. Applejack sighed and held back the tears that were threatening to break through. She wasn't rejected, but just the look in Dash's face as enough to make her worry.
All she could do now was wait and hope.
Since her confession, Applejack had waited by the tree for the past three nights, hoping that Rainbow Dash would come by and give her the answer she wanted to hear. She hadn't even seen Rainbow Dash during the day when she went into town. She had asked her other friends if they had seen her too, but they were just as clueless as she was. It seemed Rainbow Dash didn't seem to have spread the word of her secret, and Applejack was grateful for that.
A yawn escaped Applejack lips as she struggled to keep her eyes open. Her late night waiting was starting to become a toll on her work effort. Just today alone she missed ten trees during her applebucking rounds, resulting in a harsh landing. Thankfully, nopony else was there to notice or else they would start asking questions. Applejack hated how her feelings were messing with her work effort, but she couldn't help it. The question had been nagging in her mind almost all the time and only by sitting near the tree, pretending her parents were watching over her, did she feel some ease.
Right when she was about to fear that it would be another vain night, Applejack's ears perked up upon hearing somepony flying overhead. Holding her breath she looked up and saw a blue set of wings, surrounded by the moonlight. It was as if an angel of the night had come down to bless her. Applejack continued to watch in fascination, even when Rainbow Dash touched down on the ground right in front of her.
Realizing she was staring, Applejack gulped and forced a smile. "Hey, Rainbow... Ah... Ah guess ya got yer answer, huh?"
Rainbow Dash continued to look at her, unfazed and emotionless. This only increased the amount of sweat dripping from the farmer's brow as the silence continued. For what seemed like years, the two friends continued to focus on one another, trying to get a read on what the other was thinking. Finally, Rainbow Dash sighed and closed her eyes. "I want to know something..."
"Y-yes?"
"... why me?"
Applejack blinked and saw the careful look in Rainbow Dash's eyes. Knowing that she had to be honest, Applejack took a deep breath and let out her answer from the deepest part of her heart. "The sonic rainboom. That was the day a lone, sad, little filly realized, thanks to a miracle, that she always had what she needed back home. That miracle saved her from makin' the worst mistake in her life, and gave her purpose. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she ever saw, and never forgot how grateful she was for it. Not a single day."
With a warm smile, Applejack continued, "Imagine how that filly, all grown up, learned that it was all thanks to a good, loyal friend. A friend who has the most beautiful of manes and the strongest spirit that puts any of them heroes of old times to shame. And that grown up filly began to fall for that mare until she was hopelessly in love with her." She closed her eyes. "That's why Ah love ya, Rainbow Dash."
Keeping her eyes shut, Applejack let the silence take over her as she waited for a single word to come out of Rainbow Dash. Instead, she felt something brush against her lips. A wave of pleasure and warmth overwhelmed her as the sweet tasty lips of Rainbow Dash left her mouth and started nibbling on her ear. A coo resonated from Applejack as she heard her crush whisper, "What if that friend also thought the grown up filly was amazing? Strong. Brave. Honest," Dash listed, biting harder with each quality. "And what if that friend realized that maybe there was something between them? Something, which was more than friendship and a love for athletics? More than just some fancy magical stones? A bond that she had always felt but never knew what it was until three days ago."
Opening her eyes, Applejack looked into Rainbow Dash's eyes and felt her own starting to mist. With a small chuckle, Applejack answered, "Ah think Ah'm gonna have to put a new carving up on that tree."
If you had told Rainbow Dash that kissing would be almost as thrilling as flying, she would have laughed. Now, it was all she could think about the moment as she assaulted Applejack's lips with vigor. You'd think she would have been bored with this after nearly a month of lip sucking, tongue tasting, and neck biting. Yet every kiss felt like a brand new one fresh from the hottest mare Dash knew.
She pressed Applejack against the tree, right next to where their own carved names were on the trunk. Their lips were locked as usual, but something was different. Applejack wasn't showing the same effort she always gave as Dash felt her domination over her marefriend was too easy. Something was wrong.
Removing her lips from Applejack's, Rainbow Dash pressed their foreheads together and gave her special somepony her usual cocky grin. "What's wrong?"
"Nothin'," muttered Applejack. She tried to end the issue by moving her muzzle forward, but Rainbow Dash stopped her with her hoof.
"AJ, even before I became your marefriend I could tell when something was bothering you," Rainbow Dash pointed out. She backed off, letting them fall back to four hooves. Applejack was staring at the ground, pawing at it while Rainbow Dash sat on her haunches and crossed her hooves. "Come on. Tell me."
Applejack sighed. "Big Macintosh is gettin' suspicious. Ah'm thinkin' we may have to be on the low for a while."
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes as she fought the urge to tell Applejack to pony up. It was ironic really. Applejack was the one who confessed and yet she wanted to keep it as secret from everypony. Rainbow, meanwhile, was ready to make the whole world know with some cloud writing and a sonic rainboom. "Come on, Applejack! What is there to be afraid off? Your family will love you no matter what and so will our friends! Don't you want this relationship to go somewhere?"
"Of course Ah do!" Applejack shouted, stomping her hoof. "Ah want to take ya on a real date. Kiss ya in public. Walk under the moon through the park while findin' a nice spot to hold on to ya like it was our last day alive!" She lowered her head, hat covering her eyes. "It's just mah family..."
"Even if they're against you like mares, they'll still love you!" Rainbow Dash reassured.
"It's not that. The Apple Family has always supported fillyfoolin' and coltcuddlin'. It's just... well," Applejack fumbled around her words a bit, "we've always married earth ponies. No Apple had ever fallen for a unicorn or a pegasus or any other being that wasn't an earth pony. Some of mah more... conservative family members are against the idea of inter-race marriage in general. Ah just don't want any trouble to come to ya if they get word of this."
Resisting the urge to smack herself with her own hoof, Rainbow Dash instead placed it under Applejack's chin and lifted it up. She looked deep into those emerald eyes she adored and gently kissed her on the nose. "I can handle it. Don't worry about me; I can take on whatever hate they give me. I just want us to be happy? Don't you love me?"
"Yes."
"Then you have to trust me," Rainbow said, "trust me and be honest. That means telling your family and letting them know who you are dating. Say you're in love with a sexy and awesome pegasus who loves you every waking moment of her life. Do it not just for me, nor for you, but for us."
A smile slowly stretched across Applejack's muzzle. "Alright, Ah'll tell them. There's gonna be a reunion next week. Ah'll tell Granny Smith, Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh before tellin' the rest. So Ah'll see how things turn out."
"Don't you mean 'we'?" inquired Rainbow Dash with a sly smirk. Giggling at Applejack's surprised reaction, she answered, "We're gonna do this together. I'm not going to let you face the lion's den alone without me."
Applejack's answer was a hug that knocked her off her hooves and onto the ground. She groaned but soon found herself silenced when Applejack took of her hat and her hair braid. The long, golden mane flowed through the breeze like waves of fresh grain, memorizing and full of life. The leering glare in Applejack's eyes was enough to flare out Dash's wings against the ground as her love slowly crawled her way towards her face and started kissing her. This time she was using the passion Dash craved.
No words needed to be spoken as the two let that same passion expand further that night.
The rain was getting worse, but that wasn't going to stop Rainbow Dash. Big Macintosh told her how spaced out she had been since the funeral, and it was starting to worry everypony. Rainbow Dash wanted to kick herself. She kept herself distant from Applejack because she figured she needed time to mourn. A lot good that had been. According to Macintosh and Apple Bloom, she had been missing in her bucks, eating less, and going to the grave every day for hours at end.
They had tried to get her to talk, to open up and talk about what happened, but she refused to talk about it. With no other choice, they turned to Dash, her marefriend, to get her to finally open up and talk about what happened. So far she had checked most of the farm, leaving only one place left for her to check.
Arriving at the tree, she spotted the downtrodden Applejack starting into the sky, her eyes bloodshot with tear marks decorating her cheeks. Forcing a smile, Rainbow Dash walked towards her marefriend who didn't even acknowledge her.
"Hey," greeted Rainbow Dash.
"Hey," replied Applejack, emotionless.
Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck and cursed herself for not knowing what to do. This was more along the line of one of her other friend's field of expertise. Still, she had to give it a shot. "Look, I'm not gonna soft talk you or try to steer this in any other way, AJ. She's gone. You have to accept that."
To her credit, Applejack wasn't bawling tears or even asking not to talk about it. She was just busy staring into the stormy sky, silent as a grave. Closing her eyes, Applejack took a deep breath. "Ma and Pa only raised me six years of mah life before they died. Apple Bloom was only a newborn around then. Big Macintosh knew them longer, but he took such a hurtin' back then it's a miracle he recovered. If it wasn't for Granny Smith... Ah'd hate to think what he might have done to deal with the pain."
"Applejack..."
"She was more than just a grandma, Dash," said Applejack, opening her misting eyes and staring into Dash's soul. "She was our foster mother. She raised us, not Ma or Pa, but her. She was always there for us, durin' both good and bad times. She never spoiled us and always taught us good virtues. Ah knew she was old and Ah knew one day her time was gonna come, but now that it has..." she took off her hat and cried into it, "... Ah don't' know what to do."
Rainbow Dash sat down beside her lover and hugged her, letting her tears fall upon her shoulder. It was hard for everypony to see Granny Smith, Ponyville's oldest member, finally pass away a few days ago. The entire town was there for the funeral, even friends from outside came to say goodbye. For Rainbow Dash, she only got to seriously know the old mare after she and Applejack came out with their relationship. Since then, Granny had been adamant in treating Rainbow Dash as one of her own. She could still remember Granny Smith's words when they had a private moment together:
"Y'all better take care of mah Jackie. She's a good girl who deserves happiness and Ah feel ya can give that to her, Rainbow Dash. Make her smile when she's sad. Stop her from bein' too stubborn. Never leave her, even if ya fight. But if ya ever hurt her Ah'll send ya to the grave before Ah do and carve yer tombstone with yer teeth!"
Dash had a feeling that threat still applied even now. Holding Applejack closer, she whispered, "Applejack, I know it's hard, but what do you think she would say if she saw you now?"
Applejack sniffed before whispering, "She'd tell me to get off mah butt and sob up. There's work to be done tomorrow and Ah need to be mah best."
"You think moping about her all day is gonna do that?"
Breaking away from the hold, Applejack turned away and sighed. "No, but... but it's just so hard to let go."
"Moving on doesn't mean letting go. It means accepting what's happened and continuing your life," replied Rainbow Dash, memories of such feelings resurging inside her. Of a time when she was little, just around Apple Bloom's age, and what she lost. "I never told you about my folks, right? There's kind of a story that I rarely tell ponies, only Fluttershy knows."
Applejack wiped her eyes and turned around, watching her marefriend look down at the ground with a sad expression. "My folks were always there for me, kind of spoiled me really since I was their only filly. They both were top workers at the weather factory, that's how I was able to get us inside when I was showing you around Cloudsdale the first time, they employees see me as family." Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and sniffed. "One day, there was an accident... a lot of ponies were hurt and... my parents were of the victims."
"Dash," muttered Applejack as she stroked Dash's cheek. "You don't have to say anymore."
"No, I need to, it's okay." Dash rubbed her nose before continuing. "Dad died on the way to the hospital, while Mom was on her last legs. She was smiling, even on death's door, she smiled and held onto my hoof despite my tears and pleas for her to stay with me. She said she had to go, Dad was waiting for her, and told me that she was confident that I would be alright." Rainbow Dash then lifted her hoof and placed it on Applejack's heart. "She told me that Dash's always move forward, never looking back. I told her I would be strong just as she died. It... it's something I always remember, every day. Keep moving forward, but never forget."
"... she sounded amazing," muttered Applejack, lowering her head as the two slowly wrapped their hooves around each other. "Just like mah Ma..."
"Yeah..." said Rainbow Dash, nuzzling her lover. "I moved to Ponyville soon after, to get a fresh start and make my parents proud. And I wasn't alone. I had Fluttershy to help me and I want to do the same with you. I want to help you keep moving forward with your life, Applejack. I want to be there for you. Always, now and forever."
Applejack's response was a kiss on the lips. That was all that was needed to be said. Still crying, Applejack wrapped her neck around Rainbow's neck, who in turn wrapped her wings around her for protection against the rain. A part of Rainbow Dash wanted to get out of the storm, but she couldn't help but find this situation right. So they stayed by the tree throughout the storm in each other's embrace, letting the memories of the fallen pass them by.
The silence was just killing Applejack. A part of her was worried as Rainbow Dash continued pacing around, biting her lip. Rainbow Dash had been acting strange ever since last week's Wonderbolts Trials and she had been acting strange ever since then. The other part of her was annoyed because Dash had decided to wake her up early in the morning on her day off from work. A yawn escaped her lips, eyes barely opened as she asked, "Is there some reason why ya decided to bring me all the way out here, Dash? Ah got a lot of work to do."
Rainbow Dash stopped her pacing and sighed. Facing Applejack, she said, "Remember when I went to that Wonderbolts tryout last week?"
"Yeah, ya said ya did good despite being more scared then Fluttershy on Nightmare Night," commented Applejack, shaking her head to keep herself away. "What about it."
"... I'm in."
Immediately, Applejack's eyes widen and focused on her blushing Rainbow Dash. "Sugarcube... ya mean yer..."
Tears of joy dripped down Rainbow Dash's eyes as she nodded. "I'm in the Wonderbolts, AJ....I got the letter and... I finally did it."
A big whoop ran out as Applejack hugged her marefriend and kissed her straight on the lips. She let her tongue flick out and went to work inside Rainbow's mouth, exploring every nook and cranny she could find. Rainbow Dash returned the favor, sending shivers down Applejack's spine as she felt her heart increase with each passing moment. Despite the desperate need for air, she continued to reward her marefriend with all the strength she had. Eventually, her mouth explored other regions of Dash's body, each fulfilling her lust and inner animal.
Naturally, Rainbow Dash returned the favor, making Applejack howl louder than Winona during her moon barking. She made a note to have early morning sex more often. An hour of love making later, the two were huddled against their sacred tree, Rainbow Dash wrapped around Applejack's waist as she continued to nibble on her ear and caress her wings.
"That... was just awesome..." muttered Rainbow Dash, a smile on her face. "I love you, Applejack."
"Ah love ya too, Rainbow Dash," replied Applejack, finishing her sentence with a kiss on the nose. "Ah'm not sayin' that Ah didn't enjoy this, but Ah kind of wish that ya told me when Ah had enough shuteye."
Rising up to her haunches, Rainbow Dash scratched her head and nervously chuckled, "Well... I didn't know how to tell you what's gonna happen now that I'm a Wonderbolt."
Applejack tilted her head and asked, "What do you mean?"
Frowning, Rainbow Dash lowered her head, ears falling flat, as she answered, "The Wonderbolts tour around the world, Applejack. I'll be gone for... a really long time. Months even."
"Then..." whispered Applejack as she straightened her stance, "that means..."
"Yeah..." muttered Rainbow Dash, a tone of regret in her voice.
The two lovers looked at each other, eye to eye, in deep silence. Applejack tried to imagine even spending one day without Rainbow Dash and found herself torn apart. What started as a simple crush had turned into a bond that Applejack believed, deep in her heart, was true love. She had heard about soulmates before and believed that she and Rainbow Dash were such. She couldn't imagine life, or even one day, without her love. But this was Dash's dream. The one thing she had been chasing her entire life. She had practiced every chance she had to achieve the speed and skills that would let her join the group of heroes she worshiped. Much as Applejack wanted to say no she just couldn't.
"Yer goin' to join them," stated Applejack. Rainbow opened her mouth to say something, but she held her hoof out. "Listen to me, Dash. This is what y'all have been livin' for and ya just can't let this chance go. Ya go out there and live that dream that y'all been dreamin' off since y'all were a filly."
"But what about you?" asked Rainbow Dash. "Ah don't want to leave you."
Applejack chuckled. "Shucks, Rainbow Dash. It's not like we're never gonna see each other again. If anythin' it will just make each moment we have together even better." She reached out and lifted the pegasus' head up, kissing it on the lips with a gentle yet fiery touch. "Ah'll wait for ya every day, Rainbow Dash. Ah love ya too much to let ya just be held back by me. So go join them Wonderbolts and show them what ya got."
Rainbow Dash divided into Applejack's arms, knocking her to the ground. She felt her muzzle rub against her shoulder, her pelt damping from the tears falling down. She raised her head and pressed it against Applejack, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. "You're the most awesome marefriend ever, Applejack."
A smile stretched across Applejack's muzzle as she felt her worries wash away. "Come on, let's head back to mah place an--"
"Remember that sleepover a long time ago, when you told us that your dream was to be a bride and settle down?" asked Rainbow Dash.
The question took Applejack by surprise. She remembered that day and was a bit embarrassed when Rainbow Dash started making fun of her while Rarity and Pinkie kept asking questions about what she wanted for her reception and dress. Good thing she wasn't the only one with such a dream as Fluttershy admitted the same thing soon after. "Ah remember, but what does that have to do wit--"
"Marry me."
For a second, Applejack felt like she had a stroke as she felt her heart come to a complete stop. Her brain shut off like a light switch as she tried to open her mouth, but nothing came out. For a long time she stared at a cocky, grinning Rainbow Dash as her mind tried to restart. When it finally kicked in, she finally asked, "W-what... did ya say..."
"Marry me, Applejack. I love you. You love me. And if you're going support my dream, then I'm gonna support yours," said Rainbow Dash, eyes shimmering with only the truth and love. "I can't think of any other pony in the world that is so amazing, so awesome, that I wouldn't want to spend my life with. Please, say yes, Applejack."
A tear dripped down Appejack's cheek as she gave out a small laugh. She glanced at the carvings of her parents and wondered if it was fate that the very same spot her father confessed, and later on proposed, was now also her spot as well.
"Yes, Rainbow Dash. Ah'll marry you."
"Hey, Scootaloo! Bet you can't catch me!" shouted a light blue pegasus colt, flying low against the ground.
"Oh it's on, Riot!" shouted a much older pegasus filly, who was now proudly supporting her own cutie mark, a wheel on fire with two wings. It was only one of the many blessings in her life ever since she was adopted three years ago along with her new step-brother.
"Don't ya run into those trees out west y'all! Ah haven't forgotten how much a pain it was gettin' that sap out yer hides!" shouted their step-mother, Applejack. She huffed as she slowly walked towards the tree and gently put down the baby seat she had for her new adopted foal, an earth pony filly with a blond mane and orange coat. She smiled before making a few funny faces that made her daughter giggle and laugh.
"I wish I had a camera, that way I can blackmail you," said Rainbow Dash, landing and putting the picnic basket before pecking her wife on the cheek.
"Oh you're just upset that Ah managed to snap a photo of your first time changin' a diaper. Ah swear Ah thought y'all were gonna turn green permanently," laughed Applejack, while Rainbow Dash huffed and crossed her forelegs.
The two of them got to work setting up the picnic while keeping an eye on their other two adopted kids, who were both known for their rough housing. Applejack couldn't believe how things had changed so quickly for her in a short span of time. Marrying Rainbow Dash was the best day of her life, next to welcoming their new children into their new home on the farm. Riot had been their first choice off an orphanage in Canterlot, but then tragedy had stuck home for Ponyville.
A timberwolf attack came out of nowhere, and although they had managed to fight them off, there were still many ponies that had died as a result; including Scootaloo's parents. Rainbow Dash couldn't stand there and let her number one fan, and little sister figure, end up as an orphan and asked Applejack if they could adopt her as well. Applejack had no intention of saying no and they adopted both of them at the same time. Only just a few months ago did they adopt a new baby, Little Limelight, and made themselves a family of five.
For Applejack, she felt more blessed than any pony in Equestria. She had everything she had ever wanted in life and more. Resting beside the tree, right above the carved initials of her and Dash, she watched her children tagging each other while Rainbow Dash cradle Little Limelight. The littlest one cooed before closing her eyes and entering into a deep sleep. Finding the scene cute, Applejack leaned over and kissed Rainbow Dash on the cheek. "Now ain't that somethin'? Cool and awesome Rainbow Dash actin' like a proper mommy."
"S-shut up," said Rainbow Dash, sticking her tongue out. "Just because I'm the 'Dad' of the two of us, doesn't mean I can't like the 'Mom' once and awhile."
"Ah'm just messin' with ya, honey," said Applejack, taking on of the apples they had brought on the trip and ate it. "Harvest is gonna be good this year. With our kids, Apple Bloom, Big Macintosh and his marefriend helpin' out this year we're gonna have an easy time with the six of us."
"Seven you mean," said Rainbow Dash.
Applejack raised her hat and looked at her wife, perplexed. "Seven? Um, Dash correct me if Ah'm wrong, but didn't ya say that the Wonderbolts have another tour next month?"
"Yeah, but I'm not going," said Rainbow Dash, sighing. "I was gonna tell you this later tonight, but I might as well say it now. I'm retiring."
The apple in Applejack's throat got caught in her windpipe as she tried to cough it out. Rainbow Dash patted her back and helped breathe again before Applejack whipped her head around and shouted, "What in tarnation?! Why are ya doin' something like that!"
"WAAAAAH!"
Both of them looked down and saw Little Limelight crying her eyes out before Rainbow Dash gave a scolding glare at Applejack, who blushed. Taking her baby into her hooves, Dash rocked Limelight back to sleep. When the baby had been delivered back to dreamland, Applejack whispered, "What in Equestria's name are ya sayin'?! You've only been a Wonderbolt for a few years and now ya tellin' me yer quittin'? Why?"
Rainbow Dash sighed and stroked their sleeping daughter's face. "Because I miss all this. You, the kids, my hometown. I miss everything so much that it's all I think about anymore. I want to be here to help Riot with his flying, see Scootaloo do more tricks, and even watch Limelight here grow up. I want to see our friends again, and hang out like we use to. I want to wake up and smell the fresh farm smell I've grown to love." She then turned to Applejack and smiled. "And I want to wake up with you in the morning and kiss you. I want to spend time with you again. The way I see it, I've accomplished my dream and I've broken every record the Wonderbolts had. It's gonna be decades before somepony comes and breaks even half of them. What else do I have to look forward too. Captain? No way, I can't handle all that paperwork and kissing up to my superiors. I miss flying free and performing in Ponyville. I just..." Rainbow Dash sighed and looked up to the sky. "I just want to come home."
Applejack never thought she would hear Rainbow Dash even say such a thing. She thought Rainbow Dash would want to be a Wonderbolt for life, but he was actually putting her family and friends first before her dream. Wiping a tear from eye, Applejack felt like she was falling in love all over again as she leaned forward and kissed Rainbow Dash on the cheek. "Guess Ah'd better tell Pinkie Pie to make a 'Dashie's home for good party', huh?"
Rainbow Dash kissed her back and gave a leering grin. "Only if the after party is just as wild."
The two continued to kiss each other, earning a series of 'Eww's' and 'Gross' from the older children. The married couple only laughed before telling them to sit down and shared the good news.
It hasn't changed, not even after thirty years... thought Rainbow Dash, staring at the initials of her name and Applejack's.
She could still remember the day they carved into the bark, promising to love each other forever, a similar speech they used for their wedding vows. There had been so much since that day, both good and bad. Now here she was, in her final mid-years with all her children grown up. She saw a few more names added to the tree over time, making the tradition still live, even in their own children.
Rainbow Dash sighed and leaned on it. A part of her wished she could go back to those days of her youth, when there was so much to do. She was too old for the Wonderbolts now, it was time for a younger generation to take control of them. She still did her performances, but mostly settled on teaching new fliers like she had done for Scootaloo and Riot. And her children, and their children, were handling the farm better than she or AJ ever could at their age. Even the Elements of Harmony had chosen new bearers who were out fighting evil whenever it poked its ugly head.
There was no other way in putting it. She was getting old and she didn't like it. Dash and her friends were no longer the youthful mares they were so long ago, even Twilight was aging despite being an alicorn. She kicked the tree in frustration and bitterly spat on the ground. "Dammnit."
"Goin' through another mid-age crisis?" asked a voice, coming forward. "Yer not gonna try another Sonic Rainboom and nearly break yer body again, are you?"
Rainbow Dash turned toward her wife, now supporting glasses while she kept her graying mane open and free, the hat she once wore every day now given to the youngest of their children. Even though she no longer looked like the mare she once was competing against in races and sports, she was still beautiful in Dash's eyes. Applejack nuzzled her love and asked, "What's wrong now?"
"I just... I feel old," muttered Rainbow Dash.
"Well, naturally, yer getting' gray just like me," answered Applejack with a chuckle.
Dash, however, didn't share the amusement. "AJ, I'm serious. This isn't supposed to be me, taking things so easy and letting others take care of me. I'm supposed to be the fastest pegasus alive, but I can't do even half the tricks I can do anymore! I'm no longer the Element of Loyalty, some unicorn in Trottingham is! And I just... I'm just afraid that I'll have to be wearing diapers and dentures soon! I'll look so uncool!"
Applejack sighed and shook her head. "Dash, yer not the only one feelin' such worries. It takes me longer to buck apples now and Ah can't even do half the chores Ah can do anymore. Ah often wonder if this is how Granny Smith felt back in her days, takin' care of us."
"But I don't want to be Granny Smith! I want to be Rainbow Dash!"
Applejack nuzzled her love again and whispered, "Ah know, Dash. Sometimes, Ah wish things were different, but ya know what? Ah think it was all worth it."
Rainbow Dash tilted her head.
"Meetin' the girls, our adventures', fallin' in love with ya? Our family and all the times we've had together watchin' them grow up here on the farm? Ah don't think Ah would ever want to redo mah life or even be young again if it meant tradin' all that. Sure, Ah'm gonna grow old, not do as much as Ah used to do, and eventually kick the bucket, but ya know what Ah'll still have?" Applejack leaned over and kissed Rainbow Dash on the lips, the energy from it made the stunned pegasus feel like she was twenty again. She returned the kiss, with equal vigor. The two held each other in lip lock for a long time as they sat in the shade of the tree they confessed under so many years ago.
They broke the kiss as Applejack whispered, "Ah'm still gonna have ya, Dash. No matter what Ah'll still have ya. And that's enough to keep me happy."
"AJ," muttered Rainbow Dash, a smile growing on her lips. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"
"Ya made that pretty little rainbow that sent me home, Dash," answered Applejack who leaned on her wife. The two held each other, no longer afraid of their future as long as they could still have each other.
Rainbow Dash once heard somepony speak a poem about how life was like the sun. Every day it came up from the east, it felt like something new, like a newborn coming to life. The sun rose higher and higher until it reached the middle, the pinnacle of a pony's life when he or she had done all that they needed to do. And finally, the sun would soon set, indicating that the life had come to an end and had to be put to rest. Then a new sun, a new life, could begin again.
Now, it's time for my sun to set... thought Rainbow Dash as she and Applejack, both old and fully gray, walked one more time to the tree that they had loved like their own child. They stopped in front of it, staring at the initials they carved decades ago, back when only one pair of initial was carved on the tree. Rainbow Dash put a wing over her wife for nearly 65 years as she was nuzzled by Applejack.
"Are you sure you want to be here? We can wait in bed, like most ponies are age due when its time," said Rainbow Dash, looking at her wife with a smile.
Applejack shook her head. "No, Ah want it to be here. Ah want my last moments to be with ya, watchin' the sunset like we use to do when we first started."
"As my lady commands," joked Rainbow Dash.
The two of them sat down, watching the sunset in the distance. They talked of the memories they had, of ponies still here or long gone, and of the days when everything seemed to be moving at a pace they could keep up. But now all they had was these final moments, together as they had wished it to be. 'Till death do us part, huh? thought Dash, chuckling. Funny, I always thought I'd die in my forties with the lifestyle I had.
"Somethin' funny?" asked Applejack.
"It's nothing..." whispered Rainbow Dash, sighing. It was any time now. The next big adventure. "Are you scared?"
"Not a bit," answered Applejack, whose eyelids slowly began to lower themselves. "Ah'm lookin' forward to seein' everypony again. Fluttershy, Pinkie, Ma and Pa, Big Mac, Granny Smith... all of them are waitin' for me..."
"Waiting for us," whispered Rainbow Dash, kissing her on the cheek. "I'm not letting you die alone you know?"
Applejack smiled and kissed her back. Even now, the kiss from her beloved wife was still as refreshing as the breath of life. "Dash, no matter what happens, Ah love ya. Always will, even in eternity."
"I love you too, Applejack."
The two snuggled next to each other for one last embrace. They didn't speak a word for a long time, just watch the sunset in silence. Near the end of it Rainbow Dash found herself getting more and more tired, and it was getting harder to breathe. She rubbed her eyes, trying to fight the fading colors surrounding her, but she knew it was futile. It was time. She wondered who would find them first, their children, grandchildren, or would Twilight and Rarity sense their passing like they had with Pinkie and Fluttershy?
Knowing that this was the end, Rainbow Dash slowly turned her head to get one last look at Applejack before it was over. To her surprise, Applejack was already resting on her hooves, her eyes closed and her face peacefully looking. A twinge of sorrow entered Rainbow Dash but it faded knowing that they would be reunited soon.
Kissing her departed lover on the cheek one more time, Rainbow Dash rested her head on Applejack's mane and whispered, "Stupid, going on first without me.... Guess I... can let... you win... this time..."
Rainbow Dash closed her eyes for the final time, just as the sun gave way into the night.
Golden Girl, by TwilightUCrazy
Applejack's hooves met the last tree with a satisfying SMACK!, and the pleasing rapid-firing thud of dozens of apples falling ever-so-neatly into their bushels sounded behind her.
"Pretty as a paintin'," Applejack whistled happily as she trotted back to the farmhouse.
The orange mare sighed wearily and brought a hoof up to her hat to remove it. She wiped away some of the sweat dotting her brow, and smiled gratefully up at the great day she'd been given - and the pegasus ponies that'd given it to her. The sun was shining brightly, but the skies were patterned with fluffy white clouds drifting along on the intermittent cool breezes. It never got too hot, and the breeze never became insistent enough to make things cold. And every now and again, a cloud would sneak over the sun and provide at least partial relief from its rays.
Applejack was plenty used to the at-times unpleasant weather conditions. But in such prime working weather, all she could think about was taking off for the rest of the day for some quality Applejack time.
She couldn't even remember the last time she'd actually taken an unscheduled day off. Certainly there was no harm in allowing herself just one. Besides, weather this nice didn't pop up every day!
"Howdy, Big Mac," she said merrily as she trotted by her big brother. She marched inside without stopping to chat and made straight for the kitchen.
Granny had been napping in her rocker, and stirred awake at the sound of the door closing behind her granddaughter.
"Sorry, Granny. Didn't mean to wake ya."
Applejack smiled and pulled out a picnic basket from under the counter.
Granny grunted disapprovingly, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. "Wassat? What time is it?"
"It's okay Granny. Applebloom don't need to be picked up for a couple hours yet."
"Still that early?"
Granny yawned and looked at the clock on the stand next to her, and dragged herself out of her chair, crossing the living room to the kitchen. "Why'd you not come in for lunch, Applejack? Ain't like you to go without."
"Just gettin' a little extra work done in. Ah figure, with the weather bein' all nice like it is, Ah might go for a walk. Settle in for a picnic maybe."
"Oh, goin' to visit everypony, huh?" the Apple matriarch asked, giving her granddaughter's hat and hair underneath a little ruffle with her decrepit hoof.
Applejack didn't answer.
"Where did we put all the honey? Ah coulda sworn to high Heaven that we'd just bought us some."
"Ran out yesterday makin' all ah them fritters. Why doncha just take the last few and share 'em with yer friends?"
"Thanks, Granny," Applejack smiled, wrapping up the treats and pitching them in the basket. Applejack plucked the seasoning and retrieved a bundle of carnations for sandwiches, and grabbed a couple jars of cider.
"That gonna be enough, now?" Granny asked with a perk of her aged brow.
Applejack beamed.
"Plenty! Thanks!"
Applejack had left the farm an hour earlier and taken various routes into the open wilderness. On her back was perched her picnic basket, crowned by a folded red blanket.
It wasn't often that Applejack got to wander out into the grasslands - usually she was too busy, or got drug off to her friend's activities. Much as she loved her five gals, Applejack also recognized the value of being alone.
Pinkie Pie was probably throwing a "beautiful weather party" or something similar. Applejack swore that pony could turn a rainy Tuesday into a party somehow...
"Probably a 'be-thankful-for-the-rain' party." Applejack said to herself.
Applejack trotted over wooden bridge after wooden bridge, over brook after brook, past the delicately-waving green meadows, and over rolling hills and shallow vales. Her perfect place for a terrific day like today was a ways off if a pony followed the paths, probably an hour and a half from town even at a brisk trot. It was well past where most ponies would tread alone, but for her, the view was the best that Equestria itself - maybe the whole world - had to offer.
As she approached the steep incline she sought, Applejack reached back and took a hold of her basket with her teeth. The hill was too steep to find purchase with her hooves on the slanted grass, putting a few stones to use instead.
As Applejack crested the hill, the wind swelled and tugged at her mane and hat fiercely. She placed a hoof on the top of her Stetson and waited for the wind to die back down.
She set down her basket for a moment and looked around at her surroundings. It was Applejack's view of the whole Equestrian Valley, and everything precious to her - her own little piece of Heaven. As Applejack settled out her blanket and took a seat, she smiled and took a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air. There was no bustle or hustle or urgency here. There was only calmness and quiet.
The surroundings were the best part of the whole trip. The journey through the meadows and fields between here and home freed her soul from the constraints of life. Their delicate scent gave her a chance to feel like she was back in the days where she really was living again, instead of treading water to keep the farm afloat. The sentimental meaning, though, was what she came for - she had spent many evenings camping with her family on this hilltop in the past, and memories both happy and melancholy flooded back to her with every visit. It wasn't so much a family place anymore after her parents had passed away. It had become Applejack's own spiritual refuge. Peace always found her out so far from civilization, despite any of the day's hardships. Aside from Canterlot on its purple mountainous perch, Sweet Apple Acres was the only visible reminder it existed. Her farm sat in the middle of a distant landscape portrait. Her barn was highlighted as a bright red speck against the surrounding farmlands. The orchards on either side of the barnyard grounds flowed together with the Everfree Forest, forming a nice, picturesque little view. Ponyville lay somewhere beyond obscured by trees.
Applejack sometimes wondered what lay beyond the valley - it was rare she ever left it. Her thoughts would then drift to travel, seeing the world and all it had to offer. But then her thoughts would be drawn back to where she was, and the work at hand. Who knew what else there was? It didn't matter much. Everything she loved and needed was right here, and it would always be where she returned to when her legs became travel-weary.
Applejack took off her hat and fanned herself briefly with it before weighing it down with the picnic basket she'd brought. She pulled the red bands out of her mane tail and ditched them as well.
On the farm and in-town, having such untidy hair as hers was a royal pain - the individual strands were so long that she was constantly stepping on them while running or applebucking. And even on the softest winds, her hair just wasn't controllable. It regularly blew into her face, blinding her, or making her almost unrecognizable. Yet despite the inconvenience, she could never bring herself to cut it. She had her mother to thank for her unruly mane, according to Granny. She liked to think that part of her mother lived on in her in that way. Only difference was, Mommy's hair was beautiful. Applejack on the other hand just looked a fright whenever she looked into a mirror after a blustery day.
Even so, it always felt special whenever she got the chance to let everything loose. It felt like an occasion, or a metaphor for letting all her problems fall away, and a chance to renew herself.
The day felt like one in which nothing could go wrong. The weather was terrific, the setting was spectacular, and she had packed enough food to not need to go home all day. She could lounge around until the late evening hours, and catch up on some badly-needed personal time.
Fate had other plans, though.
Applejack reached into the basket and pulled out a book she'd retrieved from her room before she left. She had just sat down and flipped to the bookmarked page when she heard a faint whistling sound. Her ears pricked, and her eyes peered around for the source.
"Look out below!" came the sudden, broken cry from above.
Applejack barely had enough time to look upwards and see a rainbow-maned pegasus spiraling down at her at a steep angle relative to the ground.
She did have time to gasp in surprise, only to have the wind knocked right back out of her as Rainbow Dash plowed into her side at bone-crushing speeds. Both mares went for a tumble together for quite a substantial distance. Applejack was amazed they didn't just keep going forever.
Both ponies came to a stop on their sides, with Rainbow Dash draped limply over Applejack.
Pushing herself up from her side into a laying position, Applejack groaned, held a hoof to her head, and shook the kinks out before glaring at the pegasus laying on top of her.
Rainbow shook her head out as her daze came to an end and spat out the grass sticking out of her mouth. "Hey Applejack! Weird running into you all the way out here."
"Yeah." Applejack rolled her eyes. "Fancy that."
Rainbow Dash pushed herself off the ground and offered Applejack a helping hoof. She accepted the assist wordlessly. "I was just out here practicing some tricks for the next Junior Flier Competition. Spun out, lost control, crashed. You know how it is," Rainbow said with a shrug.
Applejack trotted over to her blanket again, followed closely by her friend.
"Uh huh. An' of all the great big blue skies in Equestria, and all Celestia's great big green earth, ya still manage to crash right into me, doncha?"
"Hey, weirder stuff has happened!" Rainbow countered with a huff, crossing her forelegs one over the other as Applejack recovered her book and resettled her picnic area. Rainbow just watched the goings-on. "I mean, how should a pony say hi anymore Little Miss Pricklypants?"
Applejack looked over her withers to Rainbow Dash and made a face. "She should just open 'er big yap and say 'hello' fer starters."
Rainbow brushed off the remark and took a look around at the scenery.
"So, what're you doing here anyway? Where is everypony? Did you come out here all by yourself?"
Applejack sighed.
"Would you like all those questions answered in a neat little package or one-by-one?"
"Whatever works."
Applejack settled back down on her blanket. Rainbow went over to join her, standing on the giant red cloth.
"Ah'm here tryin' to relax, Ah assume the girls're still back in town, and yes, Ah'm here all by mah lonesome. That clear everything up fer ya?"
"... Sorry, I can't remember what I asked."
Rainbow could practically eat Applejack's agitation it was so thick. At least it was happy-food for the soul, and there was nothing more fun than getting a rise out of her best friend.
Applejack calmed her tone with a cycle of breathing.
"It's a nice day, and this here's mah favorite spot to enjoy it from. Ah figure that's a good enough reason to be here."
"No, no. I mean, what are you doing... not working?" Rainbow asked, trying to make words that would make more sense given the context.
"Oh. Well, like Ah said, it's nice weather and-"
"You're welcome, by the way!"
"-and it's not like Ah work all the time fer yer information! Sometimes Ah feel like runnin' off and doin' somethin' by mahself too y'know."
Rainbow blinked and looked around for anypony else - aside from herself, of course - who might've come out with Applejack to spend some time with her. She knew Applejack wouldn't directly lie if she didn't need to. It just seemed so boring to be all by herself, sitting alone in a field.
"Oh. All by yourself, huh?"
"What was yer first clue? The lack of other ponies, or the fact that Ah said 'by mahself?'" Applejack smiled smugly.
Rainbow let her ears fold against the back of her head and her wings droop. "I gotcha," she said. "I won't bug ya anymore." Rainbow Dash threw a melodramatic pout Applejack's way. If there was one thing Rarity was good at besides design and style, it was being a ham. Mentally, she thanked the white unicorn for her numerous dramatic demonstrations.
Rainbow stared at Applejack with those glittering magenta eyes and a quivering lip.
Applejack's rather hard-edged face softened as Rainbow turned to leave. A gentle smile blossomed on Applejack's lips. Sympathy card! Easy-peasy mac-'n-cheesy!
Applejack had a surprise for her though.
"Well alrighty then! See ya later!" She lowered her eyes to the pages of her book once more.
Rainbow blinked and made a face. Curses! Foiled! If Applejack weren't so much fun, she probably would've just found somepony else to bother. Her friend was really playing hard-to-get today, though - that was a challenge in her book. Rainbow immediately sprang back to life with her more typical vim and vigor, and hovered right in her friend's face.
"Oh come on! Lemme stay! Please? I promise I won't ruin your afternoon. We can just sit here, chat, and have fun and munch all that good-tasting stuff you brought with you!"
Rainbow's belly grumbled.
Applejack regarded Rainbow Dash with a calculating gaze, and an ever-growing curve of her lips.
"Ya promise, huh?"
"Pega-Scout's pride!" Rainbow held up a hoof in salute.
Applejack's eyebrow twitched humorously.
"You weren't even in the Pega-Scouts, were ya?"
This pony knows me too well...
"Tch! Are you kidding?"
Applejack laughed before she reached over and patted the spot on the blanket next to her. She tossed her book in the direction of the basket and settled down. Yeah! Who needed to read when you had the awesomeness that was Rainbow Dash in your presence?
"There's sandwiches, cider, and fritters in the basket if yer-"
Before Applejack could finish her statement, Rainbow already had her head in the wicker carry-all, and was rummaging around for something to eat. She emerged with two carnation sandwich-halves sticking out of her face and a glass jar full of scrumptious cider under her wing. She trotted over next to Applejack to take her place on the quilt.
"Foo fay fomfin'?"
Applejack smiled and shook her head. Many ponies weren't very tolerant of Rainbow's "charms", but Applejack was the eternal exception to that rule. She was the one pony above all other ponies she could be herself around, and not worry if she was being judged.
"What'm Ah gonna do with you?"
Rainbow gulped down her sandwiches without finishing chewing, and used her teeth to pop the top off the cider jar. She didn't waste a moment putting away about half of it.
Applejack raised her brows and smirked.
"Ahh!" Rainbow sighed happily and licked her chops clean of the beverage.
"Settle down, hon. You're gonna make it." Applejack smiled.
"Your family makes the best cider ever. You could tell me you made it with ground-up dried bird droppings as a special ingredient, and I'd still chug it like water."
Applejack turned to her with one of those sly smiles of hers.
"Well, funny you should say that, 'cause actually..."
Rainbow's eyes became wide as dinner plates and her ears flattened against the back of her head, her hooves lowering the glass to the ground. She didn't believe it. She couldn't believe it. But the bomb had been dropped, and she had to know for sure...
"You don't."
"Sure do! Adds vitamins and nutrients and... that... special... aftertaste..."
Applejack's facade collapsed and she chortled merrily on her side.
"You are seriously twisted, AJ..."
"And yer the definition of gullible, Sugarcube. But no, we don't," Applejack said and got up. Her tail gave a majestic swish and bapped her silly friend on the nose as she went over to the basket herself.
Rainbow sighed in relief and tilted her head back for another gulp of the stuff. She blinked at Applejack's tail as she rummaged for food, wondering what seemed different. The cowpony seemed... brighter, happier somehow. She settled back down in her spot, and began enjoying her overdue lunch.
"So, watcha reading?" Dash asked with a gulp of her jar. "Daring Do? Pony Wars? ... Not Mallard the Buck..."
"No, no, and... Mallard-the-what-now?"
"Okay, good. You haven't even heard of it. Worst work the author's ever done. It's about this elk, right? And he's sucked through this dimensional portal-"
"Aaaand just like that ya went and lost me."
Rainbow shrugged and glimpsed at the black book that Applejack had brought along with her. The cover was bound and had a silver rose stamp on the front, but no title to give away it or its subject matter. She considered the book curiously and rubbed her hoof against her chin.
"So what's your book called, anyway?"
"You wouldn't be interested," Applejack answered her shortly.
Rainbow became interested.
"Oh, wouldn't I?"
Narrowing her eyes at her friend, Applejack muttered, "It's nothin' like yer Darin' Do books so just leave it alone."
Most interested!
"Oh, isn't it?"
"Rainbow, don't you dare..."
Skip the whole 'want-to-know' - that book had just nose-dived into the deep end of need-to-know!
"I think you protest too much!" Rainbow cursed her inability to remember the sayings Twilight fed her exactly, but was pleased she managed to hold onto it at least in partial form.
Applejack thought ahead of her, and jumped onto the nameless novel that she'd brought along.
Huh... I must be getting predictable...
"Rainbow..."
The pegasus grinned evilly, setting her eyes on the book.
Applejack clutched it to her chest with both hooves.
Faster than the eye could follow, Dash jumped up and bolted over behind Applejack, giving her loose mane a gentle tug with her teeth.
Applejack squeaked in surprise and reflexively reached up with a hoof to knock away her attacker. Rainbow Dash used the opportunity and leaped forward, grabbed the lightly-held novel in her mouth, and took off in a run. Applejack yelled in surprise and protest and gave chase.
"You blue varmint! Knock it off! Give that back!"
Rainbow took a leap into the sky and hovered tauntingly just overhead. Applejack tried several times to push herself up high enough in the air to grab her friend's tail and yank her back to the earth, but she was just a few inches short with every jump. Rainbow flipped to a random page in the book and pondered aloud. "Let's see what kind of junk ya read!" she said with a playful grin to her friend. Applejack gritted her teeth angrily up to her, and plopped down on her haunches in defeat, awaiting the inevitable ridicule. Her face was painted a deep scarlet, and her lower lip twisted into a pout.
"Rainbow Juniper Dash! You gimme back that book right now!"
Ooh! Applejack had used her middle name! This was gonna be good, she could tell! Rainbow tuned her out and read aloud to the chagrin of her friend below.
"'... as her hooves could barely take the weight of life anymore, Firemane collapsed onto her flank. She let out a sigh and looked on helplessly as the object of her desire vanished into the distance...'"
Rainbow quirked her eyebrow as she read and smirked playfully at Applejack. "'Object of her desire', huh?"
Applejack seethed as Rainbow turned back to the book, seeking another page.
"'As she gazed upon the mare she hadn't seen since her days at the university, nostalgia bubbled up from under the surface. Tundra Loft was still the same gorgeous shade of soft blue as she was way back from older times... happier times. Her short and expertly-combed black mane was still the stuff of beauty, even in the intervening years,'" Rainbow continued to read, putting an overly-dramatic spin on the story with her narration.
Flip. New page.
Rainbow bit her lip in a grin. "I never took you for a sappy one Applejack!"
In all seriousness, Applejack just didn't fit the bill for somepony who would like those kinds of books. Rainbow had always imagined Rarity being into them, Fluttershy sure, and maybe even Pinkie and Twilight. But Applejack? That was completely out of left field. But that made it all the better!
Applejack glowered. "Dangit Rainbow! Ah want that book back ya dang thief!"
Rainbow ignored her and flipped to another page for one more passage. The defensiveness of her friend brought a wide smile to her face that made her cheeks hurt.
Rainbow let out a highly-dramatic gasp and carried on. "'She felt Tundra's wings encircle her from behind, her heart skipping several beats as the mare wrapped one hoof around her chest, and ran the other through her long and unruly mane. 'Hey, now, where's the snappy little pilot light I used to know?' Tundra Loft asked as one of her wings stroked down along her side. The wingtip brushed past Firemane's stomach, up over her flank and against her-'"
Rainbow paused, her magenta eyes widening. Her ears and cheeks went red-hot.
"Whoa. This Tundra Loft is a smoothie!"
One glimpse down to Applejack told her that this was as far as her teasing went before she started taking things personally. Applejack's eyes had slanted into a deeply angry glare and her ears had slid back along her head irritably. Her wild-style tail twitched back and forth in mounting aggravation. Rainbow quickly came to realize that if she teased any more, there could be actual consequences. Reluctantly, she returned to the ground with her prize.
The fun went out the window whenever real anger entered the equation. Rainbow's mind drifted over to thoughts of defusing the situation she might have pushed too far.
"So... what's it all about?"
Applejack snatched the book back and returned it to the basket between the food items.
"It's just a love story. That's all," she said shortly.
Rainbow was hoping for something more elaborate than that.
"Yeah - I got that much," she smiled. "I mean, what's the plot like? What's the story?"
Applejack stared back at her with a simmering suspicion towards her friend and flopped down at her spot once more.
"It's... it's about a pony who feels unloved and... unappreciated. So when she sees an 'ol friend of hers at a party one night, she... starts feelin' things and... feelin' happy again Ah guess."
Rainbow smirked.
"I'll say! Felt like Tundra was starting to put the moves on Firemane there, huh?"
"Eeyup," Applejack replied with a mild huff.
Rainbow was hesitant. She wasn't sure if she was quite out of the chicken coop yet, and considered her next words carefully. While she didn't care much for all the mushy stuff in her personal life, she didn't mind if it was confined to a book. And hay, if Applejack liked that kind of stuff, it couldn't be all that bad!
"So, uh... do you mind if I read it sometime?"
Applejack blinked and stared at her.
"You wanna read it? But it's got all that romance and lovey-dovey stuff ya always say ya hate."
"Well... what can I say? Tundra Loft sounds like a pretty cool character!"
Applejack's smile was slow to blossom; it always was when Rainbow was involved. But she always made it worth the wait with that great laugh of hers that could cheer up even the bluest pony (no pun intended). It always made Rainbow laugh in kind, and made her feel better about... well, things.
"Alright, alright. Ah guess Ah can let ya borrow it one of these times, featherbrain." She paused a moment. "And it's called Golden Girl, if ya really are interested..."
Rainbow sighed inwardly with relief.
Well, that could've gone worse.
Applejack dug into her fritter while Rainbow finished off her jar of cider. A comfortable silence settled like a blanket over the both of them. Only the wind blowing across the prairies and making a soft hiss through the grass made it feel like the world was even there at all. The silence seemed to bring Applejack peace, and reined in the annoyance she had expressed towards Rainbow Dash earlier. That, or Rainbow was more charming than even she could have ever imagined! Yeah, she liked the sound of that one.
"So, uhh... is a book all you brought to do out here?" Rainbow finally asked. She had started to become concerned over how long Applejack had kept quiet. It wasn't like her in the least, unless some anger still lingered there under the surface. The silent anger was the worst kind. Rainbow would rather take somepony yelling at her any day. She knew how to deal with that kind of mad. But the quiet type that soured under the surface? That kind was weird and kind of spooky. It was the kind that wasn't fixed with "I'm sorries" or a fight.
"Well, Ah ain't a very quick reader. Ah was thinkin' about a nap after a couple chapters," Applejack said, emphasizing with a soft yawn. "Ah'm a mite tuckered out after walkin' all the way out here."
"Sleep?" Rainbow frowned. "That's not very fun..."
"Sorry," Applejack said, rubbing her eyes on the back of her foreleg. "Sometimes Ah gotta be the borin' pony."
"Well, we could always just go for a run or something."
An enthusiastic glimmer lit up in Rainbow's eyes and a moon-like smile wrinkled her complexion. If there was anything that could rouse Applejack from her off-mood, it was a good romp. Out here, they had space and privacy and time, all things that they kind of lacked back towards town. How could she possibly resist the offer?
"Oh Rainbow, Ah ain't done up proper fer that kinda thing. Ah mean, wouldja lookit me?"
Applejack motioned to herself. Her free-flowing mane and tail were both a beautifully disastrous mess. Such long hair had to be contained to be controlled - and she remembered the last time she tried to help Applejack tie it up. Doing it with Rainbow's help those few times had been a chore. She could only imagine Applejack's nightmarish task of doing it on her own. A stiff breeze blew through and tussled the strands about like leaves.
"Oh. Yeah. Sure," Rainbow blinked in response, tilting her head. She'd lost her train of thought. She was quiet for a few moments while she tried to track that stupid train...
Applejack took notice, apparently.
"Oh hay, darlin' - if Ah'da known ya were gonna drop in on me like a wild raccoon, I woulda just invited ya along in the first place. We coulda made a day of it, you 'n me."
Wild raccoons drop in?
Applejack looked up to the eye-wandering Rainbow Dash. Admittedly it wasn't like her to contemplate or enjoy the sights, unless those sights happened to include the Wonderbolts. Cloudsdale wasn't too terribly far, but Rainbow highly doubted the decorated fliers would practice all the way out here.
She was still trying to figure out the whole 'dropping raccoons' thing when Applejack interrupted her thoughts.
"Somethin' wrong? Ah didn't turn ya offa mah cider with mah joke, did Ah?"
Rainbow couldn't help her smile.
"Well, now that you mention it, the cider does taste a little off..." she said, letting Applejack know with a soft jab of her hoof that the comment was playful in nature.
"Now yer just bein' a silly filly," Applejack said as she sampled her apple fritter further. She swallowed and stared suspiciously for an awfully long time at Rainbow. The look was a hard one to read; Applejack was either studying her, or trying to start a staring contest. Rainbow would have believed either explanation.
"Somethin' ya wanna talk about?"
Rainbow got a chill when Applejack called her that.
"No. Well, yeah, but... I dunno." Rainbow's thought process had spun off in every which direction, and trying to piece together the fragments was like trying to put back together a shattered mirror.
"You know ya can talk to me about anything you want, right?"
Rainbow blinked at Applejack, like she'd just been suddenly broken out of a trance by some... trance-release spell of some kind - Twilight would facehoof if she knew Rainbow had been so crude with her spell names.
"Oh! Yeah, totally. Same to you, AJ," Rainbow smiled happily. "Ya sap."
"Hey, pardner," Applejack smirked, "them's wrasslin' words."
Rainbow's adrenaline spiked there for a moment as she thought back on their last match.
"No, no. I don't 'wrassle' with you anymore. Last time it took me a month to get all the mud out of my feathers."
"Heh. So much for the mighty Rainbow Dash," Applejack said with a giant grin. "'Fraid a little mud'll get on 'er wings. Next thing ya know it'll be hooficures and goin' off with Rarity and flirtin' with princes in Canterlot!"
Rainbow felt a bit of anger build up unexpectedly. She wasn't exactly sure what to direct it at, though Applejack was the only convenient target. A surge of cold radiated from her as those purplish eyes of hers glared sharp daggers Applejack's direction. "Hey, I don't make fun of you for being obsessed with that hat of yours. And hay, my wings are a part of me! Besides... princes?! Really?"
Applejack's ears lay flat against her head and she shrank defensively. She hadn't meant it as an insult. Rainbow knew that. Hay, normally Rainbow was a better sport about such things than that. Something was breaking her stride, though, and messing her thoughts up, and it was frustrating her to no end.
"Ah'm sorry. Ah didn't mean it that way... But ya did seem like you wanted to talk about somethin'... Yer startin' to make me worry a wee bit over here."
"I don't wanna talk! I just... well, I kind of wanna talk. But not really, either."
Applejack's eyes slanted to the side, and her frown deepened as she swallowed the last bite of her fritter. "A bronze bit fer yer thoughts, Sugarcube?" she offered.
Rainbow sighed and reached up with her hoof to scratch her neck. How was this gonna work?
"How do wild raccoons drop in?"
Applejack made a face.
"Rainbow..."
Rainbow Dash pouted. Confound this pony! she thought, taking a swig of her cider.
"Okay, okay," she muttered, rolling her eyes. "I guess it's just... I don't think I've ever seen you without your mane and tail let out," Rainbow said, her ears perking as her eyes ran over Applejack's golden hair, running in spiraling rivers off in every direction. "I mean, I was thinking I had at some point, like when we were really little or something. Maybe we were taking a bath or something... I dunno. It's been so long. I just can't remember anymore... It's no big deal, okay?"
There was a pause as Applejack looked back at herself. A gust of wind caught her mane like a kite, and blew it all around her face, blocking her vision. She spat it out and brought her hoof up to brush the hair aside. Applejack blushed for reasons only Faust knew, and Rainbow just kept staring at her like an idiot with her head screwed on crooked.
"Yeah?" Applejack replied as she sipped her cider. "Well, you don't need to get used to it none," she said softly. "It's a mighty big pain to do anything with it. Gets all matted when Ah run - 'specially when it's muddy. It all just likes to do its own thing. Makes me look like some pony from the wilds done blown in from outta town."
"Whaddya mean?"
"Ah mean that Ah can comb it, Ah can towel it, Ah can dry it, hay, Ah can even gel it - but Ah just can't seem to make anything about it stick. Ah just look like some filly whose never heard of lookin' halfway decentlike... or a brush."
Rainbow looked her friend over.
"Yeah, I can see that... you're kind of all over the place."
Applejack sighed and sampled her drink.
"Okay, yeah, maybe you've got that wild-girl look. But so what? You look like some sort of untamable mare from way back before Equestria even existed. You should totally walk into Rarity's boutique sometime and say 'hi' like that," Rainbow grinned.
Applejack chuckled and lay on her full belly again.
"Yeah. Ah can see 'er now: 'Of all the worst things that could happen to hair, this is THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING!'" Applejack said dramatically, doing a rather spot-on impression of Rarity. She apparently thought it was humorous.
Rainbow didn't laugh though. Instead, she felt an unpleasant pit develop in her gut, heavy and unpleasant. Her ears curled flat again and her brow fell off to the sides. "That's... not what I meant."
Applejack looked up at Rainbow and fidgeted.
"You don't really think that, do you?" Rainbow asked with a frown.
Applejack's eyes softened and her head angled to one side.
"H-how do ya mean?"
"I mean you... th-thinking that... y'know! Thinking like you're not pretty, or something!" Rainbow forced herself to say with a shrug. She tried to be casual to avert the awkwardness.
She failed.
Applejack blinked at her.
Rainbow quickly realized as her friend brushed her mane with her hooves that she was trying to avoid blushing. Maybe pretty hadn't been Rainbow's best choice of words, but either way, there it was. Nothing Applejack did, though, averted the red haze drowning out her freckles. And was that a smile she was trying to hide as she bit her lower lip? The more she thought about it, the more she began to realize that she'd never heard anypony actually call Applejack pretty or beautiful or whatever.
That boiled her blood more the more she thought about it.
"Oh, Rainbow..." she said, giving a gentle tap of her tail against Rainbow's flank. "Don't worry 'bout it none. Ah ain't all worried about lookin' fancy fer some stallion. And it sure don't matter to me none if Ah ain't gonna be on the cover of a magazine," she assured her friend with a wink.
Rainbow frowned at that and let out a frustrated huff. Which pony had planted such a poor self-image in Applejack's mind? She felt like finding them and planting them.
Applejack scooted a bit closer, and softly nuzzled the unreceptive Rainbow's neck. "It's okay, Sugarcube, really - Rarity's the one who cares about bein' the bombshell. She can be as pretty as she wants - 'long as Ah'm presentable, that's all Ah care about," she assured her friend.
Rainbow looked down at the blanket between her forelegs and turned her glare to Applejack, though somehow the look was directed past her at some unknowable entity. She felt a protectiveness towards her old friend. An anger on her behalf - fury even.
"So what does Rarity know anyway?! I think you look awesome! I think Rarity would too if she had a clue what she was talking about!" Rainbow blurted.
Applejack recoiled visibly at the sudden outburst. Rainbow wasn't one to mince words, but she usually wasn't so... blunt.
"Ah didn't... uh..." was all that came out of her mouth before her vocabulary failed her.
"I mean, come on, Applejack! You're seriously one of the hottest ponies I know! I bet if you stopped working so hard and hanging by yourself all the time, you could have an awesome marefriend if you wanted one!... er, coltfriend I mean."
Rainbow's eyes widened at the words that left her own mouth, and started falling over her own speech, trying to think of something, of anything to save her. She gulped.
Open mouth - insert hoof.
Applejack stared at her with wide emerald eyes. There was nothing but surprise in them, but Rainbow averted her gaze anyway.
"R-Rainbow, Ah..." Applejack's voice tremored, and her eyes and face were highlighted by a quaking bite to her lip. "You... Do you really think Ah'm... pretty?"
Rainbow Dash's eyes fluttered a few times. All of a sudden, it felt like what she said wasn't all that big a deal. The Opalescence was out of the bag now anyway, so why not?
Rainbow grinned sheepishly and blushed. "Well, yeah! I mean, sure... you know me. I call it like I see it," she grinned warmly to Applejack, rapidly regaining her composure and crossing her forelegs coolly.
There was a stunning vacuum of silence - it was like the world had stopped to catch its breath for a second. Rainbow Dash thought she'd gone deaf as Beethoofen for a second. The sunlight played across the individual strands of Applejack's gorgeous mane and tail, making it look like it was dusted with stars from the night sky. The way the breeze played with the individual strands reminded her of lakes of sunlight pouring into the sky and dissipating on the wind.
Applejack turned her head away, the faint sound of a sniffle punctuating the atmosphere.
Rainbow gaped. Aw horseapples! Had she really screwed up after all?
"Applejack...? Are you... are you crying?"
She was.
Streams of hot tears ran down Applejack's freckled cheeks and stained her coat a darker shade of orange. "No..." she squeaked out, covering her face with one foreleg.
"Applejack...?" Rainbow's voice broke as she pressed against her friend.
The orange-hued mare brought a hoof up to her eyes and softly rubbed away some of the excess moisture.
"AJ?" she prodded gently.
Her friend responded by facing away from her.
"Applejack? What's wrong? I didn't say something stupid did I?" Rainbow asked, resting a leg around her friend's withers. Rainbow knew she wasn't very good at the 'friend-to-lean-on' thing, but she couldn't just leave Applejack be while she was... while she was crying. Rainbow wasn't even aware until then that Applejack was able to cry. The fact that she could sent icy chills up her spine like she'd never felt before.
Applejack shook her head firmly side to side. She wouldn't look at her.
Rainbow wasn't sure what to do. All she knew was what she was known for doing: action. To her, that spoke louder than she ever could with words. She scooted closer and reached with both her legs, wrapping them around Applejack and nestling her chin down onto her mane.
Applejack's gentle movement the next moment surprised Rainbow, as she returned the gesture, wrapping her legs around Rainbow as if she were a life preserver.
Rainbow blinked confusingly.
"Ah'm..." Applejack sniffed, her voice breaking. "Ah'm sorry, darlin',"
What was wrong with this pony? How many conflicting messages could one mare send?! Her voice didn't match the one like you'd hear from somepony who was sad or depressed or something, but there were tears in Applejack's eyes, and her voice had broken like she'd had her heart ripped out, trampled, and torn in half.
Rainbow softly draped her wing over Applejack, and used its strength to pull her closer.
Applejack nuzzled her cheek against Dash's neck. Her pegasus friend could feel the breeze of Applejack's tail waggling back and forth happily behind them.
Wait. What?
"Ah didn't mean fer ya to see me cry like this. Ah don't know what's gotten into me!" Applejack wept happily, her sobs mixed with an elated laugh. Rainbow stared dumbly for what felt like several minutes as her brain ground into gear. At last everything clicked into place for her. Part of her wanted to laugh. Part of her wanted to cry too - but awesomely, of course.
"What?! Has nopony ever told you you were pretty before?" she grinned.
Applejack looked up at her. Her green eyes swam with emotion, and the tears on her cheeks clashed with the bright smile on her face.
"Y-you mean 'sides Granny or Big Mac or Applebloom? ... Shoot, Ah don't think so."
Rainbow snorted and leaned into the embrace with a gentle nuzzle to Applejack's forehead. She ran a hoof softly through that long and beautiful platinum mane.
"Sorry. Ah didn't mean to cry like a little filly."
"Heh, it's no big deal Applejack. Sometimes even the best of us - no, especially the best of us need a good cry sometimes," Rainbow encouraged her friend. The two sat there for awhile, letting Applejack happily let things out for as long as she needed. "We bottle up too much awesome inside us and have to... let it out as liquid pride," the prismatic pegasus chuckled, borrowing a page from Shining Armor. She probably owed him royalty for that or something... (Again, no pun intended.)
Applejack sniffled and squeezed Rainbow Dash with those mighty hooves of hers.
Rainbow turned her head away instinctively - nopony could see Dash blush!
"Ugh! I'm starved!" Rainbow said all of a sudden. She wasn't exactly sure how her belly could be empty after eating a whole sandwich not half an hour ago, but that was what had come out of her mouth. "Hey! Wanna split the last fritter with me?" Rainbow asked, grinning to her still-awesome best friend, her wing giving a tight squeeze.
Applejack rubbed one last tear away with her foreleg and giggled softly.
"Sure, darlin'. Ah'd be happy to."
Rainbow regretted that her wing embrace had to end. It felt kind of nice having Applejack all close to her like that. Rainbow unfurled her wing from around her friend as she began to pull away.
As she did, though, that roguish wingtip of hers dipped a bit low on Applejack's flank, and elicited a girly squeal from her as it brushed along her cutie mark. Applejack's face lit up like a late evening sun.
So she copied Tundra Loft a bit. Like it was so horrible? Applejack's reaction was way worth it!
As Rainbow casually got up and moved over to the picnic basket, she spared a look over her shoulder. Applejack couldn't have been more rooted to the spot than if she'd been planted and watered. As Rainbow rummaged, Applejack gradually roused herself from her little stupor and fidgeted with her mane once again. Clearing her throat, she waited patiently for her ill-behaved friend.
Silence was a deplorable offense in this situation, though, and had to be cured.
"Sooo, split it sixty-forty?" Rainbow grinned at Applejack as she trotted back over and retook her spot.
Applejack's face contorted. "Why sixty-forty?" she asked.
"We'll split it by degrees of cool - you get forty, I get sixty, see?" Rainbow smirked.
Applejack furrowed her brow. "Hey now, you said 'especially the best of us need a good cry every once in awhile', and Ah ain't never seen you shed a tear in mah life. Why do Ah get the forty?"
"Well, look on the bright side! You only would've gotten thirty before. But, y'know, 'cause your mane and tail make you look cooler, I decided to spot ya an extra ten. Aren't I an awesome friend?"
Rainbow didn't give compliments out like candy. She gave them out like roses. Candy was for little fillies and wimps!
"So how am Ah s'posed to be the best and still not get the lion's share?" Applejack smiled.
"Well, yeah, you might be the best but..." Rainbow thought about her answer for a moment. "That's 'cause I'm the best of the best, and the best of the best don't need to cry - we know how to hold our awesome better than you common ponies do." Rainbow poked her tongue out at Applejack playfully.
Applejack stared evenly at Rainbow. Despite her rather devious comment, Applejack sighed and leaned against her side with a nuzzle. "Alright... deal."
Rainbow smiled and draped a wing over her friend once again. So maybe it was a bit of a mushy gesture, but it felt like a cool thing to do too.
"Keep it up though! Maybe one day you'll be just as amazing as I am!"
Applejack smirked up to her. "Maybe we should hang out more so yer awesomeness can rub off on me a bit." Her tail flashed to the side and whacked against Rainbow's flank softly.
The two shared a moment of silence.
Then, Applejack blinked and narrowed her eyes into slits as she turned up to face Rainbow Dash.
"Say, just what did ya mean by 'marefriend', anyway?" Applejack asked suspiciously. "You tryin' to imply somethin'...?"
Rainbow's everything seized up, her coat paled a few shades, and her wings expanded in an explosion of feathers.
Oh crud... Stupid book. |
Life Fiber Harmonize | pre | Her hoof swung out in frustration before she could even think about what she was doing. She struck the pedestal and caused it to sway violently back and forth. Her blood froze as she saw the egg tip from the edge and tumble down. Time slowed as she watched her future fall away, only to to be caught mere centimeters from the floor in the golden glow of Celestia's magic.
No-no-no. What had she done? Stupid! She was so stupid! How could she have let her temper flare like that?
Her frustration grew to the breaking point as tears streamed down Sunset's muzzle. She turned her leaky eyes to Celestia as the regal mare approached her, bringing the precious egg safely aloft beside her. Her previously unreadable expression was all too clear now. The disappointment in her eyes crushed Sunset's spirit, causing her to fall to her knees as she sobbed.
"I see you understand that I cannot pass you after that little display," Celestia sighed, shaking her head. "If this is how you behave, then you would have also failed the dragon egg test had you not known what you do. I honestly expected better from you, Sunset." She turned and started towards the door as Dawn ran up to hug her daughter tight, lovingly running a hoof through her mane while she cried.
Those words were like a lance through the heart. All of that hard work, and all of Sunset's hopes and dreams, had just gone up in smoke. She had no one to blame but herself. She'd let her anger get the better of her and almost destroyed a phoenix egg, a rare miracle of life.
Why hadn't anything worked? If there was any magic that facilitated hatching, she had tried it. She'd put all of her heart and soul into it.
A bright glow wrapped her cutie mark for a brief moment as realization struck. That was it! That was what she needed to do!
Sunset vanished in a flash of green, appearing in the doorway just as Celestia was about to leave, much to her surprise. She held up a hoof to bar the princess' path and pleaded, "Princess, please listen to me! I can't apologize enough for the shameful display I just made, but I'm begging you, please let me try just one more time!" Her eyes welled with earnest tears as she kept going. "Attending your school would be a dream come true for me, but if I fail this last time, I'll leave. I promise."
"Teleportation at such a young age?" Celestia whispered, just barely loud enough for Sunset to hear as she looked the filly over. After an agonizingly long silence, Celestia dipped her head and relented, "Just one more try, Sunset. If you fail, then you'll have to pursue your magical education on your own."
"I understand," Sunset nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes.
A moment later she was standing in front of the pedestal again, staring intently at the egg as Celestia and her mother watched. It was all or nothing now.
She moved right up to the egg, tilted her head, and touched her horn to the delicate shell. The glow of her magic wrapped around her and the egg as she focused everything she could into her horn. Every last bit of magic and emotion she had swirling inside of her. She was going to nurture the egg with every bit of her heart and soul. Every bit of warmth, hope, and aspiration she held for the future; a future that this egg depended on, and was thus a part of. This egg was her future now, and she had to put everything into it that she would put into being the greatest pony she could be. Every bit of love and life in her flowing freely back and forth between her and the egg.
It was so simple, really. Why couldn't she have realized it just moments ago? It was one of the most basic principles of magic ever taught. Magic was the projection of one's will to affect the world in some way. As such, the heart and soul of a pony affected the shape that magic took. Plus, the phoenix wasn't just a bird of flame and light, but an icon of the soul and rebirth in its many forms. Wouldn't it make sense that a phoenix egg would hatch in response to the love, warmth, and hope a parent has for its child? She just needed to be all of that to the little life in this egg.
Her magic lifted the egg from its perch, bringing it down to her as she sat on her haunches and took it into her hooves. She held the egg close to her as she channeled her magic as a medium of her heart, eyes clenched tightly shut.
She didn't know how long she stayed like that. It could have been seconds, minutes, or even hours, but the next thing she knew she felt a stirring inside the egg. A tap from within the shell caused her eyes to snap open, discovering a crack across the gold and amber surface. Another tap, and the crack expanded. Yet another sent a chip flying off. Finally, the opened up as a beak poked through it. It was a beautiful sight to see as more of the egg fell away from her hooves to reveal a tiny little chick chirping excitedly. It was a beautiful bird covered in the red and gold of its soft, fluffy down feathers.
The little chick looked around at the bright new world it had been born into, and eventually turned its beady little eye to look at Sunset. It chirped and tweet happily, bringing a smile to her face.
Grinning from ear to ear, Sunset leaned forward and grazed her nose along the chick's tiny beak, giggling all the while. "I did it," she said, tears almost on the verge of falling again. "I actually did it! I hatched her!"
"Her?" Celestia asked, perplexed but still graced with a small smile for the filly's achievement. "How do you know that?"
How did she know that? Strange. She couldn't exactly identify avian gender at a glance. "I don't know," Sunset answered honestly. "I just... felt it."
"Oh Sunny, I'm so proud of you!" Dawn cheered, running up to her daughter for a tight hug. She was careful to avoid disturbing the chick, but still managed a spine-poppingly tight squeeze that left her daughter grimacing.
"Yes, congratulations Sunset Shimmer," Celestia said, smiling down on the filly. "You've accomplished something incredible today; something that most ponies could never accomplish, and at such a tender age. You truly have the makings of a magnificent sorceress."
Sunset's eyes lit up at the praise, her dreams of greatness all the more affirmed. "Thank you, Princess. Thank you!" Sunset beamed, looking down to see the chick crawl up along her forearm until it perched on her shoulder. It nuzzled against her cheek and gave another chirp. "I'll study hard and be the best student ever once I graduate from your school."
Celestia shook her head, saying, "You misunderstand. I won't be accepting you into the school."
Both Sunset and the chick's heads swivelled to Celestia in surprise. What did she mean? The test was complete. She'd passed the test, right?
Celestia approached them, her smile growing wider as she announced, "Sunset Shimmer, I want to make you my protege so that I may overlook you education personally. You will further your studies in the ways of magic, and any other subject you pursue."
The smile on Sunset's face was matched in size only by her mother's. The two whinnied ecstatically, and Sunset returned an equally spine-popping hug to Dawn. Sleipnir above! This was incredible! Beyond her wildest dreams! She was going to study directly under Princess Celestia herself? There was no greater honor that she could think of.
Celestia chuckled at their enthusiasm and continued, "Your first task as my pupil will be one of your most important. I want you to raise this phoenix chick. You have forged a powerful bond with her already, and she is sure to be an important part of your life from now on. I trust you'll take good care of her?"
Sunset nodded so hard her head seemed likely to come right off. "Yes, Princess. I promise that I won't let you down."
The princess bowed her head ever so slightly, accepting her promise before asking, "Do you have a name for your new friend?"
She did. Just as surely as she had known the chick was a girl, she knew what her name would be. She smiled, tickling the tip of her hoof under the bird's little beak as she said, "Her name is Philomena."
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sunset deftly twisted her head to the side as a fist flew past it. She reflexively grabbed it by the wrist, leveraged it, flipped Rainbow Dash down onto the floor mat, and sat on her back. "And that's how I became Princess Celestia's pupil," she finished her tale with a mischievous smile as she slowly twisted the girl's arm further and further back.
"Ow-ow-ow! Mercy! Uncle!" Rainbow yelped out until Sunset finally released her.
The pair got to their feet and dusted themselves off as a little smattering of applause came from off to the side. The rest of their friends were standing at the edge of the room, watching as they were sparring. With the match concluded, they came closer to cheer and pat them on the back.
"Man, guess there's some sports I'm not the best at," Rainbow pouted, rubbing her sore shoulder. "But I'd still cream you at soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and-- Oof!" She was cut short as Applejack gave her a playful elbow to the gut.
"Oh quit yer belly'achin," she laughed. "No need to lord yer athletics over her just cause ya lost at martial arts."
Sunset smiled wide, more than a little happy to get one over Rainbow Dash and get under her skin a bit. The girl could be quite obnoxiously proud of her natural abilities, and it was fun to see her in a huff over being bested. Still smiling, she held her hand out to Rainbow and said, "You're really good, though; it's just that you were too aggressive. Not only did you completely ignore defense, but you went so overboard into offense that it was easy to put you off balance. If you practice on more control and protection, you'll beat me out in no time."
Rainbow continued to pout as she stared down at Sunset's hand, but after a moment she sighed and took her hand. She laughed wryly as she squeezed it tight and said, "Thanks for the advice. I'll put it to use next time and totally wipe the floor with you."
Sunset winced at the tight grip on her hand, but joined in laughter with Rainbow as the heat of the match started to wind down. She looked around the gymnasium where they had decided to spar, eyeing a few banners that still hung from the walls. They were what remained of the latest big event at school, a musical showcase turned Battle of the Bands where they had stopped a trio of sirens that had tried to steal the magic at this school. It had only been two weeks since then, but it still felt like she had been there just hours ago. She had helped her friends stop the sirens' plan, and since then her life at Canterlot High had been so much better. Most of the animosity she'd earned when she had been at her lowest, darkest point and become a demon had been swept clean, and she'd earned the forgiveness she'd wanted for so many months. She couldn't even begin to describe how happy she was to be free of the twisted darkness that had been clawing at her heels since that day.
"I'm quite curious, wherever did you learn to fight like that, darling?" Rarity asked.
A slight flush tinted Sunset's cheeks as she recalled the memories. "Actually, it was Flash Sentry that taught me all that. Him teaching me that, and how to play guitar, are how I got used to moving in my human body," she explained. She hid her embarrassment by picking up the mats and lugging them over to the storage closet. "It's just another way that I used him. I'm beyond grateful for everything he did, but I feel terrible for how I took advantage of him when I knew how he was."
Fluttershy struggled to lift up another mat, smiling meekly as Applejack took care of it for her, hefting one onto each shoulder and following after Sunset. "What do you mean you knew how he was?" she asked.
Sunset sighed as she dumped the mat back in its place in the closet. "The Flash Sentry in Equestria is one of the Royal Guard," she recalled with more than a little regret. "For about three or four years, up until I left for this world, he was also my personal escort and guardian whenever I went out into the field for research. I even had him teach me to fight back then too. I was a bit stubborn about not wanting to rely on others more than I had to."
"That's Flash for you!" Pinkie cheered, bouncing along to deposit another mat on the pile. "Always willing to lend a hand, or hoof, to anyone that needs help!"
"Yeah, he's been like that since before I even met him," Sunset chuckled, this time recalling some fond memories. "He always used to help me bounce theories and just listen to me talk while I was working. He's a smart guy, and was able to keep up with most of what I rambled on about. I guess it helped that his father's a scientist." Her hands drifted up to clutch at the sleeves of her jacket, frowning as she said, "I feel terrible for how I treated that Flash during the last year I was in Equestria, and how I treated this one as nothing more than a tool."
"Chin up, darling," Rarity said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder as Rainbow Dash struggled with three mats just behind her. "We may not know a lot about how magic works, but I think everyone in this school understands that you couldn't have helped us stop those awful sirens like you did unless you'd completely changed."
"I still have a lot to learn, though," Sunset admitted. Once all of the mats were stowed away, she shut the closet behind them. "I think my next big lesson on friendship is going to have to be how to make a real apology. I may have done a lot of horrible things to everyone, but Flash is the one I really want forgiveness from. It's hard, though; because every time I see him I feel too ashamed to say anything."
The six friends left the gymnasium and started towards the front doors of the school, talking all the while.
Part way into one conversation, Pinkie Pie suddenly chimed in, "Oh! Oh! I have a question. If the pony Flash is a Royal Guard, then why is he a guitarist in a band on this side?"
"There's actually not as big of a difference as you might think," Sunset explained. "Human Flash always told me that he wants to be a police officer once he graduates. Heck, his best friend Strike Wing has already started training as a cadet since he graduated last year, and Flash plans to follow when he graduates."
"Guess that don't surprise me one bit," Applejack mused, fiddling with the brim of her stetson. "That's just how folks like him are. People that have a shield mark live to protect others."
The six of them nodded together, continuing their way through the empty halls. It was already well after class, and they had just stayed behind to use the gym and floor mats for the sparring match. By now pretty much everyone else had either gone home, holed away in the library or club rooms, or outside in the fields practicing for sports. So it was quite a surprise to Sunset when she heard a voices coming from a branching hall down the way. She held an arm out to stop her friends, holding a finger to her lips as she listened.
"So they're doing better now?" the familiar voice of Flash Sentry came from around the corner. "They were in pretty rough shape before."
"Thanks to you, they've already made a full recovery," another, unknown voice answered. "We've managed to reverse the Pale Death, and they've been back on their feet for the last week."
The Pale Death? The fatal illness caused by an imbalance in the elemental spectrum of mana in the body? Seriously? That actually existed in this world?
More curious than ever, Sunset creeped up to the corner and peeked around. The rest of the girls followed suit, crowding the edge with their heads poking around at different heights. She saw Flash with his back to her, speaking to a boy she only vaguely recognized. He was definitely a Canterlot High student, but he had to be fairly new since she knew almost everyone's name around here.
The boy had a messy mop of dark green hair and pale pale gray skin. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of thick, round glasses, and he wore an unevenly buttoned dress shirt and too-loose jeans under a black jacket. A green shield emblem could be seen stitched to his chest pocket, and around his neck hung a necklace of a longsword with a silver hilt and a green blade. The jacket was probably the oddest thing about him. With the rest of his disheveled attire, the punkish jacket seemed out of place on such a nerdy looking guy.
"I'm glad they're okay," Flash said, relieved. "I've been thinking about what you said before, and I still haven't made up my mind yet. I still have a lot to think about before I accept your offer."
The boy broke into a big grin and gave Flash a playful nudge, saying, "That's okay. Take the time you need, but until then I want you to have something." He reached into his pants pocket and handed something off to Flash. "Things are going to get really dangerous around here really fast. We're still in the progress of creating a Three Star for you, but you can use this if trouble comes knocking. It'll weave the fibers into the outfit you're wearing, and the design has already been tweaked to match your abilities."
Sunset couldn't make heads or tails of what they were talking about. The only clear part was that the boy had mentioned things getting dangerous. What did he mean by that? Flash took the mysterious item, thanked him, and the pair turned to head further down the hall, their conversation fading into the distance.
Once they turned down another hall and out of earshot, Rarity spoke up, "I wonder what's gotten into Emerl? I've never seen him act like that."
Sunset turned to Rarity, surprised. "You know that boy?"
"Well, yes," she explained, brushing her long coif of hair out of her face. "Emerald Mist came to Canterlot High a little bit after the Fall Formal. He and a darling sweetheart named Coco Pommel joined my fashion club together. You wouldn't know it from looking at him, but he can sew a mean outfit. Poor dear doesn't have the slightest bit of design sense, though. Such a shame."
"The fellah doesn't really look like much, does he?" Applejack commented. "I've seen him here and there around the school. Coulda sworn one time I heard him talking to his jacket, of all things. Called it Sam Ketchup, or something like that."
"Hehe, sounds like a fun guy! I'll bet Maud and him would get along great!" Pinkie giggled. "They could have a play-date for Boulder and Sam Ketchup. Oh, I'll even bring Gummy along!"
Pinkie's tangent might have normally gotten a smile out of Sunset, but her mind was far too occupied with Emerald. Something dangerous was coming, and he seemed to know what it was. Even more peculiar was that he was talking with Flash about it. Flash was a great guy and all, but after witnessing the Battle of the Bands, wouldn't he think that the six of them should know? Heck, he was even part of Rarity's club. For that matter, shouldn't he be talking to Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna?
Her thoughts were interrupted as Emerald's voice came shouting back down the hall. "Are you shitting me?! How could you let them escape with the uniforms?!"
Fluttershy looked around the corner to see what was going on and gasped, "Oh my! He's coming back, and really fa-- Eek!"She didn't even have time to finish as a gust of wind knocked her back and Emerald came to a skidding stop at the intersection, his back to them.
In that moment, he looked like a completely different person from before. His glasses were gone, and his messy rats-nest of hair was now neatly parted to frame his face. His entire disheveled and lazy look was replaced with control and conviction.
His sharp gray eyes flicked over to Sunset for a split second, and a tiny smile appeared. He'd known they were there all along! Still that wasn't nearly as surprising as the second set of eyes on his jacket that glanced at her. What the hell was that thing?
Holding a hand to his ear, Emerald said, "Coco, I want you to stay far away. I'll take care of this problem myself." He took his hand away, lowered his stance, and slammed his palm to the floor, looking straight ahead. "Are you ready, Senketsu?" As he shouted, a green aura surrounded him. A pair of pony ears appeared atop his head, and a ponytail grew from the back of his hair.
"Yes, we have to protect the school," his jacket spoke, its own eyes turning forward too. "Let's go, Emerl!"
The collective jaws of the girls dropped, and were summarily knocked onto their backside as, in another rush of wind, Emerald shot down the hall like a rocket. They girls were left gaping at what they'd just seen and heard.
After a few seconds, Rainbow leaped to her feet and shouted, "Come on, girls! Let's follow him!" She broke into a sprint, hopping over her dazed friends, and the rest of them followed right after.
"What in tarnation is going on 'round here?" Applejack asked between puffs of breath.
"I have no idea, darling," Rarity called up, lagging at the back of the pack. "Emerl's normally such a sweet, awkward, and mousey boy. I never thought he had such a fierce side to him."
Sunset shook her head, saying, "I think she was referring to the insane speed, the magic, and the freaking talking jacket!"
"Oh yay! I wasn't the only one that heard that! I thought I was going crazy, hearing clothing with eyes talk. Guess I'll have to cancel that appointment with the funny farm," Pinkie giggled, typing away on her phone as she bounced along with them.
"I hope he doesn't get hurt," Fluttershy whispered softly.
Rainbow had already gotten to the school's entryway ahead of the group, and after looking out the doors, turned to call back, "Hurry up, slow-pokes! We've got big trouble!" She was about to say more, but she was interrupted by a loud crash and the shattering of glass.
Just behind her, Emerald came tumbling into view along with a shower of broken glass. His face and body had gashes all over, but the rips on his jacket quickly mended themselves.
"Damn it!" Emerald shouted, pushing himself back to his feet and ripping his necklace off. As the girls reached the chaos, there was a rapid, mechanical clicking sound, and the tiny sword pendant in his hand folded out, expanding into a full-sized, gleaming blade. The green blade flourished through the air, and Emerald's eyes flashed with the same color as he shouted, "You'll pay for that, you bitch!" With another leap, he shot back through the destroyed front doors, charging at his enemy.
Beyond the doors several crashes shook the air, but were overwhelmed by the ominous melody of three voices singing in unison. Three voices that the girls remembered all too well.
"Oh no," Sunset gasped, running to get a good look at the ones attacking their school. It really was them, the three sirens that had tried before to steal all the magic at Canterlot High; Aria Blaze, Sonata Dusk, and their leader, Adagio Dazzle. "They're able to sing again? How? We destroyed their amulets!" It shouldn't have been possible for them to use their musical magic anymore, let alone sound as hauntingly beautiful as they did once more.
"This is nothing like they were before," Rainbow said, pointing to them. "They never had this kind of power, and there are there weird glowing stars on their clothes."
Emerald came in to slash at Adagio, only for her to duck under his blade and deliver a kick that sent him sprawling again. The other two sirens stood behind Adagio, singing their low, dark tune in time with her as she continued to evade strikes and pummel Emerald in retaliation. The beating the boy was taking was brutal, but he got up every time and kept fighting with that green light in his eyes burning fiercely.
They were never like this before. The sirens weren't fighters like this at all. They'd used musical magic to manipulate the school into conflict and fed off of the negative magical energy that was produced. With the gems that gave them that singing magic broken, they had been left completely powerless. Yet now Adagio was pounding Emerald into the dirt, and he clearly wasn't lacking in power or technique from the way he welded his blade.
How were they this strong? It shouldn't even be possible.
Wait, Emerald had said something about them stealing some uniforms. Did those clothes have something to do with it? They didn't look that different from what they'd always worn, but each of them had a single silver, four-point star emblazoned on the fronts of their shirts and glowing bright. That had to be it. There was no other explanation that made sense. The question then was where they got those clothes and what it had to do with Emerald.
That would have to wait, because with a painful punch to the gut, Emerald was flung into the wall of the school. The brick surface crumbled like dust at the impact, and chunks of stone fell on the boy's collapsed body. With him taken care of, Adagio and the other sirens turned their eyes to Sunset and Rainbow, as well as the rest of their friends as they joined them at the school entrance
The sirens' melody grew louder and louder as they marched forward, a familiar song leaving their lips, but with a much darker twist.
We heard you thought that it was over.
We heard you thought you saved the school.
Well we're back and even better,
And now you'll see that you were fools.
Why pretend our thoughts are tame,
When they've gone much darker?
You're the ones that are to blame,
And now it's time to pay the Reaper.
Me and you,
You and me,
Why don't we see who is stronger?
We don't have to play your little safe game.
Oh what's so wrong with a little confrontation?
Are you afraid of a swift decapitation?
If you're strong, then time to show it.
We will put you to the test!
But don't forget that you'll get hurt
If you don't give your very best!
Battle;
This time we mean it!
Let's have a battle,
Battle to the Death!
Let's have a battle,
This one will end it!
Let's have a battle, battle, battle!
Battle to the Death! |
Life Fiber Harmonize | ... I Burn Myself to Ash... | Celestia let out a long sigh, levitating a scroll before her as she paced her throne room. Ponies around her moved tirelessly, cleaning up shattered pieces of flooring, splinters of wood, and shattered glass. Others entered the hall carrying new floor tiles, a new carpet, stained glass windows, and finally a set of huge double doors.
It was nice to finally get around to fixing the throne room after the mess Tirek had caused. Between repairing the damage done to the rest of Equestria, and still having to hold major events like the Grand Galloping Gala, it had taken a while to get to this. Plus getting all of the stained glass windows recreated, and getting the door wood from a particularly rare and strong Everfree tree had taken longer than expected. With so much done to return things to normal everywhere else, finishing it all here felt like the perfect punctuation at end of the road.
"Princess," a pegasus guard cleared his throat as he approached her through the empty doorway, "is there something ahoof in Ponyville?"
Celestia turned a curious eye to the stallion, "Why do you ask?"
The stallion trotted over to one of the empty spaces for the windows and pointed out to the sky. "Our sentries on the wall just reported that they saw Philomena flying in that direction. It seems quite urgent, considering how easy it is to spot."
Celestia felt a gnawing uneasiness as she approached the window to see. How had Philomena gotten out? She knew she'd left the bird in the cage in her bed chambers while she was seeing to the repairs. She'd even left a silence bubble around the room so the sounds of construction would not disturb Philomena, as she wasn't overly fond of loud noises.
What Celestia saw as she looked to the sky was quite a shock. A trail of flames, burning almost as bright as the sun, stretched from the upper heights of the castle and out beyond sight. With such intense fire she must have melted the bars of her cage to escape, but what could prompt such an unusual outburst? She was a bit of a troublemaker and prankster for a bird, to be sure, but the guard had been quite right to say that her flight seemed very urgent.
"I fear that it's not Ponyville we have to worry about," Celestia said calmly, keeping herself collected so as not to alarm those around that had started to stare. She looked to the guard again, giving him the scroll she'd been holding on to for overseeing the repairs. "I want you to keep things running for me. I need to take a moment to get in touch with Princess Twilight."
Before the guard could even answer her command, she turned to leave the throne room, summoning up a blank scroll and quill to scrawl down a letter. There was only one reason she could think of for Philomena to go to Ponyville on her own. The portal to the human world was there, in Twilight's castle, and beyond that portal was the one whom Philomena cared most for, Sunset Shimmer. The bond between the two had always been as mysterious as it was powerful. When Philomena had entered her rebirth cycle many decades earlier than she should have, shortly after Sunset had fled through the portal, Celestia had believed it was in response to a change in the mare's heart. Their lives were undeniably entwined, and for Philomena to choose to act like this now, even after all the other dangers that Sunset had encountered in the other world, had to mean that a far more terrible danger was looming.
She just hoped it wasn't what she thought it was.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The dark song of the sirens came to an end as they reached the foot of the stairs leading up to the school's destroyed doors. Adagio stood at the front of the trio, with Aria and Sonata flanking her on either side. She placed a hand on her hip and smirked up at the girls watching them.
"I thought we were done with you," Sunset called down to them, stepping forward from the group. "How did you even get your magic back?"
Adagio's malicious smirk only grew wider as she replied, "You'll have to thank your cute little ex-boyfriend, and that green sneak, Sunset. Those idiots took us in and thanks to Emerald we're stronger than ever now." She held up a fist and clenched it tight. The force of that simple gesture was so strong that it made an audible thump. "Thanks to the Life Fibers woven into our outfits, we don't just have our magic back; we have power beyond anything you could imagine."
"Life Fibers?" Sunset echoed. If the name was any indication... A living fabric? Did that have something to do with Emerald's talking jacket? And just what were he and Flash thinking, helping the sirens?
"You Rainbooms aren't going to be able to sing your way out of this," Adagio cackled.
"Whatever, let's just get this over with, Adagio," Aria grumbled grouchily. "Once we kill them we can trick Twilight into opening the portal and take over Equestria."
"Horseapples," Sunset whispered. They were after her journal. How did they know that it could be used to contact Twilight?
Adagio turned a fierce glare back to Aria, who just huffed indifferently. She was about to speak again when Sonata leaped between the two, wearing an oblivious smile.
"Aw come on, do we have to kill them? They aren't so bad," she laughed.
Out of the corner of her eyes, Sunset saw her friends grow more tense at every mention of the word kill. Fluttershy hugged tight to the arm of Pinkie, who if at all possible was looking just as uncomfortable as the meek girl. Unsurprisingly, Rainbow Dash looked primed and ready to leap at the trio, and Applejack was squeezing her shoulder to hold her back. Rarity somehow looked even more pale, as though ready to fall back onto an absent fainting couch at a moment's notice.
"Zip it, both of you!" Adagio barked. "We went through Hades because of them, and I'll be damned if we don't do this exactly as planned. I will have my moment!"
The two recoiled at the outburst and nodded reluctantly.
Adagio turned back to face Sunset and the girls and crossed her arms over her chest. A pale blue aura, completely different from the sinister red they once had, silhouetted her body. In response to the surge, a pair of pony ears appeared atop her head, and piscene fins grew from her back like wings.
"Well, Rainbooms? Any last words?" Adagio asked, her voice low and laced with hatred. The danger became very much apparent as multiple spots of magic started to appear around her. These points began to expand, and water in the air began to condense into razor thin disks swirling at high speed. It wasn't hard to imagine this spell's purpose.
It was very clear to Sunset that their situation was beyond just bad. Whatever these Life Fiber things were, they had put the sirens on a completely different level than before. She and her friends couldn't use musical magic to counter this. There was no matching the physical strength they'd gained either. She'd never felt so completely and utterly helpless.
"Emmy! Oh no, Emmy!" a sudden shout turned all attention to the side as Coco Pommel came running out of the school entryway, past the girls, headed right for the pile of rubble Emerald lay in.
"No you don't," Aria said, her expression flat and unchanging. She aimed a hand at Coco, glowing with the same blue light as she transformed, and shot a gout of steam from her palm. The hot stream struck Coco full on, scalding her and flinging her limp body against the brick wall.
"Coco! Oh, the poor dear. What did she ever do to you, you ruffians?!" Rarity shouted, stepping forward in a sudden swell of bravery.
"Ah ah ah," Sonata said with a smile, "don't get any funny ideas." She raised her hand and followed the other's lead, transforming and unleashing her magic. For her, a chilly beam shot forward and struck Rarity's feet, encasing them in ice and rooting her where she stood.
"Eek!" Rarity shrieked in panic. "Do you have any idea how hard these boots were to make? The materials were very expensive! I expect you to pay for these if you ruined them! And as for what you did to poor Coco, you should be asha-- mmph!" A smaller beam shot out, and a band of ice wrapped over her lips, silencing her.
Rainbow and Applejack snorted in a futile attempt to not laugh.
Sunset's eyes flicked back and forth between the sirens, taking in information. It seemed like they not only had musical magic, but were each capable of controlling one of the three stages of water. That made sense. Sirens were aquatic creatures. What use was this information though? Her panic was getting the better of her, making her scrutinize details that weren't even useful to her. She had to get it together and think of a way to save herself and her friends.
"Can't say I think those were very good last words," Adagio commented. "Now, time to die, Rainbooms."
Tseeeeeeer!
That sound. Could it be?
Adagio's arms whipped forward, and the water disks shot at them. In the same instant, a bright light flew out of the statue in the center of the courtyard, moving through the air with a wake of searing flame as it intercepted the attack.
A loud hiss and a cloud of steam filled the air, the disks burning away under a wave of intense heat. The steam billowed out, enveloping the whole courtyard, the white fog masking everything but a golden light that shined brilliantly before Sunset.
"... Philomena?" she asked hesitantly. As the steam began to clear, the familiar form of her old friend started to come into focus. The sight had her on the verge of tears. "Philomena! You saved us!"
"She's beautiful," Fluttershy commented in awe of the radiant bird.
"So shiny!" Pinkie exclaimed.
Sunset's elation was short lived, as she felt a terrible dread suddenly flood into her heart unbidden. A moment later, the light from Philomena started to fade fast, and with a dull, wet thud, she fell to the floor.
"Philomena!" Sunset cried. She rushed over to her fallen friend's side, seeing a small puddle of blood starting to form under her, matting her beautiful feathers. She gingerly, ever so carefully pulled Philomena's wing aside, and broke into sobs. There was a deep gash across the bird's stomach. It probably didn't seem too bad, but a phoenix was a very slender bird; even a seemingly shallow cut only an inch deep could slice into vital organs or arteries.
Philomena was dying. Worst of all was the fact that Sunset could feel every little bit of life leaving, like pieces of her own heart crumbling away.
"This is horrible," Fluttershy gasped, tears welling in her eyes. She knelt down beside Sunset and gently stroked the creature's head. "Won't she be reborn when she dies? Isn't that what a phoenix does?"
Sunset shook her head, lifting her wounded friend and holding her tight to her chest. "No, a phoenix can only revive itself when it reaches the end of its lifespan and enters a natural cycle," she explained, fighting the tears even as they streamed down her face. "If they die from injury, they never come back." The warm blood covering her hands and staining her clothes was the least of her worries. All she cared about right now was holding Philomena tight. She would show her that the one that loved her most was here for her.
As the steam completely cleared, the sirens got to see their handiwork. Adagio looked strangely taken aback, and Sonata was beyond alarmed. She grabbed Adagio by her arm and shook her furiously.
"Adagio, this wasn't part of the--"
"Zip it!" Adagio cut her off in a panic. She closed her eyes for a second and looked back to Sunset with a fierce glare. "Your little bird shouldn't have gotten in the way. Now things are going to get very ugly for you."
"How..." Sunset's body shook as an entirely different feeling flooded her being. They'd attacked this school. They'd hurt her fellow students and her friends. Because of them, her best friend she'd had since fillyhood was about to die. They didn't care. They were evil. All of these thoughts swirled inside her, stirring a part of her that she'd tried to get away from for months now. A black aura started to lift off of her, growing larger and larger.
She wanted to make them pay.
"How--"
"How dare you!"
Sunset's head snapped over to see Flash Sentry stepping up next to her, the black aura vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. His eyes were lit with an intensity that she hadn't seen since she last saw pony Flash. In his hand he tossed and caught what looked like a small spool wrapped in glowing red thread.
"Oh? The pretty boy steps forward? Don't you have a guitar to go tune, hun?" Adagio scoffed, waving a hand dismissively at him.
"Adagio, why are you doing this?" he shouted. "I didn't save your lives so that you could come back and hurt all my friends! Do you see what you've done?!"
"So what?" she snapped back. "It's because of the Rainbooms that we almost died in the first place. I'm going to return the favor."
Flash started down the steps, clasping the spool of thread tight in his hand. "I'm not going to let this continue."
What did he think he could do? It didn't seem like he had those Life Fiber things in his own clothes, and Emerald had been defeated easily by Adagio single-handedly.
"And what are you going to do?" Adagio asked, echoing Sunset's concerns. "You can't beat our Goku Uniforms." Flash twirled the spool in his fingers then opened it on a hinge to reveal blinking lights and circuitry hidden within. "I can if I have a Goku Uniform of my own," he explained. When he held the device over his jacket sleeve, red threads shot out, latched themselves to the garment and wove the device on tight. "Fiber Interweave Terminal, activate."
Bright light shined from the device, and the red threads started to spiderweb throughout his clothes. They lit up brilliantly, pinpoints of light flashing along their length as energy flowed into them. Eventually his entire outfit was covered with those glowing red lines, like a second network of blood vessels. The threads around his jacket sleeves started to twist and stitch together, forming a pair of crimson four point stars on each arm. Lastly, the threads flowed out of the cuffs of his jacket and condensed into silver bracelets on his wrists.
Flash took a ready posture, holding his fists up and widening his stance, just as he had taught Sunset to do. "Lightning Spec, Augmentation Enhancing Two Star Goku Uniform! Guardian Flash Sentry, ready to fight!" he shouted, the change completed. His clothes didn't look any different than they had before, aside from the red stars on his jacket and the bracelets, but a feeling of strength came off of him as he stood his ground.
"Heh, interesting. I didn't know that the organization had toys like that," Adagio looked him over with smug confidence. "So what is lightning spec, augmentation enhancing supposed to mean? You think just because we use water that you'll have the advantage with lightning?
Flash didn't answer, but Sunset had a feeling she knew what was coming. If these Goku Uniforms were able to unleash the magic buried deep in a person, then she knew exactly what that meant for Flash. His pony self had a talent unlike any pegasus she had ever known. A talent that the sirens would never see coming.
Flash lifted one of his arms over his head, and the bracelets on his wrists started to expand, wrapping up and down his arms until they took shape as a pair of gleaming gauntlets. The weapons were so much like the ones his pony self used, with a particularly thick, heavy plate covering the back of his forearm and hand, and the rounded end wrapping around his knuckles, almost hiding his hands. A gauntlet weapon as thick and durable as a shield, capable of delivering fast, powerful strikes while also providing incredible defense if used correctly; the Barrier Cestus.
With his arm raised high, Flash called out, "Thunder set." A soft orange glow spread across his body, pony ears replaced his human ones, and the feathered wings of a pegasus pony sprouted from his back just as several bolts of electricity arced out and struck the cestus, sending their current coursing through his body. Looking up, Sunset could see that the "lightning" came from power lines that ran from the street to the school. Electrical energy danced through the air between his wings and crept along his skin as that power was drawn into and contained within his body.
"Impressive light show," Adagio smirked. She pointed a hand at Flash, calling forth more water disks around her. "Since you saved our lives, just this once I'll do you the favor of sparing you and only shredding your Goku Uniform."
With a snap of his wings and a deafening crack of thunder, Flash was behind Adagio, his body coursing with power and his arm pulled back to strike. The sirens started to turn, stunned at the sudden burst of speed.
"What the--"
Before Adagio could finish, Flash's fist struck her jaw with another thunderous snap of power. A moment later, a secondary shockwave cracked from his gauntlets, sending Adagio flying into the stairs. Electricity danced painfully across her body as the wave rocked through her, and Aria and Sonata immediately leaped back to distance themselves from Flash.
"It's just like in Equestria," Sunset said in awe. She'd forgotten how incredible this ability was. It had been so long since she'd seen it. A weak call from Philomena returned her attention to the bird, and she tenderly stroked her head.
"Whatever he's doing, it's totally awesome! What do you mean it's just like in Equestria?" Rainbow asked, her eyes riveted on Flash and an excited grin plastered on her face. In her excitement, she was instinctively shadowboxing, bobbing back and forth with her fists raised to fight.
"The Flash Sentry from Equestria had this unique ability too. He was able to take the power of lightning and electricity into his body like a battery," Sunset explained, watching on as Flash readied himself to fight. "Then, he directs the electricity, along with the mana inside it, to different parts of his body. From there, he can release a pulse of force or use it to reinforce himself. When he does, his speed and reflexes are enhanced, as well as the strength of his body to withstand the strain. The attribute that gets the biggest boost, however, is his acceleration. He isn't the fastest, but he can hit top speed and stop again in less than half a second without any negative effects from the g-force."
"Wow, that really is something right there," Applejack commented. "I guess that magic stuff has even more uses than what we've seen before."
Flash approached Adagio's fallen form, glaring down at her as he said, "You can't win, Adagio. You're wearing a One Star Uniform, and mine is a Two Star. You three should leave right now, while you still can."
Adagio just laughed, pushing herself back to her feet as the last bits of electricity lanced along her body. Surprisingly, she didn't look worse for wear after the hit she'd taken. There was barely even a scuff on her cheek. Faster than Sunset could follow, she leaped forward and threw a punch at Flash, who blocked with one arm. The sound of metal ringing from the impact was deafening, and the force of the blow made Flash's feet sink into the concrete beneath him as it crumbled away.
"You've got it backwards, Flash," Adagio said smugly. "Our Goku Uniforms are special. They are linked together, and because of that they have all the power of a Three Star Uniform!"
"What?!" Flash gasped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sonata charge him, and barely lifted his other arm in time to block her fist.
Both arms now occupied, Aria moved in next, leaping up and spinning in the air to deliver a brutal kick right to Flash's exposed shoulder. Adagio and Sonata moved aside as Flash was sent tumbling across the courtyard, and the three sirens charged him once more.
Flash recovered quickly, righting himself mid-tumble and flinging an arm out to call, "Thunder set!" Another bolt of electricity was called to strike his cestus, filling him with power. With a supercharged flap of his wings he shot forward to meet the trio.
Shockwaves rocked through the air as the fight moved at sonic speed. The lightning streak of Flash and the blue glows of the sirens took to the skies in a flurry of clashes that were almost too fast to follow. Flash ducked, jabbed, swerved, and blocked, but every strike he managed to land was shrugged off, even with his secondary impact waves hitting them full on. Meanwhile, he had to contend with blasts of steam, ice, and water that threatened to knock him right out of the sky on top of the coordinated strikes of the sirens. For every two blows he managed to land, the sirens dealt a much more painful one in return.
He was holding his own, but Sunset could see that he was wearing down fast. It couldn't be easy for him to keep the currents in his body under control while fighting, and he was still new to using the technique. The pony Flash had even said it took him years to master containing lightning without it hurting his body. It had to be agony just using this ability, and yet he wasn't letting a bit of it show. That was just like him.
Suddenly, yet another new voice spoke up from off to her side, "This is bad. His ability is allowing him to keep up with the speed of all three of them, but his offensive and defensive power isn't enough. He's going to lose."
Sunset looked beside her, and if she hadn't already seen enough shocking things today, what she saw might have actually surprised her. Standing at her side, staring up at the battle in the sky, was a black and red school sailor uniform with a pair of eyes under its scarf. It may not have had much of in the way of a face, but she could tell that it was very worried.
The rest of the group recoiled in surprise at his sudden appearance, but Pinkie waved excitedly at the garment. "Oh look, it's Sam Ketchup!" Pinkie said. "Why aren't you on Emerald? Looked like he got hurt pretty bad."
The uniform violently shuddered and replied, "Please don't call me that. My name is Senketsu, and Emerald told me to leave him to come and get help from you."
Help? How could they help? Even though they wanted to, there was no way they could match the power the sirens had. Sunset could feel that not even the magic of friendship could stop the trio.
"It's hopeless," Sunset said bluntly, cradling Philomena in her arms and stroking her head. "The sirens have won. We're no match for them now."
"What are you talking about, Sunset?!" Rainbow shouted. "You can't just give up now. If we had those Geki Uniforms too, we could totally whup their butts and send them packing!"
"They're called Goku Uniforms," Senketsu corrected her, "and that's exactly why I'm here. Sunset, I have something for you." He reached into his chest pocket and held out a spool of glowing red thread to her just like the one Flash had used, only this one had Sunset's mark on top, the crimson and gold sun. "Unfortunately, we don't have the ones that we made for the rest of you, but this FIT is designed just for you. With the Three Star configuration programmed into it, you will be able to match or even beat Adagio and the others."
Sunset's face went pale. He wanted her to wear one of those things? Yet another source of awesome power? Her mind flashed back to when she had placed the Element of Magic on her head, and the darkness in her heart transformed her into a terrible demon. That darkness wasn't gone. She felt it bubbling beneath the surface as she wrestled with her fury that she was about to lose her oldest friend.
"No, I don't want a power like that ever again," Sunset hissed through clenched teeth. "I won't let myself become a monster!"
Uuuwoh.
Sunset looked down to Philomena, who was staring at her with a tender gaze. A smile crept unbidden to Sunset's lips, and she leaned in to nuzzle nose to beak. "You idiot. You're the one that's hurt. Why are you the one cheering me up?" she muttered.
Senketsu hopped closer and placed a sleeve on her shoulder. "I know this is a lot to take in. Still, I'm begging you to believe me when I say that I know you can do this. We wouldn't have prepared a uniform for you if we thought you were still the demon we saw when we first started watching over you all. You've changed."
Senketsu's attempted kindness lit a fuse in Sunset, and she smacked the spool of thread out of his sleeve before turning a smoldering glare on him. "So let me get this straight; you and that Emerald guy have been spying on me and my friends ever since the Fall Formal," she barked, her voice rising as she kept going. "You came into our school and started working in the shadows, not even talking to us about this Life Fiber business. You just sat and watched on the sidelines as the sirens almost succeeded in tearing our school apart, and then decided for whatever reason to make these dangerous clothes for them to give them their powers back and then some. Then last but not least, you started making these clothes for us too, and are expecting us to start fighting for you now that the shit has hit the fan. Where the hell do you guys get off pulling this crap?"
"Uh, Sunset, normally I'd agree with ya, but I reckon we've got bigger problems right now," Applejack pointed out, still watching the thunderous fight in the skies.
Senketsu's eyes shifted away and clenched shut as he answered, "We didn't have a choice. One of our most dangerous enemies already knows we are, and we couldn't risk letting Crystal Prep find us before we were ready."
"Crystal Prep?" Rainbow Dash butted in. "They're involved in this whole mess?"
Senketsu nodded. "There's no time to explain though. Sunset, I know you're mad, but--"
Before he could finish, Flash was sent crashing into the stairway with a loud crash. The force of the impact shattered the concrete and sent debris flying in every direction. When the dust cleared, he could be seen trying to get up on his feet, only to fall forward with a painful groan.
"Flash!" all of them shouted. Pinkie, Rainbow, and Applejack even started to step out to help him.
"Stay back!" he shouted as Adagio, Aria, and Sonata landed in front of his beaten form. His body was completely devoid of strength and hung limp as Adagio lifted him by his collar.
A dark smile spread across the girl's face as she held Flash up like some sort of trophy. "You put up a good fight, pretty boy. Better than Emerald did, anyway. Congrats on getting a few clean hits in," she commended him.
"Yeah, I was, like totally surprised," Sonata giggled. "Wouldn't it have been scary if he'd had a Three Star? He would have totally kicked our butts!"
Aria rolled her eyes and groaned, "Could you shut your big mouth for once? Talking about us losing isn't exactly going to make them terrified of us."
Sonata turned her nose up and huffed, "Meanie. If you're going to be like that, I won't share any of my candy with you when we get back."
In an unusual display of emotion, Aria's cold indifference suddenly melted into surprising concern. "Whoa now, let's not go saying things we'll regret later," she said cautiously.
Pretending she hadn't heard, Sonata tapped her chin and wondered aloud, "I think I'll start with the Nerds."
Concern turned to panic and anger as Aria shouted, "You know those are my favorite!"
"Oh for the love of Sleipnir, would the two of you stop?" Adagio groaned in disgust. She looked at Flash's ragdoll body in her hand and just threw him aside. "Great, now because of you idiots, I don't even feel like dealing with him anymore." She looked up to Sunset and swept her arm out, summoning her water discs again. "I'm far from finished with you, though."
"Damn, this isn't good," Senketsu grimaced. "You knocked the FIT too far away for me to get to. She'll kill you before you have the chance to use it."
"I already told you, I don't want that kind of power," Sunset said, her gaze fixed on Adagio. It was tough talk, though. She didn't want to trust this creepy talking outfit, but at the same time she was starting to wish she hadn't smacked that device away. Her pride and regret are the last things she wanted to get her and her friends killed. Philomena was dying, and they were next. If she had just taken the stupid device from Senketsu in the first place she would be able to protect her friends.
Philomena's head lunged to the side, pecking at Senketsu's sleeve out of nowhere, making him jump back. "Ow! What was that for? Wait... What?"
Sunset looked down to see that Philomena was holding a blood red glove in her beak, and the bird's eyes slowly started to close as a fresh flow of blood stained her hands. Her breath caught in her throat. "Philomena! No, please don't die! Don't leave me after I just got you back!" she screamed. "Why did you do that? You're just going to die faster!"
Senketsu watched Philomena in a frustrated mix of curiosity and concern. When she lunged at him like that she had irritated her wound. Surely she understood that? Why would she hasten her own death just to get ahold of the Seki Tekko? He had a feeling he was about to find out.
Philomena's weak, half-lidded gaze met Sunset's and she let out a soft coo.
I'm never leaving your side again, Mom.
The words Sunset felt in that instant were like a knife through her heart, and Philomena burst into flame in her arms. The soft orange and gold tongues consumed the bird's body, as well as all the blood that soaked Sunset's skin, clothes, and even the Seki Tekko. The dreadful, yet beautiful, funeral pyre wreathed around Sunset and completely enveloped her as she let out a heart-wrenching scream. Brilliant light radiated from the center of the flame, bathing all around in a tender warmth as Sunset's sobs sent chills through their spines. Even the sirens gave a noticeable shudder at the sound.
"Whoa, look what's happening to Senketsu!" Pinkie shouted, pointing to him on the other side of the flames. Just as she spoke up, Senketsu felt a rush through every last one of his fibers. Two bursts of immense magic flooded him to the point that he felt he would overflow, and the black of his fabric began to shift to a shimmering gold color, starting from the hem of his skirt and traveling all the way up to his collar. Whatever Philomena was doing to the Seki Tekko, it was affecting him too; he could feel it. He was evolving in response to this overwhelming power.
From within the roaring flames, Sunset felt the warmth of Philomena's soul enveloping her and melting away each tear before it could even fall. She felt a push, as though a hand were upon her back, urging her to her feet, and she followed it. She stood in the inferno with only the red, fingerless glove clutched tightly in her hand, and her shoulders shaking as her grief pressed down on her.
Philomena was dead. Her first and oldest friend was gone in an instant, and as that cruel fact continued to churn inside her, Sunset could also feel the blackness in her heart screaming and clawing its way to the forefront. A sinister aura started to pulse off of her body, only to be driven away as the flames leaped upon the shadows in an instant, purging it and filling her heart with a consoling warmth. Beneath that warmth, however, she discovered a burning wrath that made the darkness seem tame in comparison.
It was Philomena's heart speaking to her, and she understood what was being said.
I don't have to be afraid of myself. It's okay to have feel rage and fury. I don't have to let it control me. I can control it .That is the burning star that is our hearts, right, Philomena?
The world around her seemed to fade as clarity filled her, giving way to endless whiteness. In that moment, all that existed was Sunset, the warm flames of Philomena, and...
The hand on her back that suddenly shoved her forward.
Sunset failed desperately to keep her balance, barely managing to keep herself upright. She whipped around, immediately ready to blame Rainbow Dash, but her voice caught in her throat when she laid eyes on someone entirely different. It was a punkish looking girl with messy, medium length black hair accentuated by a single locke that was a bright crimson. She stared back at Sunset with feisty dark grey eyes that had a strange pattern inside them, somewhere between a flower and a clockwork gear. She was also wearing what looked like Senketsu, but the sailor uniform's distinct eyes were nowhere to be seen.
"Who are you?" Sunset asked cautiously.
The girl just put on a fierce smile, her form becoming translucent as she started to fade. "Good luck out there," she said. "This fight isn't going to be an easy one."
Sunset had the distinct, foreboding feeling that the girl wasn't just talking about the sirens, but she slowly nodded. "Thanks."
The girl's smile softened, and she held out a hand, asking, "And please take good care of Senketsu, would ya? That blubbering rag can be such a crybaby, and he's totally hopeless without me."
Sunset hesitated for a moment, staring at the girl's hand. Why did this feel so... right? She didn't even know this girl, but she felt a strong kinship with her at first sight. Before she even realized it, she was clasping the girl's in her own, giving a firm shake.
The girl's smile broke into a huge grin, and she faded away completely with one last cheer.
"Thanks, Sunset. Now go give those bitches hell!"
The parting words got an amused chuckle out of Sunset, and the world snapped back into focus. The glove she held writhed with life and wrapping itself around her hand before another whole glove split off from it and put itself on her other hand. At the same time, the inferno that enveloped her body started to recede, all of the flames converging on a single point at her right hand. When the last tongue was pulled away, what remained on her finger was a golden ring in the shape of a phoenix, with its wings cradled around a glowing, perfectly round ruby.
The girls watched in wonder as Sunset raised her hand, amber flames erupting around the ring. This was her anger and hatred, freed from the fear and darkness she'd held in her heart and turned into a pure righteousness. It was a harmonious flame, the fury of which was fueled by her love for her friends and this world she called home. This was their power; hers and Philomena's.
The sirens all took a considerable step back in the face of such intensity. A nervous grimace even shadowed Adagio's face for just a moment, but she held firm, raising a hand over her head to summon more deadly discs.
"You're going to pay for what you've done!" Sunset shouted at the trio. Light and flame poured out of her ring and encircled her in a burning spiral. She poured every last bit of her heart into the ring, just like that day so many years ago when she hatched Philomena.
"As if I'd just stand and watch!" Adagio shouted back. She swung her hand down and the water discs shot at Sunset all at once.
"Shippu Senjin!"
In a burst of fire, Senketsu rocketed into the path of the discs. His body hardened like steel, and scorching hot razor spines sprouted along his body. The jets that formed from his skirt sent him into a dizzying spin to slice right through the discs, which fell to harmless puddles on the ground, and he arced through the air before landing squarely in front of the tornado of flame.
The blaze dispersed, revealing Sunset in her pony transformation, but with her once green eyes now glowed with the same amber hue as the flaming aura that lit upon her forehead. She stood ready to fight, her hands raised to brandish her weapons. "Phoenix Gloves," she called their name, flourishing the transformed Seki Tekkos. The once fingerless gloves now covered her hands entirely, with amber colored metal plates wrapping over the knuckles and finger joints, and a razor metal nail extending from each fingertip like talons. The backs of each glove were embedded with identical hemispheres of a ruby sphere like on the ring, and both were wreathed by the image of Sunset's sun mark. Golden pinions decorated the cuffs of the gloves to finish the motif, making the weaponized gloves look truly avian in nature.
"Whoa! That is so awesome!" Rainbow cheered.
"Looks like we'll make it through this afterall," Applejack agreed.
"Yeah! Kick some butt, Sunset!" Pinkie whooped.
"Be careful," Fluttershy whispered softly.
"Hmph," Rarity huffed, pouting through the ice still keeping her silent.
With her friends supporting her, Sunset's full attention zeroed in on the sirens. Her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched tight.
"Let's go, Philomena." |
Life Fiber Harmonize | ... And Am Born Again Anew | It was incredible. There was no other word to describe it. With just two gloves and a ring, Sunset had reached an amazing new level that Senketsu could never have predicted. Since the Phoenix Gloves were part of his body, he didn't need to imagine what was happening inside her. He could see it clearly, and it was like nothing he'd ever seen before.
Sunset walked past Senketsu and down the stairs with deliberate, purposeful steps. Her eyes were fixed upon the sirens with a fury that was somehow quiet, tempered, and serene. When she reached the foot of the stairs she just stood there, staring at them.
"You think we're scared of a pair of gloves?" Adagio scoffed, stepping forward to meet her. The two stood a mere arm's reach apart, glaring at each other, and the air around them seemed to almost crackle with clash of their wills. "I'm going to thoroughly enjoy grinding you into the dirt, Sunset Shimmer."
Sunset's expression didn't change, the boast not getting even the slightest rise out of her.
The punch came in the blink of an eye. Adagio's fist sending a ripple of force through the air, only to have Sunset tilt her head to the side and catch the blow in her hand. The air pressure whipped her hair back and nearly knocked down Senketsu and her friends with its force.
"Wha-- aargh!" Adagio yelled as the talons of the Phoenix Glove gripped down and sank into her hand. She yanked her hand free, the claws leaving fresh, bloody tears on the back of her hand as she took a few cautious steps back.
"I would advise against underestimating Sunset now," Senketsu explained. "Those gloves are made of one hundred percent Life Fibers, and are tapping into the combined power of Sunset and her ring. Like any Life Fiber would, they have unlocked the physical limitations of her body beyond normal human ability, but thanks to the transformation brought on by her ring they don't simply draw out and radiate her magic like they normally would. Instead, that powerful magic is being redirected back into her body and spirit, heightening her awareness and unlocking the psychological limitations on her power."
With a wave of her hand and a flash of her magic, Adagio pulled more moisture from the air, directing the water to her wound and healing it. "So what?" she spat. "They're just a pair of fancy gloves. Even if they're pure Life Fibers, they can't possibly match us."
Senketsu shook his body from side to side, looking to Sunset as he said, "With so many different energies flowing in so many different ways, I can't even tell how strong she's become, but I can see that she's at least as powerful as you are."
"That's right," Sunset confirmed. "Don't even bother running, because there's no way I'm going to let you get away after what you've done." She pointed an accusing, clawed finger at the trio. "You've hurt my friends and killed Philomena. I won't ever forgive you."
"Pretty high and mighty coming from a demon that tried to mind control her entire school into an army to invade Equestria," Aria sniped icily.
"Wow, that's pretty evil," Sonata gasped. "And she calls us the bad guys?"
Sunset only smirked at the barbs.
"Face it, Sunset, you're no better than us," Adagio said. Her hand healed, she directed her own accusing finger at Sunset. "You wanted absolute power, and did anything you felt you had to to get it. No matter how hard you try, something like that doesn't go away."
"This isn't getting us anywhere. Are you just stalling for time?" Sunset shot back, starting to break into a cocky grin. "What's the matter? Are you afraid to find out just how strong I am now?"
"Heh," Adagio sneered, "Are you kidding? I'm excited that we finally get to test the limits of our Goku Uniforms." She slammed her fist into her open palm.
"Good," Sunset said, raising her fists to fight, "and since the three of you love music so much, I even have a special song to share with you." The aura on her head swayed back and forth as a gust of wind blew past, and she started to sing.
Power was all I desired,
Aria and Sonata leaped forward on either side to attack with mirrored aerial kicks. They moved in sync, and without any warning. Sunset caught them effortlessly by their feet, the force causing the ground beneath her to crack and buckle, only for Adagio to charge down the middle, aiming a punch right at her chest.
But all that grew inside me was a darkness I acquired.
Sunset waited until Adagio was just inches away before she made her move. She hopped up and delivered two swift kicks to Adagio's chest and face, twisting through the air with Sonata and Aria still in her grip. As she spun, her arms whipped out to mercilessly smash the two helpless sirens against the pavement before landing and throwing them into a heap on top of Adagio.
When I began to fall, and I lost the path ahead,
Sunset turned back for a moment to look up at her friends as they watched from the top of the stairs, cheering her on. She smiled gently, and the aura on her forehead seemed to thrash more fiercely.
That's when your friendship found me, and it lifted me instead!
Adagio heaved the other two off of her, standing up and gathering a dense magical aura all around her. A vein throbbed on her forehead and her teeth gnashed together as she summoned up more of the same water discs, but this time she didn't stop at just a few. Soon the air around her was filled with dozens of razor blades of water. "Rrraah! Aqua Edge!" she screamed, flinging her arms forward to direct every last shot right at Sunset.
Sunset whipped her head back to face the assault, and struck back with incredible speed. Every last disc that approached her was struck or sliced through by her gloves, reduced to nothing more than harmless splashes across her body and the pavement.
Adagio broke into a manic smirk and shouted, "Now!"
On queue, Aria surged with mana and slammed her hand to the ground, yelling, "Geyser!"
Sunset realized her mistake a moment too late, and screamed in pain as the water drenching her clothes and splattered across the ground violently exploded into hot steam. The force of the blast sent her flying skyward, only for Sonata to fly up alongside her and strike her back down, far across the courtyard, cratering the ground beneath her and kicking up a huge cloud of dust.
Her body aching all over, Sunset pushed herself back to her feet despite the protests of her scalded skin. Just as she was starting to worry she'd have to fight in this condition, a golden light radiated from the core of the rubies on her gloves. When that light touched her skin, she saw the already blistering scalds evaporate away, leaving her skin pristine and unscarred. She was a little more winded after that emergency healing, but at least she could keep fighting.
"Thanks, Philomena," she whispered, and received a twinkle of light within the ruby in answer.
She knew what she had to do next. Even if she was a match for them in combat, she wouldn't win if she didn't answer their magic in kind. It was time to see just what these gloves could do.
Adagio approached the dust cloud as the light that shined within it started to fade. "I thought you had more fight in you than that, Sunset," she jeered. "We're still just warming up here."
"Good, because I still have more to show too."
A sudden wave of heat rippled out, washing over Adagio's face and pushing the dust aside. With the view clear she could see Sunset standing in the center of the crater, completely unharmed, and holding her hands up into the aura on her forehead. When she pulled them away, that amber aura clung to her gloves, flickering violently as she flourished them.
"So you've concentrated some of your magic aura at your hands? Big deal!" Adagio scoffed. She held up her hands and concentrated the sapphire blue glow of her magic around them too. "In case you hadn't noticed, we've been doing that this whole time."
"This isn't just an aura," Sunset corrected her before belting out into her song once more.
Like the Phoenix burning bright in the sky,
In the blink of an eye Sunset was in front of Adagio, swinging a strong right hook. The blow barely grazed past her nose, but as the fist flew past, one overriding sensation hit her. It was hot. That wasn't just magic, it was pure flame!
She was too distracted to see the next hit coming, a knee to the gut that doubled her over and sent her flying back. It didn't end there, as Sunset rushed to intercept her target, cutting her off midflight and uppercutting her in the back, sending her soaring up.
Such an incredible increase in speed, and just from lighting her gloves in that strange flame. It made no sense to Adagio. Had Sunset somehow further increased the flow of energy in her body just by igniting the gloves?
She flared the fins on her back, righting herself to catch her breath for a moment. She was safe up here for now. Sunset was a unicorn type, unable to fly, so she had a little time to plan her next attack.
"Surround her" Adagio shouted to Aria and Sonata, pointing down to... nothing? She'd vanished again!
I'll show there's another side to me you can't deny!
Behind her, but how could that--
"Aaahh!" Adagio screamed, pain and scorching heat exploding in her back as she was sent careening back down to earth. As she fell, she managed to look up to see Sunset far above, starting to fall after her. Had she seriously just jumped that high? Even with power supposedly comparable to a Three Star Uniform, that was just insane!
"Adagio!" Sonata yelled, leaping out to catch her fall, but ending up flat on the ground as the impact knocked her right off her feet.
Aria made her move after Adagio was caught, flying straight at Sunset and crashing into her full force, knocking the wind out of the girl. "If you keep focusing on Adagio, you'll never beat us," she growled, slugging her hard in the gut.
Sunset winced, the hit even causing her back to pop like a visit to the chiropractor. "I understand better than you might think," she said through a broad smirk. "Your Goku Uniforms are linked, so if I take one of you out your power will plummet, and her face is the most punchable of the three of you."
Concern registered on Aria's face for a brief second before turning to anger. "Well just try to avoid this!" she shouted. She grabbed Sunset by her wrist and spun her around to fling her headlong down at Sonata and Adagio.
In response, Sonata started casting her own spell. Her magic glowed brightly and swirled around her and Adagio as she shouted, "Frigid Iron Maiden!" The spell took form as hundreds of razor sharp spires of ice, each at least spine was two feet long and formed along two deadly sheets ready to clap shut once Sunset fell inside.
Adagio watched gleefully as Sunset fell closer and closer. "It's over."
"Not likely," Senketsu spoke up, crossing his sleeves over his torso. "It's time to show them the true power of the Phoenix Gloves, Sunset."
I may not know what the future holds, but hear me when I say,
Though his words didn't reach her, Sunset was already prepared to do just that. As she fell headlong to certain death, she flung her hands forward, against the fierce wind. It was then that the flames on her gloves reacted. They moved to her palms and flared more fiercely than ever, the force of the jets halting her just as the icicle trap slammed shut before her.
"No way!" Aria growled.
"She can fly by using the flames as thrust?" Adagio gawked in disbelief. "How can her magic be that strong?"
The pair panicked as Sunset rocketed around the hunk of ice, the flames on her gloves propelling her right at Adagio and Sonata. They tried to shoot her down with blasts of water and ice, but Sunset evaded effortlessly with mere twists of her hands and bursts of flame. She reached them in seconds, and moved right past Sonata to tackle Adagio at full speed. The two of them rolled across the ground for several feet before Sunset knocked her across the pavement and into a the brick wall of the school, just a few yards from the rubble-filled hole Emerald was still buried in.
That the past does not define me, because my past is not today!
"It's all really quite simple," Senketsu commented as he watched the fight unfold. "When Sunset's heavily fire and light inclined magic flows back into her body through the Phoenix Gloves, it is concentrated into a pure form, stripped of all other wavelengths. It then emerges from the only place it can, and since Sunset is a unicorn type, that would be her forehead. Once her gloves connect to that flow, the Life Fibers along the surface direct and control these extremely dense, pure flames in any way she wishes. The downside is that she can't cast anything but fire and light based magic, but the tradeoff is explosive."
"It sounds marvelously intricate, dear, but I'm afraid most of it was over my head," Rarity shrugged, having freed herself from the oppressive ice on her mouth.
"The sirens can't exactly hear you, you know," Rainbow replied dryly. "Why are you even answering their rhetorical questions anyway?"
"Never question the laws of exposition!" Pinkie exclaimed, looking absurdly serious. "CED (Compulsive Exposition Disorder) is how the audience understands what's going on!"
"But I still don't understand what Senketsu meant," Fluttershy pointed out.
"Oh you silly, I wasn't talking about us," Pinkie giggled, her momentary serious facade shattering after mere seconds.
"Then who did ya mean, Pinkie?" Applejack asked.
"That's a super-duper secret, right Senketsu?" she deflected to him with an innocent smile.
"Umm... Sure," he answered, pretending he had any idea what the girl was talking about. Her behavior was as hard to understand as the beyond abnormal magic wavelength they'd been monitoring from her for the last few months.
Back at the fight, Sunset hovered. On her flames as she watched Adagio claw her way out of the wall. The siren leader was covered in dust and looking more and more frazzled as she threw chunks of brick aside.
"That's it! I've had enough of this!" she screamed. "Aria! Sonata! It's time for Serenade!" The star on Adagio's chest flashed brightly, and a second flash as Aria landed far off to Sunset's side. ...
"..." Sunset just hovered in place, waiting for something to happen, but not a thing did.
"What the hell?! Are these stupid things broken?" Adagio growled in frustration, pulling at the fabric on her arm.
Aria rolled her eyes and grumbled, "I think I know what the problem is." She directed a pointed, irritated glare at Sonata.
The girl hadn't moved an inch, standing with her nose up and her arms crossed over her chest. "I don't want to do Serenade," she whined and pouted. "I want Nocturne!"
"Seriously? You're going to argue about this now? In the middle of a battle?!" Adagio yelled, motioning toward Sunset.
"Oh, don't mind me," Sunset said with a chuckle. "I want to see where this is going." She didn't even bother masking her grin over how entertaining this little turn was.
"You can't do it if I don't want you to," Sonata said, sticking her tongue out at Adagio. "We either do it my way or not at all."
"Why do you even care?" Aria asked. "You didn't even want to fight in the first place, so why do you want Nocturne?"
"I'll give you the Nerds."
"Deal."
"Hey! You can't just decide that! This was supposed to be my fight!" Adagio argued. She seemed about ready to snap with how her teeth were gnashing and her fists clenched, but something strange happened. Much to Sunset's surprise, she just deflated. Her shoulders slumped and her anger melted into irritated submission. "Fine. Whatever. Do what you want. Stupid linked uniform design. I miss the amulets."
Sonata jumped up and down, clapping giddily as she cheered, "Yes! This is going to be so cool! Literally!"
The stars on each of the sirens' outfits flashed brightly in succession, starting from Sonata's. The light enveloped Adagio and Aria, leaving nothing but two large stars of pure light and energy. An identical star was formed in front of Sonata as her uniform stripped away from her body. Those three stars linked together by red threads and spun around Sonata as she twirled gracefully, singing out in a soft, dulcet tone. That ominous melody went on, even as she stopped her twirl and flung her left arm out to her side. At her queue, the stars lined up on that side and pulled in towards her, overlapping her one by one and bathing her in a blinding light.
Sunset shielded her eyes against the glare, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Had Adagio and Aria just merged with Sonata? Was this some sort of transformation?
She got her answer as the light faded, leaving behind a figure clad in gleaming armor as dark and blue as the dusk sky. The armor was decorated with an array of piscene fins from the forearms to the shins, and even flaring out from the hips and shoulders. Most prominent of all was the single dorsal fin that crested the helm, running down the back and all the way to the tailbone. The membranes of these fins glittered like stars on the dark armament. The helmet completely obscured the girl's face behind its armor plates, but as the transformation completed, an azure glow came from the eyeholes with the unmistakable mirth of the wearer behind them.
"Three Star Goku Uniform. Trinity Regalia Nocturne!" Sonata called out giddily, twirling around once more and pointing a hand to the sky.
Sunset's eyes went wide as she took in this new form of the Goku Uniform. Adagio and Aria were nowhere to be seen, apparently having been absorbed into this regalia. There was no mistaking that the perky girl had become a lot more powerful too. Something like this couldn't just be for show. She'd expected a power up, though; she wanted it this way. She would beat them at their best and utterly crush them for what happened to Philomena. She only wished that it was Adagio's face she could smash in. Still, she couldn't exactly complain when she'd let it turn out like this.
"Wowsers! I feel super duper stronger than when we were training with these things," Sonata cooed in wonder, examining the armor that clad her arm. "I wonder if it's because I'm feeling so excited? My heart's totally pounding so fast right now."
Interesting. Aria had mentioned that Sonata had been reluctant to fight at all, so why was she excited now? Something wasn't fitting right. Now that she thought about it, there was something off about the sirens' behavior from the very beginning. What was going on?
"So are you going to keep singing?" Sonata asked. She held a hand out, and Life Fibers stretched out of her armor to stitch together into a long black pole. At the top of that pole mana started to gather and condensed into a deadly looking sickle of pure ice. She spun the large scythe around with a giggle before sinking the blade into the ground. "If you don't keep it going, this fight might end before you can finish your beautiful song."
Sunset was a bit taken aback by how casual Sonata was being. "Um, okay," she answered. She was getting a very weird feeling. Even with how dangerous the Trinity Regalia Nocturne and its scythe looked, there wasn't any feeling of hostility coming from her. It was nothing like the anger and maliciousness Adagio had given off. Well, answers could come after this fight.
Ambition is what I believed
The real battle finally began. Sonata's dorsal fin began to glow, lifting her off the ground just as Sunset tilted forward to rocket at her. The fiery girl landed an immediate and strong blow to her gut, followed by a swift hook to the jaw and a kick to the chest.
It was too easy. There was no attempt to defend, and that had to mean--
Sunset panicked, her flames bursting violently from her gloves to send her flying back just in time to avoid the frozen blade of the scythe. If she'd kept going, she could have lost a limb, or worse.
Ow," Sonata hissed as she rubbed at her stomach. "Wow, you really are fast with those gloves. You hit like a truck too." Despite her complaints, she sounded strangely happy. "Emerald was right, you really are incredible. I can't wait to see what else you've got!"
What was with this girl? She was happy with this? She wanted to see the limits of the Phoenix Gloves? Wasn't their whole goal revenge? It didn't add up at all!
Would be the only way to set me free.
"Don't hold back now! Show us everything!" Sonata yelled in excitement, flying at Sunset and swinging her scythe in a wide arc.
But when it disappeared, and I found myself alone,
A quick thrust backward, and the blade cut through nothing but air, leaving a wide opening for Sunset to advance once more and throw every ounce of strength she had into a fierce jab that hit Sonata squarely in the chest. As the force of the blow started to rock the armored siren backwards, Sunset activated her follow-up. She snapped her fingers, creating a violent spark of energy. In the next instant, the air before Sonata ignited in a concentrated explosion, completely enveloping her as she tried to guard against the blast.
That had to do some major damage, right?
As the blast cleared, Sonata was revealed floating with her arms crossed defensively in front of her. Her breathing was labored, and her armor, while blackened in a few places, was still very much intact. The regalia dripped with moisture, and a few patches of ice still remained across the plating, all signs that she had used a chilly layer to guard against the inferno.
That's when you came and got me, and it felt like I was home!
Sonata panted for breath as she laughed, "Wow, that was incredible! I didn't think you could create explosions from a distance like that! Hehe, come on! More! Let's go!"
Like a phoenix burning aright in the sky!
The battle took to the skies as the pair clashed violently back and forth. Waves of heat and cold rippled out one after another as spell after spell was cast. Sunset got knocked down by a blow from the staff of Sonata's scythe, only to fly back up and land a hit in return. Neither came out of a clash unscathed, and both started to wear down as the fight dragged on.
It just didn't feel right, though; and that feeling continued to gnaw at Sunset as she fought. No matter how hard she came at Sonata, the girl always had a smile in her eyes and a laugh in her voice. She wasn't fighting for revenge. She was eager to see everything her enemy could do, and each assault brought more excitement out of her.
There wasn't even even an intent to kill behind her attacks. Every strike with the scythe blade was easy to avoid, but was followed up with blows from the staff. More than a few bruises were already forming on Sunset's body, but not so much as a single cut.
If Sonata wasn't trying to kill her, then what was she even fighting for? Why would Adagio, so determined to have her revenge, let Sonata take over like this?
I'll show there's another side to me you can't deny!
Sonata moved in close to Sunset, startling her into an attempt to shoot her flames directly from her gloves, but the thrust sent her crashing down into the pavement below.
"Gee, that really didn't work did it?" Sonata noted as she looked down into the new crater. "You'll have to try hard-- aaaah!"
I may not know what the future holds, but hear me when I say,
Sonata screamed as a burning whip shot up to wrap around her ankle, yanking her down for a painful landing of her own.
"If I can't shoot because of the thrust," Sunset growled as she pulled herself upright, her mind running a mile a minute to figure a workaround to the newly discovered problem, "then I just need a counter-balance." The infernal whip retracted back into the palm of her glove, and she strained to step out of the shallow crater, battered all over and barely able to stand. Still, she made ready to keep fighting, and held one glove facing behind her, the other aiming forward. "Phoenix Gloves; Incineration Mode!"
Sonata shakily got to her feet just as a huge wave of gentle flames started to emit from Sunset's back glove. The glove itself started to shift too; the pinions along the wrist flipping the over way and growing exponentially in size. The glowing golden feathers fanned out in a manner that evoked the image of a bird's tail, with the soft waves of flame pulsing from it in a steady flow. The front glove started to change soon after, the metal plating shifting and merging together in the shape of a phoenix's eyes and beak, just above the ruby which started to glow more brilliantly than ever, its sister half responding in kind.
That the past does not define me, cause my past is not today!
The song reached its end with a final transformation. As Sunset's emotions reached their peak, she felt her magic spike with a last desperate second wind. Scorching wings of pure flame sprouted from her back, flaring out to their full length as she pointed her front glove directly at Sonata and shouted, "Phoenix Cry!"
"I'd say we've seen enough now, haven't we, Senketsu?"
The girls who were watching the fight were already wound tight as a tripwire, and the sudden interjection caused them all to jump in unison and scream. Standing on the other side of Senketsu from them, they saw Emerald, casually watching the action. When he'd gotten there, they couldn't begin to guess, but he was covered in dust and was supporting quite a nasty looking bruise on his cheek. His weapon hung around his neck as a pendant once more, and blood stained one of his sleeves from the inside, running down the length to drip from his fingertips.
"Yes, I think that it's time to end this," Senketsu nodded in agreement, raising a sleeve.
Suddenly the Nocturne and the Phoenix Gloves began to glitter with tiny red stars, and just like that, the regalia vanished, leaving three exhausted sirens in a heap. The Phoenix Gloves reacted similarly, their power suddenly vanishing completely as they reverted back to the form of twin Seki Tekkos.
Sunset's flames were extinguished, and all of her strength fled her body. She fell to her knees, and her pony ears and phoenix wings vanished as well. "Nngh! What's going on?" she gasped between haggard breaths.
"Aww! No fair! I really wanted to see the Phoenix Cry!" Sonata whined weakly, flailing her arms.
"Idiot," Aria puffed, squinting up at the bright sun as she lay on her back. "That attack would have definitely killed us."
"Both of you are idiots," Adagio complained, wincing as her body ached all over. "Can't you just shut up for five minutes? I've got a mother of a migraine thanks to you."
The four battered and beaten combatants looked up as Emerald and Senketsu approached them.
"I hope you're satisfied now, Adagio," Emerald said as he stopped before the sirens. "You wanted to fight Sunset Shimmer, and you got your wish. I trust we can expect your full cooperation moving forward."
What?!
"Yeah, yeah," Adagio groaned as she sat upright. "A deal is a deal. Besides, it's not like it's the last time we'll fight. All of us need a lot more training."
A deal? All of this? It was... staged?
"Just what in tarnation is going on here?" Applejack fumed. She ran over to Sunset and helped her to her feet, the rest of the girls trailing behind. "How did ya'll stop the fight so easily? And why didn't ya'll do that from the beginning?"
Senketsu was silent for a moment before answering, "I have the power to deactivate any Life Fibers that I have created, the power of Absolute Submission. The truth is that from the very beginning no one was in any danger."
"But Emerald is terribly hurt!" Rarity exclaimed. "Flash was beaten till he collapsed, and poor Coco took a nasty hit from the sirens too, the poor dear."
"Even Sunset isn't looking too hot," Rainbow added indignantly. "Why did so many people get hurt if there was no danger?"
"Oh please," Adagio grumbled, "If we had really planned to kill you, we wouldn't have given you any time at all to react. You would have been dead in seconds."
All of it... it was just a ploy. A means to some end. Was this...?
"Was this what Philomena died for?!" Sunset screamed. "She died to protect me when I wasn't in any danger in the first place? That's just--"
"It's not like I wanted to kill it," Adagio interrupted, making a point of looking the other way. "That Aqua Edge spell was only going to cut you up a bit, then I'd gloat over how scared or angry you were, and the script would continue from there. How was I supposed to guess your stupid bird would fly out of the portal and take the hit?"
"You goddamn bitch! I'll wring your neck!" Sunset bellowed. She tried to get at Adagio, but her weak body was barely able to put up a fight against Applejack holding her back. "How dare you call her some stupid bird! Philomena was my oldest friend! A piece of me! I hatched her myself with every ounce of my being, and you took her away from me forever!"
Adagio didn't so much as look in her direction. She pulled her knees into her chest, resting her chin on top as she struggled to say, "I'm... sorry."
The words gave Sunset pause, and she stopped her futile struggle to murder her. An apology was the last thing she ever expected to hear, and it put her off guard. She didn't even know what to say to something like that.
"None of us wanted something like this to happen," Senketsu explained. "This whole act was created to show the six of you that the coming threat is far more dangerous than anything you faced before. It's no exaggeration to say that the survival of the entire human race is at stake. The same rings true for Equestria and worlds beyond."
Emerald's brow furrowed as he stepped forward, continuing off of Senketsu as he said, "It may be cruel, but I believe that Philomena's death was ultimately for the best. Thanks to her, you were given a power we couldn't even dream of before, Sunset."
"For the best?!" Sunset sobbed, tears forming in her eyes. "Who are you to put a value on her life? What gave you the right to do all of this?"
"Would you rather we had just stood aside and let Crystal Prep test their own Goku Uniforms on you at the upcoming Friendship Games?" Emerald asked bluntly, unphased by her hysterics. Whatever retort Sunset had got caught in her throat, giving him a chance to continue, "I won't try to apologize for how my plan turned out. I know that it will never be enough, and I will make no excuses for my choices. If you must hate me, then go right ahead, but I will do whatever it takes to protect this world and everyone I care for. Even if I have to pave the way with lies and deceptions, you can count on that singular truth." As he spoke, magic swelled around him, bringing out his pony transformation, much to everyone's surprise, even his own. "Interesting. I'm not even wearing any Life Fibers. This will require some research."
"Seems I never did know the real you, did I, Emerl?" Rarity asked, moving to console Sunset.
"Yes and no," he replied, looking to his left as Coco came up beside him. "The me you've known is the carefree me; the me that doesn't lead the fight against Life Fibers."
"You don't get much time these days to just be a kid, Emmy," Coco said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She met Sunset's angry, tear-stained gaze with a tender expression as she added, "We really do care dearly about this school. The people here are so kind and friendly; nothing like our old classmates at Crystal Prep. Emmy saved me from that awful place and helped me find somewhere I could belong, so no matter what I'll always stand by his side."
"Well that's great for you," Rainbow Dash fumed, "but how do you expect us to be trusting after how our friends have been hurt? I don't see why we should believe a thing you all say."
"Land's sake! Emerald even said for himself that he's willing to lie to us all, and I'm sure that includes you, Coco!" Applejack shouted, leering at the young man.
"Um, but he did have the best of intentions, didn't he?" Fluttershy squeaked out from the back of the group, drawing everyone's attention.
"How can you defend him, Fluttershy?" Rainbow argued, pointing an accusing finger at Emerald. "Doesn't it make you mad that what he did got an innocent animal killed?"
"Yes, it does," Fluttershy nodded softly. "I'm so sad, I feel I could just scream, but I know he's not lying about his intentions. He really does lie only to protect what he loves."
"Fluttershy's right," a voice confirmed, flipping all eyes in the other direction to see Flash stumbling to his feet. "It's his Mark. We all know that people with a shield Mark live to protect others, and the fog on his shield shows his nature to conceal and deceive in order to protect. A guardian of lies, as he puts it."
Emerald nodded and returned his attention to Sunset as he said, "I never wanted anyone to die, but it was agreed that this was the best way to show you just how deadly the threat we face is. It gave us a controlled environment within which to reveal the danger while also giving you and Flash a head start with adapting to Life Fibers. By allowing Adagio a vent for her grudge we also secured her as an ally." He turned a playful grin on the lead siren and teased, "She was the hardest to convince, but Aria and Sonata have done a good job keeping her in line."
Sunset spat a bit of blood from her mouth and directed a glare at a nearby chunk of concrete that seemed as though it would make the stone combust. She didn't want to hear any of this crap right now. Philomena had died for no good reason, and no attempt to justify it could make her feel better. In a fit of rage she yanked her arms away from Applejack and Rarity, turning to storm off down the street.
"Sunset! Wait up!" Pinkie called out, bounding after the girl.
The rest of the girls turned cautious glares on Emerald before following, with Fluttershy staying behind a second longer to give a timid wave and barely audible, "Sorry."
"Well this is a fine mess," Senketsu commented dryly.
"I know you were against lying to them from the start," Emerald said with a deep sigh. "Still, we've dealt our hand, and for better or worse, this is the rath that fate took my choice down. I have a good feeling about those Phoenix Gloves. If they are combined with the rest of your power, it may just be the key to winning this war."
Adagio stood, patting the dust off of her skirt as she added, "Good feeling or not, that power won't do anyone any good if she refuses to work with us. You're resting a lot of hope on some really big 'if's, like if she's even compatible enough to become a hybrid so she can wear Senketsu, let alone if she would even try." Skepticism oozed from her voice, making no attempt to hide her own lack of faith in him.
"I think she'll do great!" Sonata said, leaping up from the ground. "It's just like Starswirl always said back in Equestria, 'Harmony will prevail'."
"I don't want to hear another word about him!" Adagio snapped, making Sonata flinch back.
Emerald's shoulders went slack as he looked up at the clear blue sky ponderously. "Whatever the case may be, I will accept the repercussions for my actions," he repeated.
His thoughts were violently interested as with a crack of thunder, Flash moved in front of him to deliver a bone jarring punch right to his chest. Emerald was sent tumbling back across the ground, letting out a sharp scream as his injured arm struck pavement. When he finally stopped, his arm was bleeding even more profusely, and a new bloodstain started to grow on his chest.
"That's for making Sunset cry," Flash said, a furious edge to his otherwise calm voice, "but I'm sure you accept that as a consequence of your little plan you sprung on all of us. I'll agree to fight and help you, but I won't be forgiving you for this anytime soon." His peace said, he left as well, leaving a panicked Coco and Senketsu to tend to the battered Emerald.
"This is bad," Senketsu said as strands of Life Fiber extended from his sleeve to examine the wound beneath his shirt. "You've got seven broken ribs on each side, a cracked sternum, and three ribs on the left have punctured your lung."
Emerald got up onto all fours, coughing up blood before wheezing out, "I'll be fine. Coco, please take Adagio and the others back to base to have their injuries tended. I'll follow soon."
"Are you crazy? You're hurt way worse!" Coco objected.
"Please do as he says," Senketsu pleaded, waving her away. "I can take care of him, so don't worry."
Coco stood there looking conflicted for a moment before she finally gave in. She took Adagio, Sonata, and Aria, and lead them away from the school.
With them gone, Emerald and Senketsu were left alone. The boy sat himself upright, coughing up a bit more blood between weak breaths. Slowly, however, his breaths became more steady. Stomach churning snaps and pops came from his chest, and the skin on the left side of his neck started to harden from soft grey flesh to a lustrous silver shell. The strange hardening spread up along his jawline and halfway up his cheek, while on the over end it traveled down and below his collar, moving further unseen beneath his shirt. The spread halted after a few seconds, and his breathing evened out.
"So it's happening like you said it would," Senketsu said as he watched. "Those cells in your body are responding to your injuries and awakening."
Emerald nodded, lifting a hand to his cheek. With a swipe of his fingers over the hardened flesh, foggy green mana spread, and an illusion of his normal soft skin took its place. "We told you, didn't we? We're a monster."
The pair looked to the school in time to see Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna being led out the destroyed front door of school by an escort of four uniformed Safe Skies employees. The two school administrators looked understandably vexed as they were guided out of the school and into the ravaged courtyard.
At the same time, a motorcycle roared up the street and came to a stop in front of the school. The driver of chopper was Honey Sweet, pulling off her helmet in a cascade of golden lockes. She was wearing a rather interesting outfit today; a brown leather jacket over a black corset top and a pencil skirt that looked a little too short for the typical office setting.
"Love the new look, Senketsu," the peppy woman winked playfully before joining them. "Gold is really your color."
Senketsu simply nodded in reply, somewhat distracted by Celestia and Luna.
Emerald stood to meet the new arrivals, hands clasped behind his back, and Senketsu at his side. Once everyone was together, Emerald waved his employees away gratefully and broke the ice by saying, "I suppose this would have been the part where I explain things to you, but I get the feeling that you already know quite a bit about Life Fibers. Isn't that right, Princess Celeste and Princess Moonlight?"
"Princesses?" Senketsu echoed in surprise.
Celestia and Luna stiffened noticeably at the names. Luna was the first to go on the defensive, eying them all suspiciously as she asked, "How did you come to learn those names? They have been lost to history. We made sure of it."
Honey giggled, not bothered in the slightest by the suspicion as she said, "You two really haven't changed a bit in almost two thousand years. I recognized you both right away."
Celestia looked over Honey intently for a moment before her eyes went wide in wonder. "Rosalia? Is that you?"
Honey shook her head, her smile fading ever so slightly as she replied, "No, I'm her daughter, Honey Sweet. She would have been very happy to know that you remembered her though."
Her wording was not lost on the women, as their faces immediately went pale. "Rosalia is dead?" Celestia asked solemnly. "Then does that mean that the Primordial Life Fiber is in their hands again?"
Emerald nodded in confirmation of her suspicions. "Unfortunately, that is exactly the case," he replied. "Which is why I think this reunion is quite fortunate. It's time the heroes of the first war and the infamous family of traitors fought together again."
~*~*~*~*~*~
Far beneath Crystal Prep, in a special, underground structure, explosions rang out in rapid succession. The enormous blasts went unheard to all above ground, completely isolated from the outside world. They continued for several minutes, until they came to an abrupt stop just as quickly as they began.
The result was an enormous empty room littered with battered and broken bodies. Shreds of fabric floated down like snowfall, and all the Life Fibers therein were pulled to the center of the room, where a lone figure stood. Alone amidst the devastation, the female figure glowed an ominous violet hue as the Life Fibers flowed into the garment she wore. Silhouetted by the magic light, she stood hunched over, hands hanging with pistols gripped tight in each. Her shoulders rose and sank as she gasped for breath, only for an arm to whip out and fire a beam of light at a nearby combatant attempting to rise. The unlucky target let out an agonizing scream, and another thread of Life Fibers was sucked in.
Looking over the scene, in an adjacent room filled with monitors, Suri Polomare scribbled on a clipboard, taking frequent notes. Beside her stood Koketsu, or rather, a copy of Koketsu. The genuine article was currently being worn by their test subject, with seriously impressive results. The humanoid Kamui was grinning from ear to ear in childish glee as she took in the show.
A door behind the pair slid opened with a soft rush of air, and Suri immediately bowed as Gladiola Nectar entered the room.
"How is the test subject doing?" Gladiola asked, brushing a strand of her dark red hair out of her eye.
"Physical prowess and magical energies are off the charts, Lady Nectar. She took to the hybridization process magnificently," Suri replied, pointing the end of her pen at the largest screen, which showed an extensive view of the entire testing chamber. The damage hadn't just been limited to the combatants. The structure had been built from the toughest materials possible, and yet scorching craters could be seen all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. The metal was blackened and warped, and the metal was bowed a good three feet outward at each point of impact; a testament to the power on display.
"I told you she would be perfect," Koketsu's copy hummed happily, an inappropriately suggestive shudder traveling down her spine. "Still, even I'm surprised. I never would have thought that the power of an alicorn type would be so amazing! The dark magic feels so incredible flowing through me!"
Gladiola moved to the computer console and read all of the measurements, then examined the camera feeds as she asked, "What of her mental state?"
Suri flipped a few pages up on her clipboard and answered, "The subject's behavior experiences a drastic shift once she undergoes Life Fiber Subjugation. Her personality becomes far more severe, with an insatiable thirst to push the limits of her newfound power. She wants to know everything her magic can do."
"It's a shame that she's not like that when I deactivate," Koketsu sighed in disappointment. "It will still take some time to mold her into the perfect host. I won't be able to unleash all my power until she completely gives in to that dark hunger she has inside her."
Satisfied with the report, Gladiola turned to leave. "Try to fix that problem as soon as possible, Koketsu. Twilight Sparkle may be useful when transformed, but she's a liability in her normal state," she added.
"As you wish, Lady Nectar," Koketsu said with a curtsy.
Gladiola stopped as the door opened for her once more, turning a venomous glare on Koketsu as she mentioned, "Oh right, I almost forgot. It would seem that Emerald Mist and Senketsu have finally shown their faces again. Our satellites spotted them fighting just outside of Canterlot High, the location where you were sent to investigate the abnormal magical fluctuations. I hope that this is a recent development, and that you have not been withholding the location of our enemies intentionally."
Koketsu burst into a paper thin facade of laughter, waving dismissively at Gladiola's claim. "As if! What possible reason could I have to do that?" she lied, though it could barely be called one.
Leaving it at that, Gladiola left the room. She had better things to concern her with at this point than Koketsu's misbehavior.
The second war was coming. |
Life Fiber Harmonize | How We Got Here | The loud crack of shattering glass and other fragile items broke the silence of the night as a man screamThe loud crack of shattering glass and other fragile items broke the silence of the night as a man screamed, "Get out of here, you freeloading monsters! If I ever see your faces again, I'm calling the cops!"
The place; Sleep Easy Inn.
The one shouting; the innkeeper, Mr. Sleep Easy.
The three hurried escapees, running for their lives as vases, plates, cups, and everything else in reach was flung at them; the sirens Adagio, Aria, and Sonata.
Well, to call it running might have been a bit generous. The trio of singers were stumbling out of the front door as fast as their weakened limbs could carry them, ducking as tableware flew over their heads.
The fury of the innkeeper had been brought to bear on them after the spell they had cast on him had worn off. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't been too happy that a strange group of girls had manipulated his mind in order to get free room and board for the last week. With their amulets destroyed and their magic all but gone with them, the sirens had been too distraught upon their return to inn to realize that the spell they had placed here would have been broken too.
Unfortunately, Sleep Easy remembered all too well the humiliation the girls had put him through; free room and board, penthouse no less; a near constant demand for room service and expensive TV channels whenever they were there; and exclusive use of pool, hot tub, and sauna. Any customers that dared complain had merely been sent into an enchanted tirade with the manager that fed the girls negative energy and kept the cycle going. They had even taken all the complimentary chocolate mints that were supposed to be left on a customer's pillow. The savages.
"Ow!" Sonata yelped as a stray ladle struck the back of her head and sent her stumbling into a nearby car. The alarm was triggered, trilling an ear-piercing medley of whistles and honks.
"Sonata!" Aria gasped, shuffling over to help the girl get balanced again, turning an angry but helpless glare back on the man. She threw herself in the path of another object, this one a vase that shattered on her back as she shielded Sonata.
Fury bubbled up in Adagio, and she moved her heavy body over to grab at a rolling pin that had been thrown at them. The protests of her tired arm were nothing before the rage she felt as she yelled, "Don't you dare hurt them!" She screamed at the top of her lungs and hurled the rolling pin with all of her might. The impromptu weapon soared true, striking Sleep Easy square in the face and knocking him down with all the grace of a tipped cow.
Adagio's limbs turned to lead as the exertion hit her like a truck. She fell to her knees, just barely catching herself on her hands and wheezing for breath. She just stared at her hands for a few moments as she tried to get her strength back, and her blood went cold at what she saw; her fingertips were going white. She knew what the spread of the ghostly hue meant. Her mana was falling out of balance, and eventually there wouldn't be enough to sustain her life anymore.
Without their amulets they were worse than just helpless. It was a death sentence. The dark magic of the jewels had been the only thing sustaining their existences, and they had to constantly feed them negative energy, the body's natural mana release created from conflict. They'd had so much of it at their fingertips too. Almost as much power as they'd once wielded in Equestria over a thousand years ago. All of it was gone in an instant, and the lynchpin of their lives had been shattered in the same fell swoop.
"Curse those Rainbooms," Adagio growled, her fingernails scratching at the pavement. For the first time in what felt like centuries, she felt a wet droplet fall on the back of her hand. A tear. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, but she couldn't stop as still more streamed down her cheeks, and a black pit of helplessness gnawed at her chest and stomach. All three of them were going to die.
What could she do?
Aria and Sonata placed a hand on her back, and Adagio felt a second wind rush into her body. Meager as it was, she found the strength to get back to her feet, and the white on her fingers gave way to their normal yellow hue before she wiped the tears from her eyes. "You idiots, I'm the one in charge," she grumbled, catching the two of them before they could teeter over from exhaustion. "If anyone's going to die first, it's going to be me."
"Oh quit it with that leader crap," Aria puffed weakly, leaning into Adagio as the trio started to make their way down the side of the road under the starry night sky, the trill of the car alarm fading into the background. "How do you think we'd feel if you went and croaked, leaving us all alone?"
"Prolonging a dying woman's suffering, huh? You sure have a warm and fuzzy way of showing you care," Adagio quipped grimly.
"Now who's being an idiot?" Aria asked, delivering a vicious, exhausted flick to Adagio's nose. "Don't you even dare think of dying without us. We were born together, and we'll die together. Nobody is going to be left alone."
A faint sniffling turned the attention of the two towards Sonata, who had been silent up until that point, her bangs shadowing her face. The girl's shoulders shook violently, and she clung to Adagio as though she never intended to let go. "I--" she sobbed, burying her face in Adagio's shoulder, "-- I don't want to die. I'm scared, Dagi. I don't want to disappear forever."
Adagio wanted to say something to comfort her. She wanted to be able to say that everything would be alright; that she would find some way for them to survive. The words wouldn't come, though. All she could do was stroke through the sobbing girl's hair as they kept their slow pace down the sidewalk. She couldn't bring herself to even hope to be saved. Why would anyone even want to? It wasn't like they belonged in this world anyway, and they had caused nothing but trouble for everyone they came across. Plus, the Equestria they knew was nothing but a distant, painful memory now. Not a soul from there was left to miss them. Not even Starswirl.
Adagio's slow descent into the blackness of her mind was stopped as Aria suddenly slumped all of her weight into her, nearly knocking the whole trio over. "Hey, watch it!" she protested, struggling to push back against Aria's weight. "I can't carry y--"
She was cut off as Sonata's weight pressed against her from the other side, nearly causing her legs to buckle under her. She frantically looked down at their hands, seeing the color start to drain from them, and their eyes were starting to lose their life. "No. No-no-no," Adagio panicked, shaking her head. "I'm not going to let you die."
She spotted an alley just a few yards ahead and started to heave her ragdoll sisters to it, using every last ounce of strength she could muster to barely drag them into the shadows between the buildings. Laying them down on the rough pavement, she sat with their heads in her lap, stroking through their hair as she helplessly watched the whiteness spread.
It was her fault that they were like this. They had given her a bit of their energy to keep her alive, and now they were dying sooner. Besides that, she wished she had never decided that they should attack Canterlot High to steal the magic there. If they had just kept wandering and stealing energy as they went, things wouldn't be like this.
"I'm sorry. It's all my fault," she sobbed, choking back the tears that yelled in her eyes as she placed a hand on their cheeks. "Even I know it's impossible, if you two live even a little longer, maybe someone can save you. You don't deserve to die because of me."
The alleyway was bathed in a sickly red glow as Adagio tapped into the barest dregs of magic she had left in her. Without the amulets, it was more difficult than she had imagined, but her will grasped hold of that energy and drew it out, pouring it through her hands and into Aria and Sonata. As the crimson glow spread across their bodies, their fingers began to get their color back, but the same whiteness began to spread up Adagio's hands twice as fast.
In no time at all it was already working its way up her forearms, and she started to feel her mind clouding. It was getting hard to focus, and there was less and less power to grab ahold of and give. Still, she had to keep going. Every last bit she could give them was that much more time they'd have for some miracle to come along and save them.
It may have been ridiculous to hope for something like that after all that had happened, but even that sliver of hope for them was worth it. They didn't deserve to die in a place like this, surrounded by trash cans, dumpsters, and the odd stray cat. If they survived, then she had no regrets. If they didn't? Well, she could apologize all she needed to when she saw them in Hades.
"It's you..."
Adagio's head snapped to spy a familiar face glaring at them from the end of the alley. The young man had swept up, two-toned blue hair that was as unmistakable as the shield and lightning bolt on his shirt. It was Flash Sentry, one of the students of Canterlot High that they had controlled, and Sunset Shimmer's ex boyfriend. The boy's eyes darted from Adagio to the unconscious Aria and Sonata, then to the white that was spreading up her arms. His eyes went wide at the sight, and he turned a panicked glare down the street, out of Adagio's view as he yelled, "What the hell is this, Emerl? The Dazzlings are who you need help with? They have the Pale Death?"
At the questions, another boy stepped into view, this one a young man with messy dark green hair and thick aviator glasses. He wore a black coat that somehow made the otherwise dorky looking boy seem somehow sinister.
"Heh, yeah, you've got me," the boy named Emerl raised his hands apologetically. His glasses flashed ominously as his voice dropped ever so slightly to say, "You are the only one that can keep them stable long enough for me to save them. With your help, I can stop the Pale Death."
Stop the Pale Death? How could he even do that? While it had always been an unusual fact that the magical affliction even existed in this world, there was far less chance of this world being able to stop it. The amulets had been the only safeguard to exist, even in Equestria.
"Me? Why do you need me?" Flash demanded. He pointed an accusing finger at Adagio. "And why do you want to save them? They attacked our school and took control of us, making us bicker, argue, and turn on each other!"
And there it was, every reason that screamed to Adagio that they didn't deserve to be saved. The words stung more than she had expected, and what little concentration she'd maintained was shattered, the crimson glow fading from her body. She couldn't move. She could barely breath. She didn't have any strength left to give to Aria and Sonata, and the Pale Death was starting to spread to her shoulders.
Why did it hurt so bad? She'd always been like iron; the backbone of their little group. No regrets. All that mattered was surviving and taking care of each other. If that meant hurting others? So be it.
So why? Why did Flash's words hurt so much?
"I know exactly what they did," Emerl replied calmly, a decisive air coming about him as he turned to enter the alley. He cast the darkness aside suddenly with a glow of chartreuse magic in his palm. "My organization was watching over the situation carefully, and if the Rainbooms had failed, we were ready to step in."
"Organization?" Flash repeated cautiously, his eyes riveted with shock on the glow in Emerl's hand. "Who are you?"
Adagio was just as stunned, her muddled head echoing Flash's questions. What the boy was claiming was beyond belief, and yet the display of magic showed that there had to be some truth to his claims. Emerl stepped just in front of the sirens, looking down on Adagio's whitened skin for a moment before turning to look back at Flash.
"I know that the things they did can't be excused, but as the only one to ever survive the Pale Death, do you really think they deserve to die this way?" he asked.
Flash... had survived the Pale Death? How? It was impossible. Once the balance of mana in the body faltered, there was no way to restore it. The mana could be supplemented, like the amulets did, but in the end the affliction still existed. There was no cure. There shouldn't be a cure.
"Guess I shouldn't be surprised that you've done your homework, should I?" Flash grumbled irritably, his eyes turning to the ground in thought. He glanced at Adagio, meeting her eyes and seeing the emptiness inside. That once fierce gaze, filled with contempt and ambition, was now completely absent of hope or life. It was not a pleasant sight.
Letting out a sigh, Flash replied, "You're right. I'm just being spiteful because I'm upset. There's no way I would really wish this on them, but what can I do?"
"Place your hand on Adagio's shoulder, please," Emerl instructed. A tiny glimmer danced in Adagio's eyes at Flash's words, even as the Pale Death started to spread up her neck and the tips of her curly hair. They may not have been forgiveness, but they were kinder than anything she ever expected to hear. If what Emerl claimed was possible... then they could be saved.
Aria and Sonata didn't have to die.
She didn't have to die.
The feeling of unbridled joy and relief she felt was so overwhelming that she began to sob. She hunched over Aria and Sonata and stroked their hair as every last pent-up emotion inside of her burst free in a great flood. She couldn't stop the tears anymore if she wanted to, and she kept sobbing hysterically as she felt Flash's hand on her shoulder.
The instant he touched her, she felt strength flowing back into her body, and her breath caught in her throat. The feeling that traveled through her from his hand was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. She could feel his mana, but it wasn't flowing into her. Rather, it was resonating with what few scraps remained inside of her, and somehow her own strength was starting to seep back into her body. The red glow of magic started to encompass her again, spreading down to Aria and Sonata while Flash was wrapped in a dark blue light.
"Looks like I was right," Emerl whispered in awe.
Adagio sniffled uncontrollably as relief continued to overwhelm her. They were saved! They were being fixed!
"What's happening?" Flash asked with concern. "This feels really strange."
"You survived the Pale Death, Flash. It's a magical affliction with no known cure," the boy answered plainly. "Because you survived, the spectrum of mna in your body knows how to rebalance itself intuitively, and once it came in contact with the warped and damaged magic inside of Adagio, it began to resonate. Think of it like when you share antibodies with someone; your body is teaching hers how to restore itself while providing a support, and hers is passin it on to the other two." He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. "It won't be enough, though."
Flash's eyes narrowed at Emerl. "What do you mean? Didn't you just say their bodies were learning how to fix themselves?"
Emerl nodded. "Yes, but it's not that simple. Thanks to the readings we've gotten of their magic, we've learned that they are in fact incomplete, fragmented beings. Because of that, while their magic may be able to repair itself now, they can never reach a state of completion, and without a constant support their spectrums will fall out of balance all over again. You let go, and they start dying again."
And just like that, hope sank down like a rock in Adagio's stomach. No matter what they did, the'd always be broken? She'd been able to accept that for centuries, but right now, when hope had been so bright, the cruel truth hit harder than it ever had before.
Emerl removed his glasses to meet Adagio's tearful, questioning gaze without blinking. An unwavering conviction lay behind those stony gray eyes as he said, "I can fix you. I will fix you. We have something superior to your old amulets that can allow you to live without the need to absorb negative energy." He reached for an inside chest pocket of his coat and pulled out a small item that sparkled in the glow Flash and the sirens gave off. It was a spool of luminous red thread that seemed to shine with its own light. "Before I give it to you, though..."
"Of course there's a catch," Adagio muttered dryly.
A mischievous smirk appeared on Emerl's face for the briefest of seconds at her remark, and he continue, "I need to tell you all that there is a terrible danger coming. A threat that could destroy the human race, our planet, and even spread its terror to Equestria, if it isn't stopped."
Adagio and Flash blinked in unison, the sheer magnitude of what he'd said not sinking in for moment. When it finally did, Adagio was the first to speak, "Destroy the world, and even Equestria? What kind of nonsense are you spouting? You expect me to believe that garbage?"
Flash looked Emerl over for a moment before agreeing, "I'm with her. That's a lot to claim. If it's true, then why not go to the government or something?"
Emerl shook his head, "Suffice it to say that the government is powerless to stop it. They are no more able to fight this than any magical threat from beyond the portal," he told them, giving a pointed look to the sirens. "Besides, this has been a tightly guarded secret for centuries, and it is a danger that only my organization can face."
"What the hell is this organization of yours?" Adagio asked, feeling a bit of her nerve come back with her strength. Concerns bubbled up in the back of her mind, but were quickly forgotten as she felt a gentle squeeze around her hands. She looked down to see Sonata and Aria's hands wrapping over her own, their eyes starting to flit open. They both looked up to her and gave a wordless nod that she instinctively understood. They were trusting her to decide what to do.
"We are Second Skin," Emerl explained, "A group dedicated to eradicating the threat of the parasitic lifeforms known as Life Fibers." He swept a hand across his coat in a grand gesture as he announced, "And this is our ultimate weapon, the symbiotic Life Fiber, Kamui Senketsu."
Now makin himself known, Senketsu's eyes opened upon Emerl's shoulders and he greeted the teens, "Hello."
Three panicked screams cut through the cold night air, along with a single exclamation of "Cool!"
~*~*~*~*~*~
Adagio opened her eyes to the sterile glow of a fluorescent ceiling light. Her mind was running a mile a minute, keeping her from getting any sleep.
Had that all really happened only three weeks ago? From that night onward, their lives had changed more drastically than she could have ever imagined. She didn't know whether to thank or blame that bastard Emerald for it either.
He was a clever one. He had to have known that once he showed her the threat of the Life Fibers, along with the power they offered, that she wouldn't be able to refuse him. She simply wasn't the type to accept feeling powerless, and if there was a danger to her and her sisters, then there was no way she wouldn't try to fight it. Once she knew what was coming, she agreed to join Second Skin along with Sonata and Aria.
Not that she was particularly pleased with the situation. She hated taking orders from someone else, even if Emerald was considerate enough to not ask too much of them yet. Still, the tradeoff was close to being worth the damage to her pride. She had a rather nice cozy bedroom all to herself; something she hadn't often had the pleasure of when wandering the world for the last several centuries. She had power; her Three Star Goku Uniform stabilizing her magic and making her body stronger than it had ever been. She had safety; no more desperately trying to gather enough negative energy to survive, and she had a stable roof over her head.
Okay, so being safe was only partly true. In due time she would have to do as she promised and fight for her life. Even then, the training and last week's battle against Sunset Shimmer aside, she'd never been able to just... relax like this. Maybe that was why she'd started having problems sleeping. She hardly knew what to do with herself anymore, and it was starting to get on her nerves. Not having to worry about survival left her with very little to do now, especially since she didn't feel like she needed to be constantly watching over Sonata and Aria every second. They were well taken care of here, and while she was happy for that, it left her with little to do but stew in her own thoughts.
And where else would her mind decide to wander than to the past, and all the choices she ever made. With her callin the shots, she and her sisters had ruined a lot of people's lives over the centuries. She didn't regret any of it. She'd done what she had to for them to survive, and she would do it all again. She did, however, now have time to think about just how horrible some of the things they'd done were, and how the people they affected must have felt. She may not have been sorry for her actions, but a pang of sympathy was starting to claw at the back of her mind, and it frustrated her all the more.
She growled in mounting irritation and pulled her pillow over her face, using a flick of her magic to flip the light switch and sink herself into the dark. The only light now came from the red glow of the numbers on her digital clock. She was tempted to smash it into little pieces and leave herself in total blackness, but begrudgingly let the appliance live. It may have been old fashioned, but she sometimes still prefered to listen to music on the radio instead of her phone. She also didn't want to get another lecture from one of Emerald's brothers, a man named Dirty Nickel who was in charge of finances. So what if they broke a few expensive toys when they first got here? Sonata was a clutz that should never be trusted around a toaster, and Aria could find a way to burn water just trying to make Kool Aid. PLus, that video game deserved what it got for having a cheating bitch AI.
There she went again, being all considerate and crap. The old her would have just broken the stupid clock. The old her wouldn't have even cared how she hurt others. The old her wouldn't be sorry for something for the first time in her life; sorry that she had killed Sunset Shimmer's beloved phoenix.
She had already told herself countless times that it was just a stupid bird, but no matter how many times she repeated it she was no more convinced. That 'stupid bird' had meant a great deal to Sunset, and her screams as she held the dying animal in her arms still rang in Adagio's ears.
She could have blamed Emerald. It was his genius plan that went off script and got the phoenix killed. She could try to justify that it was an unfortunate but unavoidable casualty of the coming war. It wouldn't make her feel any better, though. It was her spell that had taken it's life, and she could never take that back. It wasn't something she could just apologize for either. Her one little apology right after the fight with Sunset was all she could muster, and it would never be enough.
This was the endless spiral of ever greater and greater irritation that Adagio found herself in. No matter what she tried to do to distract herself, these thoughts always looped back around to her eventually. There was only one remedy, temporary as it was, and she could really use the therapy.
Throwing her pillow across the room, Adagio got up in a huff and stormed towards the door. It opened with a soft, mechanical hiss as soon as she got close, and the silence she had isolated herself in was abruptly shattered with a racket of gunfire, explosions, and shouting.
"Take that, alien scum!" Sonata yelled enthusiastically at a television screen. "Feel my energy blade fury!"
"Yeah!" Aria cheered in agreement. "How about a nice hot meal of fifty caliber, hollow-point tungsten to your freaking face?!"
It was a rare moment of unity for the pair, playing a co-op game together. Of course, a round of a cart racing game could just as easily have them at each other's throats. If she wasn't in such a bad mood, Adagio might have found their outbursts amusing.
Aria was the first to notice the open door, and paused the game to turn around. "Uh oh, the creature from the bedroom lagoon awakens," she commented ominously. "You done pouting in there?"
"Bite me," Adagio groaned.
"Love you too," Aria shot back snarkily.
"Hey, wanna play with us?" Sonata asked with a cheery grin. "We could use a third to get through this level. Come on, what do you say? You could use a shotgun to blow some brains out!"
"Mind if I try it out on myself first?" Was Adagio's morbid reply, causing Sonata's smile to wilt away.
"Wow, way to kill the fun," Aria snapped back, her eyes tracking Adagio as she went into the kitchen to rummage through the fridge.
"Put the fun in camps why don't you?" Sonata added, puffing her cheeks brattily.
"Yeah, you Fun Nazi," Aria kept it going without missing a beat.
Adagio pulled her head out of the fridge to stare blankly at the girls, clearly anything but amused as she asked, "Really?"
Aria bumped fists with Sonata as she replied, "Hey, we've been waiting for days now to use that bit. It's not our fault you've become even more moody and grouchy than usual."
Adagio didn't dignify that with a reply, at least not with anything more than a low grumble as she grabbed a slice of pizza from a half-empty box and shut the fridge. "I'm going to the training room," she announced as she headed to the front door of their little domicile. "I need to break a few things and not be yelled at for it."
"Fine by me," Aria waved her off dismissively. "Go be a bummer somewhere else."
Sonata frowned and called after her, "Want us to some along to form Serenade?"
Aria facepalmed and rolled her eyes.
Adagio stopped in the doorway as it slid open. As stormy as she was feeling, she couldn't bring herself to be anything but happy for Sonata's offer. Still, she shook her head and looked back to show a faint, weak smile before saying, "Thank you, but I really just want to be alone a bit longer, okay? I promise I'll play some video games with you later."
"I'll hold you to that!" Sonata whooped as Adagio left, the door hissing shut behind her. |
Life Fiber Harmonize | Cluster | Sunset stood grumbling and glaring irately at her hand as she stood before the solitary door of a large postal service warehouse. The two story building's back area was fenced off with delivery trucks, forklifts, and employees milling about their busy work day. Off in the distance the sounds of planes taking off from the nearby airport ripped through the air almost deafeningly.
The door in front of her was the only public access to the building, and her hand was pointing to it earnestly, as though it had a mind of its own. Her friends stood behind her too; Pinkie, Rainbow, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack all stared together at her autonomous hand, then to the building and the large sign on it that read "Safe Skies Deliveries".
The undoubted culprit in this strange event was the Seki Tekko gloves on Sunset's hands. Ever since the big fight outside of Canterlot High, Sunset had rarely even removed them. The made her feel closer to Philomena, through the ring she also scarcely took off.
The whole thing started when Sunset had been talking with her friends after class that day. After a week of anger and frustration over the death of Philomena and Emerald's part in it, Sunset finally managed to calm herself down and make a decision. The moment she told her friends that she was going to talk to Emerald and hear what he had to say, her hand started to move on its own, practically yanking her arm. The girls had tagged along with her to make sure she was safe as the willful appendage took them on a winding adventure. They went all through town, traveling down streets and alleys, and even on a few buses before it had them where they stood now.
Finally wresting control of her hand from the glove, Sunset looked back at her friends and raised a questioning eyebrow. "I guess... this is where they are?"
"'Spose so," Applejack mused, glancing up the building. "Gotta admit, not what I was expecting."
"Seriously, I was thinking we'd be led to some top secret installation on the edge of town, or something else more exciting. What a let down," Rainbow complained.
"I do suppose that there's something to be said for hiding in plain sight, though," Rarity pointed out. "Like how he became a Canterlot High student," Sunset grumbled. Turning a glance back to Rarity, she asked, "So you haven't seen him at all for the last week?"
The fashionista shook her head and answered, "I don't think he's been in school at all. He hasn't shown up for the Fashion Club at all, even though Coco has."
"Didn't she say anything?" Fluttershy wondered.
Rarity merely shrugged, saying, "I tried to talk to her about it, but she'd only say that we'd be seeing him soon before changing the subject. I couldn't bring myself to press further, I'm afraid."
"Rrrgh!" Rainbow growled, scratching at her scalp. "I'm getting really sick of being in the dark about all this! Life Fibers? Geki Uniforms? Transforming clothes and gloves? A freaking talking coat, or sailor uniform, or whatever he is? I liked it better when all we were dealing with was magic!"
Applejack nodded, habitually running her fingers along the brim of her stetson. "I'm with ya there, Rainbow," she agreed before turning a questioning look to Sunset. "You sure none of this has to do with Equestria?"
Sunset let out a long, drawn out sigh before replying, "I don't think so, but I'm not one hundred percent sure." She held up her hand in front of her, staring at the crimson glove on it. "These Life Fiber things don't have any magic in them at all. When I used the Phoenix Gloves, I could feel it. They weren't giving me magical power; they were tapping into the magic in me and the ring; pushing it to the surface."
"I suppose that's why you decided to talk to Emerl?" Rarity asked. "You think he'll have answers about all this?"
"Who else would?" Sunset answered with a sarcastic question of her own. "That shifty bastard got us mixed up in whatever this is, so I think it's only fair that he tells us everything he knows."
Fluttershy chimed in, commenting, "I really want to know more about Senketsu. I've never seen any creature him."
"Well that goes without saying," Rainbow muttered.
Pinkie, as full of energy as usual, grabbed AJ and Rainbow by the shoulders, pulling them to her sides as she cheered, "Oh come on, look on the bright side. This is a brand new adventure for all of us. No doubt, when all's said and done, our bonds of friendship will be stronger than ever!"
"Pfffft!" Rainbow sputtered before bursting into laughter. She playfully pushed Pinkie away, saying, "Seriously, could you have picked a cornier line to say?"
"Don't like that one? I have others. How about 'This will certainly be a growing experience for all of us!'? Oh! Oh! Or even 'If we work together, we can face anything that's in our way!'?" Pinkie grinned from ear to ear.
The group laughed together as they approached the door, Sunset pulled open the door and led the way as they walked into a quiet reception room. It looked as ordinary as any other place would, with an assortment of chairs lining the walls and a small coffee table littered with magazines. The warm lighting made the few houseplants and paintings lining the wall pop out and grab the eye all the more. A gurgle from the corner of the room announced the presence of a water cooler, tiny paper cups included, and opposite from that was a tv playing some strange show with lots of yelling. At the farthest end of the room was a desk with a woman seated behind it, mindlessly clicking on a mouse as she stared at a computer screen.
Pinkie immediately bolted for the cooler and started downing tiny portions of water while watching the show. The rest of the group went to the desk, and Sunset cleared her throat to get the woman's attention. She wore a lovely but very professional black dress that was an off-yellow at its high collar and the midriff of its flattering hourglass waist. It even had a pin of what seemed to be her mark stuck to the breast, an uneven red circle very much like the wax seals on old envelopes. These, and the dark stockings she wore only seemed to make her bright blue eyes, pale cream skin, and crimson hair, tied in a tight bun, stand out all the more as she looked over the teens.
The woman tilted her thin, half-rim reading glasses down to appraise them with a critical, piercing gaze before asking, "How may I help you, ladies?"
"Is there an Emerald Mist here?" Sunset asked, straight to the point. "We've got a lot of questions we want to ask him."
The woman's eyes lingered on Sunset's gloves and ring for a moment before she nodded her head in understanding, her keen expression unchanging. "I see, you must be Sunset Shimmer. Yes, we've been expecting you," she replied. A few quick clicks of her mouse, and she stood to leave, gesturing back to the chairs lining the room. "If you would please give me a moment, I will go fetch Mr. Mist for you. Until then, please enjoy the show we have running."
More waiting. Just great. If they knew she was coming, then why wasn't he here already? He was doing this on purpose, she just knew it.
Still, not wanting to seem ungrateful to the woman, she bowed her head slightly. "Thank you very much, Miss..." she started to thank her, but stopped short when she realized she didn't even know the woman's name. There wasn't even a plate on the desk or a tag on her dress to help her out.
"It's Scarlet Seal, and please don't call of Miss, it makes me feel old," she offered her name with the faintest hint of a smile on her lips before slipping out of the room through a door behind her desk.
With nothing better to do, the girls joined Pinkie at the water cooler and took seats around it. As soon as she plopped down in the cushy seat, she tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and let out a long sigh, tuning out the sound of the television. As much as she wanted to punch Emerald's teeth out, she needed to keep her anger in check for now. She had too many unanswered questions to ask first.
"Mr. Mist?" Rainbow's voice came from the seat to her left, dripping with suspicion. "What's up with that? Are we supposed to believe he's some sort of big shot?"
"I haven't the faintest, dear," Rarity chimed in from the left. "Now that I think about it, Emerl never did talk about his home life. Frankly, I know more about Coco than I do him, and even that isn't much."
Sunset's quiet, and the musings of the girls, were interrupted as a strong female voice came from the television.
"The last time I saw you, you said we would, quote; 'finish this thing'."
Nothing too special about it. Just your typical action flick dialogue. However, it was the next voice that made Sunset's eyes snap open and rivet to the screen.
"Well aren't you the conscientious type. Hey Mako, you'd better get back."
The one speaking was the very same girl that Sunset had seen when Philomena died, and just like in that vision, she was wearing Senketsu in his sailor uniform form. However, unlike in the vision, one of Senketsu's eyes was open and glaring from beneath the scarf of the outfit. Beside her stood a girl with a simpler white and gray-blue uniform and brown, bowl-cut hair.
In full agreement with the order, the chipper girl, Mako, said, "Will do! I want to live a long and healthy life!"
"That girl!" Sunset gasped.
"Is that Senketsu she's wearing?" Rarity echoed her surprise. "He really looks rather fetching on her, don't you think?"
"That's your first thought? Really?" Rainbow asked.
"That's not it... I've seen her before, when I got the Phoenix Gloves," Sunset spoke up before another argument could break out. Memories of her promise to the mysterious girl flashed through her mind as she watched the show continue.
Across from the black-clad girl, descending a flight of blood red stairs to a barren field lined with uniformed students holding banners, was a woman with long black hair and prominent eyebrows. This girl wore a very decorated alabaster-white sailor uniform. Everything from the tasseled, yellow shoulder epaulets to the blue steel armband, and dark blue accents gave off the aura of a deadly military commander taking the field. Hammering that point home was the katana she held tight in its scabbard, and perhaps most ominous of all, however, was the matching set of eyes that peered out from her outfit's own scarf, just like Senketsu.
The heel of the young woman's thigh-high boot clicked ominously as she set foot on the battlefield. "Congratulations. You have the honor of being my first offering to Junketsu," she declared proudly.
All the while, the girls watched at rapt attention, unable to take their eyes off the tv.
"Junketsu? Purity? Didn't know there was anything pure about ya," the girl wearing Senketsu sassed cockily.
"Allow me to show you," the long haired girl replied, raising a hand to her armband and flipping three switches down on it.
The view on the screen zoomed in, and three syringes were shown piercing her flesh, drawing blood up to spread throughout the fabric of her uniform. The blood quickly spiderwebbed its way across the outfit, until the entire thing was stained crimson. Then, suddenly, the outfit unravelled, leaving its wearer naked before it began reconfiguring itself around her. Long, skin-tight sleeves that seamlessly transitioned to gloves extended out from a prominent chestpiece that exposed and even accentuated her cleavage. The lower half was even more daring, with only a few scant straps connecting her top to a skimpy, v-line bikini bottom, and to her boots, the tops of which fluttered out in a skirt-like fashion. Finally, the shoulders of her outfit shot up to form huge spines that dwarfed the height of her own head with each spine bearing one of the outfit's eyes.
"Life Fiber Override! Kamui Junketsu!" she shouted, the transformation complete.
"Oh my!" Rarity gasped. "What a scandalous change!"
"What the hell is that?!" the girl wearing Senketsu asked furiously.
"You're not the only one with a Kamui," her foe replied, proudly displaying her new garb. "This is Junketsu!"
So Senketsu is one of there Kamui things? An outfit that drinks blood to change into a seemingly powerful but skimpy new form?
The camera then panned over to another character, one with a suspiciously familiar style of unruly hair and a sloppily buttoned white shirt, thick glasses only driving the image home more. "Uh-oh. Looks like little-miss Satsuki brought something dangerous to Show and Tell," he said, revealing the name of the white-clad woman.
The girl wearing Senketsu was shown again, holding up a glove on her left hand just like the Seki Tekkos that Sunset wore as she shouted, "Let's do this, Senketsu!" Pulling the pin on the wrist of the glove and eclipsing herself in thousands of tiny flashes of light as Life Fibers activated, revealing Senketsu transformed to an equally revealing state as Junketsu. She, however, lacked the enormous shoulder spikes of Junketsu. Senketsu's single left eye instead inhabited I small, wing-shaped crest in front of the girl's shoulder, the opposite crest having what looked like a scar across it, the eye shut tight.
Senketsu's armor-like top barely managed to cover the girl's breasts, leaving a considerable amount of the undersides free and exposed while garter belts strapped it to an absolutely tiny skirt that hardly covered anything. Black thigh-high boots completed the look, much like with Junketsu. In her hand she held half of a giant pair of crimson scissors. She brandished it like a blade while looking very uncomfortable with her new outfit.
The pair of combatants advanced on each other, both staring the other down as the girl spoke to Senketsu, "That why you were scared yesterday? Cause you sensed her outfit?"
The familiar voice of Senketsu replied, "I have to warn you, Ryuko; your opponent is much more powerful than you."
The girl, Ryuko, answered dryly, "Thanks a bunch for the pep talk."
As Ryuko and Satsuki got closer, the sheer intensity between them created a literal shockwave that sent the onlooking crowd around them flying.
"Whoa," Applejack muttered under her breath, her eyes wide as saucers, much like the rest of the girls watching the tv.
On the screen, another group was shown watching the fight, one of them shouting, "Incredible! Their willpower created a concussive blast!"
"Cool! Now let's see if you can back it up, or if you're just blowing hot air!" Ryuko jeered, charging Satsuki at full speed.
She was answered with a deft flick of Satsuki's blade. A visible razor line of force traveled from its edge, only to barely be blocked by Ryuko, shockwaves tearing up the terrain all around her. That single blow, and Ryuko was already at a disadvantage, a bad cut already bleeding across her cheek, and her breathing heavy.
"Awesome power!" Rainbow Dash gasped in awe, practically dangling from the edge of her seat.
What followed was a flurry of slashes from Satsuki's blade, turning the air into a deadly whirl of steel. It was all that Ryuko could do to guard against the onslaught, but she was getting lacerated despite her best efforts. Blood flew from fresh cuts on her body and left long streaks across the ground around her.
"Careful! Try not to lose too much of your blood," Senketsu warned her. "The more you lose, the faster you'll pass out."
"I know, I know! Jeez!" Ryuko snapped at him. She blocked one last strike before sliding around Satsuki's barrage. Coming to a stop behind her, Ryuko swung her scissor at her enemy's back, only to be effortlessly blocked without even looking. The power being wielded by the girls was hammered home as the excess force of that blocked strike caused the terrain to upheave all around them.
Satsuki clenched her fist in marvel of her new strength, not even turning to look at Ryuko. "Incredible. More than I ever imagined," she boasted proudly.
Bringing her attention back to bear, Satsuki jammed her sword arm downward, creating an instant of intense downward air pressure around Ryuko that smacked her with bone-shaking force into the ground. The impact bounced Ryuko right back into the air, and Senketsu's eye glanced up in time to see the hilt of Satsuki's sword slowly being thrust towards him in midair. Nothing more than a mere tap was delivered, directly upon Senketsu's eye, and he and Ryuko were sent careening into the building that surrounded their battlefield.
Then--
The screen froze, right in the middle of the fight. The abrupt stop got a frustrated reaction from the girls, until their attention was drawn to Scarlet's desk, where the door was ajar and Emerald stood, holding a remote with a playful smile. Behind him was Scarlet, who wasted no time in taking her seat again, clicking absently on the mouse.
"Enjoy the show?" Emerald asked casually.
How could he just stand there like that? Just looking at him pissed Sunset off, and she stormed right up to him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, despite the protests of her friends. Still, he just stood there with a smile, and it made her want to deck him right then and there.
Instead, she asked through clenched teeth, "Why the hell are you jerking us around like this? What are you up to?" Questions began to fire off one after the other, her anger preventing her from closing the floodgate. "What was that video? Who were those girls? Why were the humans so strange looking? Who the hell are you? Wh--"
She was cut off as Emerald calmly grabbed hold of her wrist, pulling himself free. "That video was made to show you a small fraction of the threat we are facing," he explained, his smile fading somewhat and his demeanor growing more serious.
Sunset yanked her arm from his grasp; scowling at him. "A threat? What, are talking clothes going to destroy us all?" she mocked him.
"As if," Rainbow scoffed.
Emerald's eyes hardened far more drastically as he replied, "That's exactly what is coming."
The silence after his audacious declaration was deadening, only disrupted by the methodical clicks of Scarlet's mouse.
Emerald didn't wait for them to speak up. He turned around and walked through the door he had come in from. He called over his shoulder, "Follow me. You won't believe what I have to say, but there is someone you can't possibly ignore."
Stunned by his words, before the girls knew it, they were tailing after him.
The first thing that Sunset noticed as they followed him was that the hall they had entered was strangely barren, even for what she would have expected from a shipping warehouse like this. The walls were uniformly off-white, with fluorescent ceiling panels lighting their way. Farther down, she could see a set of double doors from which she could hear a clamorous racket, but that didn't seem to be their destination. They only traveled a few yards before he stopped in the middle of the hall. He turned to face the wall at a seemingly random spot and reached out to press his palm against it.
The wall lit up in a square around his palm, and opened on an invisible seam to reveal an elevator behind it. The inside was like most any other elevator, but there was a second set of doors in the back, and hand rails on either side.
"Ooooo! Secret door!" Pinkie cooed in excitement.
"Eh, it's cool and all, but I'm not very impressed," Rainbow sniped. Emerald didn't even acknowledge their words as he silently stepped into elevator and stood beside the console of buttons, hands clasped behind his back, the rest of them joining him. Satisfied that they were all aboard, he pressed the bottom-most button. "Might want to brace yourselves," he warned them.
His words of caution were just a tad late; the girl's feet lifting off of the ground as he spoke. They all screamed in surprise, well, all except Pinkie, and grabbed at the hand rails to pull themselves back down.
"What's the big idea you... you...?" Sunset tried to complain before trailing off. Her eyes were drawn past him, through the door they had boarded from, which was solid glass. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, as earth and rock gave way to an enormous cavern, easily two city blocks wide, four deep, and as high eight stories. Disc-shaped plateaus on the ceiling showed where what had to have been enormous stalactites had been completely shorn away and embedded with lighting, leaving it safe for what lay below. And damn, what lay below was a sight to behold.
One could practically call what they were seeing a village, with dozens of cone-shaped buildings carved out of the stalagmites jutting out of the ground. They were a variety of sizes, ranging from single story structures to about four stories. Some of the biggest ones even looked like they'd had their tips shorn off too, the spaces on top had clear domed structures filled with an indistinguishable green hue. Each stalagmite over one story had a spiral ramp leading to various entryways along their paths.
They weren't the only structures, though. There were a number of man-made structures, large and small, scattered all over too. None of them was higher than two stories, and looked strangely new and out of place compared to the jagged and unevenly populated stalagmites that surrounded them.
Sunset's eyes drifted farther and farther down as she took in this incredible sight. The rest of the girls, still clutching to the handrail for dear life, let out gasps of awe as they looked out.
"Okay, now I'm a little impressed," Rainbow admitted, dumbstruck. The rest of the group echoed her feeling of awe as with a violent jerk the elevator came to a stop.
"Welcome to Cluster, the home base of my organization," he said with obvious pride. "My family created this place as a safe haven from which to wage a silent war against Life Fibers." As the doors opened and he stepped out, numerous people could be seen walking an interwoven network of pathways that wound between the buildings. "Everyone here is a member doing their part."
Life Fibers, right, the stuff that those Goku Uniforms were made of. Senketsu and the Phoenix Gloves too.
Sunset's thoughts drifted back to the fight they had watched on the tv. That fight had been on another level entirely from her own fight with the Dazzlings. Not only was the strength that Ryuko wielded enormous, but that Satsuki girl shrugged her off like she was nothing. Sunset's own fight hadn't been nearly as devastating in collateral damage, and what damage there had been was fixed by the next day, likely by Emerald's group.
If what they'd watched was only a taste of what Life Fibers could do, then they definitely were something to be feared. It did, however, leave her with one nagging question.
"I get that Senketsu is alive and all," she began, following him off the elevator, "but from what I've seen it's the bozos that wear these outfits that are the real problem, aren't they?"
"Ah-ah-ah," Emerald tutted, not even looking over his shoulder as he waved a scolding finger in the air. "Please save all questions until class is in session. Your teachers are very eager to explain everything to you." He didn't stop, and started heading deeper into Cluster, already on one of the many winding paths.
Sunset frowned at his evasive answer. He was jerking them around again. Couldn't he give a freaking straight answer? And now they had teachers? Who? She wanted to ask, but he'd likely just shrug that question off too. Jerk.
"Oh, please wait up!" Fluttershy called out, her and the rest of the girls picking up the pace after recovering from their rapid descent.
Emerald led them all on a winding trek through the heart of the underground base, passing a surprisingly large number of people on the way. "Wow, there's Crafty Crate! Noteworthy is over there, talking to Peachy Pit. I even see Silver Script in that window over there!" Pinkie randomly pointed out many of the people she saw in turn.
"Wow, Pinkie," Rainbow snickered, bumping shoulders with her, "Is there anyone that you don't know?"
"Not that I know of," she answered cheerfully before wandering down another train of thought. "Hey, if I know so many of the members, then do you think I've been a member all along and never knew it?!" She bounced up alongside Emerald and directed her question at him, "Did I go through some sort of super secret initiation, and then you wiped my memory afterwards? Or are you all secretly out to get me?"
Her questions grew more frantic, and she stopped him in his tracks, grabbing him by his shoulders and turning him to face her barrage of queries. "Are you bugging my phones or copying my emails? Are you observing everything I love from the shadows to find my weaknesses? Are waiting for just the right time to infiltrate my life and take advantage? DO THE BROWN COWS MAKE THE CHOCOLATE MILK?!" By this point she was shaking him furiously, and came to an abrupt stop at the last question.
After a moment of baffled silence, Emerald shook her hands from his shoulders and replied, "Um, no, no-no, no, no, no, and... no."
"Wait, didn't you miss one?"
"No."
Pinkie's eyes narrowed at him for a few seconds, bringing a surprisingly uneasy and uncomfortable look to his face. "Your story checks out for now, but I've got my eye on you, buster." She pointed at her eyes then at him before stepping back next to her friends.
"Alright then, if that's over with, our destination is right around the corner here," Emerald announced, sounding a corner at a two story stalagmite building. Just beyond the top of it, I much larger structure could be seen, four stories high. With evenly placed glass windows, and exposed steel supports, it gave off a feeling of hasty construction. It looked as though it were ready to buckle under its own weight.
"What was all that about?" Sunset asked Pinkie as they dragged their feet after him.
"I can't explain it," Pinkie admitted. "I got this really weird feeling from him and I just ran with it."
"Please don't tell me it was a bad feeling," Fluttershy whispered nervously. "I don't think I could handle more bad things happening."
Pinkie shook her head. "Not bad, just weird. I can't put my finger on it," Pinkie mused with an interestingly serious expression before immediately perking up. "Oh well! I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually!"
There certainly was something strange about Emerald, but was there even more to it? Was Pinkie picking up on something the rest of them couldn't? Her barrage of questions had been peculiar, even for her.
As Emerald approached the entrance to the building ahead of them, the door slid right open with a soft hiss. He waved them along behind him, and soon they were taking a number of turns through still more hallways. Just how much farther was it, anyway?
"Oh my, look," Fluttershy spoke up, pointing past Emerald. The girls all looked over to see Adagio stepping into the hall, sighing deeply as a door hissed closed behind her, the faintest traces of a smile on her face.
"Good afternoon," Emerald greeted her as they approached. "Are you headed to the training room?"
Adagio gave a start as she whirled to see the group. It only took a moment for that surprise to turn to an indifferent glare as she gave a curt reply of, "Yes, sir."
Emerald didn't stop moving, passing right by her as he ordered, "On your way there, could you please stop by the sewing room? Ask Coco, Scrap Iron, and White Knight to bring the FITs to the training room."
The displeasure at being ordered about was more than apparent on Adagio's face. She grimaced and held her tongue, even though it she seemed to want to say something. For a second she even made eye contact with Sunset, but in the next moment she squeezed her eyes shut, her cheeks flushing an irritated red.
Calming herself, she opted to take a deep breath and answer with another frank "Yes, sir."
The awkward tension in the air was nearly suffocating as Sunset and her friends quietly passed by Adagio in the hall. It was so strange to see the proud siren so compliant, and Sunset couldn't help but wonder what was going through her head. She found her head turning to watch as Adagio stormed off, rounding another corner and disappearing from sight.
"This is all so very strange," Rarity whispered.
"Yer tellin' me," Applejack quietly agreed. "I can't get it around my head how one kid can be behind... all of this." She made a small gesture all around with her hand.
It really was a lot to take in, but that was why they were here. They needed answers, and Emerald could give them. It looked like they were about to get them too.
Emerald stopped at a door that really didn't look different from any of the others they had passed on their way through. As it opened, he smiled to whoever was inside and called out, "Alright! Looks like the presentation room is all ready. You two good to go?"
The warm, mature, and familiar voice of a woman grabbed Sunset's attention as it answered, "Yes, please bring them in. Senketsu and I have everything prepared."
That voice... Was that--?
After Emerald entered the room, Sunset rushed to the doorway. Who she saw inside was the last person she expected to, and her presence challenged everything Sunset thought she knew about this world. New questions swarmed through her mind like a cloud of gnats, as she stood tongue-tied in the doorway.
"Please take a seat, Sunset," Principal Celestia requested with a warm smile. "There is much we need to talk about." |
The Return | pre | "I can work logistics. Contrary to the name I just joined the army a few months before this. Before I had worked in a steel factory. I was good at logistics. I can run the numbers on what we have and make it last; from food to cannon rounds." Smiling from ear to ear Marcus nodded. "Logistics it is. Bullseye?"
"Aye?" Marcus nodded out towards the soldiers walking around outside.
"Find me a pegasus who knows how to fight and to lead and bring him to me. Once that is finished, I want you to gather what unicorns you can and put them into two units; one for wall defence, and the second for air defense. For the first gather what earth ponies you can who aren't working on the wall and mix them in. Can I count of you to do all that?" The gruff stallion just smirked and nodded.
"Piece o' cake Chief." Smirking at the nickname, Marcus nodded.
"Alright. You have your orders. Get to them and get ready. We got a long fight in front of us." |
The Return | Chapter 13: Siege of the Mountains | Except for the quiet clopping of hooves on the make-shift stone wall and the occasional cough, the camp was quiet. Since the surviving 83 guard-ponies who had been taken into the reinforcing company, their numbers now stood at 212 ponies. They had been split into 3 divisions; the first consisting of mainly earth ponies and unicorns for wall defense which stood at around 110 ponies, the 4 units of artillery that had been lent to Marcus's company when assigned to had 4 cannons plus 20 ponies to man them and were stationed in the rear, and the third consisting of what pegasi were left and the remaining amount of unicorns for air defense which put them at 82, the consistency stacked in the unicorns favor. Marcus stood at the wall, watching the mountain pass before him while the watch switched shifts. He hadn't slept at all since the past day's events, focusing all of his energy in getting his guards ready for the fight ahead. And even then his thoughts slipped off to that which he had no control over. Doubts about Emilia and thoughts of his family drifted through his mind as the wind howled through the mountain pass. Dust kicked up and blew into the eyes of those along the wall. Marcus reached into his armors pouch and pulled out Fluttershy's feather, twirling it between his forefinger and thumb. A light horn could be heard over the howling of the wind. It echoed through the mountains like a wounded beast rearing its head back from the fire. "They are coming," he whispered.
The guards began to move, motioning for everyone to get ready. The plan was to wait; let them get close and think that they somehow caught them off guard in weather. When they were close enough, Marcus would lob makeshift explosives over the wall into the army as the artillery and air support lite up. The wall unit would then man their posts, and from there they would fight. Drawing his sword and a 'grenade' from his waste, Marcus waited, crouched on the wall. The grenades were simple casts of thin iron filled with gunpowder and had a magical fuse at the top. They had been developed for him before the war, just in case; they had been kept in Canterlot's vaults however.
He could see them now, coming closer. "Hold," he whispered. The guards tensed. Some trembled, their spears shaking as they made ready to move up onto the wall. Marcus could hear wings flapping above him. They swooped low, catching glimpses of 'sleeping' ponies in their cots and around the burning embers of camp fires. One swooped too low, and Marcus gave the order.
"NOW," he yelled. At once, every pony sprang to their feet, bolts of magic arcing through the sky as pegasi swooped in from the cliffs above. They engaged their unaware foe, bring down more with knives and wing-tip blades. Earth ponies rushed to the wall, spears and shields raised high as the 4 units of artillery rang out. Marcus threw his explosives, and griffins behind the wall began to disappear in red mists. Ponies rushed to the top of the wall, spears at the ready when the griffons soon began to climb up. Marcus ran up to greet them with his sword and pistol,and slashed at the first head that rose above the wall. He fired two rounds into a griffon across the way that was about to slash a guard in the back with his talons. It fell to the ground, the body pushed and shoved aside and back to the ground where it lay; his brothers fighting on onto of him, as more and more fell to the guard's spears. An artillery shell flew over head, blasting its way into the horde before the wall. Marcus could hear nothing above the din of battle. He caught sight of Iron Grip and her band holding off a group of heavy armored griffons; their spears kept them at bay, but were swatted away any time they tried to press their advantage. Marcus raised his pistol and fired into them, watching one fall limp and another flinch away with a limp in it's rear leg.
Finding another grenade on his belt, Marcus lit it and threw it close to the wall where the griffons were trying to climb up. It went off and sent limbs flying. Fragments from the cast iron few in every direction, striking metal and stone. Some of it bounced off of the armor, where other pieces found purchase in flesh; it dug into whatever it found and burned red hot. Griffons not 10 feet from the blast fell to the shrapnel, yelling in agony. Catching movement in the corner of his vision, Marcus brought up his sword, blocking blow from another blade. He parried, then thrust inward, not really paying much attention. The blade found purchase, and sunk in deep. It tore through the flesh and out the back of the griffon. He utters a silent gurgle before falling forward dead. Yanking his blade free, Marcus focused more on what was in front of him. He swung down, his sword finding a shoulder. It dug in and cut tendon, severing the limb from its owner. Marcus rounded his pistol on the griffon and fired three times. It fell back from the blast, slowly tearing away from the sword. Marcus looked back at the anti air with what little breathing time he had.
They were working in teams of two, switching out every so often to let the others rest and recharge while the other team fired off into the griffons air forces. Now aware of what was happening, the griffons had rallied and were now trying to dive bomb the unicorns; every time they got close though, they would just shred them to pieces, and when they drew away, they were greeted by the pegasus who kept up their altitude and bought from up high. Smirking Marcus fired three more times into the amassed horde above them, and saw two griffons fall this time. He laughed when he saw two unicorns try to dodge the bodies. Only one was successful, while the other had to try and pry off the other body. That makes 10 rounds fired....2 more. Turning back around, Marcus swung his sword in a wide arc, cutting off one head, and burying the blade into another neck. He fired once into the head, and threw the body back into another griffon, then fired the last shot into a flag bearer. The griffon fell, with the flag not far behind.
"HOLD THE LINE," he yelled out to his comrades. They gave their acknowledgment back with a loud cheer from the wall and behind, as two more artillery rounds fire off into the griffon army. Emptying his pistol, Marcus brought up another magazine and rammed in home into it, then felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. He looked down to find a spear point pressing hard against his outer suit. The wielder had taken his short opportunity to try and stab his between the metal plates of his armor; Marcus, grabbing the spear, brought the griffon closer. He brought the butt of his sword down on the griffons, head, caving in his helmet. Blood began to leak up, but the griffon moved, trying to get away. Marcus brought his knee up and mashed it into the beak of the soldier, knocking him out cold. He grabbed the griffon by the back of his armor and threw him over the barricade, having use for him later. Turning back, Marcus barely had enough time to bring up his blade to block a swing from a battle ax. Twisting his blade to catch the blade of the ax so the griffon couldn't pull away, Marcus aimed directly at the griffons chest with his magnum and fired two shots into the bird's chest. A guttural noise emanated from the griffon's mouth as he fell, blood flowing freely over Marcus's boots. Looking over his shoulder once more, Marcus saw the anti-air crews wavering. So much magic so fast, even with respite in between, was drawing a toll on them. That when Marcus felt the first bolder.
A rock the size of a small pony hit the barricade towards the left end, shaking stones loose and making ponies and griffons alike lose their footing. One fell out past the barricade, falling in the mass of griffons below. Marcus never saw what became of him. He wished him a swift death if anything. We need to break this off fast or else the unicorns will falter and the wall will fall to whatever is launching those rocks. Marcus thought to himself as he felt another connect with the wall; this time more towards the center where he stood. Thinking fast, Marcus called out. "Iron Grip!" he yelled towards his right, firing four more shots into the griffon line.
"What?!" she yelled back, blocking an ax with her spear and driving the tip forward into a griffon. Marcus brought his blade up in a wide arc, slashing open a griffon then moving his way towards her through the crowd of bodies, dead and alive. Marcus aimed at a griffon behind Iron Grip, but she swung around and whacked it in the face with her spear; she then turned around and bucked it in the face, shattering his jaw and making him fall back into the griffon army. Finally reaching her, Marcus did a quick hoof bump before firing his pistol at two griffons, downing them both.
"We need to break the assault; the anti air group can't keep this up much longer!" Marcus yelled over the sounds of the battle raging on around them. Driving her spear into the head of a griffon soldier below her, Iron Grip laughed.
"You think that's all of our problems? We've got smaller catapults throwing rocks at us! The wall won't hold out for eternity!" She yelled back. Marcus only nodded his acknowledgement, fighting off three griffons at once. He drove his sword forward, severing off a limb before drawing it back and blocking a sword thrust from the second and point blank shooting the third. Marcus brought up his armored boot and kick the last griffon in the chest with all of his might, sending the bird flying back.
"I have a plan."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Officially, his plan involved his forces staying behind while he ran in as a diversion and to destroy the siege equipment with what explosives he had left. When he would near the wall on his way back, Iron's best stallions would make their way down the the front of the wall and make way for Marcus to get back up. What it seemed to be turning into was a hail marry. Marcus was charging forward, his shotgun pointed forward as he blasted away at bodies that decided to get into his way. He ducked down and launched a griffon over his shoulder, only giving him the dust as he ran forward, loading in a few more shells as he turned left and shot a griffon before it got a chance to trip him with his spear. He jumped over one, and kick the other in the chest, landing on him and hearing a soft crunch as the griffons ribs broke from the Spartan's sheer weight.
Marcus stopped for a brief few seconds to reload and look around for the griffon's siege equipment. They were located in the back towards the opening of the chasm that the guard ponies now occupied towards the right, closer to the wall. Marcus charged once more, yelling out his frustration as the bodies piled on. Now they were just trying to stop him with themselves. Checking his map, Marcus noticed 3 high flyers coming in from behind him. He dove forward flipped over and began to slid on his back, the mud from the previous day's slaughter, as he opened up, buckshot going wild as it torn through the griffon air forces. Marcus got back up on his feet and kept moving, his goal nearly before him. Drawing his sword and pistol, Marcus brought the blade down and fire a shot as he made his way forward again, taking his time and making sure each griffon that fell before him was actually dead. He thrust forward and drove the tip of the blade into the gut of a griffon before tearing it out through the side. He brought the pommel down on the dying griffon's helmet for added insult.
Marcus stopped and caught his breath, having finally reached his targets. There were 3 of them in total, the rocks they were using piled up behind them. Putting his sword away, Marcus drew a grenade from his side. Quickly jogging up, he pulled the pin and placed it within the machine, running away quickly to the next one as the grenade went off, sending splinters and shards of wood flying past hi. He moved to the next and did the same, as with the third one. And thus his march back began.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Iron Grip thrust forward with her spear, her third one so far. It found parches in an eye socket, and the tip was twisted as she gave off a feral scream, fire burning brightly in her eyes. Her armor was caked in dirt and blood, dents and scratched from blades and blunt objects alike. The largest mark was left by a hammer wielding griffon twice her size. That one ended up tasting her back hooves. The griffon's jaw and beak broke clean in half, his right cheek bone having caved in. Iron put more force behind the spear, driving it forward into the griffons skull as 3 explosions sounded throughout the chasm.
"That's the signal! Rex, bring up the flag! Alpha and Bravo squads to me; get ready to jump down their on my go!" pulling a grenade from her side, Iron Grip pulled the pin with her teeth and counted to three before tossing it directly below her, letting hit explode as it hit the ground. Griffons fell in droves from the blast, clearing a space for a few moments right in front of the guard ponies.
"Now!" As one, the jumped down onto the dead and dying, readying themselves to hold the line and wait for Marcus to get there. Swords quickly lashed out, killing any griffon that tried to advance and take what ground they had lost back. The stallions with Iron Grip were her best; sturdy and battle tested, they would hold their own, taking as many griffons as they could with them as they could. For what seemed like hours the two squads held their little alcove from the wall, only a few falling to the enemy's blades. Great strength and bravery would be shown that day by those brave few, as they would not leave that fight the same. Griffon bodies piled on as the fought, waiting for the man in armor to show back up.
Just when they thought him dead, several gun shots rang out. A griffon then sprouted a sword blade from its mouth, falling limp on the blade, the owner letting the corpse fall forward. Marcus stepped in toward the half circle of ponies and raised his sword high. He let loose a throaty, animalistic cry, shaking his sword and turning back towards the griffons, grabbing one by the neck and raising it high, chocking the bird to death as it clawed at Marcus' armor. He let it fall before raising his voice, and maxing out his exterior mic in his helmet.
"You want our homes?! Come and claim them!" |
Fear of Falling | pre | Far away she heard a hawk cry.
After a few minutes of silence, pleasant breezes, and the soft whisper of the ponies' breaths, Dash spoke. "So anyway, I was thinking that maybe we do one more thing and call it a day. Have you ever heard of a Stoop-and-Swoop?"
"No," said Fluttershy.
"That's okay. I invented it, so not everypony knows about it yet. It's pretty awesome. You get to go really fast at the end and it's as easy as falling out of bed. Check it out."
She nudged Fluttershy's shoulder and sketched out the flight path with a hoof. "So you start out good and high. Speed doesn't matter; you can start it fast or slow. You glide up a bit, then just as you're beginning to stall, you do a wing roll. That puts you more or less in a spin, but you just ride it out with that dart-wing trick I showed you and dive straight down as far as you dare. Then you just zoom back into level flight." Dash's gesture traced a rough J shape with a swash at the top.
"You..." said Fluttershy, "you're not telling me to do this, are you?"
"C'mon, it's perfect!" said Dash. "You've already practiced everything. All you have to do is put it together."
"But I don't... I don't do aerobatics, Rainbow. You know that."
"Well, think of it as a final test or review or whatever. And don't worry. I'll be right along to catch you if you need it again." Dash laughed. "Actually, I'm beginning to think the third and fourth times were because you like it."
"Well..."
"C'mover here. See that tuft of cloud way down there? Let's make that our target for the dive phase. Skim under it, then continue to the big tower over there. Simple enough?"
Fluttershy climbed shakily too her hooves. Dash could hear her swallow hard. "I'm scared. It's like you said earlier, it's reckless to fall too much, like what if I go too far or sprain a wing pulling out of the dive or something? I'm sorry, but I don't do aerobatics and that's why."
"Fluttershy," said Dash. "Go ahead and sit at the edge." Fluttershy sat on her rump, facing the open sky beyond their scoop. It looked pretty much awesome to Dash: disorganized thunderheads the size of mountains floated in a huge herd extending all the way to the horizon. Canterlot clung to the side of Mt. Corona far, far away. And when that front rolled into Ponyville airspace, Rainbow Dash was going to be in charge of it.
She too sat up and put her forehooves on Fluttershy's shoulders. "Hey. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm scared too. Only a little bit because I've practiced so much, but sometimes it hits me just how crazy it is for a pony to fly or just how much I have to be scared for. But you've been doing aerobatics all day now and I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think you can handle it. You understand that, right?"
Fluttershy nodded.
"The hardest part is right before you begin. So what I do is I count, and when I get to the number I pick, I just do it. No thinking. Just go."
Dash smiled, let her hooves slide from Fluttershy's shoulders, and faced the sky. She spread her wings. "So let's go." |
Fear of Falling | 3. Thunderstruck | Darkness, wind, and rain swept over the edge of the Everfree Forest. Lightening flashed actinic upon the boughs, their leaves shone stark green, and black shadows slashed over Fluttershy's home below. Then crashed the thunder. Within, Fluttershy snuggled a blanket closer around herself.
"That one sounded close, didn't it, Angel?" she said.
The white rabbit, his face half-shaded by the orange light of the room's oil-lamp, looked up from his dinner and nodded.
"You aren't too scared, are you?" she asked.
Angel rolled his eyes.
"That's good." Fluttershy took a deep breath of the steam rising from the mug of tea she cradeled in her forehooves. "It's amazing, isn't it? Rainbow's up there, in charge of all that. Oh. I hope the other ponies aren't giving her a hard time."
Angel set down his carrot and cocked an eyebrow.
Fluttershy sighed. "I did something today that I'm not proud of - a couple of things, really. Weatherponies are a little rough. I'm sure they already tease her for not having a special stallion, and I didn't exactly help."
Angel winked, and held one paw sideways, twisted so his dewclaw pointed up.
Fluttershy shook her head. "But she's not like that, even if I am. I don't know. Maybe I should fly up there and set the record straight, show them what really happened."
Dash smiled, let her hooves slide from Fluttershy's shoulders, and turned towards the edge of the sky. She spread her wings. "Let's go."
Fluttershy followed, feeling almost like she was in a trance. Her wings seemed to move on their own, propelling her from the comfortable cloud and into empty air. Dash flew sedately, unhurried, like she had confidence in Fluttershy, who felt a tiny swell of pride, warm as the first glint of dawn sunlight atop an entire mountain of unease.
"Do you still know where the target cloud is?" said Dash.
Fluttershy looked down a long way to spot it and murmurred agreement.
"Good," said Dash, barely loud enough to hear. "So were gonna do it on 'one.' "
One? Wait!
"One!" called Dash. Fluttershy didn't think. She just pulled her head up towards the dome of the sky above. Her body followed, a short arc trading speed for altitude, and twin stalled eddies plucked at her wings. She twisted with the last of her airspeed, flipping the entire world upside down, and then Fluttershy fell.
Fluttershy fell upside down; the far-off jagged teeth of haze-shrouded mountains hung like stalactites, and whisps of clouds streamed past them falling up into the blue void. Pink strands of her mane whipped in the growing wind. Her blood rushed in an unbroken and silent scream, but just like Dash had told her, just like she had practiced, Fluttershy held her wings half-folded and craned back, two triangles like the fletchings of an arrow or dart.
And just as the laws of aerodynamics and pegasus magic dictated, Fluttershy's head tipped towards the ground. Sky rolled away to dense clouds and the hard green earth, which was growing larger and larger at an easy but unrelenting pace. Fluttershy let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, told herself to focus, and scanned the air below for the reference cloud.
She found it - a little closer than she had expected - rolled to line up with it, and as she began to pitch up out of her dive, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. It was Rainbow Dash, who somehow Fluttershy had outflown. She pumped her wings with desparate intensity, while Fluttershy only glided, and only then had she managed to catch up. A smile played across Fluttershy's face along with a touch of self-satisfied surprise. Of course Rainbow would turn it into a race.
Fluttershy didn't mind.
The air poured over Fluttershy in a bracing cold torrent, slicking her feathers down and pulling her ears straight back. She didn't pull up too aggressively; that might break her into a stall or sprain her wings. Fluttershy turned in midair smooth but hard, her stomach feeling like it had taken a vacation and was happily spending the day atop one of the hills below. It felt good. Granted there were plenty of good reasons to not fly so dangerously, and if she wanted to, Fluttershy could probably list them all.
But all those fears could go and jump in a lake, just for today. This was Rainbow's sky and Fluttershy was honored to be it's guest - even if what Rainbow said was true and she somehow was in love with it. Fluttershy could stand losing to a worthy opponent.
Fluttershy brought herself level, skimming just under the reference cloud, gliding far faster than she ever flew on her own. Ahead, Rainbow brought herself to an elegant halt and touched down on a little billow on the cloud's side.
Fluttershy didn't mind. After all, there were more ways to win than just one. Fluttershy didn't slow, she just angled herself directly towards Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow smiled, her face gradually falling and her eyes growing wider as she saw Fluttershy speed closer. She didn't react in time; Fluttershy flew straight into her, wrapping her in a hug, and driving both pegasi deep into the cloud.
The air was rough, ashy gray, and warm. The mist sank into Fluttershy's coat and she held her friend close, burying her face in Dash's mane. She smelled salt and wind, felt the heat of overworked muscles. Gradually their pegasus magic slowed them and gently tugged them towards the surface.
"Thank you," whispered Fluttershy, catching her breath. "Thank you. That was amazing."
Rainbow Dash stayed silent and stone still, even as they emerged into the sunlight. Fluttershy nuzzled her face against Dash's neck.
"Hey, Fluttershy?" she said. "Can I have some space?"
"Oh. Sorry." Fluttershy disentangled herself and looked away sheepishly. "I guess I got a little too excited."
"Don't worry about it." Dash spread and refolded her wings. "You really did a good job today. Color me impressed."
A short whistle interrupted them followed by a cheerful voice. "Hey, Boss."
Fluttershy looked up. A pegasus flew came to hover in front of them. Her coat was a gorgeous shade of lilac, her mane was yellow, and she was grinning from ear to ear. Fluttershy couldn't quite remember her name, but she looked familiar.
"Oh, hey, Cloud," said Dash. "It's about time, isn't it?"
"Oh, you two should see the look on Bluebird's face." Cloud tried to imitate a scowl, but couldn't hold it for long before another smile cracked through. "But look at you, Boss, a very fine catch indeed. Just say the word and I'll run you two a couple minutes of interference."
Fluttershy's ears burned.
"We're just friends, Cloud," said Dash, sounding a little peeved. "And we were just saying goodbye anyway. Sorry Fluttershy, but Bluebird's one of those 'if you're not an hour early you're late' kind of ponies and I sort of lost track of time."
"Oh," said Fluttershy. "The storm today. Yes. I'm sorry I kept you and everything."
"Confidentially, I figure Blue's gunning for your job, Boss," said Cloud - Cloud Kicker, Fluttershy now remembered. She turned to Fluttershy and winked. "Hey, pleasure to meet you. Sorry to steal Dash, I'm such a terrible pony sometimes."
"Later, Fluttershy," said Dash and took to the air. She and Cloud departed, leaving Fluttershy sitting, scowling, and wondering exactly how much damage she'd done to Dash's reputation with her stupid impulses.
But more importantly for the moment, Fluttershy remembered that there was a storm coming and she had animals to go check on before it hit.
The wind swelled, moaning in the tree branches and making the house shift and creak. Lightning flashed again, sparkling off Angel's shiny black eyes, and the thunder roared.
Fluttershy laughed nervously, "Actually, me showing up to defend her would be counterproductive, don't you think?" She sipped her tea and set it on the table. "I'm not quite right anyway. I just have these... crazy feelings around her. I guess. I don't imagine you'd understand."
Angel crossed his forepaws, tapped a hind paw, then made a sweeping gesture as if to say, really, just look at me.
"Oh. Right. You probably do have some idea what love feels like, you naughty little bunny. Or, um, lust at least. Well, anyway, I suppose things could have gone a lot worse. I'll try to do better the next time I see her. That's all."
Fluttershy set down her tea and scooped up a well-worn book, the title long since gone from its threadbare yellow cloth covers. She stretched herself out comfortably supine on the couch and nosed it open to her bookmark.
The rough and tumble adventures of Stoic Ironhooves were a guilty pleasure, but her pleasure nevertheless. And it wasn't like he always got the pretty mare in the end. Fluttershy felt like she could understand him a bit better tonight. Maybe she'd read a chapter or two, finish the dishes she hadn't felt like taking care of after dinner, and call it an early night.
The storm passed and the sky brightened just a bit. Somepony knocked on Fluttershy's door. She looked up, secured her book in the drawer under the table - just in case Rarity had come to visit and brought her adorable but oh-so-curious little sister - and went up to answer. "Just a minute."
She opened the door. Dash was standing on her porch with a smile just a little too big to be natural. Her mane lay across her forehead, sodden but illuminated in impossibly vivid colors. Fluttershy's yard behind her was likewise surreal, a trick of the evening summer light.
Both ponies were silent a moment. Rainwater pitter-pattered from the tree leaves and robins tittered to each other. The silly little birds were confused, not sure whether it was time for their morning arguments or for settling in to roost. They were attempting both at the same time, just to be sure. Distant thunder grumbled.
"So," said Dash.
"Would you like to come in?" said Fluttershy.
"I'm good," said Dash. "Actually, I just had a little something I wanted to show you. If you're not too busy, of course."
"Right," said Fluttershy. She turned her head and as she expected, Angel was standing by the door, watching both ponies. "We'll just be a few minutes, okay?"
He gave her a thumbs-up and a big smile.
Fluttershy shut the door behind her and stepped outside. Half the sky was dark behind the departing storm, the other an impossible shade of royal blue.
"Right this way," said Dash and she trotted down the steps.
The wet grass tickled at Fluttershy fetlocks as she followed and everything felt so fresh. Dash took to the air and Fluttershy looked up. A cloud floated low over her lawn, but not the whispy semi-substantial natural kind. This one had been made by pegasus hooves, packed and sculpeted. It was about three times larger than Dash, who easily guided it to the ground.
There was a rough but comfortable-looking cloud couch on top.
"For you, Fluttershy," said Dash. "Like I said, I want to show you something, but it's a bit of a surprise. So just hop on and keep your eyes closed until I say so, okay?"
Fluttershy walked up to the cloud. It wasn't exactly a cloud chariot, but Dash had even cut steps into the side. She climbed on, settled into the couch, and closed her eyes.
Dash must have started to lift the cloud because Fluttershy heard the soft rustling of her wings and felt the cloud begin to move.
"Listen, " said Fluttershy. "I just wanted to apologize. For what I did in front of Cloud Kicker this afternoon."
"Don't sweat it. "
"I was totally out of line. There isn't any excuse, I'll try to do better -"
Dash raised her voice just a little. "I said we're cool. Just drop it, okay? And no peeking. "
Fluttershy sat in silence. As best as she could tell, Dash was taking them almost straight up. She could feel, deep below her ears, the altitude change, smell the still damp air, possibly even hear the far-off rain, but that was most likely the wind.
Dash's stomach growled.
"Rainbow, " said Fluttershy. "Have you had dinner?"
Dash didn't answer.
"Because it just occurred to me that maybe you just got back from work and... " Fluttershy wanted to apologize for taking so much of Dash's time, but Dash didn't seem to be in the mood to hear it. "If there was somewhere you wanted to go, or maybe I could make something for you - not like dinner dinner. I just feel like I owe you."
The cloud stopped and Fluttershy heard Dash land next to her, felt the down-wash of her wings. "I was busy with something more important. It's not going to kill me if I skip a meal every so often, so please stop worrying. But you know what? That sounds nice. Later. After I..."
Dash paused and Fluttershy couldn't be sure but she thought she heard a gulp. "Well, we're here, and I wanted you to see this. Go ahead and open your eyes."
Fluttershy looked. Dash had brought them above the trees and hills so they could get a good look at the early evening sky. The western sky to their left burned with the red and gold sunset, houses and trees ran into long shadows across the ground, and beyond that the retreating storm hung dark and enormous across half the sky.
Here and there sunlight slanted through gaps in the cloud, casting slashes of light into the rain-shade below. Tiny specks of various colors, pegasi still at work, flickered between light and shadow, herding errant clouds and tickling flashes of lightning from the cells.
The thunder boomed, long-delayed and distant.
"Is it always like this?" asked Fluttershy, spellbound.
"If you get the timing right," said Dash.
"You didn't... Is this why the storm went through late?"
"Hey, it was nothing. The front boss owed me a little favor, that's all. Besides, I was hoping to put a rainbow over there, but, well, things don't always work out."
Most ponies, those who didn't take the time to really get to know Rainbow Dash wouldn't expect her to plan or execute something so inspired. Fluttershy knew better. And yet, something felt like it was breaking inside her. "You did this for me?"
"Well, yeah, you really weren't yourself today. I was hoping to cheer you up and..."
Something brushed across Fluttershy's back. Rainbow's wing gently folded across her shoulders, and strong flight muscles drew the pegasi against each other. Fluttershy sqeezed her eyes tight, but when she felt Dash kiss her cheek, it was too much. Fluttershy didn't sob. She didn't make much sound at all, just a soft wheeze as her chest shrank in on itself.
Dash let go, leaving her wing lying gingerly on Fluttershy's back. "No, no, no, no. You're not supposed to cry!"
Fluttershy threw her forehooves around Dash's chest and took a shuddering breath. "You- You're too g- good." A normal pony might take the time to paint a sunset for his marefriend. Dash painted the sky itself, for a just-friend. It was entirely too much.
Thunder rolled across the hills.
"Darn it, Fluttershy! What's wrong with you? Why'd you have to fall for a pony like me?"
"Sorry." Fluttershy opened her eyes, settled back into her own place. Dash's shoulders and wing-wrists drooped, then she pulled herself together and raised her eyes to meet Fluttershy.
"Don't apologize to me. You. Didn't. Hurt. Me. Apologize to yourself."
"Sor- Um, right."
"Just, ugh. I was right. I said I was only going to hurt you. I'm just too selfish. Do you know what the best part is being selfish? When you screw up a trick maybe you crash or hurt yourself, but it's only you. I can't not hurt you, so you need to get over me."
Dash turned away, and Fluttershy followed her gaze. The sky above the storm had begun to darken to a more somber shade of blue. Cloud-to-cloud lightning flickered inside, like the storm was a line of paper lanterns.
" 'Nopony chooses what she feels,' " said Fluttershy without thinking. Her soft but steady voice surprised herself. " 'She only chooses what she does.' " She set a hoof on Dash's shoulder. "I need to be honest with you."
Dash turned. "Okay."
"You're beautiful. I love you. That's making it really hard for me to think straight. They say this sort of thing doesn't last forever, and I really, really hope that's true because I want your friendship more than anything else."
"I... see," said Dash.
Fluttershy let her hoof fall. They sat in silence for a bit. The sky grew darker and the thunder quieter.
"Can I ask for a favor?" said Dash. "Earlier today you said if there was somepony I had in mind, you'd help me out, right?"
Fluttershy's heart skipped a beat. "Yes. And I choose to." She didn't feel like setting Rainbow up with somepony else, but a nice thing about promises is that a pony can keep them even as they tear her apart inside.
"Even if I'm talking about a mare? I know what I said today and all."
"Yes, Rainbow."
"Okay, good. So here's what I'm thinking: I can walk up to her and say 'hey, you know, I love you,' but that's just words. I wanna do something awesome that will say it for me, but what if she doesn't understand? What do I do then?"
Fluttershy thought it over. "It's not like to be so nervous. Maybe she says yes, maybe she says no, but you won't know unless you try. Count to one and just do it."
"But, what if she doesn't say either? What if we're sitting next to each other and she doesn't get it."
"Well then." Fluttershy swallowed the lump in her throat. "Lean in close and whisper it. I might be biased, but I'm sure I'm not the only pony who finds you beautiful."
Once again, Dash embraced Fluttershy with her wing and brought her face closer and closer. Fluttershy started to object, but Dash silenced her with a "shh" and nuzzled firm and strong against her neck, finally whispering in her ear, "Fluttershy, are we still on that rooftoop waiting to jump?" She kissed her cheek. "'Cuz I really, really hope we are."
Fluttershy had to give her credit. She looked and acted perfectly sincere. She pushed Dash away. "Rainbow Dash, I have to draw a line somewhere. That was not okay. Not okay at all... but, yes, something like that would probably work."
Dash scowled. "Why do you have to be so soaking selfless all the time? I'm talking about you, Fluttershy! Can you believe that a pony might just want you to have something nice?"
"Oh," said Fluttershy. "Oh." She didn't know what to think or feel. "But you said-"
"I meant everything I said today. I don't know what I feel. But I was thinking today, after you left. You're a wonderful pony and I'm just a screw-up, but if you think I'm worth taking a chance on, we..."
Dash set her forehooves on Fluttershy's shoulders and her gaze bored into Fluttershy's eyes. Her voice was despirate. "Promise me that we're friends first. The worst happens, no matter what, and we'll forgive each other and stay friends."
"I promise," said Fluttershy. "But do you love me?"
Dash leaned closer. Fluttershy could feel her breath against her face as she whispered. "I think so. I care about you. I definitely want to love you." Before Fluttershy could react, Dash kissed her, just a filly's kiss, brief but on the lips. "Please say something."
"This is a bad idea, " breathed Fluttershy. Her body told her that, no, it was a very good idea. She could feel it deep in her gut, an almost-sick twisting feeling. So very much could go wrong, and so very much could go right.
Her entire world shrunk down to Rainbow's face and the weight of her hooves on her shoulders, the smell of rainwater and sweat, the feeling of Rainbows mane as Fluttershy reached both forehooves into it and pulled.
You would never guess it from the jagged-edge cut Rainbow liked, but the straight hairs of her mane were as soft as ground fog. They kissed and Fluttershy dropped her jaw and set her tongue against Rainbow's lips and softly licked.
Apples. The ghost of Rainbow's snack lingered in her mouth. Her tongue and cheeks were soft and fleshy, and she didn't take long to learn to kiss like a mare. Fluttershy giggled. Dash was probably tasting her cinnamon and carrots and oats.
Dash's stomach rumbled again, then thunder joined it, and neither mare could resist laughing. Joyous tears flooded Fluttershy's eyes.
"Okay, Rainbow, don't you dare tell me you aren't hungry."
"I took you up here to watch the sunset. It's not over yet." She threw a forehoof at the sky. "Besides, my mouth is busy."
Already the sky was darkening. Shadows and sunrays swept along the ground, unhurried, to where the pegusi sat blue and yellow and pink and all the colors of the sky. They kissed once more. |
Fear of Falling | 4. Dawn | Dawn broke over Dash gently bumping against the edges of her sleep like a foal begging for attention.
It began with the fragrance of hazelnuts, which drifted into Dash's dreams and made it hard to tell where they ended and reality began. They were strange dreams too. Some days something flowed and swirled and licked at the edges of her mind; she felt like she was riding a thrumming cataract of energy, like a microburst in the sky or an undertow pulling her out to sea.
Those days Dash wanted to lose herself in the flow. It was overpowering, but gentle. It wanted to sweep her away and take care of her and - although these dreams usually were vague and elemental for Dash - this time her torrent of feeling had taken the form of her best friend, Fluttershy.
Dash crashed awake where she lay, eyes still closed and body still. She knew instantly that she could never, ever talk about what had just been going through her head. They were just dreams, but then Fluttershy might find out and the poor filly wouldn't know what to make of them, so Dash resolved then and there to ignore what was probably just a meaningless trick of her subconscious.
She rolled to her back with a creaky grunt and drew a forehoof casually up along the curve of her bottom rib, savoring the soft warmth of her belly.
At least, that was what she meant to do, but when she felt the heavy blanket slide over her body, and the firm bed - not a cloud - below it, her eyes flew open in fresher shock.
There was a watercolor of a marigold hanging on the wall, its reds and golds blazing in the morning sunlight. The wall was papered, clean but cracked. Small crates for animals were stacked against it.
Rainbow Dash sat up in bed, her blanket slipping down her chest and her mouth falling open.
It was Fluttershy's house. Hazelnut still hung in the air. And that meant - maybe... maybe last night wasn't all a dream.
The clink of a dish in the kitchen snapped Dash from her stunned state. She was sitting on Fluttershy's guest bed, she realized. Even now, her marefriend - her marefriend! - must be making breakfast. It was morning, and she could smell faintly the pine shavings and other clean animal smells that were always there. Something on tiny paws skittered atop the ceiling overhead.
Out of habit Dash twisted around to preen, the first thing she did every morning. Sleeping on a groundy's mattress always gave her terrible bed-wings.
They didn't look too bad, though. Her secondaries were a bit ruffled, but it looked like her primaries had stayed neatly folded all night. When she brought her mouth to smooth out a twist, she tasted a bit of cinnamon.
So that part was real. Oh boy, that part was real.
"Didn't your mother teach you to preen twice a day?" said Fluttershy last night. Concern pulled at her face lit by shifting candlelight.
"I don't see the point," said Dash. "I'm going to sleep on them and they'll be messed up again by morning." She finished with her towel and hung it on the rack. The air in the bathroom was heavy with humidity and the spicy sandlewood soap that Fluttershy liked.
Fluttershy shook her head. "You lazy pony. Have a seat, then, and let me do it."
"I'm not a little filly. I can-" Dash began, but suddenly Fluttershy was filling her vision with kind, huge eyes and kissing Dash's nose and smiling.
"Of course," she said. "But just because you can doesn't mean I don't want to."
The cinnamon oil she'd used still lingered in the vanes of Dash's feathers. Dash preferred natural wing-care; this was all a little too fru-fru, but she had to admit they did look kind of nice.
More to the point, her feathers had stayed neater than she expected. It took only a moment to make them perfect. Dash hopped out of bed and opened the door and almost ran over Fluttershy who was just about to come in with a tray balanced on her back.
"Oh sorry." She smiled, and her eyes seemed to light up the entire world. Dash's heart pounded, louder in her ears than Fluttershy's voice. "Good morning. Um. If you're up, we can use the table. I just thought..."
"That sounds great, Flutters," said Dash. "I'll just..."
What? "Take a leak?" Not that Dash was self-conscious or anything, but could she be any less romantic?
Once finished, Dash noticed somepony in the bathroom mirror. She was smiling and her eyes almost seemed to sparkle - not at all like herself. She shook her head and scowled and messed up her forelocks with a hoof, but then she only looked mean. Dash experimented with a little bit of a smile, which looked silly, and only then realized she was obsessing.
Dash laughed at herself. There. For a moment, she saw the real Rainbow Dash, carefree, confident, awesome, the usual. She tried to freeze that expression, but the love-struck other filly oozed through. She looked like the heroine of those silly romance novels Fluttershy and Rarity were always talking about.
Whatever. Dash decided to just roll with it. Since when did she start caring about how she looked?
Fluttershy was waiting for her at the little table in her parlor. Small creatures stirred around the margins of the room. The sunlight caught stray strands of her mane, making them a frizzy pink halo. Dash had never realized how beautiful her best friend was. Which was stupid, because she'd been there year after year while Dash had been... not noticing. Stupid.
And now they were together.
Dash took her seat. "This looks amazing, Fluttershy."
Hazelnuts with some kind of syrup in pastry shells were cooling on a plate in the center of the table. She and Flutters each had a glass of carrot juice with a straws in it, and their breakfast steamed in two bowls.
"It's nothing fancy," said Fluttershy. "Just hay and oats, really."
"Sticks and slop!" said Dash, then seeing Fluttershy's eyes fall she added, "That's what Gilda used to call hay and oats, back before... you know. She liked pony food, she just joked around."
"Oh." Fluttershy looked up. "You miss her."
"Good riddance," said Dash and scoffed. There was an over-easy egg on the top of each bowl of oats - the "plop on top" as G would say - and a few slices of buttered toast completed the meal. To change the subject, she picked up a knife and scored the egg's yolk, which flowed into the oats like a liquid sunset. "Woah," she said, her knife clinking on the bowl. "Where'd you get orange eggs?"
"They're supposed to be that color," said Fluttershy. Dash took a bite. "If the hens are healthy and eat plenty of... If they eat a good diet. Um, I wasn't sure how to cook yours, so I just made what I like."
"Overeasy's fine. But seriously, these are excellent. What do you feed them, anyway?"
Fluttershy looked down and chewed her breakfast. That gave Dash a moment to enjoy the slop - there was something in the oats that brought out the grassy spring shine of the hay, and the egg was very rich on her tongue, almost like butter.
Dash swallowed. Somepony else had the food-critic cutie mark and could probably describe it, but she wouldn't even try. All she knew was that it was almost good enough to make her cry - she could feel it in the back of her throat, a joyful tingly tightness.
What was going on, anyway?
"Um, well, chickens feed themselves," said Fluttershy. "If you let them. It's not fair how the big farms keep them cooped up and don't let them hunt and scratch."
"Hunt?" asked Dash. They didn't look like predators.
"Oh. It's a little bit gross. I didn't want to-"
"C'mon. Tell me."
"Insects," admitted Fluttershy. "They eat bugs, and if they don't their eggs don't taste right. I hope you don't mind."
Dash meant to say that it was alright. They really were good eggs, and it would take a lot more than that to gross her out. What came out was: "I love you."
Fluttershy blushed. "I love you too, Dashie."
They sat and steam rose from their breakfast. The moment seemed to stretch and stretch out toward forever, perfect and perfectly strange.
Somepony knocked on the door. Fluttershy got up to answer it, greeting Rarity. She was wearing a ridiculously large purple hat and a pair of silver-gray saddle bags.
"Good morning," said Fluttershy.
"And the best of mornings to you too, dear. I just wanted to thank you for the tea yesterday and return your things, but I can see-" Her eyes met Dash's for the briefest moment.
"It's no bother," said Fluttershy. "Please come in."
"Only if I'm not intruding," said Rarity. When Fluttershy stepped out of her way she allowed herself in.
"We were just having breakfast," said Fluttershy. "I didn't know you were coming..."
"I wouldn't say no to tea if it's no trouble."
"Just a moment," said Fluttershy. "I have a kettle warm." She disappeared into the kitchen.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.
Rarity sat by the table, at right angles to Dash and Fluttershy's places. She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Rainbow Dash, what do you think you're doing?"
"Uh, having breakfast?" she ventured.
"Clearly. But what are you doing here, mm? Surely you didn't spend the night."
"So what if I did?" Something very much like lightning prickled at the back of Dash's neck.
Fortunately, Fluttershy came back with the tea, which Rarity took with her magic. Peace reigned for a moment: Rarity sipped her tea, Fluttershy sucked a long drink of carrot juice up her straw, Dash chewed her oats.
Fluttershy said, "So, you can probably guess this already, but I hope Dash won't mind me saying it."
Dash shook her head slightly, but Fluttershy charged ahead.
"You wouldn't believe what she did last night, Rarity. It must have been the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen."
"And you two are dating, then," said Rarity flatly.
"Mmm-hmm," said Fluttershy, a huge grin spreading across her face. She giggled. "Yes. Yes we are."
Dash bit the inside of her mouth, bracing herself.
Rarity smiled. "Congratulations. To both of you. Goodness, and here I am interrupting your breakfast. I am sorry, truly. I should probably be going."
"No, no, please stay," said Fluttershy. "It's always a pleasure to have you visit."
"Yeah," said Dash. "So what's happening, Rarity? It seems like a while since we've seen you..." Dash swallowed hard. The last Rarity had seen of either of them was yesterday morning. Open mouth, insert hoof.
"Oh, I've just been... Well, I spent a good part of yesterday putting my sketches into a portfolio so I might find a model today. Just between the three of us, I have good feelings about this show."
Dash chased her oats with her carrot juice, bittersweet and bright. "Yeah. Sorry about that."
"Oh, Dash dear," - Rarity sipped her tea - "it's no trouble. You're not the only pegasus in Ponyville, after all. If the runway isn't your forte that is nothing to apologize for. I suspect you two had the more interesting day, mm?"
Dash scowled. Sure, there were other pegasi, but no way were any of them half as good-looking as she was. Not that she'd changed her mind, but...
Fluttershy filled the gap. "Oh, yes. We practiced flying together. I even did a... what was that called?"
"Stoop-and-Swoop," said Dash. Her sticks-and-slop-with-a-plop were getting heavy. What was Rarity's problem, anyway?
Dash let Fluttershy fill Rarity in, drawing loops and dives with her hooves and making soft "whoosh" and "whee" noises. Dash soldiered through the rest of her oats and a slice of toast and kept an eye on Rarity's reaction.
"So I guess it wasn't all bad I let myself get so carried away," Fluttershy finished. She blushed. "I... do you think I'm a bad pony, Rarity?"
Rarity had set her empty teacup down. Now she poured herself another half cup as she answered. "Fluttershy, I can scarcely imagine you doing anything wrong."
"I... I did jump Rainbow."
"That was more my fault," Dash admitted. "We were talking, and I kinda brought up the idea that I should practice dating somepony else and I guess that was a little too much. But, hey, no harm no foul, right?"
Rarity set her cup down. Dash could see her bite her lip. Fluttershy said, "But then we practiced flying - and Dash painted a sunset for me. I wish you could have seen it."
"I did, darling."
"Oh, but from a cloud, Rarity!"
Dash allowed herself a smile that might have been a little smug. "Yeah, I have no idea how I'm going to outdo that one."
Rarity blinked. Fluttershy smiled at Dash. "Would you care for a pastry, Rainbow?"
"Oo, yes please."
Fluttershy answered - not with words but by half-climbing the table, her wings mantling for balance. She picked up one of the hazelnut-filled shells and before either of her friends could properly react, she had passed it to Dash, brushed her lips-to-lips, and backed down to her place.
It was electric. Dash loved hazelnuts - and Rarity's speechlessness now was as sweet as the honey on them. Fluttershy said, "Don't worry about it. I think it's my turn now, Dashie."
Rainbow Dash took her time chewing and swallowing. "Ah. Is that how the rules go?"
"Rules?" asked Rarity. Her voice was small. "She is not just a game."
The air seemed to chill, or at least the silence made it feel that way.
"Sounds like a good rule to me..." said Fluttershy.
"Look," said Dash. She fixed Rarity's eyes. "Did anypony ask your advice?"
Rarity cleared her throat, politely.
"You're a good friend, but sometimes you don't know when to keep your mouth shut. Since when have I ever had 'just' game. I have game, not 'just' game. And I've got-" In the flash of a thunderstroke, Dash saw herself and Rarity and Fluttershy, who was cringing ever so slightly. And in the same flash, Dash saw herself with a much younger Fluttershy, weathering a storm of words that wounded the pink-maned filly more than they ever did her friends.
Dash meant to say she had it, but the lie died in her throat. "I've... I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't think about this sort of thing, or read those stories or anything. I just... Fluttershy, I want to make you happy, so I'm sorry."
Fluttershy shook her head and laughed. "Oh Dash, I love you just the way you are. But you really haven't read any romance stories, have you?"
"Whaddya mean?" Dash looked from Fluttershy to Rarity, who sure enough was trying to hide a smile, or possibly a smirk.
Rarity answered. "They're just fantasies anyway. Not how one should really go about finding one's soulmate."
"I'll save you the trouble of reading that stuff," said Fluttershy. "They pretty much all end like this: 'Then at long last they kissed and lived happily ever after.' At least, the happy ones do."
"Really?" said Dash. "Sounds more like a beginning to me."
That earned her a giggle at least from her friends, both of them, but Dash couldn't help feeling a little bit lost and out-of-place herself. "Seriously though," she said. "What do we do now?"
"We mustn't let ourselves get completely absorbed in each other," said Fluttershy. "I should wake Angel and feed the animals and I'm sure you have your responsibilities, too."
"Well, traditionally..." Rarity cleared her throat. "The second date is the stallion's responsibility, of course, but... Yes. It won't kill you two to give each other a little space. You wouldn't want to exhaust each other, and it takes time for feelings to mature. Haha. Not that I'm exactly the expert anyway."
"Like I said," said Fluttershy catching Dash's eye. "This one's my turn. I've got an idea, so just be patient."
Dash stood. "Yeah," she said and then, because she could, she stepped close to Fluttershy. The way the morning light caught in her eyes was really something - she could hardly wait to see them again. "See you around." She put her forehooves on Fluttershy's shoulders and embraced her, and they kissed. Dash was really starting to like that part.
Rarity left with Dash, saying that there was a "little something" she wanted to ask her about. They walked side by side, Rarity humming a little tune.
Her humming stopped once they were out of earshot. Both ponies' hooves crunched in the dirt, already warm in the morning sun.
"Rainbow Dash," said Rarity with soft intensity. "I ask you again: What are you doing?"
Dash stopped. "What? I'm doing what you said."
" 'What I sa-' " sputtered Rarity. "Rainbow Dash, I told you to console her. Not to- to bed her, you stupid, stupid pony!"
"Nuh-uh," said Dash. "You said, and I quote here: 'Rainbow Dash, in this store she who breaks any merchandise has purchased it. That goes for hearts as well.' " She took to the air.
At least, Dash tried to take to the air and would have flown off in a huff, but Rarity grabbed hold of her wings - her wings! - so that Dash could barely hover, shocked, between the silence and bird-calls.
"You are not yet dismissed, missy," said Rarity, her accent slipping from Manehattan back toward its Ponyville roots. "I will not see Fluttershy taken advantage of for anypony's amusement or experiment. And if you're thinking that you can't get her in a family situation earns you a free pass, think again. You will not toy with my best friend's heart. Am I clear?"
"Rarity." Anger licked at Dash's ears. "What's with you and sex? I'm honest here. I will make her happy. And, seeing how I've known her a lot longer than you have, I might know a thing or two more about your best friend than you do."
"Are you telling me you did not take-"
Dash leveled a shaking hoof at Rarity, who glared at her under hat and horn. "Last night isn't your business. And if you're so sure it is, you can go ask her yourself. Now let me go."
Rarity took a deep breath and lowered her eyes. "Promise me you're doing this for the right reasons."
"Of course I am."
"Say you love her!"
Dash looked Rarity in her eyes, sapphire-blue, angry and for whatever reason hurt. "I love her," she said. Her voice cracked.
Rarity let her go, and Dash went, faster and faster, trying to wash the shame off her wings. Whether it was the imprint of Rarity's touch or of honest guilt, Dash couldn't be sure.
But everything that had felt so perfectly right the night before now lay between the light of dawn and shade of doubt. |
Northern Stars | pre | The emptiness in me gives way to fury. I merely wanted to question him and yet he's not even deigning me with a look. Fine. So be it!
My horn flares into life and I project out my magic to incapacitate him. I feel the ethereal grip connect, yet he keeps on moving. This is impossible, I am the strongest spellcaster in Equestria! He should be squirming in my grasp!
I stop in utter confusion. Suddenly, almost at the same moment, he stops as well and slowly turns towards me. I can't really make out his features due to the darkness. His unnaturally white coat glistens in the cold air. We stare at each other for a few seconds.
"Who are you?" I finally ask him.
"Is that truly what interests you?" His accent is odd and his voice has a certain coldness to it.
"Answer the question!"
"I'm someone who may know all the answers to the questions that interest you."
It could be merely a trick of the light, but I could swear his mouth isn't moving.
"What happened to this place? Why is it enveloped in frost?"
"I could tell you, but wouldn't you prefer to see it with your own eyes? Come a bit closer," he says, while beckoning me with a hoof. Some of the words dissolve into a slight crunching noise as he speaks.
I follow him slowly.
"Just a bit more."
He's now only ahead of me by a few meters, yet I'm still unable to see as much as his cutie mark. Before I could catch up to him, he turns around once more and trots forwards. Now that I'm closer to him, I use the opportunity to take a better look. My eyes go wide, as the realization slowly dawns on me and I begin to feel the blood freeze in my veins. His... No, its gait is a complete mockery of the natural order. It is as if its joints are in completely different places than where they should be. As it steps, its thigh slightly buckles in the middle, while its knee remains completely rigid. As its front legs move, its shoulders don't seem to be rotating, instead it is like they are merely sliding inside its body.
I feel terror slowly creep up on my mind, but I push it back. I remain silent and slow down a little. It continues to trot forward and after a little while its body passes over an almost imperceptible barrier, which shimmers with a sickly green light where it is touched.
I stop before the field. Upon noticing that I've stopped, its head turns around in a way that I am certain would break a pony's neck.
"What's the problem? Don't you wish to know what happened?"
I don't budge.
"Tell me here and now."
It doesn't seem to like this. I can see its body tensing up.
"No time. Follow."
"No. You will tell me here."
"Follow. Now."
Its body seems more and more rigid as it continues to wave for me with movements that slowly begin to resemble a puppet being yanked around on strings. What an incredibly obvious trap.
"Follow," it croaks once more.
I make up my mind. I put a hoof forward, right at the edge of the barrier. In the very same moment, the pony explodes into a flurry of snow that violently slams into the field before sliding harmlessly to the ground. I yank my hoof back.
That's when I sense it. I cannot see anything on the other side, but I know something is there. Its ravenous hunger radiates through. It sputters and drools corrosive saliva all over the barrier. Its slavering mouths open and snap shut, gasping for air it cannot truly breathe. My nostrils fill with the nauseating smell of ozone mixed with liquefied, molding flesh. It batters the barrier with an immeasurable amount of spiny appendages and wet tentacles hanging off its pockmarked, bloated body, glistening with colors never meant for pony eyes. My ears are filled with an otherworldly chittering, like a hive of ants burrowed into my brain. A thousand cloudy, dead eyes glare at me. Some of them open like horrifying mockeries of mouths, revealing rows upon rows of rotten teeth yearning for my flesh and soul. The very space distorts and shifts around it.
Yet nothing is there.
I fall back on my haunches. My consciousness flickers like a candle in the wind. In this moment, I'm not King Sombra, I'm a foal who wandered off alone during the night never to be seen again. My mind stirs and in a blind, instinctual panic, I let out a whinny and scramble back to the spire. With a flash of light, I'm inside the old building once more. My magic slams the half-rotten bed against the hole and I lean against it. I close my eyes as I uselessly try to calm my breathing. Blood rushes in my ears, blocking out my raspy breaths. The icy air stabs my lungs.
Minutes pass and I slowly open my eyes. It didn't follow. I'm still not dead. It takes a great deal of effort, but I finally calm down enough to take another look around the room. It is just as barren as before and everything is where I left it. Suddenly I feel another presence in the spire, below me. I feel my blood run cold.
Did it break through?
No. I force some calmness onto myself. No, that barrier holds it outside.
I send a ping from my horn below. Even though it's buried deep in snow, the rest of the spire seems to have stayed hollow just like this room. I carefully carve a hole into the floor and look down. Only darkness greets me.
Wait, no. As I squint, I see a faint glimmer of light.
I float down. The air is stagnant. My landing kicks up a cloud of dust, sending me into a fit of coughs. When it finally clears, I focus my hornlight and look around. My heart pangs as I find myself in my old throneroom. I faintly see myself reflected in the walls, nothing more than a dark spot standing in the middle of even more darkness. Ancient banners, hanging from intricately carved pillars of crystal, declare my Empire's sovereignty. A lavish carpet leads to the throne standing in the middle. My throne. A mockery of everything I wanted.
Atop the throne sits the source of the light. My eyes fall upon an artifact I never expected to see again. The Crystal Heart.
I trot up to it, not daring to look away from it. It shines with the same sick green light as the barrier. I slowly stretch a hoof out and put it on its surface. It pulses and I feel my body forcibly dragged inside. |
Northern Stars | Ch.7 - Of Forlorn Echoes | "Don't feel too bad, I will be back for you soon, and then for the entirety of Equestria," I hear him yell, and a moment later he's gone. With my journal.
My body aches from the impact. I wince as I crack my eyes open and look down. My body is sprawled out like a discarded rug, propped up by the broken remains of what used to be my chair. As I lie there, small blotches of blood begin to stain my coat. Tears well up in my eyes, but I don't care about them. There is only a single, overwhelming thought echoing in my mind:
It's gone!
In my haze, my eyes wander upwards and I notice a blue and purple blotch move slightly in the distance. As I look at it, my ringing ears catch a fleeting, alien noise. It sounds so familiar, but my thoughts continue to hide behind a thick veil of confusion. I continue to stare into the nothing in utter incomprehension. Slowly I shake my head and blink a few times. As my vision clears, the ringing dies down and the noise comes closer, clearing into a sound.
The moment I realize what it is, it breaks me out of my stupor.
I look towards the source again. It is Izzy heaving on the floor.
"Why?" she stammers. "Why did he lie to us?"
Seeing her like that forces my body into action. I attempt to stand up, but my left hindleg buckles under my weight. It feels like it was struck with a white-hot iron. I scream from the pain. For a moment I even forget about the journal.
After the pain subsides a little, I grit my teeth and crawl away from the ruins of the chair. It takes me some effort to reach Izzy, but when I get there I wrap my hooves around her in a tight hug. I burrow my face into her coat. We stay that way for a few seconds. Eventually her breathing slows a little and I feel her body slightly loosen up. My tears continue to flow freely. She silently runs a hoof through my mane.
"We will get it back," she whispers to me in a low voice.
This just makes me cry even harder.
"How?" I break away from her hug and scream in her face. "Don't you get it? We're ants compared to him! He subjugated an entire empire! Alone!"
"Maybe, but unlike him, you're not alone."
I look up at her. Izzy is staring into the distance. Her eyes are shining with determination. She looks down at me and they soften a bit.
"Sunny, you've shown us we can all be friends. And friends help when you're in need."
Can I really believe her? Do we stand a chance?
"If we don't do anything, then he'll just come back and there will be no more fun afterwards. I don't want to see you in chains... or worse," despite her firm expression, her voice is shaking with fear.
"I... I don't want to see anything like that happen to you either," I reply slowly. She gives me another firm hug.
"We must talk to the others. Everyone. There is not a single pony in Equestria who's safe as long as he's around."
I've never seen her so serious before. It's contagious. I feel some of my strength returning.
"You're right, Izzy. We can't just sit here. Go home, tell the unicorns what happened and that they should prepare to defend themselves. I will ask Hitch to spread the news here and I'll go to Zephyr Heights myself. Come back, when you're done. We'll decide what to do next when all of us are together."
"Sunny!" she says forcefully. "You'll go nowhere! You're injured."
"It's nothing," I say, but she knows I'm lying. Her frown tells me as much.
"Lie down. Get some rest. I'll tell Hitch everything and we'll take care of it."
I try to protest, but she gently pushes me back.
"You've done a lot for us already. You've given me hope when I had none. Please, let me try to do the same."
I try to stand up again, but the pain makes me collapse back to the floor. I relent.
"Go, I'll be okay."
She helps me to the couch and gives me a final hug before hurrying out. I climb up and allow my leg to stretch out. The pain dulls a little and I fall into a dreamless sleep.
I find myself in an empty void once more. This time, however, I'm not surrounded by darkness, but a brilliant white light in every direction I can see. I'm also not floating. Despite nothing being under my hooves, I can still walk.
I trot forward. A colorful shape lies in front of me in the distance, but I can't make out what it is. I can feel it call out to me.
I don't know how long I walk. As hours or perhaps merely seconds pass, I feel a serene calmness overtake me and I forget about everything that happened to me recently. This seems like a nice place to lie down and give myself to oblivion.
A pleasant tingle passes over my body as it relaxes. I feel my eyelids slowly becoming heavier and heavier.
As I begin to give myself over to rest, suddenly images of the being flash in my mind. I jolt awake, as if I was struck by a lightning bolt.
No. What am I even thinking? That thing is out there. Any moment it could break through!
With the tiredness banished from my body, I decide to gallop on towards the mysterious object.
I can finally see what lies in front of me. A small sphere hangs in the air, its surface radiating the colors of a rainbow shifting and mixing in wondrous patterns.
My hooves freeze to the ground. Hidden behind the glow of the orb I spot a slender figure. Her eyes are closed in focus, as her horn fires a beam of light into the object in front of her.
I know her.
She might have become more akin to her mentors over the years, but other than that it is still just her. The same purple coat. The same blue mane.
She is the one who sent me to the darkness.
Her sight returns the pain to me with renewed fury. Even in this void of complete light I feel the darkness creep up on me. The silence fades as the eons spent alone begin to howl into my ears once more. I stumble a step back and grit my teeth, but it's no use. I shiver as the laughing chorus of my inner voices slowly tears itself from the cacophony and forces me to relive the feeling of reality stripped away from my body. They remind me how I immediately understood there would be no return.
I am forced to recall every single inconsequential detail. The colors of each of those blasted flowers in the palace. The crystals jutting out of the floor. The gaudy stained glass windows heralding the victories of my enemies. My new throne, the coldness of which was the last thing I ever felt before my utter annihilation.
I remember cherishing my victory before that mismatched Snake tricked me by appearing weak. That accursed trickster... I hope he rots in Tartarus! Oh, the triumph I felt when I thought I defeated him. What a vain and naive fool I was! I should have known I never stood any real chance against him. It should have been so blatantly obvious that he wasn't seriously hurt! But by then it was too late. My goading and his laughable theatrics were enough to enrage the Six and seal my fate.
And, finally, I can still remember the confident and cocky look on her face. On all of their faces. It was no glorious battle ending in a fair and noble defeat. No, for me it was the beginning of unending torment, but for her and her friends? For them it was just another day.
It is a humiliation beyond what a pony can suffer.
The pain blooms into anger and my vision narrows on her. My thoughts fade as I tap into my deepest reservoirs of magic and prepare the vilest, most malevolent spell I know. A spell I was too soft to use on her back then, thinking even after she caused my demise, she still didn't deserve it. This time, I have no such reservations. A small dot of complete darkness forms on the tip of my horn, crackling with magic. The very space warps around it as it continues to increase in strength. Even I am not sure how potent this spell is once I release it.
My mind screams at me to attack. To unleash the spell and obliterate her before she even has the chance to notice me. I've suffered for far too long, while she prospered. I glare at her in anticipation as a dull ache fills my horn from the overwhelming energy stored inside it.
"Stay your horn, Umbrum." Her voice suddenly cuts through the silence, yet her mouth doesn't open. "Whatever be the reason you came here, you'll find nothing you want. Leave me be and never come back."
I force the anger and hate into the back of my mind, at least for the time being. I keep the spell primed, but I do not fire. If she's this confident to threaten me without even looking at me, she is either completely insane or more powerful than what I could hope to fight. Until I figure out which is the case, any rash action could prove to be suicidal. Haste and vanity brought my downfall too many times already. I will never get my justice if I keep committing the same mistakes. I must not fail myself again.
I take a better look. Her body is slightly translucent and pulses with light in a slow rhythm. Even now she continues to keep her eyes closed.
Confusion rises in me.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"Is it not obvious? I am protecting Equestria from the being outside."
I feel a shiver down my spine, as I realize it isn't just her voice I'm hearing. Echoes of other ponies mix into her speech, too quiet to be recognized, yet too loud to be ignored. I glance around to see if this is some sort of trick or ambush, but she merely continues to stand there, without even opening her eyes.
My caution bursts into flame. Why does she think me below herself still?
"Stop hiding behind your sphere and face me with dignity!"
She shows no reaction. Instead she merely asks, "Is my destruction truly what you desire?"
"Yes!" I yell, slamming my hoof down. It makes no sound as it collides with the solid nothing below. For a moment my grasp on the spell falters and it violently pulses before I get it under my control again. "You and your little friends may have defeated me back then, but I have returned! And I will have my justice!"
"You're no enemy of mine anymore," her multitude of voices echo somberly. "The young mare who banished you might as well be dead."
What?
I take another look at her. The realization slowly dawns on me: She don't seem exactly... alive, more like a statue. I focus on my horn and allow my spell to collapse on itself. As it blinks out of existence it leaves nary more than a bit of arcane dust that fades away as it falls down.
"What happened?" There is humility in my voice, though I don't understand why. "Why is that thing haunting my Empire's border?"
"The truth lies in the past, buried along with everyone I ever cared for. No one knows how and why the being found Equestria. Not that it would change anything. One day my biggest worry was making sure everyone had a friend... The next, preventing the total annihilation of my subjects."
A pained, hollow laugh rings out from her, echoing a few times in the deafening silence.
"We tried everything. Yet not even our strongest spells could do as much as even scratch the creature, as it continued to devour city after city in blind, senseless carnage."
She gasps as if to stifle a tear, but her body remains unmoving.
"In desperation we stripped the world of magic, eradicated the Windigos, and formed the barrier to protect Equestria. We sacrificed our subjects' heritage, the lives of millions of creatures who could not survive without magic. It wasn't enough. The barrier was too weak. Deep down we all knew it would break after just a few years, even with all those lives fueling it."
She interrupts her monologue with a ragged sigh. Neither of us speaks for a while, as she tries to compose herself again.
"Finally the other alicorns... My family after my family... They chose me to stay behind and guard this world." With each word her voice becomes more and more pained and the chorus dissonant. "Celestia, Luna, Cadance, even Flurry, they all gave me their life and magic. And even then, when our combined power came this tantalizingly close to repel the being, it wasn't enough."
As her echoes slowly die down, I find myself unable to even say anything. We stand there in silence for a few seconds.
"So you have... their magic?" The question absentmindedly slips from my mouth.
"Yes. And more. I possess all of the magic, be it from the pegasi, the unicorns, or earth ponies," she replies weakly, before pausing for a moment. "All except yours."
So this is what Izzy meant.
"Not all of it. Magic has returned, I saw it with my own eyes."
The alicorn's face remains set in stone. Yet when she speaks again, her voices tremble with fear and rage.
"You lie!" she sneers.
"Why would I? Didn't you just say you're not my enemy?"
Silence falls upon us. Only the sphere hums softly, its colors ever-shifting.
"King Sombra," she finally says. "Whether what you are saying is true or not, I require your magic."
"What?" I stare at her in disbelief.
"The dark magic that sustains and strengthens you is the push I need to finally banish the creature. After so many centuries Equestria could finally be saved! My centuries of watch could finally be over! You must help me!"
Her pleading voices do little to soften the blow.
"Never!" I lash back at her audacity. "I didn't suffer pain and humiliation for so long to become your pawn!"
As rage wells in me, I take another step closer and jab an accusatory hoof in her direction.
"You will find no lackey in me!" A sadistic smirk creeps on my face. "Now that I know the others are dead and you cannot intervene, there is nothing that stands in my way to finally conquer Equestria! I shall rebuild my Empire! And you will be forced to protect me!"
"You would truly become an enemy to everyone just to satiate your ego?" she asks quietly.
"Ego?" I scoff. "This is merely the honor and duty of any ruler!"
My labored breathing is the only sound breaking the silence for a few seconds.
"Go then, King, enjoy your decade of reign." Her voices lower to a whisper. I could swear her face is scowling at me. Yet when I blink, it is just as serene as before. "I am bound to protect and perhaps, if I'm powerful enough, you might even rule a century. But if what you're saying is true, time is running out.
"That thing out there is ravenous for magic. We hoped that by sealing all of it away, the creature would lose interest and leave. This proved to be the fantasy of false optimism. Though it ceased its endless attacks, it never moved on. Still it lurks just beyond the barrier, waiting with senseless patience. And if my grip on magic truly is slipping as you say, it will eventually become rabid once more and I will grow too weak to hold it back.
"Will you have the strength in that last moment to look into your subjects' eyes, knowing your vanity doomed them all?"
As her quiet accusation washes over me, I feel my blood slowly freeze in my veins.
"You're- You're bluffing," is all I manage to reply.
"Am I? You seem to have made up your mind. Leave now, allow me to grieve for this dying world in peace."
I find no rebuttal. This doesn't feel like the victory I was coveting.
I slowly turn around. Though her eyes remain closed, I can feel her glare on my back as I walk away. With each step the light grows harsher, until I cannot see anything anymore.
I take a few more steps and suddenly my hoof lands on solid ground. My eye adjusts to the sudden darkness and I find myself back in the throneroom. The Heart lies behind me, still bathed in an ethereal glow. I fly back to the room above. I reel back from the bed-barricade's sight and avert my eyes. They fall upon the journal. With almost mechanical movements, I take it into my hooves, before trotting out to the balcony once more. I spend some time looking towards the south.
Then my horn flashes and the shadows take me once more. |
Northern Stars | Ch.8 - Of the Calm before the Storm | Only a few minutes passed after Izzy left, when I hear my door open again. I slowly crack my eyes open. I try to raise myself, but after a surge of stinging pain, I decide otherwise.
A red stallion stands in front of me. He stares at me with his mouth slightly agape.
"What did he do to you?" he manages to whisper.
"Sprout?" I ask with disbelief. "Is that you?"
"I heard from Hitch that you were in trouble. I, uh, I just had to check on you," he says as he casts his eyes on the floor. "I knew trusting the unicorns was a mistake," he mutters.
"Sprout!" I reply, raising my voice. I shuffle slightly on the couch, so that I can look at him better. "He's not just some unicorn. He is an ancient, evil king!"
"I know, I know, Hitch told me already. I'm just saying, if we hadn't opened the town this wouldn't have happened." He doesn't look into my eyes as he speaks.
Unbelievable.
"If you're only here to lecture me, I'd rather be left alone."
His ears flop. He quickly clears his throat.
"No, no, that's not..." He groans in frustration. "I'm sorry. How do you feel?"
"Well you know, my leg is broken, my father's legacy is stolen, a powerful wizard is threatening to enslave us all, and somepony who I believed had changed is doing nothing but rubbing it in!"
With each word he shrinks back further away from me. I see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He turns away from me and starts to slowly move towards the door.
Stars, what am I doing?
"Wait! Sprout!" I yell after him. He turns back. His expression is blank.
"No, you're right, Sunny. I'm a terrible friend. I shouldn't have come here." His voice is low, subdued.
Before I can say another word, he darts out. I sink deeper into the couch.
Can this day get any worse?
I find no strength to contemplate the question. Sleep overtakes me once more.
Days pass and slowly my pain dulls. While I still can't move around very fast, I can at least take care of myself now, without needing to rely on somepony else.
It was about time too. I find myself worrying about Izzy far more than myself at this point. The poor girl has been overworking herself since our encounter with the king.
When she's not out there, dedicating her time to the town, she's with me, catering to my every need. Even though I've told her several times that I'm fine and that it is not necessary.
I can't help but smile.
If- No, that's not the right mindset. When this whole thing blows over, we must throw her a massive party, I think to myself.
With a small groan I get out of my couch. We haven't yet had the time to fix the elevator and I'd still rather not chance the stairs, so I've just been living downstairs. Izzy, of course, offered to bring my bed down, but I insisted that she should conserve her magic.
Who knows when he will return.
I glance at the side of the room. My trusty roller-skates beckon me, but I turn my head away. Not a good idea.
Instead, I slowly walk over to the door and open it. The gentle slope that leads to the city is usually very welcoming, but now every step is an obstacle to be conquered. But I cannot laze around anymore. I must do what I can for the others. That's what the Princess would do as well.
I hurry as much as I can, but it still takes me a long time to get into the city proper. As I'm getting closer, I stare at the barricades erected around the city. A frown creeps on my face. They are made from flimsy planks and whatever other junk the city could salvage. I think a stronger wind could probably knock them over.
What's worse, I can hardly see anypony around them. Only the barricade closest to me has two ponies posted next to it, the others stand empty, allowing anypony to just waltz in, without us knowing about it.
I think back to the previous few days.
Hitch was, of course, mortified when he heard the news. I don't think I have ever seen him so scared and angry before. He immediately called for a town meeting right next to my house. At first, especially after seeing my sorry state, everypony was eager to help. Though not many wanted to play military after Sprout's little incident, the city agreed to set up a militia of sorts to protect ourselves against the king.
Though at first it seemed like cool heads may prevail, eventually a collective panic took hold on the others and they began to propose all sorts of wild ideas. I guess this is partly on me. I merely wondered aloud whether we could organize some sort of patrol or watch on a voluntary basis that could alert and buy us some time when he returns. The others were so into the idea that they quickly began to chime in with their own far more far-fetched ones. By the time the meeting ended, everypony's minds were full of nonsensical plans like compulsory combat training or even repurposing some of Ms. Cloverleaf's inventions as actual weapons to use against the king.
Though, at the very least, Izzy was able to convince some Bridlewood ponies to come over and bolster our defenses. It's funny how a crisis can bring us together like that.
My train of thought is derailed by the two guards at the barricade. One of them, a brown stallion with a black mane, salutes me, before his partner, a pink mare with a light green mane, pokes him in the side. They laugh then return to patrolling. Both of them are wearing those ridiculous anti-mind-reading helmets.
I sincerely hope they're only trying to protect their heads.
I roll my eyes and sigh as I walk past them into the city. As much as I hate to ruin anypony's fun, this isn't the time to joke around. My mind picks up the thread where I left it.
While spirits were high in the beginning, as time passed and the town suffered no attack, the ponies slowly became less and less concerned with the situation at hoof.
At first some of the guards decided to take longer naps and turned up late or occasionally forgot their schedule. Annoying, but manageable. But, by the end of the week, they outright didn't even take their posts. The newest dumb movie was more interesting than staring out of your head at a peaceful meadow for eight to ten hours a day.
A few foals run past me, playing tag. As I look back at them, my eyes meet their parents'. I can see a hint of guilt on their faces before they quickly turn and usher their kids away. Both sides know, this isn't what we agreed on. Children should not prance around on streets that could become a battlefield at any moment. I see no point in lecturing individuals though, so I continue my walk towards the sheriff's office.
Hopefully together we might be able to convince folks to take things a bit more seriously.
The guards' laziness was already a big hit to our security, but then the Bridlewood ponies became homesick as well. Though, I can't fully blame them. As much as we've been trying to encourage the town to be more welcoming towards them, some old tensions still reared their ugly heads. An unsought word here, an accidental insult there and a lot of small conflicts eventually added up. Finally, they found it too much and decided to leave. Poor Izzy tried her hardest to convince them to stay, but she was told to chase butterflies elsewhere.
The rest of our plans didn't go anywhere either, though I expected as much. We aren't exactly fighters after all. There was nopony who could teach combat in either Maretime Bay or Bridlewood, and we figured Zephyr Heights was way too far away to be contacted in time.
As for that other brilliant idea? As it turned out, while the splat-a-pults are great at hurling slime at innocent ponies, they are far too frail to throw anything heavy enough to cause much harm. But even if we were to reinforce them, a powerful unicorn like Sombra could probably just swat away anything we threw at him, so this idea too was scrapped.
Other than the barricades, which were deemed to be far too big of a hassle to dismantle for the time being, life has mostly returned to its usual sleepy monotonousness. But, as much as I'd love to be as carefree as the others, I can feel it in my bones that he will come back any day now. And seeing how unprepared the town is, I can't help but feel a bit terrified.
I am so lost in thought that I almost bump into Hitch, who is just stepping out of his office.
"Sunny, what are you doing out here?" he asks me.
"Hi, Hitch! I figured I'd drop by to see if I could help with something." I squeeze as much enthusiasm as I can into my voice.
"Sunny, you're still injured! You should be resting at home. Let us take care of things. Please."
"And then what? Sleep through when he comes back?" I ask him with a scoff. "Hitch, I appreciate that you're worried about me, but this is far more important than a sprained ankle."
I can see it on his face that he's not happy with my answer. But then he snorts and shakes his head.
"Fine, I know how headstrong you are. Just promise me not to overexert yourself."
"I'm not the sort to disobey the sheriff's orders," I tell him with a smirk. He rolls his eyes, but I can still hear a stifled chuckle escape him.
My voice turns serious, "So, let's get back to the point, any luck with the others?"
He shrugs and averts his eyes.
"Nah. I was hoping to call another meeting today and maybe find some new guards who'd be willing to work on a laxer schedule or something. I don't know. This whole situation is a mess. And then there is this."
He takes a step to the side and points at a poster on the wall. The words "MISSING PONY" can be read on it in bold letters, below them a familiar red face stares back at me, with a less than amused expression on his face.
I look at the poster, then at Hitch questioningly.
"Yeah, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Nopony has seen Sprout since that king came here and Ms. Cloverleaf is in a complete panic. She has been pestering me to go look for him every single day." He sighs in exasperation and massages his temple for a second before continuing in a more sympathetic tone. "I understand her concerns and, in any other case, I would've gone after him already, but the town's protection comes first." He pauses for a second and snorts. "Let's be honest, he was never exactly the brave type, I bet he just ran off into the forest until this whole thing blows over."
He shrugs.
"This is probably for the best anyway, he'd just mess things up."
"Hitch!" I give him a scalding look. "Sprout might have a lot of issues, but he wants the best just as you or I."
"Yeah," he says as he flicks his tail. "Last time he 'wanted the best,' you were almost killed!"
"Just give him some time. He will be back, I'm sure."
"Yeah, right."
As I'm about to give him a retort, I spot Izzy turn a corner and trot towards us. She's wearing a small pouch, packed to the brim with small round objects. She seems to be lost in thought and doesn't even seem to notice we're in her way. As she comes closer, I notice with a frown that her mane is far less puffy than usual and her eyes have dark circles under them.
"Hi Hitch," she says almost mechanically. Her voice is flat and tired, but as soon as she spots me, she perks up a little and flashes me a wide smile. "Oh, hi Sunny! Didn't expect you to be here. Shouldn't you be resting at home?"
"Hi Izzy!" I greet her while giving her a quick hug. "I figured I'd finally stick my nose out. I've been lazing around for far too long."
"Oh okay. I was just about to pass some lunch to those two at the barricades. They really seem to take their job seriously!"
I'm not so sure about that, I think to myself, but I keep my expression positive. The last thing she needs is my doubt.
"I'll go with you, then we can figure out what to do next."
"Yeah, I'll come as well, I wanted to ask them if they've seen anything that might help us find Sprout." |
Northern Stars | Ch.9 - Of Darkness in Daylight | Soon we find ourselves at the barricades again. Despite their flimsiness, they do seem somewhat intimidating from up close, but sadly that is hardly enough against what we're facing. Behind them, the two guards I passed previously are still making their rounds.
"Hi! The food is here!" Izzy tells them, and they immediately stop their patrol.
"Oh, thank goodness!" the pink mare replies excitedly. If I remember correctly, her name is Cream Puff. "Coal and I thought you'd never come."
"Haha, sorry, sorry, just got caught up in a few things," Izzy says as she floats the bag into the mare's hooves using her magic. As she opens it, the sweet smell of pancakes fills the air.
As Cream digs in, Hitch turns to the stallion.
"So, have you two seen anything odd since my last visit? Any unexpected disturbances or anything? Perhaps a certain red-coated troublemaker?" he adds with slight annoyance in his voice.
"Nope. Just the usual," Coal replies before accepting a pancake from Cream and biting into it. "Not that I mind though. It's more time I can spend with Cream."
The two share a soft look.
"Yeah, we were just talking before you arrived about how much those black crystals remind me of his mane," she continues with an affectionate chuckle. Even with her pink coat trying its best to hide it, her face still glaringly shows the telltale signs of blushing. "Funny how I only just noticed them being there."
"Black... crystals?" I stammer as my heart begins to pound. I look at Izzy and Hitch. They are staring back at me in terror, hooves frozen to the ground. "Are you sure?"
A moment passes. It feels like eternity.
"Yup, check them out," she says cheerfully and points in the distance. "Oh, wow! I could have sworn they were further away. It's almost like they came closer."
My eyes follow her hoof and I feel the blood rush out of my face. In the distance I can spot several crystals jutting out of the ground, their blackness contrasting unnaturally with the cheerful green grass and blue sky behind. They are exactly like the ones my dad's journal spoke about.
This breaks our stupor.
"What are you waiting for? Sound the alarm already!" Hitch yells at them while slamming a hoof down. "That's the king! We have to get everypony to safety!"
While her expression remains relaxed, Cream's voice is slightly wavering as she speaks, "Umm, you're just pulling a prank on me, right? There isn't actually an evil king, is there?" She chuckles nervously. "I thought the whole thing was just a joke."
"You might wanna look behind yourself," I mutter while pointing behind them.
While they weren't looking a massive dark cloud formed on the horizon, heading straight for the city. Below it a dozen or so new black crystals began to emerge out of the earth. Patches of the cloud's roiling black surface are eerily illuminated by the muted flashes of lightning bolts. Whenever one of them strikes the ground a new crystal erupts on the spot. The wind brings the faint smell of ozone in our direction.
"Oh horseapples," she says flatly as her ears flop down.
A moment later, the duo drops their half-eaten pancakes and frantically gallops away towards the city center.
"The king is here! The king is here!" they scream, and the other townsponies break into a panic. They scramble in all directions to find shelter, knocking chairs and tables aside. The screaming banishes the previous quiet.
The alarm suddenly begins to blare as well, further adding to the cacophony.
Trying my best to ignore the chaos, I take another look over the barricade. As the cloud shifts closer, I spot a dark figure walking among the crystals. He is wearing a royal cape, armor, and crown, but otherwise he looks the same.
I'm looking at the pony who has been haunting my dreams since that day.
I glance backwards again. Everypony is falling over each other in a blind hysteria. I struggle to get my own head straight.
Oh, what do I do? What do I do? Just like the crowd, my own thoughts are tripping up on each other. Do I rally them? Tell them to leave the city? Do I join them? Perhaps if I blend in, he won't notice me. I could get away safely. Maybe he'll be happy with just this town and he'll leave the rest alone.
My eyes jump around wildly as I'm looking for the best direction to escape towards, when I suddenly glance at Izzy. She staring at me with wet eyes. The realization slowly dawns upon me: She's expecting me to take charge. I feel a rush of adrenaline and, though my heart continues to race, the storm in my head calms and I finally know what to do.
"Izzy, Hitch, we're doing that meeting now!" I yell at them and they merely nod before rushing off to direct the crowd back towards us.
I ignore a wave of nausea as it hits me. Blood rushes in my ears and I feel my hooves tremble, but I force my body to move into the middle of the chaos.
I close my eyes for a second and try to ignore the noise. I take a deep breath.
"Everypony, stop!" I scream, overpowering the chaos.
It takes quite some time to organize them somehow, but finally we herd everypony back to the square.
I clamber up on a nearby box and stare at the crowd in front of me. The townsponies are looking at me with fearful gazes. My throat feels dry. I was never really good with crowds and now I have to improvise on the spot. I take a deep breath and speak up.
"I'm terrified as much as you are, but if we panic, he won't even have to try. We have to face him to even stand a chance."
"But he has magic!" somepony yells from the crowd.
"We all have magic and he's alone. If we face him together, we can defeat him! We can win!"
My voice isn't exactly as commanding as I'd like, but I have to believe in myself and press on.
"We have to show him that we're not afraid and that he'll never enslave us!"
Some faces in the crowd seem just a bit less panicked than before.
Yes, we can do this, I just need to-
"My, my, my. How incredibly touching," a voice suddenly says behind me, enunciating each word with dripping malice. Despite its charismatic smoothness, I feel a shiver run down my spine.
The ponies who were until now beginning to finally listen to me gaze behind me, and their eyes go wide. They start panicking once more and rush away, leaving Hitch, Izzy, and I to fend for ourselves.
I turn around slowly.
He stands mere meters from me, surrounded by several giant crystals erupting from the pavement. There's a cocky smirk plastered on his face as his piercing, red eyes burrow deeply into mine. Even in my shock I can't help but marvel a little at the mesmerizing patterns made by the dancing purple flames emanating from the corners of his eyes.
"It appears your little speech was a bit less effective that one could hope for. What a shame," he says with feigned, mocking sympathy. "Don't feel too bad though. Even if your whole town threw itself against me, it would've been for naught. You need a bit more than a few ponies in silly hats to put someone like me down."
I involuntarily take a step back and fall off the box. As my hooves hit the pavement below, my hind leg flares with searing pain, but the adrenaline allows me to remain standing. My mind is screaming at me to run, but I endure.
"You're lying! The Magic of Friendship can overcome even the likes of you!"
"Perhaps, perhaps not," he says musingly, while tipping his head from one side to the other. "Unfortunately, today isn't the day we put this to the test."
It takes several moments until I process what he just said. Confusion hits me.
"What?"
He gives me no answer. Instead, his horn lights up and a a wave of shadows erupts from him towards me. Before I can even do as much as scream, it swallows me completely.
I grit my teeth and shut my eyes tight as I wait for the impact, but it never comes. After a few moments, I tentatively open them once more. Not only am I unharmed, we are still standing in the same place. I can tell it from the faintly visible cobblestone path under my hooves and the knocked-over box beside me. Only now an undulating sphere of pure blackness separates us from the world. I cannot hear a single sound coming from outside. I glance around for an escape, but besides his hornlight and my own ethereal wings and horn bringing some light into the darkness, there is nothing else in here.
Without a word, he makes a slicing motion with his hoof and a dark gash opens in the air next to him. He reaches inside and pulls something out, before the ethereal wound disappears into nothing again. I gasp when the light falls on what he's holding.
A small book lies between his hooves. One with a familiar six pointed star on it.
My heart begins to pound faster and faster. There is no mistake.
It is my journal.
"Is this your plan?" I scream at him as I feel a wave of despair hit me. "To separate me from my friends and humiliate me?"
He once again says nothing. Instead he seems to be deep in thought. We continue to stare at each other. Despite their menacing purple flames, his eyes don't seem to be quite as piercing as before. Still, I can't afford to drop my guard. I take the closest thing I know to a fighter's stance, ignoring my leg's protests.
I'm prepared to protect my friends, even if it costs me my life.
"No," he finally says after a few seconds. He relaxes his pose and holds the book out towards me. "I came here to give this back to you."
I stare at the book, then at him in disbelief. He makes no other movement. His burning eyes continue to burrow into mine.
Am- Am I dreaming?
"Go on then, take it. It is an outrage to decline a king's magnanimous present."
This can't be real, I think as my mind races for an explanation. There can be no other reason, he's just toying with me!
"Stop trying to trick me! I'm not stupid, I won't fall for something this obvious!"
He sighs and rolls his eyes as his horn flashes brightly for a moment. In the blink of an eye, a number of crystals rip out of the sphere stopping mere centimeters from my neck. I let out a whimper.
"Does it seem like I need to resort to tricks?" he asks quietly. "Or have you perhaps forgotten how our last meeting ended?"
The crystals melt into shadows, then disappear.
"Take it, before I change my mind."
I feel like I'm sleepwalking as I trot up to him. Without taking my eyes off him, I take the journal and step back.
"Why?" I finally manage to ask. "Why are you giving it back?"
He just laughs bitterly.
"Where I'm going, I won't need it. Call it a royal obligation, if you will."
"I don't understand."
He smiles, but his eyes remain cold.
"Pray that you never will."
Before I could say another word, the light of his horn goes out and the sphere collapses on us, evaporating into nothing. I yank my hoof in front of my eyes as the sudden light blinds me. I stumble around from the sudden sensation, blinking blearily.
Finally my vision slowly clears and I find my bearings, though I still feel a bit dazed. My mind is full of questions. My eyes snap forwards, but all I see in front of myself are holes in the torn-up pavement where his crystals previously erupted. I hear Izzy and Hitch rush towards me and call out my name, but I pay them no attention. Instead I look down.
My hooves are still clutching the journal. |
Northern Stars | Ch.10 - Of Abdication and Absolution | As the darkness fades, I find myself in that old, familiar room. The bed has since fallen over, likely from the assault of winds and, through the once-again open hole, I glance to the wasteland beyond. Its gentle slopes and virgin snow standing in stark contrast to the dark skies above would delight any artist's heart, but I merely shudder from the knowledge of the annihilation lurking in plain sight.
The moment I make sure nothing has changed, the last few minutes begin to haunt my mind. I start pacing up and down in the room. Abruptly I stop and stroke my mane.
What a fool I am... My shoulders bounce as I laugh to myself silently. I have seen what this world has decayed into. With that journal taking over everything would be so easy. What has gotten into me?
Of course, I know the answer. It stares me right in the muzzle through that accursed hole. Rage takes over me and I slam the bed against the gash once more. As it crashes loudly into the wall, splinters and rubble scatter around me. The noise echoes in the room a few times, then fades into nothing.
In my moment of victory, fate still robs me blind!
My magic levitates the weathered sofa off the ground and flings it into a corner. With another flick of my horn the remains ignite.
I stare into the mesmerizing dance of the flames. In a way, I see myself in them. Despite being brilliant and untouchable, I'm still destined to burn out when the time comes.
And that time is now.
I curse the cruelty of it all. The feeling of coldness completely fades. My body feels like it too is burning. In a blind rage I slam every other piece of furniture against the ground. And after those are all smashed into pieces, I conjure up crystal after crystal.
Finally the floor itself gives in to my brutal assault. Cracks like spiderwebs spread along the ground, before it suddenly collapses with a deafening crack. I lose my footing and time almost seems to crawl to a halt, as I find myself falling.
The impact, however, never arrives. I instinctually catch myself with my magic mid-flight and slowly float down instead.
Once more I find myself in the throne room. This time though, it's not merely just dust that greets me, but the repercussions of my destruction. The hanging banners lie scattered across the ground, knocked off by falling debris. The gleaming floor itself is cracked and marred from the chunks of crystals that crashed into it. I struggle to blink the kicked-up cloud of dust out of my eyes. As my vision clears, I notice that the throne itself is chipped and its backrest toppled over onto the seat.
Immediately, my rage is snuffed out and terror fills my heart. I approach the throne with trembling hooves. I find only darkness. I hesitate for a second. Staying ignorant seems so inviting, when a possible outcome is certain doom. I grit my teeth and close my eyes. Cowering in fear is for lesser unicorns. I must face the consequences of my actions.
I light my horn again. Magic envelops the piece of stone and flings it away.
As I open my eyes again, a familiar glow greets me. Immense relief washes over me and I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in. The Heart is still there, likely protected by the same magic that protects the world.
Having confirmed my immediate survival, I turn around and observe the chamber. I realize, with bitter irony, that I accomplished what time wasn't capable of and destroyed a memento that survived centuries.
I find myself chuckling at the absurdity of the situation. Perhaps a ruined palace befits me, considering what's about to happen.
I turn back towards the Heart and stare into the faint, ethereal glow. I see tired, hollow eyes look back at me. My own reflection.
I sigh. There are no more excuses to be made.
I touch the crystal and allow myself to be dragged inside by its power.
The moment I come to, I immediately start moving forward. I don't gawk at the white space inside, I don't question the impossibility of walking on nothing. I disregard the alluring peace of the void. This time my steps have a purpose to them.
After a minute of walking in silence, I stand in front of the luminescent sphere once more.
Though she continues to be still like a statue, I feel the princess's attention focus on me.
"You have returned," I hear her choir in my mind. She sounds confused. "Why?"
I take another long look at her before answering. My throat feels sore. For the first time since I came back, I find it hard to speak.
"I had no other choice," I finally say.
It is now her turn to remain silent for a while. Her ethereal mane continues to flow from a breeze felt only by her kind.
"Are you not aware of what I must do to you?" her voices say in unison eventually. "Perhaps not today, nor tomorrow, but without your magic to sustain you, you will surely die."
"The same fate awaits me if I refuse, doesn't it?" I reply with an indignant huff. "Spare me your compassion and let's not waste any more words."
"Very well."
In the same moment the alicorn's eyes snap open. In her eye-sockets I see the same radiance the sphere emits. The beam from her horn strengthens and the orb itself begins to glow brighter and brighter, before a ray of light erupts from it, striking me true in my chest.
The pain is indescribable.
I howl and scream and throw myself against the nonexistent ground. I claw and writhe as every single cell in my body shrieks in panic. The very essence of immortality is drained from me. I feel the incredibly slow but unstoppable rot that my power held at bay until now gleefully encroach upon me. The purple flames in my eyes evaporate and my crimson horn darkens to a dull black as the magic is torn from my body.
I hardly even have the strength to look up in my half-unconscious state. As I do, I see the princess float above me with wings flared. She is surrounded by the pale apparitions of my former enemies. All of their eyes shine with the same overwhelming glow. As they begin to fly upwards, the orb floats with them, becoming even brighter. With my last strength, I weakly reach up and try to shield my eyes, but it is too late.
In an instant the orb shrinks into a point then explodes into a supernova and, though I'm blinded, I feel my body blown away by an unstoppable force. My instincts scream at me to catch myself with my magic, but I find no strength to do so.
Yet instead of hitting the ground, the whiteness suddenly disappears and I black out.
Stupid journal. And stupid wizard. Or king... Or... Or whatever he is! I think to myself scornfully as I kick a pebble in front of me. It skips once or twice before firmly lodging itself between two patches of grass. I roll my eyes and focus back on the road, hoping it might take my mind off how my legs ache from exhaustion and how I am already bored beyond belief.
But I cannot stop. I have to do this. I think back to Sunny's face and how devastated and broken she looked. Nopony should feel like that. Especially not her. I will get her journal back. I have to prove myself, prove that I'm better than who she thinks I am.
Who all of them think I am.
On the other hoof, I've been walking for almost a week and I haven't even reached the end of the forest yet. Just how far away is this "Frozen North" anyway? Am I even going towards the north?
I try to remember the rules of the compass, but I think I slept through that class. I figured a sheriff hardly needs to know which direction is which to catch a criminal. Not that I had to ever bother with that, when Mr. Perfect is there to take care of all the little problems.
I roll my eyes and sigh. Focus, Sprout. Focus. If you nail this, even he will have to admit that you did the impossible.
I just wish I knew what I was doing.
My rations are already dwindling and, to be frank, I'm terrified to think what I will do once they run out. Will I need to forage for mushrooms? What if they're poisonous? I guess I could also eat the grass, if I can't find anything better, but that would be just awful. Oh well. That's a problem future-me will have to worry about.
Right now I should pay attention to crossing this little brook in front of me. I could swear I've crossed at least five or six of these already. Huh. Who would have guessed Equestria held so much water?
I take a deep breath and wade into the cold water. I shudder as it seeps into my coat and it immediately becomes all wet. Great, more mud, just what I needed. Not that it matters much, I must already stink from walking around for so long without any chance to take a hot bath. What's a bit more dirt?
I float in darkness. Not a pinprick of light permeates this space as far as I can or, to be more precise, can't see. What a familiar sensation. Yet, unlike my previous prison, I do not feel myself suffocating, nor are my eyes burning. In a way, this void is almost comforting.
I allow my limbs to relax, though I feel the disgusting skitter of decay on them even now. Is this what mortal minds have to contend with from the moment they are born? How do they take it so well?
My musing is silenced as I spot a translucent mist appear in the distance. It's a combination of shades of purple and blue. As it floats closer to me, its details become clearer and clearer. As if an artist worked with paint smeared on a black canvas, shapes come into being and I find myself face to face with her.
"Greetings, your majesty," she says in a disinterested tone. A chill runs down my spine. Something feels off about her, but I cannot tell what.
I scoff and turn my head away.
"'Majesty?' Have you come back only to humiliate me, Princess?" I ask, giving her a side-look. "If so, please spare me my now very much finite time. Or perhaps are you here to tell me my sacrifice was for naught?"
I feel her magic grab and forcibly turn my face back towards her. I try, but I don't have the power to resist her.
"You will listen, King Sombra," she booms at me. Her voice is commanding and regal, reminiscent of the one the former Diarchs used in the past. A voice befit not just a princess, but an unyielding, merciless queen. "While your past atrocities will forever remain a dark blotch on history, no such thing will be done, nor was your sacrifice in vain."
Her horn flashes and suddenly we find ourselves in a snowy field. I recognize the place immediately. This is where the barrier stands. Without my powers, the freezing cold bites into my flesh and I begin to shiver.
She, however, does not seem to care about either the cold or whether it bothers me. Instead she leaves my side and takes a few measured steps forward, before looking into the distance. The little I can see of her face seems completely impassive and almost bored.
"Can you hear it?" she asks after a few seconds, with her back still turned towards me.
I listen. Only the howling winds break the silence and those are surely not what she means.
"No. I can't hear anything."
"And perhaps now?" she asks as her horn flashes again. A pair of faint, pink, ethereal lenses manifest in front of my eyes. As I peer through them, my glance falls upon the maddening shape of the being as it twists and contorts in the snow beyond. The wailing and chittering returns, burrowing into my ears like hungry termites.
I try to close my eyes, but, even though my muscles flex, my eyelids don't budge. I try to move my legs, but they too refuse me and remain firmly planted in the snow. Utter panic fills my soul as I realize I became a prisoner of my own body. Suddenly my vision is forced towards her. She looks at me from the corner of her eyes, the smallest, contemptuous frown playing on her lips. Her horn is alight.
I struggle against the grasp, but it's no use. I'm unable to do as much as blink. As I exert myself I inadvertently let out a grunt and realize I still have control over my mouth.
"You conniving whore!" I scream at her in rage. My face contorts into a scowl, but she doesn't even flinch. The horrifying sight batters on my mind, bending and warping my very consciousness. "Is this betrayal the reward I get for my sacrifice?"
My anger, however, is torn to shreds by what she says next. Her words cut into me harsher than the frost under my hooves. The curses die in my throat.
"Fall silent, fleeting shadow, and bear witness to the obliteration you were spared from," she says in a low voice, as she steps away from me.
That's when I realize what was so off.
It is no longer a chorus that speaks from her, but a singular voice. One which is not hers. The tone is completely detached and devoid of emotions. I look up at the princess's face. Her eyes seem almost lifeless, as she glares right through me. Whoever is talking through this mare right now is not the same being anymore.
"Heed me now. This is the fate of all who threaten whom Harmony had chosen to protect."
As she speaks, I notice a growing presence emanating from her. Even with my diminished magic I sense a magical vortex inside her that rapidly increases in ferocity.
She flares her wings and her horn blazes alight with a glow which then slowly envelops her whole body. The very air begins to tremble with arcane currents and I feel my hairs stand up on my back. The intensity continues to grow. A radiating pain hits my horn as I struggle to resist just the residual magic filling the air. Even though she hasn't physically changed, she somehow feels far greater now than before. Like I'm standing next to a giant, who wouldn't even register my presence.
I feel the maddening aura of the being slowly getting pushed to the side as the princess-thing unleashes her magic.
Five sparks roar into life around her, as the very air screams from having to hold so much magic in one place. Purple, orange, red, blue, and pink. They form a loose pentagram.
I merely stare in horror, as the realization slowly dawns on me.
I know this magic.
A translucent crown manifests on her head, with its own magenta spark. Her eyes slowly fade to white.
It is what banished me.
Suddenly the aura shifts and blackness mixes into the light around her. Her piercing gaze blazes alight in purple flames, as the whites of her eyes turn green. A shifting ball of pure darkness mixed with shining white forms on the tip of her horn, which slowly begins to swell.
And it is combined with the very spell I wanted to use against her, I think in disbelief.
The orb continues to grow, until it reaches the breaking point. The six sparks slowly break off and gather around it. They begin to revolve, spinning faster and faster until, as if a tightly-wound string was cut, the wings of the possessed alicorn snap forwards and the spell abruptly releases.
A terrifying ray of black and white magic shoots out of the sphere, accompanied by a shifting ripple in the air and the roar of a deafening thunderclap. It punches straight through the barrier with fearsome speed. Like a window hit by a stone, the barrier shatters into a billion little green shards of magical energy, which hang in the air for a second, then quickly fizzle into nothingness.
The bolt, however, does not stop. It strikes the creature's grotesque body on the side, tearing a ghastly hole through it, marred by smoldering, blackened flesh. The impact causes the being to collapse back into the snow with a deafening thud.
For a moment nothing happens and it is as if the whole world had frozen in place. Silence falls upon us. I am about to exhale, when the being suddenly screams like a banshee and perches up. This brings me back from the edge in an instant.
"What- What have you done!" I scream at her. "Your spell didn't work! It's still alive! The barrier is broken! It will kill us!"
"No," she answers with the same otherworldly calmness. "It won't."
Suddenly the gash flashes and ignites in black flames, which quickly spread all over the being. I watch with wide eyes and my mouth agape as it writhes in pain. Its uncountable tentacles and appendages flail wildly, swatting itself, uselessly trying to extinguish the fire. Its eyes dart around in a mad panic, as they begin to melt from the heat. Its uncountable jaws open and shut in terror as the teeth inside burst open. The pustules on its body erupt from the flames, spilling revolting puddles of rotten pus and curdled blood on the pristine snow. It howls with a million deafening screams and disgusting shrieks, as parts of it begin to char and fall off. I instinctively try to cup my hooves on my ears to block the cacophony, but my legs remain frozen to the ground.
It spasms in agony for several long seconds, but the flames are unrelenting. As more and more ignite, the creature begins to shrivel, its throes slowly becoming more and more rigid. Its shrieks drown under the fluids that flood its many throats. Patches of its burning flesh fall to the ground, where they continue to smoulder and smoke. Soon the movement stops. Only the quiet sounds of sizzling flesh can be heard as the last vestiges of the devourer slowly burn away. Eventually nothing more than a puddle of pus and blood remain, spilled around a blackened, steaming corpse.
The lenses fade away and I find myself able to move my head again. I collapse into the cold snow below, but I hardly even feel the frost biting into my flesh. I just blink a few times into the snow in a daze, as I try to catch my breath. My gaze then slowly shifts towards the princess. I stare at her speechlessly. The magic slowly fades from her body and she lowers her wings. The crown fades and, at the same time, her face softens. Finally life returns into her eyes, granting her a far kinder look than she had before.
Her horn flashes and we're back inside the void once more. I gasp for air, as I try to calm my racing heart.
"Why," I stammer weakly. "Why did you do this to me?"
She tips her head to the side in confusion.
"I told you already and you even agreed to it," she says while furrowing her brows. "Your magic was needed to defeat the creature."
"That's not what I mean!" I yell, with a distraught sob. I feel tears forming in the corners of my eyes, which I quickly wipe away. "Why did you force me to watch?"
She shrinks back a little.
"I... I blacked out after you granted me your strength. I have only just regained my senses." Her face turns worried. "What happened?"
Images of the two beings, one more terrifying than the other, flash in front of my eyes. I snap them shut and take a deep breath. As I exhale and feel my heart calm a bit, I take a better look at her. She genuinely doesn't seem to be aware of the last few minutes.
Despite everything that might have happened, even she doesn't deserve this.
I let out a ragged sigh and hang my head.
"I believe it is better if only one of us suffers from this knowledge," I finally say.
"I don't know what you witnessed, but I will pry no more," she slowly says with sympathy after some deliberation. A small sigh escapes her lips. "I sense the being has finally relinquished its grasp on the world. I can only hope it will never return to Equestria. Thanks to you, my duty has ended as well," she continues with a relieved smile. She exhales deeply. "Finally... after all these years spent alone and imprisoned, I am able to move on and reunite with the others."
Yet, she doesn't move. I already know why.
I glance around the void.
"So, is this how my story ends then?" I ask her, slowly regaining my composure. "Let's see. What would your journal say?" I clear my throat and switch to a tone one would use to narrate a story, "The terrible king, having made the ultimate sacrifice, was left to repent in the darkness he always coveted, forever scarred and defeated?"
I hum, before continuing.
"Perhaps it's a bit too dramatic for your book, but it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?" I add with a raspy laugh.
She merely shakes her head.
"Choosing to relinquish your magic and immortality is the price you've paid to wipe the slate clean. I see no further punishment necessary."
"As if what you forced me to experience for all these years wasn't torment in and of itself," I mutter under my breath scornfully. Even if she heard me, she doesn't show any sign of it. "So what then? Will you kill me on the spot so I can pass on to the next world? You have plenty of experience in that by now."
She snorts humorlessly.
"Not quite. You see, there is one last service I can offer to thank you. You are still to face a great journey before death can claim you, this much I can guarantee," she tells me with a smirk. "Farewell now, Ruler of the Crystal Empire, may we meet as friends in the next life."
Before I could even ask her what she means, she turns around and trots away into the nothingness, her body slowly becoming more and more translucent until she completely disappears. I'm left alone in the darkness. I feel the terror slowly creeping back, but then suddenly the void splits apart below me and a glowing portal opens. I fall into the light. |
Northern Stars | Ch.11 - Of the Red and the Black | I find myself in a forest once more. As the haze lifts from my mind, I realize I'm laying on the ground, hooves limply stretched out from the sudden teleportation. I slowly raise my head and take a look at myself. My armor and crown are gone. My entire body hurts and I don't think my magic could float even as much as an apple in my current state. A dull headache throbs in my head. How familiar...
Hardly even a moment after I clamber to my hooves, I hear something move through the underbrush. Before I have any chance of escape, a red pony trots before me, mumbling something to himself, seemingly lost in thought. I clear my throat. His eyes drift towards me for a second, still glazed over, before he suddenly shrinks back and stares at me again. His body immediately tenses up. We stare at each other for a moment.
With nothing left to lose, I decide to call out to him.
"Hello."
His ears flap backwards and his eyes go wide. He shrieks.
Oh brilliant.
"Hello," I hear him speak in his vile and horrid voice.
Oh, mommy. How was I so unlucky to run into the monster himself? Is this how I will die?
My eyes dart around, as I look for a way to escape. I feel my heart beating in my throat.
Perhaps if I start running now, he won't be able to catch me? Or maybe he will take it as an insult and snap my neck with his magic? Oh, what do I do? What do I do?
A shriek slips from my mouth.
He snorts. Is this how unicorns prepare to breathe flame?
"What is your name?" he asks me.
Maybe if I tell him, he'll leave me alone... I think to myself as I catch another glimpse of him. His red eyes are staring at me intently. No, I shouldn't tell him. I heard it somewhere that those who know your name have power over you.
"I- I won't tell you, sorcerer!" My voice is flimsy and weak, but at least I managed to hold my ground. For now. "If- If you hurt me, my town will take revenge!"
"Oh, for the Crystal Heart's sake!" he groans. I have no idea what that is, but I imagine it is some horrific artifact. "Why do I always have to find the weird ones? I am no sorcerer and I'm certainly not here to hurt you."
Wait, what? No, it has to be some trick.
"You just want me to drop my guard!"
He sighs.
"Look at me. Do I seem to be in a state where I'm capable of doing whatever harm your cowardly mind imagines? Don't kid yourself."
I force some calmness onto myself and take a better look at him. Despite his lustrous dark coat and shining black mane, he does really seem almost broken. His stature is that of a pony who lost everything. As my eyes pass over him, my body slowly relaxes. I feel some confidence return into me. I even allow myself a tiny smirk. For an ancient, evil king, with awesome power, he seems to be a complete pushover.
"I will ask you again, what is your name?" he demands.
"My name is Sprout Cloverleaf and you'll do good if you remember it. For I will be the pony who defeats you and returns the journal!" I start to believe my own words.
To my immense chagrin, he begins to laugh. He laughs at me uncontrollably for several seconds, before his laughter turns into a fit of raspy coughs.
"Well then, Sprout Cloverleaf, I have to regretfully tell you that you have been too slow on both counts. Not only am I already defeated and my magic forfeit, but I also already returned the journal to your friend."
His words hit me like a tram. I stumble backwards and sit down. I feel my eyes lose focus.
"This was all pointless? I've struggled and feared and endured for this?" I mutter to myself.
He shrugs a little, not showing the least bit of concern.
"Don't worry about it, kid. I think out of the two of us, you still got off better," he says with a low chuckle.
This smugness ignites something in me. I feel my despair morph into a vile, dripping anger I haven't felt since that day. I glare at him, but he looks just as impassive as before. I feel a sharp pain in my chest as my breathing quickens.
How can life be so unfair?
I snap my eyes shut and I feel tears gather behind my eyelids. The scene after my mishap flashes back into my mind.
How shameful and alone I felt... Although she told me she has long forgiven me, the disappointment in my mother's eyes still hasn't truly faded. Every time she looks at me, my heart trembles in pain. And she isn't the only one.
Whenever I walk down the street, I can't not notice the clear contempt in everypony's eyes. They are all too eager to point their hooves at me or talk behind my back, as if we didn't all believe in the same things back then. There wasn't a single filly or colt who didn't occasionally wake up, their bed soaked in cold sweat, screaming about not wanting to be abducted by a winged or horned monster. There wasn't a single mare or stallion who didn't lock their door twice at night "just to be safe" or, under their cheerful mask, worry, that maybe, just maybe, one of these days this unwritten, flimsy peace would come to an end and the nightmares of their children and their own foalhoods' would truly become reality. And not a single soul, except for Sunny and her father, ever questioned this. This unease was merely a part of life, a tradition accepted by all. Yet the moment the old beliefs were proven wrong, it suddenly wasn't everypony's collective fault, it was only mine alone. The blame was all on me.
It didn't matter that I'd done everything for the sake of protecting my city. Was I misguided? Obviously. Were my plans rushed and even stupid? I cannot deny it. But I hadn't thought for a single moment that I wasn't doing the right thing.
It's ironic. Even though I've caused her the most pain, it was Sunny who understood me the best. She pulled me back from the edge. After they returned the magic and everypony left to figure out how things would work from then on, I somehow found myself alone at the edge of the city's cliff, my uniform laying next to me in a crumpled pile. I don't remember how exactly I got there or when I took it off. I stared down the water as it clashed against the rocks and listened to the soft impacts of the waves. I needed something, anything to take my mind off what would happen to me next.
That's when she found me. I remember how her wings and horn burned into the night, illuminating her face. There was a sad smile playing on her lips. I could not look into her eyes. Not after all that had happened. I turned my back towards her and told her to go away. To just leave me alone, like the rest of them had and enjoy her newfound group of friends, but she didn't listen. Eventually I lost the strength to even tell her to leave. When that happened she just silently sat next to me and stared off into the distance. We remained there for a while, without saying a word.
"I understand how you feel," she finally told me. "I know what it's like to be alone. To be made into the face of ridicule. Even though you did everything with good intentions." There was nothing accusatory in her voice. It was soft and full of empathy.
My heart almost broke.
I teased her so much. I never even realized how cruel I must have been towards her. I believed that if I poked a bit of fun at her, she would eventually give up her childish beliefs. But, as it turned out, I was the child after all.
I broke down crying then. And yet, instead of leaving me, or rightfully gloating over her victory, or even screaming at me for what I did to her lighthouse, she just trotted over and gave me a hug. As I desperately held onto her, she told me that despite everything I might have done, she was willing to forgive me. That she still wanted to be my friend. After what felt like an eternity, we broke apart and she guided me to the sheriff's office where I was unceremoniously locked away. I don't remember much from my imprisonment. All I know is that during the next few days she used her newfound fame to get me off the hook with merely a slap on my hooves. After a few days in detention I was a free pony. She even made sure I could keep my job. Things couldn't have worked out for me better than that.
And it is all so wrong!
She forgave me and gave me her full support without me even having the chance to prove that I can be better. That I can change and grow! I didn't deserve it! I only took and took from her. And now, even after she offered me her friendship on a silver platter, I wasn't there for her. I didn't ask her the right questions. The only thing I managed to do was disappoint her. In her most vulnerable moment I let my big mouth run and hurt her, instead of giving her the support she deserved. It was my only chance to repay her kindness and I messed it all up. Because that's who I am. Sprout, the mess-up. Sprout, the failure. Sprout, who can never do anything right. The pony who can never change and who will forever live in somepony else's shadows.
No more.
My mind goes blank. I feel my body tense up in a way it never has before. Every little piece of me screams for the same thing.
I roar and pounce on him.
He doesn't expect it and I tackle him effortlessly. His head collides with the ground with a violent thud and, before he could do as much as move a muscle, I pin his front legs down.
"This is all your fault!" I scream into his face between two erratic gasps. I feel a drop of sweat roll down from my temple. My vision is still a little blurry from my tears.
He continues to stare at me. His eyes do not waver.
I raise my hoof and aim towards his neck. I ignore that it's slightly shaking.
This will end here. They will know I'm not just full of hot air. I can do this. This is what will set me apart from Hitch. He would never dare to do anything like this. This is something only I could do. My mother will be proud. They will never underestimate me again. Sunny will understand just how much I appreciate her. I'm meant to do this.
"Go on then."
His unimpressed words douse my fervor like a bucket of cold water. Even though he's clearly hurt and I'm putting a lot of weight on his chest, a raspy laughs still manages to worm its way out of him.
"Finish it already, if you have the guts. Blame whatever inadequacies you suffer from on me, even though we have never even met before. Just don't be disappointed when you get what you deserve, not what you're wishing for. I've seen your town and I've seen your kin." He glances towards my hoof. "Do you really think they will look up to you once your coat's color is mixed with another shade of red?"
I hesitate. I feel a tightness in my chest and my hoof begins to tremble. I look back at him. He weakly tries to push me off himself, but his efforts are pitiful. I slowly feel the red mist lift from my eyes.
Stars above... What am I doing? This is no justice. I am no murderer. I already came far too close to that once.
I make up my mind. It almost feels like I'm dreaming as I slowly let him go and clamber off. I mechanically dust my coat off and wipe my eyes, while he slowly raises himself. He touches the back of his head and hisses from the pain, but when he lowers his hoof and looks me in the eyes, his look is one of cold determination, showing no pain nor fear, just a distance-keeping curiosity.
I take a deep breath and clear my throat.
"King... Umm?"
"Sombra," he grunts. "As of recently, just Sombra."
"Right," I half-heartedly strike a pose I've practiced so many times in front of a mirror. This is not how I expected to speak the words I always wanted, but never had the chance to say. My voice still wavers a little, but I ignore this. "Mr. Sombra. Under the jurisdiction of Maretime Bay, I, deputy-sheriff Sprout Cloverleaf, am placing you under arrest for assault and battery, theft of property, and threats of terrorism. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the ri-"
He raises a hoof and I grind to a halt.
"I was a monarch for longer than you've been alive. I am more than aware of criminal law and my rights."
My face contorts into a frown. I roll my eyes and sigh.
"Right. Let's just, umm." I glance around trying to orient myself.
I try not to appear too helpless, but he sees through me like a sieve. He raises his eyebrow at me questioningly. My bravado falters.
I feel myself deflating.
"I just need to figure out how to get back to the city to take you in."
He buries his face in a hoof.
"Of all ponies, you really had to leave me with an idiot," I hear him whisper bitterly between his teeth.
"Shut up!" I snap at him.
"Yes, I believe you've already made yourself quite clear on that part," he lashes back, his eyes shining with ire for a moment. He quickly trots closer to a tree and looks around before turning back to me. "Evidently you have been walking towards the south, we should head northwards."
"H-how did you?"
"The moss," he says flatly, pointing towards the tree he just examined. "It grows on the north side of the trees. Just how low have you Equestrians fallen, if you don't even know this?"
The... The south? All this time I've been going in the exact opposite direction?
Any rebuttals I try to utter get stuck in my throat.
"Fine! We will head north," I finally say. "But I will lead."
I follow behind my unexpected, red-coated companion. He rarely glances back, perhaps out of shame, perhaps out of worry I would humiliate him again with a simple question. I certainly don't mind that we don't speak much. Now that he's not staring at me, I am free to experience the pain his wild thrashing has given me. The back of my head throbs with a sharp pain and I'm aching all over my body.
Damned mudpony. Is this the thanks I deserve?
I silently sigh. It would be pointless to hold this grudge. He is clearly far too immature to properly understand who he is dealing with. And now that I'm this vulnerable, I cannot afford to elaborate in a way he would understand. Still, perhaps I can use this situation to my advantage, I just need to keep my calm.
"So, uh, you were like a king or something back in the day, right?"
Oh, just what I needed. Small talk.
I give him no response. He glances back expectantly, but quickly looks back when he sees my expression.
Another few minutes pass. This part of the forest is so dense and monotonous that the miles melt into each other.
"You know, I'm the son of the town's de-facto mayor. Technically that makes me a prince or something like that as well."
We continue to walk.
"Nothing? Okay."
We eventually find ourselves in front of a small creek. I look to the left, then to the right, but there doesn't seem to be any way nearby to avoid it. Sprout walks through without hesitation. I'd rather not dirty my coat, so I try to teleport myself past or float, but my darkened horn just sputters a few sparks and gives out. He stares at me dumbly from the other side. With a groan, I wade into the freezing water and follow him.
"There are actually a lot of these little creeks around Equestria," he tells me like it is the most fascinating fact in the world. "I found at least five while I was, uh, looking for you."
I stop. My head aches in more ways than one, my legs are drenched in ice cold water, my magic is gone, and I'm forced to listen to his incoherent rambling. I feel my patience slipping. I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. I reach back to stroke my mane, but I stop myself when I see the amount of mud caked on my hoof.
He notices the lack of clopping behind him and turns around.
"What's wrong?" he asks without the slightest hint of worry in his voice. "You okay?"
That does it.
"Let's make one thing crystal clear," I tell him, my voice slowly increasing in volume. "The only reason I'm submitting to you now is because powers you cannot even hope to comprehend have crippled me. If I still had my magic, you would be begging for my mercy right now."
He shrinks back at my sudden outburst, but I'm not finished. As I speak I slowly walk up to him and jab a hoof into his chest, leaving a wet and muddy spot. I stare deeply into his eyes and they shrink to pinpricks.
"I led an Empire of millions, carving a prosperous dominion into an inhospitable, frozen wasteland. I waged war of untold misery against two beings who were capable of destruction far more terrifying than your wildest imagination could conjure up. I died numerous times only to laugh Death in the face and come back even stronger."
Another coughing fit assaults me and I stumble a step backwards. The violent spasms send waves of pain all over my body until I finally get a hold of myself. My voice is hoarse as I speak again.
"And now that I found myself in this alien world ripe for the harvest, I chose to sacrifice my power and eternal life instead of conquering it. I did this to protect the likes of you from a horror the mere description of which would drive a simpleton such as yourself mad." My tail flicks in frustration. "And what thanks do I get? I'm insulted and jerked around by a neurotic and insignificant chinovnik, who has the audacity to believe his little epiphany actually had any meaningful impact on the fate of the world. What makes you think I have any interest in camaraderie with you after this?"
I step back and glare at him. For a moment the only sound that can be heard is the quiet whistling of the wind and my own shallow breaths. He merely stares at the ground, while one of his hooves meekly digs a groove into the soil.
"You're right. I guess I just wanted to do the right thing once," he finally mutters. "I'm no emperor. I never fought anypony. When I finally got the chance to prove myself, I messed up big time. I seriously hurt my most important friend." Tears well up in his eyes and his speech becomes slurred. "I... I hoped by defeating you I'd become a hero and nopony would look down on me anymore. That I could still make things right. But when I realized I was about to commit an atrocity and... and you didn't even flinch, I thought- I just wanted to move on, to not even think about what I almost did."
He shudders and slowly wipes his eyes. He looks even more pitiful than before. Finally he turns around and slowly begins to walk.
"You are not innocent either and I am still taking you in for what you did to Sunny, but I am deeply sorry for what I've done to you," he says flatly without looking back. "I will not bother you again."
"No good deed goes unpunished," I chuckle to myself, satisfied with his reply.
He keeps his word and we march on in silence for a few more hours. He doesn't even look back to see if I'm still with him. We both know I have no reason to leave him behind. Eventually the trees begin to thin out and, just as the Sun is about to set, we finally spot the first few buildings in the distance.
"But I... But I've been walking for a week," he whispers to himself in disbelief. I say nothing and, after a moment, he just shakes his head and trots on. We approach the city. |
Northern Stars | Ch.12 - Of Painful Revelations | I sit alone in my office. Only the clock's ticking breaks the silence. As the soft click of the shorter hand signals that another hour has passed, it slowly dawns on me that I've been looking towards the door for quite some time now, just staring into the dimming reddish-orange hues of the late afternoon spilling in through the window. I guess I was really just hoping he would suddenly walk in and take his place loudly and obtusely as usual. I stretch a cramp out of my neck and glance over at the desk opposite to me. It simply doesn't feel right for this room to be so empty. Even though his antics are less than tolerable usually, I still miss seeing that clown. Even after what he did.
For a while Izzy kept me company when she occasionally crashed in the office, but after our second run in with the king, Sunny sent her home to relax after all that has happened. Now that she's gone, there is truly nothing stopping this office from feeling far more desolate than it usually is.
My eyes return to the desk. A map sits on it, showing the general area around Maretime Bay. A number of X-es are neatly drawn onto the page. I run my hooves over my face. We've checked almost everywhere. Even as a foal Sprout was never great at hide-and-seek, there should be at least a sign or anything, but there are no leads!
And now even Sunny with her busted leg wants to go after him. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to tell her no.
I groan in frustration. These last few weeks held more surprises than my entire life until this point.
I really wish I could rely on somepony to share the load. I glance over to the empty desk again. Yeah, good luck with that.
Suddenly my ears perk up. I hear weird sounds coming from outside. I kick my chair back and trot up to the door. As I look out its window I see ponies running all over the place, fleeing into their homes and hiding behind furniture.
I rush outside and try to assess the situation. It's hard to really see what's happening due to the hysteria and the setting Sun, but as I stare into the distance, I see two figures approaching calmly.
Not again, I groan.
I trot closer in disbelief and my eyes go wide.
I see the king, though he seems far less threatening than before. His eyes are tired and far less piercing as well. His coat is dirty and unkempt. His steps seem almost wobbling. Wasn't his horn bright red the last time I saw him? Is this even the same unicorn?
I look at the sheepish figure next to him. My heart sinks. I try to convince myself it's not him. That it's only a cruel illusion conjured up by that wicked stallion. But no, even from this far, he seems far too weak for such a trick. I cannot read Sprout's face. He doesn't seem as terrified as I would expect, but there is a darkness in his eyes.
I break into a sprint. I have to save Sprout. My mind races as I hedge my options.
He already saw me, so would a frontal attack even work? He doesn't seem to be as powerful as he was before, but maybe that's just a trick. Perhaps I can distract him somehow until somepony alerts Sunny and then- And then she will wing it! No time to think, I have to act now!
I meet them where the cobblestone path ends. I dig my hooves in, as I prepare to turn around and buck him in the face, when Sprout suddenly screams.
"Stop!"
I already began to swing my body, so I awkwardly fall to the ground and look up at him in confusion.
"What?"
"I said stop. Don't hurt him," he says forcefully, though his eyes are still dejected. "He is a suspect. I have arrested him."
"You did what?"
I blink once or twice as I lay on the ground. I feel an immense amount of relief wash over me mixed with confusion of an extent I wasn't even aware was possible. As I slowly pick myself up, my eyes dart between him and the unicorn. Ultimately they decide to come to a halt on the latter.
"Hello, Sheriff. It seems like we did have to meet in a more formal manner after all," he says with a raspy laugh. "It is as he says, however. I submit myself to your authority."
"What?" I blurt out again, still completely dumbfounded.
"Is this seriously the stallion you could never manage to overcome?" he asks Sprout incredulously, but he just averts his eyes and hangs his head. The king then turns back to me. "Do you expect me to shackle myself?" His voice is more tired than anything.
"I, um, no. We don't really do shackles," I stammer. I force some composure on myself. "Please follow me."
The next few minutes are a blur. I walk back to the office, but my mind is not here. The astonished townsponies stare at the absurd scene from their hiding places in silence, as two simple officers escort an ancient evil to the slammer.
He doesn't even put up any resistance when I tell him to enter his cell. He just trots inside and looks at us expectantly.
"You too," I tell Sprout. He looks at me in disbelief. "Until I figure out just exactly what happened, you're not off the hook either."
He opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it immediately and slowly nods. While I lock Sombra's cell, he trots into the next one and just lies on the small bed standing in the corner, and turns towards the wall.
I stare at his back as I lock the cell. It feels terrible to have to put him behind bars again, but I have to make sure this isn't just an elaborate plan to ruin the town.
I stick around for a few seconds, but I don't find any words to speak. Instead, I quickly trot outside the office. I see Coal walking around with a blissful look on his face, while everyone else is still peeking out from behind their blinders and windows. I call out to him. He eagerly approaches.
"Hi Coal-" I begin, but he immediately interrupts me.
"Oh, hi Hitch, so good to see you!" I've never seen him talk this quickly and excitedly. He's usually so subdued. "Did you hear the news? Cream and I are engaged! We were so terrified of that horrible king that I... Well, I kind of told her I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without her! And she immediately said yes! Oh, it still feels so incredible to say this." He stops for a second to take a deep breath. In any other situation I would be impressed he managed to say all this in one go, but right now this the least of my concerns. I open my mouth to continue, but before I could say a single word, he continues his monologue. "I was just coming back from the other end of the city, don't tell Cream this, but I've already spoken with the confectioner. Our wedding will have her favorite cream puffs-"
I open the door behind me and point inside. As his eyes wander over the cells, his enamored expression immediately shatters and he looks at me with a mix of fear and confusion.
"Is- Is that?" he whispers.
"Yes," I tell him bluntly. "It's him."
I see it in his eyes that he's about to run away. I put a calming hoof on his shoulder.
"Coal, it's okay," I tell him in a slow, soothing voice. "Calm down. Take a deep breath. He's under control." I'm not honestly sure myself whether this is the case, but I cannot allow him to panic. His body slightly relaxes, but I keep my hoof on him, just in case. "Still with me? Good. Listen, I will keep an eye on him. Please visit Sunny for me and tell her to come immediately. Okay?"
The moment I let him go, he gives me a curt nod, then gallops off without saying another word.
As I leave the lighthouse and begin the painful march towards the city, I gaze up at the sky and watch the slowly-rising Moon shine down upon me with its haunting, ethereal glow.
Coal, of course, offered to come with me, but it was clear from his less than coherent ramble, the way his ears were practically hugging his head, and how he unsuccessfully tried to hide the fact that his hooves were making the sounds of a step-dance from how hard they were shaking, that he was really just trying to act courteous; so I told him that I'd be fine and that he should just go home.
He weakly insisted a few times that it's no big deal and that he isn't even scared, but the relieved glint in his eyes betrayed his actual thoughts. Eventually he gave me an earnest thanks, excused himself, and rushed off, leaving me to dare the silence of the early night.
Normally I wouldn't be afraid to walk alone, of course. I'm a grown mare and the most heinous crime one could fall victim to in Maretime Bay is perhaps a clumsy pony accidentally bumping into you or, on a particularly bad day, a delinquent foal stealing one of your smoothie cups. But now, knowing that it is not impossible for an ancient evil to just fall into our necks from nothing, without any warning? I can't help but feel on the edge.
Though I never doubted the journal's words, I never expected to actually meet any of its characters.
Who knows what else could be lurking out there? The thought sends a small shiver down my spine.
As I walk down the serpentine dirt path and my hooves reach stone, I notice that the streets are all empty and, with the exception of one, almost all buildings are dark. Even if it is night, there are usually a few stragglers, who still have some extremely important business they need to attend to. I guess the recent events made everypony even jumpier than usual. The only things accompanying me are the soft whistling of the wind and the Moon casting its long shadows on the road before me. My ear flicks a little. I never realized this before, but the city is quite eerie with no one around at night.
But I have more important things to do than worry about such idle daydreams, so I shake these pointless worries out of my head. I pick up some speed and gallop towards the only building with its lights on. Despite my leg's protests, it takes me almost no time to get to Hitch's office. Despite the chilly air, he is waiting outside for me. As the dim, neon light of the lamps falls on his face, I can see a mix of confusion and worry on it.
"I came as soon as I could, where is he? What's going on?"
"Honestly, this is beyond me, Sunny," he says, shaking his head before waving a hoof towards the door. "You should just see for yourself. I think I need some fresh air and it's probably for the best if I stay out of your mane, so just yell if you need me."
I cast a confused look towards him as I enter. As my eyes adjust to the harsh light inside, I shrink back a little upon noticing the two stallions in the room. Yet, as much as the rational part of my mind screams at me to be afraid, I feel an unexpected sense of pity wash over me.
Both of them look absolutely devastated.
It is no question whose cell I visit first.
"Sprout! Oh thank the Stars! We've been all so worried about you!"
I practically tear the door to his cell open as I rush inside to embrace him, but as I get close, he roughly shoves me back.
"Don't bother, Sunny," he says without even looking at me. "I don't deserve it."
My heart sinks.
"Sprout, if you think I'm angry at you for what you've said, that's not the case. I'm sorry, I overreacted. I know you just wanted to help."
He finally turns around and stares into my eyes. A pained laugh rings out of him. His coat is damp with tears and ridden with dirt.
"That's real great to hear. Doesn't make me any less of a failure."
I try to walk closer to him, but he turns towards the wall.
"Just go," he says quietly. "Please."
I stare at him for a few seconds in silence, before walking outside the cell. I cast one last glance at him as I lock the door and trot away.
All the pity I've felt for the king evaporates as I approach his chamber. Though his eyes are tired, he stares at me with a cocky smirk.
"What did you do to him?" I hiss before he could even say a word, hardly able to contain my anger.
"Me?" he asks with feigned surprise. "I haven't laid as much as a hoof on him! I swear it on the Princess's name!"
"Princess Twilight's? Who has always been your mortal enemy?" I ask in a less than amused tone.
To my utter frustration his smile goes even wider.
"But not anymore!" he says with triumph. As I raise my eyebrow at him, he quickly continues, "Perhaps it'd be the best if I recounted my tale up until this point."
"...and so I almost literally fell into your friend's hooves. After that we..."
"Hold on for just a second!" The words practically burst out of her as she interjects. "Do you seriously expect me to believe an outlandish story like this?" If her raised eyebrows and slanted frown didn't already give away her glaring skepticism, her tone alone leaves no room for interpretation. "Meeting the princess? Saving the world from a devouring beast? As if a selfish tyrant like you would ever do something like that!"
Funny, though I did omit some details so my story would align with her beliefs about the princess a bit better, I did not outright lie. Though, I suppose, I cannot blame her for not believing me.
I put on a mask of hurt.
"You seem to forget that I've returned your precious belonging," I say slyly. "Do you perhaps think I'm incapable of being virtuous just because of what your journal says about me?"
"You lied to my friends and me. You stole my journal. And you broke my leg," she counts my sins on my head without any sympathy and points back towards her lower body. It doesn't take a doctor to see that one of her legs is slightly more bent than the others, likely to ease the weight placed on it.
"Oh, but you attacked me first!" I counter with a grin and she explodes into rage.
"Because, again, you stole my father's most precious belonging!" With each word she storms closer to the bars. I've never seen such fury from an earth pony before. Even if she's quite a special one. Her ethereal horn, ablaze with magic, is glowing like a small star, forcing me to squint as I look at it. Her eyes are piercing through me and her translucent wings form a halo behind her. The smell of ozone fills the air, as it crackles with power of unexpected potency. A dull ache radiates out of my own horn as it reacts to her overwhelming presence.
Ah, how she reminds me of the Sisters all those years ago, I think to myself with a small smile. It quickly falters. And yet her rage is hardly comparable to that blind fury I was forced to endure.
Instead of angering her further, I decide to wait patiently. As we stare each other down, finally a deep sigh escapes her lips. She falls silent for the next few seconds, focusing only on her breathing. Her wings fold back to her sides and her horn loses its glow. The subjugating aura melts away and the pain fades from my horn. She then continues in a much more subdued manner. "Fine, it doesn't matter now. What did you do to Sprout?"
"As I've said, nothing at all! Quite the contrary, it was he who..."
I stop mid-sentence to value my options. Is it really the best course of action for me to deliver the coup de grace? After all, with a few carefully chosen words, I could easily destroy Sprout's life. Revealing his murderous tendencies would forever alienate him from the city. Even if they don't fully believe my words, his actions have already eroded their trust, so all it'd take is one little push. On the other hoof, though seeing his life crumble away would have greatly amused me had I still had my power; I have little to gain from his suffering and quite a lot to lose.
Eventually all possibilities I consider lead to the same answer. I cast my eyes towards the ceiling as the realization dawns on me.
If I don't want to rot for the rest of my life in this tiny cell, I must play by her book.
Well played, Twilight Sparkle. I concede this one to you, I think to myself with a silent chuckle. Even now that you're gone, you still manage to have the last laugh.
"He?" she echoes impatiently.
"After he made sure I lost my magic, he arrested me and brought me back," I say curtly.
Confusion spreads on her face. She seems unsure if she can believe me or not.
"I... You... You're telling the truth?" she asks.
"The truth and only the whole truth," I lie. "If you don't believe I'm without my magic now, feel free to ask that little unicorn to see my- What was it? Ah yes. Ask her to see my 'luminessence,' I believe that was the word. I'm sure the result will be satisfactory. I hardly even possess the power of a normal unicorn now." I tip my head towards the wall separating mine from the other cell. "How else do you think our red-coated friend could have taken me in otherwise?"
She begins to pace around the room. I idly pick at the mud on my hoof. I cannot rush her or else my plan will fail.
She turns to me again.
"Let's say for a second that I believe you. Does this mean you are not interested in conquering Equestria anymore?"
I reply with an indignant huff and roll my eyes.
"Just what sort of ridiculous question is that? How would a pony like me even do that without magic, after you have made my presence and intentions so clear to the world?" I scoff at her. "If you really need me to humiliate myself, then fine, so be it. I am nothing more at this point than a defeated unicorn, coping with his newfound mortality. My only aspiration is to spend the rest of my days with as much dignity as I'm able to. I regret neither my sacrifice to save this world, nor my previous intentions to conquer it."
Her face is conflicted as she purses her lips in thought.
"Why is your coat so dirty anyway? I somehow can't imagine you of all ponies tripping over and falling to the ground." Her question is obviously just an attempt to buy herself time, yet she inadvertently put me in a corner. I need to think quickly and come up with a plausible lie.
Before I could even think of an answer, a new sound breaks the silence. A scream rings out from the other cell.
"It's all my fault!" I hear Sprout's pained wail. The smile freezes on my face.
Tartarus. I was this close to breaking through and securing my future and he must choose the worst possible moment to inconvenience me again. It takes a fair share of discipline to not show just how frustrated I am. I cannot afford to antagonize Sunny.
She rushes away from my cell and into his, but not before making sure mine is securely locked. I get off the bed and trot closer to the bars so that I can hear them better.
"I just wanted to give you a reason to like me, so I... I snuck away to get your journal back," he rants between two sobs. "And... and then I got lost and he just kind of fell out of the sky. I didn't know what to do. I really didn't. So... so I attacked him."
I hear a soft grunt from the other side. I assume Sunny just gave him a hug.
How very sentimental.
"Sprout, you idiot!" Her voice rings softly with a mix of relief and disapproval. "I like you for who you are. You don't have to play hero for me!"
I faintly hear him take a deep breath and let out a great, wavering sigh. His sobbing stops.
"You don't understand. I nearly killed him, Sunny," he says hollowly. His voice is dry and lifeless. "I really thought I could be better. Instead I almost ended another pony's life." He wheezes. "Every word he says is true. He really doesn't have magic anymore. He couldn't even defend himself when I... When I..." He cannot finish the sentence. The sobbing begins anew.
Silence falls upon us, broken only by his crying. Slowly the cell door slides open with a screech and Sunny steps out. I take a step back as she stands in front of me. Her face is pained and confused.
"Please tell me he's lying." Her voice is almost begging as she speaks. She looks deeply into my eyes. I stay silent. Her voice quickly morphs from pleading to accusing. She smashes her hoof against the bars and screams, "This is your doing, right? You forced him to say this! Tell me, you monster!"
I face her accusations without flinching. I close my eyes and shake my head before speaking.
"My answer will give you no solace, but I'll give it to you regardless."
I return her stare.
"Your friend did nearly murder me. You are, indeed, correct; I didn't merely trip. He tackled me to the ground and almost ended my life."
The anger evaporates from Sunny's face as she slowly loses her posture. She takes a step back and sits down on the cold, tiled stone floor. Her ears flop down and her eyes dart around as she desperately tries to find any sign, any hint on my face which could give away a lie, that does not exist. She slowly hangs her head when she realizes I speak the truth.
"Sprout, how could you?" she whispers with quivering lips.
I take a deep breath. This is it. I must play my cards well and choose my next words wisely. I fear, if I lose this gamble, she will never allow me out of here until it is far too late.
"As if you weren't prepared to do the same thing," I give her my retort.
"We... We never!" she snaps at me, but the rest of her words get stuck in her throat as she looks into my face.
Even without my magic I can feel my eyes flaring. I take a step closer to the bars and she takes one back.
"Oh really? You never?" I cannot help but laugh at that. "Then what were those childish barricades for? Or your little rousing speech? Or do you believe me so foolish and ignorant as to think you were merely trying to incapacitate me during our standoff?" I snicker. "I'm honestly not sure if you're trying to fool me or yourself, Sunny Starscout. If you truly want to condemn his actions, you yourself should be locked in a cell as well."
She gives me no answer. Instead she just continues to take short, shallow breaths and stare into the distance. I decide to press my advantage and continue, though with a softer voice.
"Or you could finally face reality and realize he did the right thing, just like you did during our last encounter. From the moment we met, he merely tried to protect you and this city. It is no question that he is a deeply troubled stallion. However, he ultimately tried to do well based on your very own moral compass, didn't he?"
Her eyes are blank as she stares into mine. The other cell falls silent.
"Why are you telling me this?" she finally asks. Her voice is broken and desperate.
I just scoff.
"I am painfully aware of how it feels to be cheated out of your legacy by those who believe they are morally superior to you. And I will not participate in it!" She shrinks back a little at my outburst, which, as I quickly realize, came out far more bitter and harsher than I intended.
Tartarus, I'm acting like a foal, I chide myself with a silent groan. I cannot let my emotions get the better of me in such a perilous moment!
I quickly step away from the bars and pace a little, both to calm my own nerves and allow the words some time to sink in. After reaching the end of my cell and back, I turn towards her again, this time speaking in a more sympathetic tone, "And no, before you ask, I am not pressing charges against him, nor am I holding any grudge against you. Putting one's own life on the line in the defense of their nation is a noble trait."
A few seconds pass and she stands up, seemingly not knowing what to do next.
She turns towards Sprout's cell, but after only a moment she turns back to mine. She opens her mouth to say something, but no words come out. A stifled sob escapes her.
"Go now," I tell her mercifully. "Talk to your friends and rest. Not even a ruler can make good decisions if their mind is clouded by a maelstrom of emotions. I should know," I add with a thin smile.
She gives me a tiny, indecisive nod and turns around. Her steps are uncertain and wobbling as she leaves us. As the door closes, I feel myself deflating and I finally allow myself to breathe normally. I glance towards the wall separating our cells, but there is still no sound coming from the other side.
As I'm thinking about what just happened, I realize I absentmindedly began to play with my mane again. I groan and try to shake the flakes of dirt out, without too much success. Finally I give up and just trot back to the bed and lie down.
This was far too long of a day. |
Northern Stars | Ch.13 - Of Flawed Justice | My light sleep is interrupted by the sounds of soft hoofsteps and the scraping of metal. I crack an eye open and see the sheriff tentatively approach me.
"Good morning," he greets me. "Umm, please make yourself ready, I'll need you to follow me as soon as possible."
I blink the tiredness out of my eyes and look at him better. As the early rays of the Sun shine in through the window's bars and fall upon us, I notice that his ears are slightly twitching and he's almost imperceptibly biting his lower lip. Telltale signs of nervousness.
"How many more times do I have to assert that I'm in no shape to cause harm to anyone," I ask him with a groan.
He shuffles a little.
"That's... um... that's not it."
I stretch and stifle a yawn.
"So what then? And where do you want to bring me?"
He clears his throat.
"I am to escort you to CanterLogic for your trial."
I raise an eyebrow at him.
"My trial? Just like that? Are ponies of this age not entitled to legal counsel anymore?"
His frown deepens.
"Well, you see, yes, ordinarily you would be." His tone is blatantly irritated. "However, due to some stupid old laws that nopony bothered to challenge yet due to the lack of criminal cases, pegasi and unicorns can technically be sentenced in absentia, without even hearing the charges."
"You don't seem to be entirely happy with this fact."
He slams his hoof against the floor.
"Well, of course I'm not!" he yells. "This is a mockery of law!"
"Well, well." I tip my head to the side with an amused smirk. "You're not the first pony I would have expected sympathy from."
He scoffs.
"Don't think I'm worried about you. You deserve retribution for what you did to Sunny. But even somepony like you needs to be given a fair trial." He sighs. "I was able to convince the town to at least have you be present and given the chance to defend yourself. This is why I need you to come with me."
"How very generous of you," I tell him coyly.
"If you're done with your gloating, we really need to get moving. We are risking the trial starting without you."
I look down at my dirty coat and mud-ridden hooves, before I lightly shake myself and stare at the stirred-up dust particles gleaming in the sunlight.
"You expect me to appear in front of a judge like this? Bring me a comb."
He balks at me.
"What part of 'we don't have time' do you not understand?"
"You want me to have a fair trial, right? If I walk in there like this, they'll immediately throw me out for contemning the court. Do it."
He raises his eyes at the sky in exasperation and rushes out, only to return a few seconds later with a simple wooden brush. I instinctively grab it with my magic, almost immediately dropping it in surprise. This sensation is entirely new. I never actually felt the weight of such small objects before.
Not the time to be astounded.
With some thorough swipes I make myself mostly presentable. My mane and coat lack their usual shine, and without being able to look at myself in a mirror I'm sure I've missed some spots, but it will have to make do.
"Satisfied?" he asks now visibly frustrated as I pass him back the comb. "You really don't seem to be worried about your situation."
"So why are you?" I ask with feigned innocence. Before he could explode on me, I raise my hoof. "Fine, I understand, let's move."
Without saying another word, he turns around and trots outside the cell. I gingerly step past the layer of dust I removed from myself and follow him. As I step outside, I cast a look towards the other cell.
It's empty and open.
"So, where is my would-be assassin lurking now?" I ask him half-jokingly.
He continues to walk towards the front door with the same speed as he answers.
"With no charges pressed, nor any evidence presented, there was no reason for me to keep him locked up."
"Hah, how easy it is for some of us!"
"Can we please get a move on?" He doesn't wait for an answer, just opens the door and trots outside.
I wince and raise a hoof in front of my eyes as I step into the light. Even just a day spent in that cell got me too used to the darkness.
As my vision adjusts to the brightness, I notice that the street seems a bit emptier than usual. No, that's not right. I take a better look. The street is completely empty. There isn't a single pony nearby as far as I can see. Even the homes look completely abandoned.
I turn to ask Hitch, but he already began trotting towards the building in the distance. I gallop after him.
"You know I could really easily just run away."
That gets a reaction out of him. He stops and turns around.
"Oh, please!" he pleads with me sarcastically after suppressing a curt laugh. "Be my guest to try! But I think we both know why you haven't done so already. Even if you were able to outrun Maretime Bay's most athletic pony in your current state, which, mind you, I heavily doubt, where would you even go? The unicorns already know about you and you'd never find Zephyr Heights without a map."
I answer him with a scoff and move past him. He quickly catches up to me. The rest of our short journey up the small hill passes by without words.
As we get closer to the factory I decide to get a better look at it. Though I have briefly seen it before when I first visited the city, I didn't bother to pay too much attention to it. The early Sun's rays reflect from the massive glass panes that make up the bulk of the building's front side. Behind it the walls bulge out to form the main area of the factory. A massive pair of magenta glasses stare down at us, which, despite their cheerful colors, give the place a slightly oppressive aura. The path leading up to the building is surrounded by tall banners, each proudly advertising the name of the place.
The doors slide open in front of us without us even needing to touch them.
Odd, I feel no magic emanating from them, I think to myself, as we enter into an atrium. The sunlight illuminates a labyrinthine set of tubes, which run in all directions on the walls, each connecting to giant, metal machines placed in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Yet, the more I look at them, the more I see order in the chaos. Though I do not know what exactly their purpose is, in a way I'd almost call the scene elegant.
As we walk past them, the silence is slowly replaced by a soft murmur coming from deeper inside the factory. I raise my eyebrow towards Hitch. He walks up to a corridor.
"Through here," he beckons. Finally, after a few more minutes spent walking, we find ourselves in front of a large set of double-doors. The murmuring seems to come from beyond.
Without saying another word, he throws open the doors.
Unlike the somewhat cramped, but well-lit atrium, the chamber beyond is gloomy and spacious. More of the various metal devices and cylinders surround its walls, their function just as incomprehensible to me as the ones outside. The room is divided into an elevated stage with a runway and a far larger area meant for the audience. I cannot make out anything on the stage due to the darkness.
The spectators' area is filled by a massive crowd of ponies, who are all anxiously chatting with each other and exchanging concerned glances. As the doors swing open and they notice us, the room goes silent. Just like an order was given, the crowd slowly parts, forming a small corridor and allowing us passage towards the runway. There is a small portable staircase planted in front of it, allowing ascent onto the stage.
So this is where everyone disappeared to.
I look at Hitch and he tips his head towards the path in front of us. As we walk inside I feel every single gaze in the room aimed at me. A few awkward coughs ring out, but otherwise the only thing that breaks the silence is the quiet clopping of our hooves.
The moment we reach about the halfway point the sound of something snapping into place rings out and two great, ceiling-mounted lamps suddenly spring to life, illuminating the stage. The crowd collectively gasps at the unexpected change and turns towards the stage's center, where an almost comically small desk stands with a bespectacled mare sitting behind it. Another chair sits in front of the desk, a bit further out on the runway.
Hitch trots besides the staircase and stops there. I climb it and trot up to the chair. As I sit down, I take a better look of the mare sitting in front of me. Unlike what her pink coat, carefully sculpted mane, and gaudy magenta-colored glasses would imply, the eyes staring down at me are icy cold.
Hmm, those glasses are just like the ones I've seen perched atop the building. If I had to guess, she's probably the owner of this factory. How very vain.
I return the gaze, undaunted.
For a few moments neither of us moves. A pin hitting the ground could be heard in the silence.
Finally she clears her throat and speaks.
"Mr. Sombra, you are hereby accused of..." Her voice trails off as she picks up a paper from the desk and quickly skims through. "... Assault of a citizen, theft of property, disturbing peace, and finally sedition." She takes a moment of pause. "How do you plead?"
This is it? I think to myself with a mix of shock and disappointment. Is this the court they intend to sentence me under?
I lean forward in my chair and stare deeply into her blue eyes.
"And, pray tell, which authority is prosecuting me?" I speak with a quiet voice. One that's not overtly threatening, but makes my opinion clear. "Or, for an even better question, who are you? Who's the accuser? What exact actions do my alleged crimes entail? Am I to face judgment from your decision alone or is this crowd behind me acting as a jury? How am I expected to accept justice from a court that keeps me in the dark?"
She is visibly taken aback by my flurry of questions and a slight hint of worry flashes on her expression before she quickly looks off-stage to wave a pony in the audience to herself. Another pink mare wearing a small tie rushes onto the stage and the two begin whispering to each other, while shooting a few conspiring glances towards me. She occasionally blows small bubbles of chewing gum, but this seemingly doesn't stop her from speaking or paying attention. I hear the audience's confused murmur behind myself.
Finally the mare with the tie blows one last bubble, then shrugs and walks off. The mare in glasses coughs to grab everyone's attention before speaking up.
"The prisoner will answer the court's question."
"The accused," I correct her flatly.
"What?"
"Until judgment is passed, I'm the accused," I explain to her with dejected patience. "Afterwards I'm the convict. Either way, whether I've entered here as a free stallion or one in captivity has no relevance in front of the law."
She sighs in exasperation and massages her temple.
"Fine. Will the accused please answer the question?" she asks me with an insultingly patronizing voice.
I shake my head.
"Not until the court makes its rules and identity clear."
"I knew agreeing to this was a mistake. Answer the question or I will have you removed from the room!" she orders me with a raised voice. I hear a few ponies gasping in the audience.
"And to that I can only ask the same thing again, Your Honor, on what authority?" I lash back with a similarly raised voice. "I was promised fairness, but what I'm seeing here is less than a show trial!"
I should know with how many I've personally presided over during my reign.
I take a moment to look back at the audience to underline my point. Most of them look back at me with slightly fearful eyes, but some of them also seem to be deep in thought.
"Or is this kangaroo-court merely a ploy to appear legitimate before this crowd? A little circus of mimed justice before you stick me in a cell until I die? I demand it adjourned if it is incapable of proper function."
She doesn't immediately give me an answer. I'm prepared to go further, but a new voice breaks the silence.
"Mom, I really think you should just answer his questions."
Wait a minute, I know this voice. I turn around and amid the crowd I spot Sprout. He shrinks back into the crowd as our eyes meet. I turn back, hardly able to mask the surprise I feel. Does this mean then that the mare in front of me is his mother he told me about? I suppose it makes sense, though this really wasn't exactly the mental image I've had in mind.
"Sprout, dear, this is really not the time," she answers with visible discomfort. "Let me do my job, please."
But before she could say another word, another voice joins in.
"I, uh, I think he should be given a fair trial too," says a mare.
"R-right. How can we claim to be any better otherwise?" asks a stallion.
"What sort of town is this if we just stick ponies in prison?" cries another.
"Just tell him already!"
The room's silence is quickly broken by more and more voices joining, which quickly swells into a torrent of noise, all demanding my justice. It takes quite a bit of effort not to laugh.
Perfect, just perfect. Things have worked out even better than I could have thought. The trial hasn't even truly began and yet the crowd already supports me.
A series of measured knocks cut through the noise. The crowd quickly falls silent and looks back at the stage towards the mare sitting in front of me.
"Fine," she replies as she lowers her hoof again. "Let's have it your way then. My name is Phyllis Cloverleaf, I'm the owner of this factory and more or less I serve as the city's mayor as well. The court calls upon the town's authority and you have been accused by none other than Sunny Starscout herself, the victim of two of your crimes. You are accused of inflicting long-term bodily harm on her; appropriating her journal, an object of both great sentimental value to her and great historical value to all ponykind; and, as mentioned before, disturbing peace and sedition. The act of threatening to overthrow the city's government and assume control constitutes these two charges. Is my answer satisfactory?"
"You still haven't told me who will ultimately decide the ruling."
"Ah yes. That would be me and me alone," she tells me coldly. "The town is only present to ease everypony's mind and so that you won't try to do anything clever. Is that all?"
Good, that's plenty of information to work with, I think to myself, keeping a straight face. Perhaps I could challenge her authority? She's not really the mayor after all and, seeing how much she fumbles around, I bet she doesn't actually bear the title of judge. This, combined with the fact that I'm not a citizen of the town, could play into my favor. Once I prove that she has no legal basis to convict me, the court would crumble under its own weight.
I'm about to open my mouth, but instead I take a quick glance at the crowd behind myself. They stare at us with absolute concentration. Their eyes gleam with a mix of wonder, anticipation and fire. I quickly reconsider. One could almost cut the tension in the room.
No, this isn't the right approach for an audience like this. I've seen plenty of these types back in the day. They don't even know it, but they are out for blood. They need action. Some long legal hurdle would only make them confused and make me lose their support. If they don't think me guilty, her verdict won't hold water. I need to keep them on my side, so for now I'll just see where she takes things from here.
"Yes, Your Honor," I have no choice but to concur.
"Excellent. Now that we have been able to settle this, I'll ask you again, how do you plead?"
And so the clock begins to tick on my side again.
Let's suppose I plead guilty. I speak the truth, which is of course what everypony thinks they want to hear, so even if the crowd is somewhat horrified they will still appreciate my honesty. The judge will likely give me a harsh sentence, but perhaps the crowd's mood would persuade her to act lenient. Either way, considering the fact that they never even bothered to shackle me, I cannot see them dealing in any cruel or unusual punishments even for something as serious as sedition. I doubt they even understand the concept of a life sentence. It's a dangerous gamble, but certainly the simpler route.
I quickly cough, buying myself a few more seconds to think.
Or, I could choose to plead innocent. There is little to no physical evidence of my actions and most of my charges have only been witnessed by Sunny and her eccentric friend, whom I don't think they'd even completely trust and who, as far as I've seen, isn't even present right now. I also returned the book. This definitely helps my case with some of the charges, but there is one I just don't know what to do with. I fight down the urge to smack my hoof into my face. Why I did have to choose such a bombastic entrance? I chide myself with a silent groan.
Nevermind, too late for regrets. There's not much time left to think. Let's see. That sedition charge is probably the one I dread the most. Sunny already planted the seeds of doubt into everyone's minds. Even if there isn't any evidence of me actually saying what I've said, nopony has any reason to doubt her words. Still, I don't have a choice. It is the most serious charge and I must try my best not to be convicted of it.
"Well?" I hear Phyllis ask expectantly, breaking my inner monologue.
I take a deep breath and keep it in for a few seconds. Then I very slowly exhale.
I've made up my mind.
This is where my guile may turn out to be not enough.
"Your Honor," I speak slowly as if to delay the inevitable. Deathly silence fills the room. "I plead innocent on the theft and sedition charges and guilty on the rest."
The chamber explodes into disarray.
"What? He really hurt Sunny!"
"The bastard! And to think I even felt bad for him!"
"Throw him into a cell right now!"
Their words crash against my skull like thunder. The masses are fickle and just like I've had their support mere moments ago, now I'm at their waning mercy.
"Order! Order, please!" Phyllis yells, while knocking on the desk. This time the crowd calms far slower. Her own face is shaded red with anger as well, but she still manages to keep her voice calm.
"Noted," she says with a curt nod before rapping on the desk again. "The court calls Sunny Starscout to testify."
I choose to remain silent instead of pointing out that during a proper trial the court should first describe the crimes in detail and only then call upon its first witness. I turn around and observe as parts of the audience shuffle around, trying to give way to the summoned mare.
"Sorry! Excuse me!" I hear her apologize as she pushes herself past the others. "Coming through!" Someone yelps. "Oops, sorry! Didn't see your tail!"
She eventually manages to squeeze through the crowd and trots up the staircase. As she passes my chair an odd emotion passes through her face, one I'm not sure how to interpret.
She sheepishly waves towards the mass in front of her. Phyllis takes her eyes off me and her face immediately becomes softer as she turns to Sunny.
"Dearie, thanks for coming up here. Please tell us what happened."
"Right," she says with a nod. "I met Sombra a couple of weeks ago. He posed under a fake identity, claiming he was a traveling mineralogist. He said he was looking for an ancient empire located in the Frozen North. It didn't take me long to realize my father's journal had a section about this location and upon telling him this, he became very interested. So I, uhm, thought it would be okay to show it to him. Once he made sure that his old enemies were dead, he revealed his true self to us. He then attacked me and left."
The crowd once again erupts in shouts of various insults directed at me.
"Order! I will have order! Mr. Sombra, do you deny these allegations?"
I hardly even hear the question. That's not nearly everything I've done or even said. This isn't mere naivety. Did she really just cover for me? Why? My brain is scrambling for an answer, yet I can't find any.
"N-no." My voice falters slightly as I finally answer. I take a moment to compose myself. "No, Your Honor. I did in fact attack the victim. My intent, however, wasn't to cause any serious harm. I was merely used to fighting stronger enemies."
"I see," Phyllis replies slowly with a grim look on her face. She opens her mouth to say something else, but then she changes her mind and turns to Sunny instead. "Sunny, previously you mentioned he stole your journal from you. Yet this is noticeably absent from your testimony. Why?"
Sunny seems to be in thought for a second.
"Yes, I did believe he stole my journal. However, as it turned out, the book just got lost during the struggle," she says with an apologetic smile. "I found it a week later, safe and sound."
I find myself staring at her with wide eyes. She averts hers. That was a blatant lie.
Phyllis is clearly not happy with the answer, but she sighs and nods.
"I understand. In that case, I hereby dismiss the second charge. This leaves us with sedition. When the town convened at your lighthouse for a meeting, you were adamant in your claims that he expressed a desire to take over Equestria, including Maretime Bay. Yet once again your testimony is completely ignoring this event."
I feel my heart pumping in my throat. If she doubles down, I have nothing to refute her with. She's a local hero, a lack of evidence won't convince anypony that she's wrong. Especially considering she's not. A bead of sweat rolls down my temple and I shuffle in my chair.
She stares right into my soul. For the first time since I've left the Heart, I feel afraid. There is a strange shine in her eyes.
"After the attack I was in a state of shock," her words are slow and deliberate. I realize I started playing with my mane again. Everything else fades from my vision as I focus on her face. Her eyes flick towards me for a second before she continues. "I believed he really claimed to be after Equestria. But, as I've later realized, I'm unable to properly recount his words, so I probably imagined most of it. I'm sorry."
For a moment only my short and rapid breaths can be heard, the chamber then completely loses its head. It isn't merely shouting anymore, ponies are shoving each other, striking the ground with their hooves, and some of them even begin to approach the stage only for Hitch to stand in their way and order them back.
"S-Sunny, dearie," Phyllis turns to her with a very forced smile. "You are aware of what you are saying, right? You're ruining your own credibility."
She hangs her head, seemingly unable to answer.
"I'm sorry," she finally mumbles.
Even though my mind is blank, I feel my body springing into action.
"Your Honor!" I call out to her loudly and she immediately turns towards me. "Tell me, have you ever faced a unicorn in battle before?"
"Umm, well, not exactly." Her voice is wavering like she's admitting to a lie herself. She anxiously adjusts her glasses. "You see I never, uh, actually met any until not so long ago."
"So then you have no idea what it's like to stare down a creature who could break all your legs with a mere thought?"
Her ears flop down and panic sets in her eyes. She sinks into her chair.
"N-no."
"Don't worry, most unicorns aren't nearly powerful enough to do anything like that," I reassure her with a dismissive wave of my hoof. Then with the same momentum, I lean forward in the chair and stare deeply into her eyes. "I, however, was. I wasn't joking when I said I didn't intend to cause much harm in her. For me sending a pony flying was like merely swatting a feather away."
She gulps in fear.
"So, with this in mind, can you-" I turn around to stare down the crowd, who have all fallen silent since I began talking "-or anypony else in this room fault her for not entirely remembering what happened? Or that her first instinct was to protect this town from something she could have reasonably believed could happen?"
"Well," she stammers. "When you put it that way, I suppose we can forgive her that much." She lets out a nervous laugh, as her eyes dart between me and Sunny. She adjusts her glasses again. "I- I guess this means the sedition charge is dismissed as well."
"Excellent!" I lean back and clap my hooves together. "Then I believe you can finally pass your judgment."
She takes a few calming breaths and then clears her throat.
"Right. Yes. We should absolutely immediately just do that," she says quickly, before her words trail off. She's visibly searching for what to say next.
Oh Crystals, she's not doing what I think she's doing, is she?
"Is there a problem, Your Honor?" I force myself to ask the question, already fearing for the worst.
"I'm not actually sure what the punishment for your crimes is," she finally admits flatly.
Oh, I simply cannot believe this, I scream inside as I raise my eyes towards the ceiling. The urge to bury my face into my hooves returns with a vengeance. Like mother, like son!
"I think I can be of help," says a voice behind me. I turn around to see Hitch climb onto the stage and trot next to Phyllis. He speaks like he's reading out of a book. "The Maretime Bay Code stipulates that any offender who disturbs peace can be fined up to fifty bits depending on the severity of the offense," he says as he glances up to me with a smug smirk. "I believe in this case we can easily conclude that it was most severe." I merely respond with a snort. "Assault, however, can be punished by imprisonment up to a year, depending on the victim's wishes."
All eyes slowly turn to Sunny. She looks at me quizzically.
The room goes eerily silent. It is almost as if everyone forgot to even breathe.
My hoof passes through my mane.
"I want him to-" she begins, but her voice buckles a little. Then she shakes her head and furrows her brows. She takes a deep breath, then continues confidently, "I want him to be sentenced to home confinement in my lighthouse for an entire year."
A moment of mortified silence follows.
"What?" the crowd collectively gasps.
"What?" escapes Phyllis's lips flatly as she stares at her with wide eyes.
"What?!" I echo them, completely dumbfounded.
"Sunny, dear, I don't think this is what Hitch meant by 'the victim's wishes.'"
"But this is what I want," she asserts. "Is there any rule against it?" she asks, turning to Hitch.
He takes a step back and stares into the distance.
"No, I don't think there is," he admits sourly after a few seconds. "But Sunny! You don't seriously want to take him into your home, do you?" he asks pleadingly.
"Yes, I do. I've made up my mind," she then turns to me. "You don't mind, do you?"
"N-no, not at all," I reply quickly, still in shock.
The crowd just stares at us in disbelief. Some of them exchange wide glares and point towards us with their mouths hung agape, as if to convince themselves what they just heard was reality, but no one dares to interject.
"Well," Phyllis takes back the lead, still stammering a little. "Well, I suppose it is time to wrap things up then. The court finds Mr. Sombra innocent of theft and sedition and guilty of assault and disturbing peace. The court thus sentences him to pay a fine of fifty bits and be confined for a year... at the victim's home." She shakes her head before continuing in a less formal tone, "It feels weird to even say this, but if this is what you truly want, dear."
Sunny gives her a reassuring nod. Phyllis once again knocks on the desk.
"With that, I declare this court closed."
"Adjourned." The correction accidentally slips out of my mouth as I'm still trying to process what just happened.
"Right, I declare this court adjourned." |
Northern Stars | Finale - Of a Dawn at the Lighthouse | Relieved chatter fills the chamber as the trial finally comes to its end. Even though the doors leading to the room are fairly big, it still takes quite some time until the entire population of the town leaves through them. It is almost a miracle they are able to act in such a coordinated fashion for this long.
An awkward silence falls upon the four of us standing on the stage.
"Well," Phyllis finally says, still anxiously eyeing me. "I suppose I should really just go back to work. We'll figure it out later how exactly you'll pay your fine. Too-da-loo."
With that she quickly abandons her desk and rushes off to mix into the crowd.
We stare after her for a second.
"So, uhm, I guess you're technically a citizen now?" Hitch asks halfheartedly, turning to me.
"It appears so?" I reply with a similar lack of confidence.
"Well, welcome to Maretime Bay then, I guess," he says, as his words trail off. Then he winces and shakes his head. "Okay, no. I can't just forget about everything you did in a second like that." He takes a step closer to me and jabs a hoof into my chest. As he speaks again, his voice rings deathly low. "You may have gotten off the hook due to Sunny's kindness, but I swear if I hear a single bad word from her, if she's as much as inconvenienced by you -" He twirls his hoof around a few times in the air, as he attempts to come up with a third thing to say "- if a single hair on her mane is bent the wrong way, then so help me, I'll personally drag you back to the station by that creepy horn of yours and you will not leave for a very long time." He puts a particular emphasis on the last three words.
I swat his hoof away.
"Sheriff, I'd rather you not insinuate that I'm stupid enough to try and squander her kindness in such a way," I reply in a low growl. "Or I might just be forced to take offense."
We stare each other down until Sunny steps between us.
"And I'd rather if you both calmed down," she says forcefully. "Hitch, I really appreciate that you worry about me, but I don't need to be mollycoddled." She then looks at me, her brows furrowed and eyes piercing. "And you are talking to one of my best friends. Keep that in mind when choosing your tone."
"Fine," we both begrudgingly say.
Her face immediately lightens up and she begins to walk towards the exit.
"Great! Let's go then."
We share one last grim look behind her back, then trot after her.
By now the entire room has emptied out except for us, so we leave easily and undisturbed. It's already early in the afternoon by the time we finally see the light of day again. The town outside regained its usual tempo, with ponies scurrying all over the streets like busy ants. We begin descending the hill, still holding the awkward silence.
"Hitch, don't you have a job to do?" asks Sunny with a chuckle, as we reach and pass by the police station.
"Well, I figured I'd accompany you until the lighthouse. You know, just to make sure of things," he replies with a very thin smile.
"Hitch," she says with a low voice, pausing a second for emphasis. "It's fine."
"You sure?" He doesn't even attempt to hide the disapproval in his voice.
"Yeah. Besides, I can't exactly have you hovering around me for the whole next year." She laughs at the absurd image.
He sighs.
"Alright, I guess I do need to take my post anyway. Sprout too is probably waiting for me already. See you later then, Sunny." He turns to me. "And you better not forget what I've said."
"Oh, I couldn't even if I wanted to," I tell him with my most innocent smile.
He shakes his head and mutters something under his breath as he disappears behind the door, leaving only the two of us.
"Well, we shouldn't tarry either. Let's go before he arrests you for breaking your curfew," Sunny says with a laugh. I just nod and trot after her.
We share few words as we walk through the city. The passersby all eye us with varying levels of worry, but at least they aren't running off screaming anymore. The only two ponies who don't seem to mind us are a brown stallion and a pink mare sitting at a nearby table. A bowl of cream puffs sits between them. They are far too busy staring deeply into each other's eyes, unaware of the world around them or even the passage of time. They seem somewhat familiar, but I can't exactly place them.
A little while later we finally leave the bustling city behind and reach the hill leading up to the lighthouse. As we climb the road, I stop midway.
Sunny notices the lack of clopping behind herself and turns around. She looks at me expectantly.
"Why?" I ask her.
She tips her head to the side as if she didn't understand the question.
"Why what?"
"Don't play innocent with me," I tell her with a scoff. "Your actions just now made no sense. You brought me to justice, only to save me from the charges that actually matter. Now you've sent away the only pony around who'd be willing to lay down his life for you and you're taking me into your own home, like I was some trusted friend of yours. And for what reason? Don't you realize I have only caused you harm and I would have caused so much more if I still had my magic?"
She doesn't answer, instead she waves for me to follow her. I roll my eyes, but oblige. Another minute passes as we circle around the lighthouse and reach the cliff behind it.
The waves are calmly rolling against the shore below. The faint smell of saltwater enters my nostrils as the crashing of the gentle waves plays in my ears. Sunny sits down near the edge and pats the ground next to herself.
I groan and sit next to her. I would otherwise enjoy the serene sight, but her silence annoys me. She stares at a few seagulls as they aimlessly circle in the sky, seemingly forgetting I'm even present.
"Well?" I finally snap, breaking her tranquility.
A small smile spreads onto her lips.
"Not even that long ago I sat here with another pony, one you may be quite familiar with already," she begins slowly, chuckling a little. "Admittedly his crimes were, at the end of the day, far less severe than what you did, but the underlying theme is the same. Both him and you showed that you're capable of change."
"Me?" I ask her incredulously. "Don't be so naive as to think I've had some sort of saccharine epiphany and now I'm suddenly a good stallion." I shrug a little. "I just know when to cut my losses."
"And yet you covered for Sprout even though he tried to kill you," she counters.
"Just as I hid my identity from Izzy and just as I fooled you. What difference does one more lie make?"
"This time you lied for somepony else."
I snort.
"So, allow me to get this straight. You took pity on me and sabotaged my trial just because I didn't pursue a pointless vengeance and kept your little friend out of prison?"
She doesn't answer. We continue to stare into the sea.
"Your story was true, right?" she suddenly turns to me and asks. "The one you told me from your cell. I couldn't sleep last night. Your words kept echoing in my ears. Princess Twilight..." She leans closer, her eyes gleaming with awe. "You really did meet her, right?"
I shrink back a little and let out a heavy sigh.
"Yes," I tell her flatly. "Yes, I did."
She averts her eyes upon noticing my tone.
"What was she like?" The question still bears a tinge of hope, but its edges are marred by worry.
I stay silent for a few seconds, thinking how to answer the question best.
"Majestic and regal as all alicorns are," I finally answer hesitantly, in an attempt to deflect. Sunny looks back at me. I see it on her face, that she knows I'm not telling her the full story.
After a second of pause, another sigh escapes me.
"Very well. The princess you consider such a shining beacon of Friendship was to me synonymous with death, suffering, and humiliation. I hated her with a burning passion for eons. For all the pain and shame she caused me. For helping to usurp the throne I rightfully claimed. For banishing me to a place of complete darkness for millennia. I wanted nothing more than to subject her to the same punishment she forced me to endure. But I never again even had the chance to prove myself against her."
A humorless laugh escapes me.
"Whichever force you believe controls the world, be it Fate or Harmony, has a cruel sense of irony. When I finally did meet her again, I was forced to accept the fact that she suffered a similar fate as I, without me ever even lifting a hoof. Knowing that, are my feelings of vengeance even justified anymore? Does it matter that I wasn't the one who cast her into the pit? Even I don't know anymore. We both paid a great price for our failings and were ultimately struck from the annals of history." I shrug. "And now that I've lost my immortality, whatever feud we might have had seems so far away and so insignificant."
I shake my head slowly.
"Ultimately, whether I could be capable of forgiving her or whether I'd pursue her to the end of the world is of no consequence. I've been given a checkmate for both options. She forever left this world behind and passed on to the next, but not before showing me a force inconceivably terrifying and powerful. A force I cannot ever hope to comprehend, let alone match. Not even in my prime. " I avert my eyes in shame as I realize I have been rambling on without properly answering her question. "It is probably for the best if I just say that she was nothing like the bright-eyed, young mare I fought so many moons ago."
She frowns a little and looks away.
"That's not exactly the picture I had in mind."
I feel a pang of unexpected guilt.
"Don't feel so bad. I'm sure if you were the one meeting her, you would have found her quite different." I stare off into the distance again. "We just had a long history." I let out a dry chuckle. "One that involved me trying to kill her and her successfully killing me."
One of the seagulls lets out a shrill cry, which the winds quickly carry away.
Her eyes meet mine again.
"And yet you were willing to help her save the world."
I just snort.
"As if I really had a choice. If you saw the creature I've witnessed, you'd understand why there was no other option. That is if you could still think afterwards," I add with a shudder.
"Who knows?" she asks musingly, seemingly unaffected by what I just implied or what she is implying. "From the little time I've known you for, you seem to a pony who can think quickly on his hooves. Maybe you could have figured something out. Or you could have easily thought the Princess was lying to you. But you didn't. You trusted her words."
"I... Despite everything between us, I had to. I wouldn't have been able to live with the guilt, if it turned out I was wrong." I take a deep breath and slowly exhale. "Losing my Empire once was already too much."
Sunny silently stands up and trots over to me. Before I could ask her what she's doing, the words get stuck in my throat as she envelops me in a hug.
"You were mostly right. I was willing to forgive what you did to me because you stood up for Sprout," she whispers to me affectionately. "But this is why I'm willing to give you another chance."
I freeze in place, unsure how to deal with the unexpected sensation.
"But you had no idea about any of this when you saved me," I manage to say.
"Yup, I didn't," comes the quiet reply. "I just had a hunch and hoped for the best."
I stare off blankly over her shoulder into the depths beyond.
Why is she showing me her most vulnerable side? Is she truly naive enough to think I can change just like that? I ponder. My eyes slide down to her. As I look at her gently breathing form, I feel something stir deep inside me. Something I thought I left behind with my magic. Vile thoughts begin to whisper in my ears. What a ridiculous notion... You could thrust her into her death so easily. The waves continue to wash over the sharp edges below. It would only take a little push. She would never even see it coming. Perhaps, with her gone, the town would finally submit in despair and you could still salvage a victory from this pathetic failure.
The sounds of the sea fade from my ears, as my pounding heart drowns out all other noise.
Sunny's eyes are still closed, blissfully unaware of the maddened expression on my face.
Another foamy wave hits the rocks.
I hesitate.
Oh, you coward, I hear a voice sneer in my head that is like my own, yet isn't. It is as malicious as it is patronizing. You wouldn't dare stoop to their level now, would you? That would be very unbecoming of you.
As I sit there paralyzed, my mind wanders back to the very beginning and everything that has happened flashes in front of my eyes. The voice follows me even there.
Izzy was so willing to help me, despite having only just met me.
Meaningless kindness from a raving lunatic.
Hitch stood up for me, despite his rightful anger and distrust.
A noble worm is still a worm.
Sprout admitted his failure, even though he could have cast all blame on me.
Death would be too kind for him after he dared to raise his hoof against you.
The Princess herself returned me to the world, even though my purpose was already fulfilled.
Our vengeance on her will be legendary. She will face endless suffering for her moment of weakness.
And, finally, the mare I hurt the most is now offering me a new chance.
This "mare?" I see only an insect standing in your way.
Is it really worth throwing all of it away? Just so that I can maybe continue the fight?
And then what 'fight' is there even anymore? The alicorns are dead. So is my Empire.
There is only me left.
Yes! And you're King Sombra! the voice yells while laughing viciously. The world goes dark around me. There is only me, her, and the voice. I feel its presence weigh down upon my soul like a lead blanket. You don't have second thoughts when you kill insects! You endured millennia of torment, fueled only by your hate and pride! And finally here is your new chance! Is it really worth throwing all of it away? ...
No. It's not worth it.
Finally! Then what are you waiting for?
Claim back your throne.
End her.
I hold my breath back. My hooves move towards Sunny's body on their own. Slowly, without making a sound they snake around her. As they touch her coat, I forcefully lean forward.
And I cast these treacherous thoughts into the deepest, darkest pits of my mind, never again to resurface.
I return the hug.
"Thank you," I whisper, not finding any other words to say.
She remains silent and merely tightens her grasp.
We stay there in silence, as the waves peacefully crash behind us. I allow my head to rest on her back. Her soft coat gently caresses my face. I shut my eyes, as the wind whistles quietly around us. I slowly allow my lungs to fully exhale. A sense of calmness washes over my tired body, as all the tension and hurt I accumulated since I returned begins to leave me. Even the touch of aging feels like it's waning momentarily.
After what feels like an eternity, we separate.
"Besides, there is one more reason why I wanted you to specifically move in here with me," she says after a while, with a mischievous grin. "You're a veritable treasure trove when it comes to Equestrian history! What sort of a madmare would pass up an opportunity like that to interrogate you?" She breaks into laughter. "Tell you what, I'll even pay you, so you can settle your fine! How about that? One hoof washes the other." She winks at me and playfully prods me in the side.
I find myself chuckling along and eventually I start laughing myself.
"I say, Sunny Starscout, you have showcased a masterful mixture of cunning, selfishness, and mercy. Are you sure you're not part of some royal family?"
"Nope," she says cheerfully. "I was merely taught by the two greatest ponies in the world." Her face turns wistful for a second, before she regains her luster. "Also, we will be spending a lot of time together from now on, so please, you can really just call me Sunny."
"Well, in that case, Sunny, I look forward to working out the history of Equestria with you," I reply with a smile, that, for the first time in forever, feels genuine.
"Great! We should probably start with the Crystal Empire then!" She jumps up and offers me her hoof. "Oh, I just can't wait to know what all those mysterious texts say! If only Dad could see me now!"
I grab it and allow myself to be pulled up. As I look into her eager eyes and think back to everything that happened during these two shorts weeks, I'm reminded of an old saying that was commonly used in my Empire:
"It is during the darkest of Nights, that the Stars shine their brightest." |
Phantom Krystal: An Unstable Ruby | pre | A green aura appeared around Arachnis, and the next thing he knew, he was sent straight into the ground with a loud BOOM. The citizens of Canterlot stopped what they were doing to rushed out their residences to witness what had fallen into their streets. Many speculated it was a shiny crystal or a meteor fallen from space.
Their conjecture were only half correct
As the dust settled, the townsponies gathered around the the crater and from it, came a creature that amazed them all. Something that possessed features that resembled both pony and changeling, but none seemed to overlap the other. Arachnis rose to his hooves, stood firm, and looked up to his tyrant mother, as did the townsfolk. He readied his wings, sparked his horn, and flew right back up and straight into Chrysalis, charging a dark blue beam that, while not as powerful as something Luna could've mustered, was still far beyond most ponies around his age could dish out. Even through she properly defended with a shield, Chrysalis was sent careening downward and into the Everfree Forest.
Chrysalis made deep tracks in the ground from how far back she was sent. She knew Arachnis had the upper hand, but she couldn't bring herself to hurt what she created. Nonetheless, it was painfully clear that she would have to try a bit harder. She once again levitated Arachnis and shot him right into the ground, being sure to position him a fair distance away from her. It was then that she noticed a glow. One of red and blue that could only be coming from an infuriated Arachnis, letting her know she played her cards right.
From a thicket of bushes and trees, Arachnis rushed at Chrysalis with large blue wings and fury in his eyes. Chrysalis' horn glowed just as bright as she simply looked at Arachnis coming toward her at dangerous speeds. He finally made contact, first driving his hooves into her and slamming her into the ground. Arachnis' horn dimmed, and eventually its light faded as he fell to his knees. He observed his damage only to look wide eyed at his victim.
It wasn't Chrysalis
Only seconds after noticing, green electric shocks struck him and the sting populated his body faster than a virus. He then felt his hooves being tugged, as four vines e were keeping them tightly locked, almost cutting off his blood flow. He turned his head only to see a heavily breathing Chrysalis applying the vines. She teleported in front of him.
"A pony can only handle a goddesses power for so long...." She said
Arachnis wanted to retort, but his body ached so badly he didn't even know if he had the energy to speak. Chrysalis noticed this lack of words.
"Arachnis! I...I'm sorry for what I had to do. I-I put my baby through so much pain.... But it was the only way to free you from their control. Why I would've been more gentle if I-"
"S-shut the hell up...and drop the act Chrysalis."
Chrysalis had never felt so much worry, and confusion in her life, but she only chose to facialize one of those feelings.
"W-whatever do you mean? I-I thought the ponies in Canterlot tried to-"
"You didn't free me from a damn thing! I tried to free myself from you!" He yelled
"I-I don't..."
"Oh now you don't know?! YOU THINK I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT WHY YOU MADE ME!?"
The vines loosened around Arachnis
"YOU JUST WANTED SOMEPONY POWERFUL ENOUGH TO DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU COULD NEVER DO"
The vines dropped Arachnis
"I...gave you that power because I lo-
"Because you wanted a weapon, that's why!"
Arachnis struggled to stand. He slowly walked toward Chrysalis
"That's...Arschnis none of that's true! I-I..."
"I don't want to fucking hear it. If an experiment is all I am to you...then you aren't my mother anymore."
Arachnis walked right past Chrysalis and into the town of Canterlot.
Chrysalis' horn glowed, as a nearby tree had a green aura around it. Its leaves turned brown, eventually they fell. Soon the tree was nothing but a hollow husk of what it once was.
Arachnis had been far from doing so, but Chrysalis truly felt like Arachnis had killed her. |
Phantom Krystal: An Unstable Ruby | What Once Belonged | Fizzlepop Berrytwist walked along the foot of a barren mountain. On her back she carried flowers in a clay pot. The flowers themselves, while varied in color, were very dull in their hues, with the brightest color of the bunch being a darkened yellow. She looked up the face of the mountain and at the very summit, was her makeshift dwelling. Sparks of electricity flared up from under her hooves, and soon, all four were covered in condensed electrical energy. she placed her hoof on the mountain, and began to defy gravity's force as she walked upward and to her destination.
She could never pinpoint when they began, but she started to see the same things in her dreams, and her imagination always seemed to take her back to her childhood days. The days when she had far less worries in life. The days when she could still see her friends on a daily basis. The days when she had magic. She began to have these thoughts once more, and like every other time, she repressed them. She told herself they didn't matter to her. That was the past, events that have already taken place. Events that she can no longer change. Ones that she can't forget, no matter hard she tried every single day. Ones that...could've been different.
And once again, her repression did little to keep her thoughts stable. At least she had reached her destination before her mind could wander any further. She needed to be focused on the here and now. She climbed to a large platform on the side of the mountain that led into the one thing that changed her life: a cave. Before she could even walk inside, she saw it. The tragedy that took away her every right to be called a unicorn. She envisioned every second of it so vividly. From the ball rolling into the cave, her declaring to get it with such boldness in her voice, and that boldness eventually making like her horn and being painfully ripped from her body like a band-aid. Again, she attempted repression.
Ironically enough, Berrytwist wasn't afraid to step inside. She focused lightning into her hoof and shot small bursts in four directions. Each one struck a wooden club held up by metal scaffolds, sparking a fire. With the cave lit, Berrytwist made her way to the last remnants of the Storm King. It was a dark, and barren graveyard that consisted of his, and other notable soldiers' armors from their fight with the Elements. While some died in the midst of battle, others couldn't handle the mental strain that came with war. She placed flowers on each of the graves, and placed the most on the makeshift shrine of the Storm King. It was a statue made frail by years of degradation, and mossy overgrowth. Nonetheless, she paid her respects to each of them. She then sat down on the cold but soft grass that surrounded the Storm King's statue, closed her eyes, and paid a moment of silent grace to her former ruler. It was only minutes, but it felt like hours to her. She stood up, and exited the cave to create a nice ambience for herself. Electricity jumped from her ears, and she shot a large bolt in the sky. The bolt dispersed a group of clouds, and seconds later, it began to rain. The droplets peppered her whole body and before long, she was soaked. Not that being soaked bothered her anyway. Berrytwist always had a history with rain, but unlike most ponies, she loved whenever it did. It was one of the few things that brought her peace and would allow her to sleep peacefully. And sleep peacefully she did.
Her time of peace was short lived, as the once light rain turned into a howling storm with lightning cracking down on the surface below. Berrytwist rose with urgency to the situation. She knew she hadn't used too much lighting, and yet a hurricane could be forming with how fast and hard the wind was blowing. She looked to the cave behind her, and saw that the torches she once lit had gone out. It was pitch black.
"Quite ironic that you shelter yourself in a cave Fizzlepop. I once ventured you'd learn from your mistakes." Sombra said.
Berrytwist whipped around as electricity surrounded her body. "Who the hell are you!? And why would going in a cave be a mistake?"
"I'd much rather skip the formalities until later. Then again, you are the Tempest Shadow. The one that lost something very dear to them in a cave." Sombra responded smugly.
Berrytwist's electricity declined in intensity. "That isn't who I am anymore! I left that life for good!"
"You may have left that behind, but your past stays with you in some form Fizzle." Sombra said as he pointed to Berrytwist's forehead.
"...How do you know so much?"
"Hm. The amount of tales I heard about the Storm King's battle with the elements was nearly uncountable. Most of all were tales of you. while others looked at you as a tragic traitor, I saw your power, and potential."
"Potential? What potential do I hold anymore? I wield no magic to grant me such..."
"I see.... I find your little shrine to the Storm King quite comical. Aren't you glad you have no master to order you like a sheep?"
Berrytwist figured there was no point in trying to hide anything. "I served him well, as he served me well. I owe him for the second chance he gave me." she said softly.
"Serving his people. One of the few things he did right as a monarch." Sombra said jokingly.
Berrytwist immediately retorted "And what would you know about being a king?"
Sombra stepped out of the shadowy cave, to reveal his form. "While he could've taught me a few things, I'd like to think my rule had many things over his."
The moments in which Berrytwist was genuinely shocked was few and far between, but this was certainly among those moments. She looked wide-eyed at Sombra, almost taking a step back. "I-it's...you. You're...him." She stammered
Sombra laughed in response. "I see you know of me Fizzle."
"How could I not? You once tried to overthrow Cadence and the Crystal Empire."
"To reclaim what was mine, not overthrow."
"Where have you been? Everypony thinks you're dead. Wait...all this time you could've attempted to 'reclaim your throne'. Why haven't you?" Berrytwist asked
"Simple. I need ponies like you. Of all the stories I've been told about you, y'know what you showed me. You showed me that even without magic, you can prove a challenge for those who wield it. I believe you'd make a valuable asset to my cause. My key to victory is a gem called the Vertia. Its abilities are capable of granting you something that once belonged to you. Help me obtain it, and you'll be able to use magic once again." Sombra explained.
Berrytwist pondered the possibilities. On one hand, she didn't know if she could fully trust the dark king, but on the other, she would finally be able to be a unicorn again, to rewrite her story. She'd finally be able to catch up with Glitter Drops and Spring Rain again, and she'd even be able to surpass those who once shunned her. The thoughts of revenge and redemption would've been questionable to any other pony, but to Beerytwist, it was all she cared about at this point.
"Are you willing to join me Fizzlepop?" Asked Sombra
"Call me Tempest Shadow."
Cozy Glow laid flat on the meeting room couch with empty bowls covering just as much as the blankets were. Not even the sound of Sombra and Tempest walking in was enough to wake her.
"So, this is what infamous Cozy Glow does in her spare time?" Said Tempest.
"I assure you she carries herself far better around others." Sombra responded.
"Well, what's our next move? Getting the Vertia?" Tempest asked
"Not right now. See the Vertia is inside a pony/changeling hybrid and his 'mother' is Chrysalis. All we have to do is wait until he fully rejects her, and then our time will come. In the meantime you should prepare yourself. You and Cozy will be out for recon tomorrow, so rest yourselves. Your quarters are to the right, Cozy's is to the left, and mine are on the upper floor." Sombra explained.
With those parting words, Tempest went straight to her room. She looked around. It had most of what made a room, a room, but also had other small things that made it look like a place for planning and preparation. She looked out her window to a pleasant surprise that the storm was still producing the rainy ambience that she loved. She looked out the window before bringing herself back to peace
"I'll finally show you two what I can really do..." |
Phantom Krystal: An Unstable Ruby | Rewritten | Arachnis stumbled through Canterlot like a pony attempting to walk on only its hind hooves. His energy was still heavily drained, and there was too much on his mind after his recent encounter. As each minute went by, he only felt he was covering less ground. He dragged himself along until he reached the mark that his fight with Chrysalis left on the town. He looked up to see the large crater that he left when Chrysalis slammed him into the ground. Townsponies of all kinds gathered around it, and the crowd that formed was full of whispers. Arachnis could only make out some of the sentences, but most of it sounded just sounded like noise to him. Noise that irritated him. He tried to quicken his pace, to leave the noise as fast as possible, but he only found that to hinder more than help as he tripped and tumbled down the crater that Chrysalis helped him create.
Now at the bottom with even more bruises on his body than he did before his fight. He fell to the floor, feeling almost drained of his energy. The crowd seemed to move in closer, surrounding Arachnis on every side. Despite the masses asking if he was ok, and even some offering a hoof up, Arachnis almost didn't appreciate any of it. Too many voices for only two ears to handle. Arachnis felt as if his body was on the verge of shutting down completely, and only then did his hidden power return to him. His body that was one various shades of red began to conform into only two different shades, and contort between those two shades. The flashes made the crowd back away in fear, even causing some foals to cry. Arachnis' head was in a throbbing pain, one that kept him from even standing. He was about to close his eyes...
Until he saw a familiar changeling land right in front of him.
He looked up to see Zoey with an expression so worrisome, she might've been on the verge of tears. "I thought Chrysalis would've done you in a lot worse....let's get you outta here." Zoey carried Arachnis and hovered in the air. She suddenly felt something graze her leg. She looked down to see a pencil falling toward the ground and an uproar of ponies. They detested Zoey from throwing objects to shouting names and even what many to be considered slurs. Zoey looked down upon the angry audience she caused. She knew Changelings weren't liked everywhere, but so see this about of hatred directed only toward her was...off putting to say the least. She turned around, took one last look, and flied away, Arachnis in hand.
Arachnis felt a cold but soothing sensation on his forehead. One that he knew he had never felt before but in some sense or another, felt familiar to him. He opened his eyes, expecting to still be in the middle of Canterlot, but instead found himself lying in what appeared to be a hospital bed. He leaned into a upright sitting position only discover to a sharp pain in his midsection. His body yelled at him to go to a more desirable position, but his mind told him to scan his surroundings. Telling himself he can push through the pain, he sat up and looked around. The architecture was quite similar to Canterlot's palace, but something seemed...off about it. He attempted to get up, but to no avail. His efforts only resulted in him falling off the bed and onto the cold floor below. Eventually, he stood himself up, only to see a singular door in the room. It was the only exit, but it felt like the wrong one. As Arachnis approached the door, he could hear voices, familiar ones at that. He listened closely, and realized that recognizing those voices was one of the worst things he could've done. They were the voices of both Zack and Zane, the two changelings other than Zoey tasked with protecting him as a foal. They weren't just normal voices though, they were quiet. muffled screams that Arachnis remembered all too well. At this point, he didn't want to open the door, but it was the only way out.
He turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped into...the Hive? This made even less sense to Arachnis, and was a clear indicator this was a dream, but no ordinary dream. It seemed to him it was one that targeted specific memories of his, almost as if it was being dictated by someone or something. Still, Arachnis had no way to go but forward, so he continued. It was down a long, thin hallway, only dimly lit by small green lights. With each step he took, he heard the voices of Zack and Zane, slowly taunting him in the worst way possible. Their tones were dull and full of spite, and their words were carefully sharpened to cut deep into Arachnis' mental state, and warp it into the frail foal they saw him to be. Zane spoke, "We could've lived our lives...", then Zack, "...if you hadn't been so afraid.". Arachnis was now trying his very hardest not to show it, but the voices...they were agonizing to hear. "Afraid?" Zane started. "Only afraid? It couldn't have been only thing that stopped him. It was our lives. Something else had to be there. Something... like disregard." He continued. "Oh? Or maybe it was...weakness? Yes, weakness always seemed to plague those higher than us. No different from Chrysalis."
He couldn't object to anything they told him. He knew he couldn't. He could've sworn up and down that he didn't care for Chrysalis anymore but deep down, he felt this slight sting when they called Chrysalis weak, but what seemed to pain him the most was his own apparent weakness. He recalled his encounter with Cozy Glow, and his fight with Chrysalis. He felt so powerful then, like he was taking steps to being as strong as Chrysalis and yet, he felt so helpless, like intangible knives were cutting straight though his heart. His pace through the tight hallway quickened, like a fish trying to escape a predator. His speed trot quickly turned into a full sprint as he raced down the hallway, desperately looking for a way out. The word began to ring in his head, constantly repeating itself.
"You're weak...you know you are..."
"All your power came from her...she's gone"
Arachnis couldn't do anything aside from visualize the words "shut up" in his mind's eye. Eventually, he came to a dead end. He tried to use his magic to blast the wall open, but it was of no avail. A hand grabbed Arachnis by the neck and tossed him into the air. During that short period, he saw Tirek with a smug smile on his face. His eyes hadn't even widened all the way before he was slammed into the ground. With each slamming motion, ropes of red and green blood escaped from his face. before making a contorted mess. Tirek winded up a punch, and thrusted his fist at Arachnis with everything he had. Once it made collision, Arachnis' vision went black.
Arachnis woke up in a room nearly identical to the one he was in before his nightmare began, the only difference being that the design was much more "nighttime" and "hospital". He was in considerable less pain, yet still some muscles ached and many others felt stiff. He looked to his side to find Zoey's clawed hand, leading up to her body in almost the same position as him. He quickly deduced that she was asleep.
"Quite the nap you took Arachnis."
Arachnis looked up to see Princess Luna sitting down, looking out her telescope and into the cosmos. She turned away from it to give Arachnis a short lived, but warm smile. Arachnis was hesitant to return the sentiment, but did so anyway. He looked toward the sleeping Zoey.
"She carried you all the way up here." Luna explained. "You were out for hours, but she refused to leave, even after I advised her to. She's a loyal one."
Arachnis looked at her, and thought about his "dream". Though she forgave him, the guilt would probably never leave him. He didn't want to think about it too much. He wanted to leave the past in the past. Zack and Zane, Chrysalis, even the name she gave him, he wanted to leave it all behind. He thought it fit to start with the pony that closely reminded him of his mother.
"H-hey Luna?"
"Something wrong Arachnis?"
"Well..." Arachnis looked at Zoey again. "I've put Chrysalis behind be but...I wanna start with a clean slate. I wanna erase everything I had to do with her, including my name." He said.
Luna have a surprise expression but it followed with a much longer lasting smile. "Chrysalis was a bad influence for all of us. I deeply understand. In such a case, what would you like to go by?"
Arachnis had thought long and hard about this is a younger colt. There was always a name that seemed to resonate with him, no matter how many times Chrysalis told him it sounded a bit edgy.
"Phantom Krystal." He said, half smiling. "Oh! Could you tell everypony else about this. I...wanna stay with Zoey for bit." He asked.
Luna simply nodded, and with a flash of her horn, and popping of midnight sparks, she was gone. Phantom looked back at Zoey, noticing a small scratch on her leg. She and his horn were enveloped in a crimson light and before long her scar was healed. He smiled, and laid down beside her.
> Sparking a War
Cozy Glow and Tempest Shadow sped along the darkened trails that led up to the Hive. They were told by a spy that Chrysalis was on her way back to her home, and that she would be expected any moment. Cozy's and Tempest's mission to find out why, preferably without being torn to shreds by a myriad of changelings. When they approached, Cozy used her magic to contort the terrain in a way that wouldn't make them visible, at least not to any changelings that happened to be outside.
"Tell me about the Vertia's carrier, Cozy. He's royalty here, I know that much, but you've fought him before. You'd know him better than both me and Sombra." She whispered.
Cozy looked upward and to a nearby opening in the Hive. She watched as it contracted and relaxed like a muscle to let changelings in and out. With each contraction she could hear the gut-wrenching sound of a pony's insides. She scrunched her face in disgust.
"Hear that? What does it sound like to you?" Said Cozy.
"Just...changelings." Tempest responded, curious as to where Cozy was going with this.
"I hear nothing but savages. There's a reason we shun them from the rest of the world. We can't sustain their primitive likes, and they can barley sustain their own." She explained. Her face remained stern and Tempest noticed no slight or sudden change. It felt unlike Cozy to be making such an expression.
"This...is quite an interesting outlook on them." Tempest said. It was clear she was caught off guard at what Cozy said. Cozy noticed this, and looked upward with a glare in her eye.
"Hmm. Alright, I'll show you what I mean. C'mon." She said, motioning for Tempest to follow her as her undersized wings carried her to the contracting entrance of the Hive. Tempest channeled lightning into her hooves, and walked up the side of Hive after her. Cozy approached the entrance, gagging with each movement it made. Had she not sustained a sense of decorum, she would've thrown up. She peered inside, and even more expressions of disapproval surfaced.
"Great Sombra! Look at them! Just hissing, bloodthirsty monsters. All they desire is reproduction, without any rhyme or reason. They only want one thing, and it's fucking disgusting." She said.
Tempest looked for herself from the other side. She saw much hissing, that's for sure, but she saw much more than what Cozy described. She saw much more society than savage.
"She operates under some prejudice, that much is clear. Still though, they're a far cry from what I encountered during the war. To think this is where the Vertia was born. This is what he had known since the beginning. Wait...if she thinks so lowly of them..."
"Your view of the changelings is...clear, but what does this have to do with the Vertia?" She asked.
"This is the Vertia's birthplace, his home. And yet, he couldn't be more different from the beasts in there. Unlike them he wields magic, and one of the greatest powers in Equestria. If you had given it to any one of them, they'd have used it like a foal with it's toys. But the Vertia...he and I fought at one point. Despite being half changeling, he used his magic almost as well I could've. Couple that with it's weird energy, and he might actually be able to get me to break a sweat. He's not like any of them. He's greater...greater than even Chrysalis."
Tempest took a minute to process Cozy's response. She saw bigotry, yes, but it was already blatant to her. What she found most interesting, was Cozy's view on Phantom in relation to changelings. Despite being changeling, Cozy still held Phantom in high regard because of his gift in both genetics and power. She surmised that Cozy saw him as not just a changeling, but the changeling.
"So his power is what gained him her respect...all the more reason I need mine back." She said to herself
Tempest peered through the contracting hole, marveling at the millions of changelings performing different tasks. "We'd do well to stay hidden. Do you have a plan?"
Cozy's horn glowed. "I can take control of one of them, but I'd need one stay still, which is the one damn thing these savages don't do." She said sharply.
Tempest's hoof had begun to be enveloped in lightning. "I'll shock one's head if they get close enough. That should be able to keep them stunned." She said. Cozy made a sinister smile, and nodded in agreement. Now all they had to do was watch and wait.
Before long, a changeling swiftly flew over to the hole, seemingly attempting to close it shut. Suddenly a flash of light went off, and it was unconscious, falling a few feet to the ground. He felt a presence in his head, and before he knew it, his entire body was under Cozy's control. She flew up to Tempest.
"Alright, alright! Look at the war vet still making sharp plans." Cozy said playfully. "Now look, you gotta hide the real me. I can only control one body at a time. If something happens to that one, I won't be able to get back into it." She said with urgency. Tempest nodded in affirmation as she quickly got Cozy onto her back and hurried to a safer spot
Cozy entered the Hive, moving like a shadow, following anypony she could to make her look less suspicious. This wasn't her first time possessing a changeling, but entering their hive mind was still an experience she found herself to not be used to. Having the entire landscape beamed into her brain from another's was a feeling she felt she could do without, but an advantage she was very willing to press.
Cozy suddenly felt a deep anxiety wash over her, and out of nowhere, every changeling had seemingly redirected their path. From the moment the feeling hit her, Cozy knew it wasn't her own, but she knew exactly what was causing it. Changelings roared and hissed like there was no tomorrow as a sphincter in the Hive's uppermost levels opened. The anxiety was overwhelming, and yet Cozy still could not help but smile at the now broken Chrysalis entering her sights. Her eyes were closed and her descent was slow. As she got closer to the ground, the anxious feeling in Cozy's gut intensified. Once she touched the ground, changelings roared and cheered at their queen's return, but Chrysalis saw no time to cheer. She stomped her hoof, and suddenly every changeling was bowed down, and anxiety had become lament.
"My minions...we lost a great asset to our ranks recently. You may not realize it, but your queen has been a fool. Your prince has left us in pursuit of answers. He has done this because I refused to give him these answers beforehand. I know not how we may get him back, but I know how we may exact our vengeance. We prepare for war against King Sombra and his people! MAY WE PURGE HIM OF EVERYTHING HE'S EVER KNOWN!"
The room was now louder, and that lament was now rage, and a desire to fight. Changelings hissed and roared, weapons were being sharpened, there was constant loud buzzing, and Chrysalis took her leave to her quarters of the Hive. Cozy saw opportunity, and seized it, silently following her as closely as she could. Chrysalis entered her room and finally opened her eyes. two streams of tears instantly ran down her face and eventually, hit the floor. The only sounds she made in her room was a combination of sobbing and angry grunts. The words her own son spoke to her back in Canterlot still rang in her head like the sound waves inside a large bell. She knew why Phantom said what he said, but the hurt that began to resurface with her was not to be understated. Her heart physically ached, and she could barely form up the courage to speak, even though she was alone. "I must be ready for him." She thought to herself.
Meanwhile, Cozy was making a beeline for the exit of the Hive. She got exactly what she came for, with a cherry of satisfaction on top. She headed for the same opening she entered from and Tempest Shadow hulled her out. "I saw Chrysalis come in. Do we know her next move?" She asked. "The Vertia left her alright. She must've already guessed Sombra was pulling that string for us, cuz she's getting ready to invade us." Cozy explained. Tempest recoiled a bit at those last few spoken words. She already knew what war could do to a pony, and while she wanted magic more than anything, she began to question if going into war again was wise. She suddenly saw her memories from the Storm King's attack on the Elements flash through her mind like lightning. "We must be ready for her." She responded.
> Relocated Power
The golden morning light pierced through the brilliant enclosure that was the Crystalline Castle Princess Cadance's eyes like a needle through cloth. Being a ruler of the entire Crystal Empire, you'd think her eyes would be used to the sun's glare, but the comfort of sleep would always leave her unprepared. She arose from her bed, looking to her left to see that her husband was already out and about. She sighed in worry. Ever since some strong channeling crystals were reported stolen, he simply couldn't rest until they were found. Though Cadance would happily force the prince to take a day off if she could, she was also fully aware of the potential treachery at hand. Those crystals could reflect any form of light at nearly 10 times its original intensity. She giggled, recalling a time where her husband had nearly flashbanged himself attempting to create lights for a gala. "Clumsy prince" she thought to herself with a smile. Her body finally adjusted to being awake, Cadance began her morning routine.
After a quick, but diligent bathing, she trotted to her dresser, equipped with a crystal mirror. Her horn glowed magenta as she levitated two brushes of the same color to groom her mane and tail. The bristles ran through the radiant hues of pink, purple and gold as she turned the mess she woke up with into the flowing streaks of hair that complimented the alicorn's coat of fur and her fashion. Speaking of which, she donned her iconic tiara and necklace, and hurried off in search of her prince in Shining Armor.
"And you're absolutely sure there was NO trace of anypony entering or leaving the room?"
"We ran the search exactly as you've always requested, your majesty. Nothing was found."
His majesty sighed and hung his head in disappointment. That was the opposite of what he wanted to hear, and yet he almost expected to hear those words every day. He had been dying to get some kind of progress on this matter for weeks on end, with the royal guards of the Crystal Empire having worked tirelessly all throughout that time. He had sword they'd done everything, from sample searching, to using the sensory abilities of tamed animals, to even using blacklights from synthetically made crystals. With how much work was done, you'd have thought somepony had died and an autopsy had taken place. So much effort, and yet Shining Armor got a fat stack of nothing for everypony's efforts. He'd hate to admit it to anypony, but the frustration was killing him on the inside, and he feared it would influence him to speak the wrong words to the wrong pony.
As if to answer his silent prayers, Cadance entered the room. Her dull expression slowly evolved to a grin once she laid eyes on Armor. He motioned for the royal guard to take his leave, and that he did. The prince and princess engaged in a heartfelt kiss. "Still nothing on the channelers, honey?" She asked in a high but soft voice. "Not even the tiniest piece of lint." He drowsily responded. Cadance rested a hoof on the prince's head and ran it through his cerulean mane, comforting the exhausted monarch. "You're doing your best Armor, and that's all I could ever ask of you. I'm worried for your emotional state if you keep going at it like this." She said. "I know, hun, but we-". Armor couldn't get another word in before Cadance's hoof positioned him to look directly into her eyes. "I know, I really do, but you shouldn't be stressing yourself out over a thief. Trust me, whoever they are doesn't stand a chance. You and your sister have done amazing things, and some lowlife with channelers won't be enough. Maybe you haven't made progress, but you've done an amazing job so far. You deserve a break.". A small tear left Shining Armor's eye as he embraced his lover in a long, loving hug.
"It's rare to see you cry, hun." She commented.
"Thank Celestia there's nopony else here." He retorted with a smile.
Irony struck like lightning with a knock on the door. The sounds reverberated across nearly each and every room the castle housed, and eventually reached the intimate couple. Magenta sparkles surrounded the two as Cadance warped them directly to the door in the blink of an eye. The grandiose doors were then enveloped in an aura of the same light, and slowly opened to reveal Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer at the door. Both the alicorn and unicorn gave warm greetings, with the former being formal and profound, and the latter being very nervously casual. Even to this day, the only royalty Starlight was used to being in the presence of was technically Twilight, and the formalities of speaking in their presence was still a bit beyond her. Regardless, they were both accepted with open arms into the Crystalline Castle.
"It's been so long Shining!" Twilight said excitedly. Armor nodded in agreement and the two siblings engaged in a short hug.
"How's the learning coming along?" Cadance asked. "Not tooooooooo bad." Starlight said with a sheepish grin.
"Speaking of learning, " Armor started, "why are you two here? It's not like you to show up without letting us know beforehand, sis.". Twilight's smile faded to a serious expression, as she turned to Cadance, who matched the sentiment. "Well, you see...."
DURING THE EVENTS OF "Bitter Runion"
Princess Celestia had transported Twilight, along with Zoey and Princess Luna, to a remote area in Canterlot's Castle. One where they could see the entire battle between Arachnis and Chrysalis rage on. She watched on in uncertainty as the mother and son exchanged their blows. She turned toward her younger sister, and her eyes glowed a bright yellow. Her vision had become x-ray, making her insides visible. She saw that Luna's heart was still beating, and that her body had not sustained any internal damage. "I wish he hadn't attacked her. It was all but extraneous..." She said. Twilight looked toward Zoey, who was watching in awe as her prince and queen were going hoof to hoof with one another.
"Do you support him doing this all the time!?" Twilight asked.
"He's my prince! I don't have to support it...because I trust him!" She retorted, gripping her pitchfork.
"He's causing destruction in Canterlot! We can't just let a loose cannon-"
Twilight's sentence was cut off by Zoey's response. "So what about Chrysalis, huh!? She made this poor stallion just to have a weapon! She didn't see the soul in him! It feels like I'm the only one who loves him for he really is! He...pant pant...deserves better than this." She said, almost beginning to sob. Twilight recoiled a bit from the changeling's outburst. She would've argued further, but Celestia lifted a leg in front of Twilight, urging her to take a back seat and let her do the talking. Obviously, she trusted her mentor, and instead watched over Luna.
"Zoey. I know you care much for Arachnis, and wish to support him, but there will come a time where you must steer him in the right direction. Just like now, his hasty action of vengeance was destructive to him and the town. I understand you fight for your own, but harming others in the process is intolerable here."
It took Zoey a moment to process what Celestia had told her. She looked to the outside world, where Arachnis was struggling to move. Her eyes widened with concern. She had already watched her siblings die. She wasn't about to watch her prince die as well. She looked back to Celestia as more determination flowed through her body than blood.
"Send me to him. Please! I know what I need to do."
Celestia spoke no words, and simply nodded in affirmation at Zoey's request. A portal of cascading golden light appeared before her, and she jumped through without a moment of hesitation. It closed behind her, leaving just her, Twilight, and a slowly awakening Luna in the room. She watched as Zoey carried Arachnis away. Twilight noticed the worry on her face. "What's wrong, Princess Luna?" She asked in worry. Luna stood and expressed her concerns
"That pattern on Arachnis...I've seen it before...on a powerful gem from the Crystal Empire. Celestia and I must attempt to apprehend Chrysalis. Twilight! You must warn Princess Cadance of this. We'd do well to have her cooperation." She explained. Twilight nodded, and in an array of purple sparkles, she disappeared. Celestia and Luna performed the same spell to deal with the Hive's queen.
"...I see" Cadance said drearily. Both she and Shining Armor knew exactly what Luna was referring to. Suddenly, it's as if all the reassurance Cadance had once brought to Armor had made like a crystal and shattered, being nothing but broken pieces of a once beautiful stone, thrown aside like trash on a road. Cadance now shared the same frustration that Armor did earlier in the day. They both knew full well the magnitude of the situation at hand, and quickly motioned for Twilight and Starlight to follow them. As they did, they passed a counter where a peculiar photo sat.
A picture of Princess Amore stood. Cadance stopped to gaze at it for a moment, recalling the boundless feats of the Crystal Empire's former ruler. "I'll be as great a sovereign was you were, Amore. Just you watch." |
Screw it, Applejack Gets A Harem! | pre | When Applejack had changed and stepped out, it took all of Rarity's will to not outright drool at the sight before her. The blonde was wearing a black crop top, a pair of jean shorts, black doc neightin boots, Applejack had even put on the studded leather collar and wristbands! Over all it was a sort of high fashion punk look and it had been made to perfectly fit the blonde's measurements that Rarity had on file. Everything was on display, from the washboard stomach that had a delicious hint of definition in the abs, the dreamy muscular arms, the well endowed chest, all the way down to the farmer's tight rear and long, toned legs.
... this is still within T-rating right?
"Dunno who'd wanna wear this. Not exactly mah cup o' tea if'n ya' know what Ah mean."
"But you definitely pull off the look darling."
Smiling and with an unseen predatory glint in Rarity's eye, the Hrimfaxi woman circled the unsuspecting farmer, eying each and every inch of her body.
"Yes, you pull it off very well. But I do have a confession darling, I needed you here for much more than a fitting."
Looking curiously to Rarity, she watched as the woman sashayed over to the changing room, picking something up along the way before closing the door.
"I also needed a fresh eye to see if this order is up to task. You see, there is an up and coming pop star that needed something special for her act. She is about my size so I believe it is best I take this outfit for a... test drive if you will."
Of course coming right out and saying how she felt would be so unlady-like. Not to mention it had to be Applejack who made the choice, so Rarity was determined to make the winning move today and have the blonde all over her! When she stepped out, she smirked upon seeing the farmer do a double take, and for good reason! The Hrimfaxi woman was dressed in the sort of get up Applejack figured was supposed to be worn under clothing, not as an outfit itself. Rarity was dressed in lacy garments, what seemed to be a bra and thing along with stockings and a garterbelt, and fingerless gloves, all in red and white colors, with straps that hung off here and there, yet doing nothing to hide the woman's curves as everything seemed to accentuate her assets.
....
"Well darling? What do you think?"
"U-Uh-!"
Chuckling softly, Rarity slunk over to the gobsmacked farmer, pressing but a finger to the Macha woman's chest to make her step backward before the back of her legs hit the back of the fashionista's fainting couch, which Applejack would swear hadn't been there a second ago. Applejack gulped softly as Rarity leaned over, presenting an eye full if the blonde so chose to take in the view.
"U-Uh... this part o' that... that um... test drive?"
"Mmm, you could say that. The act my client is going for is very, risque. Splits, the movement of her hips, the way she moves her body... I have to be sure this outfit is up to the task and I'll need you to keep an eye out for any wardrobe malfunctions. So shall we get started-?"
"R-Rarity!"
DAMMIT!
Ugh.... both women turned their heads to look towards the door, a very flustered and blushing Fluttershy quickly closing the door behind her as she took up the mantle of this chapter's cock blocker. Wait, is that a term you use when it's two women? Either way it makes the point.
"U-Um, y-you were l-late for o-our spa date, R-Rarity."
"Darling... that isn't until Friday."
"O-Oh? R-Really? I... I must have g-gotten the dates mixed up."
Standing up straight and putting her hands on her hips, the look Rarity gave could cut through solid steel as she glared at Fluttershy, ever so sure that the Arion woman was completely full of shit. When she glanced back over to the couch, she found that Applejack had slipped away and soon reappeared from the changing room, dressed in her usual attire with the other clothes left folded on a chair by said changing room.
"Um, sorry Rares. This kinda thing is a bit too much fer me. Ah gotta' get back to the farm n' get to mah chores. See ya' later, you too Fluttershy."
The rattled farmer was gone before either woman could say a word, Rarity's arms now crossed as she returned the full force of her glare on Fluttershy as the timid woman actually did a decent job of standing her ground and giving the other a disapproving look.
"Really Fluttershy, that was very indecent of you."
"... no more than you acting worse than a cat in heat..."
"What was that?"
"N-Nothing..." |
Screw it, Applejack Gets A Harem! | Summer Solstice Scuffle -or- Return of Nightmare Moon Electric Boogaloo | It had been a week since Applejack had gone to the Carousel Boutique, a week since anyone had really seen her but it was more understandable than her willfully avoiding people. With the oncoming Summer Solstice Celebration being celebrated in Ponyville this year, it had lined up perfectly for an Apple family reunion, meaning Applejack and her family had to get ready for the relatives. Of course more was added on when Twilight Sparkle, resident princess of magic had decided to throw work the blonde's way and have her cater the event. So while all five girls pined to see the lovable blonde farmer, they knew it was best to leave her to her work and make their own preparations.
.... what? I'm surprised too that I didn't get interrupted. As for why I'm still here, remember kiddies, reading is fundamental. So make sure you fucking read everything over before signing a damn contract.
I mean, I'm not even getting paid for this. You think the writer of this dreck has any money? I mean seriously-
AHEM
... right... right, where was I?
Oh yeah, giving time to what I'm guessing is the third most popular ship couple...
Now it was the night before the sun would rise in the morning and all were celebrating in their own way. Twilight Sparkle had found a moment in her day to have a small break, sitting comfortably in one of the big, soft chairs in her tree castle's library, sprucing a book of old children's tales. One in particular had caught her fancy, the Mare in the Moon. It was said that the patterns in the moon, in the shape of what looked to be a mare, were created when the great god Shadowfax banished his lover to forever reside within the moon after she had attempted to spread darkness through the land and subjugate the humans to her rule. This tale seemed to have inspired Princess Luna one thousand years ago, when she had attempted to usurp Princess Celestia and become Equestria's sole ruler. The battle had been one when Celestia supposedly wielded the mythical elements of harmony and purged the darkness from her sister's heart, restoring order and harmony.
A knock at the door caught the princess's attention and she set her book aside to go see who was calling on her. When she opened it, she was surprised to see it was Applejack but also curious when she noticed the other's mood seemed a little low.
"Applejack. I wasn't expecting to see you until the ceremony. Is everything okay?"
"Ah... guess. Cin Ah come in n' talk to ya' Twi?"
With a nod, Twilight lead the way further into the library, wishing she had taken the time to scry so that she could have seen the blonde was coming. Then maybe she could of been better prepared or even made a quick ten page game plan! Instead she lead Applejack to a small nook on the first floor and took a seat on a couch there, Applejack immediately taking a seat next to her with a slightly weary sigh.
"Ah think somethin' weirds goin' on with our friends. Ah mean, 'bout a week ago somethin' was botherin' Dash, then Ah get ta' town ta' check out how Pinkie's shindig is goin' n' she's actin' a bit odder n' usual. Then it's tense between 'Shy n' Rares. Ah tried ta' figure out what's goin' on but they're hidin' somethin' from me. Twi', ya' got any idea?"
While distracted by how close the dreamy blonde was to her, Twilight had some how managed to listen to what Applejack was saying and snap out of her stupor.
"Uh! Erm... I-I can't say for sure, no..."
There was no way she could expose the others, not only would it break the pact they had agreed on but there was also the worry of retaliation from four vengeful women. Especially if Applejack ended up rejecting them! So for the sake of friendship and her own well being, there was no way she was spilling the beans! No matter how down Applejack looked... those beautiful green eyes downcast... the good-natured farmer probably feeling frustrated that she could not help her friends work through their issues because she was so considerate.
The princess of magic was starting to noticeably fidget, playing with her fingers, biting her lower lip, Applejack had been about to ask what was wrong before the bookworm pounced and wrapped her up in a hug.
"T-Twilight?"
"I'm sorry! Applejack, I can't tell you what's wrong right now, but I promise that I'll work on it and I'll get you an answer as soon a possible!"
"A-Alright Twi! Ah appreciate it!"
Pulling back, the Dyaus woman blushed softly, a little embarrassed that she had slipped like that but none the less sincere in her words.
"Applejack, everything will be fine. I can promise you that, okay?"
"... okay Twi. Ah trust ya'."
They both exchanged smiles, Applejack's lopsided in a way that was totally adorable, Twilight's bright and a bit bashful. Then the princess glanced to clock on the wall, one of many she had set up around the library so that it would be very easy for visitors to find what the time was.
"It'll be time for the Summer Sun Celebration soon. I can't be late to introduce the princesses. I wouldn't want to delay Celestia from raising the sun!"
"Well shoot, let's get goin' then Twi'."
When Applejack stood and offered her hand to Twilight, the princess had to duck her head a moment to hide her blush. As she placed her hand in Applejack's, she marveled slightly at the feel. Having grown up in Canterlot and having such a high position as personal student to the princesses, she'd never really had the chance to meet many blue collar workers. The feel of Applejack's strong, calloused hand was still a small wonder and a noticeable difference compared to the nobles she had shaken hands with. It was a shame when the blonde took her hand back. However when they stepped out into the night and were far enough away from her tree, Twilight took a chance and moved close, slipping her arm around the other's.
"Um... sorry, it's just a little chilly."
"Shoot, dun' worry 'bout it."
Again, Twilight had to duck her head as Applejack's arm slipped around her shoulders, she could literally feel the spike in her heart rate now that she was so close to the other and it was a losing battle at attempting to not sound tongue-tied.
"R-R-Right! Yes! Body heat is good, yup!"
Trying to play off her awkwardness with a nervous laugh, Twilight and Applejack continued on their way to the town hall where it looked as if all of Ponyville was gathered. Without even looking she knew the other girls had spotted them, quite possibly giving her dirty looks but she didn't care! She only felt bad when she had to pull away and go to her post, Applejack giving her a small wave before moseying over to the table where all the food and drinks were kept. Twilight fought down her nerves as she stood on the balcony before the audience, taking a deep, calming breath before beginning.
"Ladies and gentleman, as the resident princess of magic in our town of Ponyville, it is my pleasure to announce the beginning of the Summer Sun Celebration! Soon, we will all bear witness to Princess Celestia raising the sun so that we may celebrate the longest day of the year! And now, it is my great honor to introduce you to our kind and benevolent rulers of Equestria, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!"
At the cue of the fanfare, the Hrimfaxi used her magic to pull aside the curtains behind her to reveal... nothing! Confusion was clear on Twilight's face as she looked into the room behind the curtains, her anxiety on the rise as she saw it was empty.
"T-They're not here! How?! Who-?!"
"Thee fool..."
Suddenly, from the shadows, two glowing, ice blue eyes shone and a dark blue blast of magic hit Twilight square in the chest, launching her off of the balcony, causing surprised gasps and screams of horror from the crowd!
"Twilight!"
Instead of hitting the hard ground, Twilight found her landing to be much softer, solid but softer, and warmer... when she opened her eyes, the princess of magic found herself in the arms of Applejack.
"You alright, Twi'?"
"Y-Yes..."
However, a laugh snapped her out of the dreamy reverie, all attention going back to the platform as Princess Luna stepped out, a cruel smirk on her face as Twilight gazed on in horror.
"Princess Luna?! WHY-?"
"Enough! Thee fool, thee bethought that I wast Princess Luna, but very much t wast me
NIGHTMARE MOON!"
"Oooo, nice sound effects in the background! But hasn't that meme been done a lot?"
Fourth wall breaking Pinkie Pie aside... the whole crowd watched on in horror as Luna transformed, the Dyaus's skin becoming darker, her teeth seeming sharper as her pupils became slits. The regal dress and crown warped, replaced with a helm, metal pads with spikes, a breastplate that really only covered her breasts, a sort of metal bikini thong with a strip of fabric in front and back to provide cover, and high heeled, metal boots that came up to her knees. While there were those that trembled in fear at the ominous being before them, Rainbow Dash couldn't help but snort at the sight.
"Ain't it a little cold in that?"
When Applejack set her back on the ground, Twilight Sparkle squared her shoulders and glared up to the other.
"So you are Nightmare Moon once more... but I thought Celestia banished all of the evil from Luna a thousand years ago?"
"Oh the lady hadst weaken'd me consid'rably. but I still did exist, a bawbling parteth of me waited, gazed, and did plan! And anon I has't finally madeth mine move, aft'r a thousand years I has't did imprison Princess Celestia! And I shall anon beest the only rul'r of this land and 'twill exp'rience nothing but beautiful darkness forever!"
"... really?"
That caused Nightmare Moon to snap her attention over to the oddly attractive blonde Macha woman next to Twilight, the farmer scratching the side of her head and looking puzzled.
"What?"
"I mean... if'n that was yer plan all this time. Why'd it take ya' one thousand years? Ah cin understand maybe taking a hun'red years 'er so ta' get yer' strength back but-"
"silence! t's mine own plan and mine own plan is flawless! I has't Princess Celestia imprisoned and anon nay one can stand ho me!"
Luckily, Twilight took that opportunity to cover up such a snag in the plot by shooting off a blast of magic, hitting the balcony and making it disappear, Nightmare Moon almost falling herself but a pair of dark blue, almost black wings caught her and kept her in the air. Soon the princess of magic took to the air as well, flying straight for her and with her fists glowing with dangerous magic. They blasted off part of the roof of the town hall, taking the fight outside as magic light up the night sky. People ran outside, either to flee to their homes or to watch the spectacle, chief among them being Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow Dash.
"Release Princess Luna from your hold and tell me where Princess Celestia is!"
"Or what? I knoweth thee, Twilight Sparkle, I've gazed thy training. . . i knoweth all thy strengths and weaknesses!"
A sudden blast sent Twilight plummeting to the ground once more, the woman rolling after she landed and weakly trying to push herself up to her knees. Nightmare Moon meanwhile, landed a few feet away and slowly began to walk up to the princess of magic, a triumphant smirk on her face as her hand began to glow with magic.
"And i knoweth thee wonneth't wend all out 'gainst me. . . because destroying me means destroying Princess Luna as well. T's a shame to has't to destroy thee, but i knoweth thee wonneth't join me. So yond just maketh thee an obstacle to-"
The monologue was thankfully interrupted as a fist came crashing into the side of Nightmare Moon's face! The woman was caught off guard and the strength was so mighty that it sent her flying back! After she recovered in mid-air and landed on her feet, Nightmare Moon rubbed her sore cheek and saw it was the Macha woman who had spoken up earlier. She could actually feel a chill run up her spine as those lovely green eyes glared at her, the blonde dropping into a fighting stance.
"Ya' ain't gonna lay 'nother hand on Twilight! Yer gunna' hafta' go through me if'n ya' wanna get ta' her!"
A small chuckle turned into raucous laughter, the smirk back on Nightmare Moon's face as she raised a hand. A barrier surrounded just her and Applejack, the others had been moving forward to stand with her but were blocked, Twilight Sparkle weakly placing a hand on the barrier.
"Applejack, no!"
The battle that commenced was a sight to behold simply because of the fact that Applejack was able to stand her ground against Nightmare Moon. The farmer had to be constantly on the move to dodge and move past all the spells flung at her, reflexes having to be sharp to strike back every time Nightmare Moon teleported behind her to strike. When there was a break in the fighting, Applejack was left panting and bruises but still standing, fists still raised and ready to keep on fighting. This, of course, made Nightmare Moon laugh again because that is what villains do in these stories.
"Not lacking. Not lacking at all. If 't be true I w're not an all pow'rful Dyaus, I might actually beest w'rri'd about losing this square. "
Menacing blue eyes took in the sight of the other, her heaving, ample chest, her muscles more exposed as some how during the fight, the farmer's shirts had been ripped to the point it seemed she was wearing little more than a raggedy crop top now. Now that she had a chance to look at the other, this bold, nicely tanned Macha was quite attractive, in both body and personality. Licking her lips, Nightmare Moon suddenly disappeared as darkness filled the area. Applejack was immediately on edge, looking around and trying to spot her when suddenly a ball of light hit her straight in the chest, a painful electric charge running through the blonde and making her scream out in pain.
Outside of the magic barrier, none of the five women could see through the dark, but all cried out the farmer's name when they heard her scream. Twilight Sparkle finally recovered enough to use her own magic to dispel the magic barrier, Rainbow Dash immediately rushing into the fading darkness with Pinkie Pie hot on her heels. However neither Nightmare Moon or Applejack were on the ground, all women turned their gaze to the sky to see Nightmare Moon hovering high above, carrying an unconscious Applejack bridal style.
"Mm, I shall taketh this one as mine own prize. And I shall waiteth at the castle of the two sist'rs, eith'r thee shall cometh to me and boweth 'r cometh and meeteth thy doom!"
Then a cloud of darkness swallowed both her and Applejack before it sped off towards the Everfree forest, Rainbow Dash tried to go after them but Twilight's magic held her back.
"TWILIGHT! LET ME GO! She's got AJ!"
"I know! But you can't just rush after her! She'll kill you!"
As much as the Arion wanted to take action, she begrudgingly knew that the princess of magic was right, floating back down to the ground and looking to Twilight, expecting answers, as did the other three women.
"I've read the tale of Nightmare Moon many times and I've read up on the elements of harmony. We need those six elements if we have any chance of defeating her without killing Luna."
"Twilight, we don't have time to go off looking for some elements-!"
"Rainbow Dash, why do you think she's waiting at the castle of the two sisters? The elements are located there, she's there to make sure I don't get to them. Because with the elements of Magic, Honesty, Laughter, Generosity, Kindness and Loyalty, she won't stand a chance."
"And we're going too, right?"
"Dash, it's dangerous..."
Of course the look that Rainbow Dash gave her as she crossed her arms gave a clear message that she was not going to be talked out of it. That same look of determination was on the others' face as well, Rarity taking the opportunity to step forward and speak.
"Twilight, she took Applejack! I think I speak for all of us when I say that we cannot just stand around idly and let that bitch steal our beloved farm woman!"
Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy nodded in agreement, so with a sigh and a nod, Twilight accepted their decision with a small smile.
"Alright. But only because I have a feeling that if I tried leaving you girls behind, you'd come anyway. Let's go girls!"
Temporarily putting to rest their feud over who would have Applejack's heart, all women turned in the direction of the Everfree forest and took their first determined steps towards their destiny. |
Screw it, Applejack Gets A Harem! | Courageous Castle Crashers -or- The Harem Finally Kicked In, Let's Party! | Deep within the bowels of the castle of the two sisters, a certain hapless blonde farmer was finally starting to regain consciousness. She found herself with her arms and legs chained to two pillars, finding her bonds enchanted and her struggles futile. It was then that she felt a presence, dark and sinister watching her from the shadows.
Nightmare Moon.
The woman's blue eyes glowed in the darkness before the rest of her emerged from darkness, an ancient being whose body was still taut and had all it's curves. She eyed the farmer like a hungry, mighty lioness would eye it's prey as she stalked closer to Applejack. The blonde tried to edge away to no avail as Nightmare Moon reached out and with one, skilled swipe of her hand, undid all of the buttons on the blonde's shirt with one motion, revealing more of that delightfully tanned skin. Then her hand reached lower to the Macha woman's belt buckle and-
WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA! TIME OUT! PAUSE THE SCENE!
GAH! Shadowfax DAMMIT Pinkie Pie! How'd you get in here?!
DUH, through the door silly! It was unlocked!
... that joke was bad and you should feel bad.
Nee-yope! Anyways, gotta' tell you to ax this scene.
Really? You'd stoop so low as to be the one to get into Applejack's pants you'd come bother the narrator? Ugh, come on! The only way we're going to get better ratings is if things get sexier! I mean, there's a couple fanfics with Applejack shipped with Princess Luna and those got popular, this'd sort of be the same thing...
Nope, nope, nope! Besides, we've only got a Teen rating and I'm pretty sure Rarity used up all our lee-way in her chapter! Plus the writer doesn't do smut or M rated work cause she's kind of a prude like that!
Really?
Hey, I don't have a problem with sex! I'm just not going to write it out!
Cause you've never actually done it...
You know it's VERY easy to get a new narrator.
Oh please, and who else could you hire to read this dreck?
Oh! OH! Me me me me me!
EXACTLY.
Shadowfax dammit, Pinkie Pie! Get back in the damn forest with the others and narrator, do your damn job and read what I wrote for you! Otherwise you're going to fade from existence since you only exist while this story goes on!
Oh! Oh! That's how you want to play it?! You're really getting metaphysical with this, huh?!
EEEEEYUP!
Well FINE then! Be that way!
So Twilight and the others go through the forest and do the things. Nightmare Moon causes an rock slide, they survive. They face a manticore, Fluttershy pulls a thorn out of it's paw because fucking kindness and lack of imagination, Steven Magnet and jokes about mustaches, loyalty to friends and tapping AJ's ass so Rainbow Dash turns down the fake and NOT AT ALL evil looking Shadowbolts, oh yeah and Pinkie Pie's singing number that starts off all THAT musical thing so we have future songs whether they're needed or not...
HEY, I expect you to actually READ what I give you!
Oh piss off! You're not even trying with this fic anyway or you wouldn't of dumped all the lore in the first chapter that chased people away and you wouldn't of gone with that stupid title! You're just going to rehash the other shit from the TV show except make it so the girls come together for the common goal of wanting to sex Applejack and don't nobody want to or got time for that shit when they want to get to the main part!
... well FINE then. I guess we'll just skip over all that possible character building and get to the main part! HAPPY?
I'M ONLY MARGINALLY HAPPY, THANK YOU!
After facing many trials, learning to trust one another and realize that despite their own desires to possess the heart of the same woman that they should work together and be friends once more, the five women made it to the castle of the two sisters. Despite the dangers flung their way, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Magic, Rainbow Dash, future Wonderbolt, Rarity, fashionista extraordinaire, Fluttershy, the kindly animal caretaker, and Pinkie Pie, a kick ass party planner, had arrived. All were determined to save the woman they loved/lusted for and followed Twilight into the crumbling castle, up the stairs and towards the area where the elements of harmony were supposed to be kept.
Upon a pedestal were six solid granite orbs, looking much different than what had been described in the history books but Twilight knew this was only because they lacked a spark to bring them to life again. All five girls gasped softly upon seeing that Nightmare Moon was there, along with Applejack! The poor blonde apple farmer was chained to a pillar with magically constructed chains, leaving her unable to use her amazing strength to break free! Still battered and bruised from her fight with Nightmare Moon earlier in the night, she truly looked to be a miserable mess and it lit a fire in all five woman seeing her this way. Yet their hearts also fluttered as she looked to them and nobly thought of their own safety first
"Run! Git outta' here!"
"Those ladies wonneth't runneth. Not at which hour the key to their vict'ry is right h're, and thee 'long with t."
Scoffed Nightmare Moon, running the back of her fingers along Applejack's cheek affectionately, which earned her five sets of eyes glaring daggers at her. Along with a frustrated groan from Rainbow Dash.
"Seriously, can anyone understand what she's saying half the time? Cause it's like... really hard."
"She's sayin' ya' won't run cause Ah guess those things r' important an Ah'm here."
"AJ, how can you understand her?"
"Considerin' how thick tha' accents are in mah family, kinda comes natural like."
"... wait, what?"
"Rainbow Dash, later."
With total seriousness and focus, Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, magical aura sparking around her hands as she moved to face Nightmare Moon.
"Thee wouldst square me again? Then thou art a bigg'r blinking idiot than I bethought! A pity since thee wouldst of madeth a fine mage to s'rve me."
Tittered Nightmare Moon, smirking as she stepped forward as well, her own magical aura coming to life with the power of a storm as it swirled around her. As much power as the Dyaus had, Twilight swallowed her fear and charged forward, sending blasts of magical energy flying towards Nightmare Moon, who simply dodged and then countered. The battle was more fierce than the last one not but mere hours ago! Twilight fighting tooth and nail, distracting Nightmare Moon as the other four girls hurried past to get to both Applejack and the elements of harmony.
"Shadow fucking fax! I can't get these to budge!"
Complained Rainbow Dash, her and Rarity trying to get Applejack out of the magic chains while Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie moved the elements off of their pedestals.
"I don't know what I really expected to do, my meager magic is no match for a Dyaus's!"
Rarity lamented, casting a glance back and seeing that Nightmare Moon was gaining the upper hand once more over Twilight Sparkle, the princess trying her best to keep up the fight and falling short. Then a final, powerful blast sent Twilight Sparkle skidding back across the ground to them, the woman coughing as some blood escaped the corner of her mouth, the young Dyaus holding her side as she glared up to Nightmare Moon.
"To square 'gainst me and to expecteth a diff'rent outcome. How brave. How futile. And as f'r those elements of harmony. . ."
Holding her hand like a gun, she fired off six shots, each hitting their marks dead center in the middle of each element of harmony, shattering them!
"Eke futile!"
"No... those were... our only chance."
Finding the energy to push herself up to her feet, Twilight looked helplessly between the shattered remains of the elements, to her friends, to Nightmare Moon and then to Applejack. It had needed a spark... but what spark? They had all five of them worked together in harmony! They had shown all of the elements tonight except! ... except honesty. Sure they were honest with each other, but they weren't honest with Applejack, were they?
Whether or not this worked, and even if it didn't, when else would Twilight have the time to say this? So with a gulp, she took a hesitant step towards Applejack, the blonde highly concerned for what would happen to them but also a bit confused by what Twilight was doing.
"Applejack... I... before we possibly die I... I wanted to say that I... love you."
Cue dramatic gasp from the girls, Applejack and the audience.
Twilight couldn't look up to Applejack, furiously fiddling with her fingers as a blush came to her face.
"I... I know we haven't shown each other long but... but you're amazing. You're so kind and easy going, you're a hard worker and you're always trying to be your best. N-Not to mention very beautiful. What I feel for you is just... magical."
Giggling at that joke, Pinkie Pie stepped spoke up as well.
"Me too! When I'm around you I just.... feel so happy, I can't stop smiling cause I feel so good being around you! It's like the best party ever!"
Then Fluttershy.
"You... you're always so kind and patient with me. I can't help but feel the same way."
Even Rainbow Dash even worked up the nerve to say her true feelings.
"Yeah... you always got my back and that's cool... and stuff. So I'd want to stick around you. I guess."
"Mm, you're all those things and more to me as well, Applejack. Knowing how much you mean to all of us, it almost makes me wish we could all just share you."
Rarity. The tart. Of course this made one or two women blush and Pinkie Pie chuckled while Twilight had a look that clearly showed she thought the idea was somewhat scandalous.
"Rarity! While I know polygamy and the like was always a big thing in Equestria's past, it's not quite as in vogue these days!"
"I know darling, but still, it seemed that would be the easiest solution!"
"Art all of thee quite done? I am losing patience!"
All having forgotten for a moment that Nightmare Moon was there, the woman tapping her toe while in the air, the five women smiled sheepishly before looking back to a stunned Applejack, Twilight being the one to speak up.
"Sorry, I know this is a lot to dump on you right now."
"S'kinda bad time fer it."
With a lopsided grin, Applejack would of rubbed the back of her neck if she could move her arms.
"Look, Ah dunno what ta' say... but if'n Ah had ta' be honest, Ah'd say y'all are a group a fine ladies. Ah'd be right honored to be with any y'all."
Before things could get any more mushy and romantic, they all noticed that Nightmare Moon was charging a great big ball of magic, ready to obliterate all of them! Twilight turned, preparing to try and throw up a shield as the other four women moved in front of Applejack protectively.
"Y'all get outta' here! NOW!"
"No! We don't leave you Applejack! We'll fight to the end!"
However, what the six women didn't see was the shards of the elements of harmony starting to glow. They flew out to create a magical shield that completely nullified Nightmare Moon's blast, the woman looking on in shock and horror as the elements got rid of the magic chains binding Applejack and surrounded all six of the women. All six of the elements formed into gold rings on the right ring finger of each woman, each with a gemstone that took different shapes and colors depending on the woman wearing it. Twilight a magenta star, Fluttershy a pink butterfly, Rarity a purple diamond, Pinkie Pie a blue balloon, Rainbow Dash a red lightning bolt, and Applejack an orange apple.
By their powers combined-! NO.
Fine, not like commenters weren't going to make the same joke anyway...
As they floated, the five women were in a circle with Applejack in the center, a bright light before a rainbow laser blast shot out and hit Nightmare Moon! The woman trying very hard to shield herself but ultimately it was futile as she was engulfed by the light! She fell to the floor, prone as her body began to warp and change back to Princess Luna.
"We did it!"
Cheered Pinkie Pie as they all floated back down to the floor, all five women ecstatic and happy as they flung themselves at Applejack, hugging the blonde farmer who was a bit overwhelmed by the attention.
"Well done everyone."
"That voice-!"
Began Twilight, pulling away from Applejack to see a ball of light float through the window before turning into Princess Celestia. The woman was tall and tanned, a very regal and pretty looking Dyaus and who could have very well been compared to the goddesses of old. Her hair which was the many hues of a sunrise seemed to billow without wind, pink eyes staring kindly as the five woman and she was in a dress of pure white and sandals and accessories of gold.
"C-Celestia!"
Twilight had squeaked, the other five women moving to bow but stopped by a motion to not do so from Celestia.
"I am glad you all succeeded. I knew Twilight, that activating the elements of harmony was the only chance to stop Nightmare Moon, I knew you had won since upon Nightmare Moon's defeat I was released from my prison."
"I'm so glad you're okay!"
Twilight rushed forward to give Celestia a hug, the woman returning the gesture but surprised when she noticed the ring on her former pupil's finger. Then a coy smile came to her face as she glanced at the other five women.
"Which one is it?"
"Huh?"
"The one you love?"
"Oh! Um... A-Applejack..."
Blushing furiously and wondering how Princess Celestia new, she glanced back and saw the farmer step forward, removing her hat from her head to try and be even more respectful to the woman.
"Ah'm Applejack, ma'a-er, princess."
"I see... well congratulations, I wish you and your new partners happiness."
"Uh, beg yer' pardon?"
Applejack looked confused whereas Twilight Sparkle's eyes widened.
"C-Celestia... you don't mean?"
"Whut's she talkin' 'bout Twi?"
"I... I think we're... you're um... spouses now Applejack."
".... WHAT???" |
Apple Bloom | pre | He had never felt so nervous before. Well, he had never been nervous, this was the first time due to him not being created long. The house stood before him, a great looming abode.
He had to pal this right, he had to play his role, he couldn't screw up.
She wouldn't like that.
He had to play his role, he had to be her friend.
What was she like though? That made him even more nervous. He would just have to play it right. Just act like she told him, act like the way he was made. XXX
Breakfast for dinner. Who would have thought it? Those were Apple Blooms thought's. Turns out mixing blueberries and chocolate chips together with the syrup drowned pancakes was a genius idea. That and the hay browns and candied apples were perfect side dishes. All of it washed down with a nice glass of milk.
"Enjoying your breakfast Apple Bloom?" asked the Other Big Macintosh.
Apple Bloom responded with an enthusiastic "mmm hmm!", seeing as her mouth was filled.
The Other Sister smiled as Apple Bloom continued her meal. "I'm so happy you like it Apple Bloom. I prepared it especially for you."
This dinner went perfectly as far as Apple Bloom was concerned. Yet she had a question as she swallowed. "Where's Granny Smith? The other one Ah mean."
"Well, sweetie, she's preparing for the rodeo." Answered the Other Sister.
"Rodeo?" Apple Bloom repeated.
"Mmm hmm, and you've been invited kiddo!" Added the Other Big Macintosh.
This prospect excited the filly. "Wow! Ah've never been to a rodeo before!"
Just then, a knock rapped upon the back door. "Oh, that must be your little friend." the Other Sister rose and went to answer it.
Apple Bloom looked up from her almost empty plate. "Mah friend?" she asked confusedly.
The Other Sister opened the door, revealing who was behind it. Apple Bloom got up from her position at the table to see who this "friend" could be. To her surprise, a young purple dragon stepped into the kitchen. "Spike?" Apple Bloom exclaimed. Spike was the only purple dragon she knew. Actually, Spike was the only dragon she knew. Immediately, she spotted the one difference, that told her this wasn't the Spike she knew. He had buttons for eyes.
"Hello there. How are you this fine evening?" The Other Spike politely asked.
Apple Bloom blinked at the dragon. Immediately, she would see the difference in personality. "Um hi.......Ah'm fine." Apple Bloom answered.
The Other Spike looked both at the Other Sister and the Other Big Macintosh. "Good even sir and madam. You're both looking lovely this evening." Once he was done, he turned his attention once more to Apple Bloom. "Apple Bloom, I hear you're going to the rodeo. Do you mind if I joined you?"
Apple Bloom noticed something else peculiar. This Other Spike had a nice smile painted upon his face. Almost as if he were in a permanent state of happiness. "Sure.......ya know you're different than the Spike Ah know." Observed Apple Bloom.
The Other Sister placed a hoof upon the Other Spike's scaly shoulder. "Well I thought you might like him better this way, so I tweaked him a bit." The Other Sister explained.
Tweaked? Apple Bloom wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but a more polite Spike? She would take that any day.
"Now hurry along you two." The Other Sister urged. "You don't want to miss the rodeo." XXX
Apple Bloom and the Other Spike walked side by side; The latter apparently he knew the way. Actually it wasn't that far from the farm. Occasionally she kept giving a glance towards the buttoned eyed dragon.
"Do I have something on my face?" The Other Spike asked.
Apple Bloom realized he had seen her. "Oh nothing, Ah just." she still couldn't shake the differences between this Spike an the one she knew. "Y'all don't like slugs do you?" she just had to ask that question.
The Other Spike gave her a quizzical look. "Slugs? Yuck! No way! I can't stand them." The dragon shivered at the very thought of those slimy gastropods.
Apple Bloom was sure relieved. Now she was certain there wasn't an Other Wybie the slug. Correction "Why-were-you-born".
Just outside the farm, slightly past it, there stood a large series of bleachers. Apple Bloom and Other Spike walked through an opening in between. The pair seated themselves and Apple Bloom let out a tiny gasp. Before her, was a large arena. A big, dirt covered area, the perfect place for a rodeo.
"Want one?" Apple Bloom turned, and noticed that the Other Spike was holding out a candied apple. in fact, there was a whole basket beside them that she didn't notice. This must have been where the animals had taken the second basket. Apple Bloom gleefully took one and took a bite. It was just as good as before.
"HOWDY!" a loud, but aged voice called out from nowhere. Suddenly, everything became dark. Odd seeing as they were outside. Furthering the oddness, spotlight appeared from nowhere. "WELCOME TO THE ONE AND ONLY GRANNY SMITH RODEO!" The spotlights stopped right in the center, revealing none other than the Other Granny Smith. The old mare no longer wore her shawl, replacing it with a red colored scarf. Atop her gray head, was a large cowpony hat. The buttoned eyed version of her grandmother twirled a lasso around before she spoke again. "THIS SHOW IS DEDICATED TO OUR SPECIAL GUEST, APPLE BLOOM!" The spotlights fell from the Other Granny Smith, to Apple Bloom herself. The little filly waved a sheepish hoof as applause resounded through the empty seats. Odd as they were empty.
"WELL NOW! LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON!" it finally dawned on Apple Bloom that the Other Granny Smith's voice was being amplified, just as if she was speaking through a microphone.
On the other side of the arena, a gate opened up. Right before the dragon and pony's eyes, several baby calfs stampeded out. The Other Granny Smith sprang with the same youth and vigor she had shown yesterday. Twirling her lasso, Apple Bloom watched as the Other Granny Smith lassoed the legs around the baby cows. With a twirl and a spin, she pinned the mall together into one big pile.
"Wow!" Apple Bloom cheered, even the Other Spike joined in. "She musta done that in five seconds!" Apple Bloom wasn't sure on the exact time, but it certainly felt fast.
The show wasn't over yet. A great snorting and stomping creature emerged from the gate. A great, big bull. Apple Bloom gasped, grabbing onto the Other Spike's arm. The bull locked eyes with the Other Granny Smith. The Other Granny Smith simply stamped her front hoof in response. The bull charged with full force.
"She's just standing still!" Apple Bloom felt herself at the edge of her seat. The bull continued to charge, and the Other Granny Smith wasn't budging. Closer the bull came. "It's going to hit her!" Apple Bloom started to shake the Other Spike, so much that the poor dragon thought his buttons would fall from his head.
Then, right at the split moment, the Other Granny Smith leapt up, her lassos twirling in midair. She landed perfectly upon the bull's back, her lasso finding it's way around the bull's muzzle. The beast tried to buck the old mare off, but she wouldn't budge. After a while, the bull started to halt in its kicking and bucking. Then, it stopped completely.
"WOO HOO!" Apple Bloom's cheers filled the area. The Other Granny Smith took a bow. She had done her job, and that was seeing Apple Bloom happy.
The rest of the night followed the same. Apple Bloom found the whole situation familiar. After a long day, she was curled up in her glorious other bed. The other versions of her family, and the Other Spike, stood by her side.
"Good night my little sugar cube." The Other Sister pecked Apple Bloom upon the cheek. Soon, she lapsed into dreamland. Just as the night before. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 5 | You did well my little doll.
He sat there listening to her words of praise.
"I really did good?" he innocently asked.
"Very much so, she was so happy and content. She enjoyed every minute."
That made him happy for two reasons. One, he had completed his task, two, he made the young filly happy. Something about her smile just lit him up inside, filling him with immense joy.
A smile crossed his face, but it fell in that instant. "Do you really have to do it?" his question passed his lips without hesitation. Or maybe he should have been hesitant. Slowly he could hear her steps. "Can't you pick someone else?"
Upon his scaly shoulder, he felt something. "Now, now my dear little doll, remember what I told you." He winced as something dug in like a knife. "Smile."
Reluctantly, he did. XXX
The next morning, Apple Bloom did what she did the last time, tell of her experience.
"It was so cool!" the little filly exclaimed excitedly.
The rest of the Apple family didn't really pay much mind to the excited youngster. Granny Smith was asleep per usual. Big Macintosh and Apple Jack simply went about their daily duties, half listening to their little sister's dream talks.
"Granny Smith, the other one Ah mean, she was roping everything and those candy apples!" Apple Bloom rolled her eyes back in ecstasy. "How come we don't grow candy apples?"
Applejack was the first to respond. "Apple Bloom, those dreams are filling yer head with silly notions."
Big Macintosh didn't have such blunt feelings on the matter. "Well, we probably would make more if weupped our produce." Although he knew candy apples didn't grow on trees, being the mathematical one, he knew that perhaps a few changes would bring in more money. "Eyup." he concluded.
Applejack on the other hand, didn't think so highly. "Horsefeathers! We've been selling plain, ordinary apples since our great grandad ran this place and that's how it's going to stay." Well that only applied to non ceremonial selling. The siblings didn't argue with each other, for they both know it would go around in circles. "Look we still got a lot to do around here big brother, so I suggest ya get to work."
Big Macintosh shrugged and went to his daily chores. Apple Bloom frowned. Same old morning, her brother too busy and her sister being a hard flank. Apple Bloom expected to be left out once again, same old, same old.
"Apple Bloom?" Applejack turned to her sister, right before she left.
The filly looked to her sibling, noticing the slightly warmed expression upon her face. "Ah was wondering, would y'all like to sell the apples with me?" Applejack seemed hesitant in her question.
Apple Bloom herself felt a tad hesitant. For the past two days, things had been tense between she and her sister. Was this her way of trying to make it up? "Um..." Apple Bloom scratched the ground with her front hoof, "sure." XXX
Ponyville was still held in the grim weather that had overtaken the town for the past two days. Amongst the passerby's that actually came out this day, grumbled about the weather conditions. Occasionally, a rainbow streak zipped past the gray clouds. Apparently, even Rainbow Dash managed to shake off her usual laziness to perk up the skyline.
"Fresh apples! Come and get your delicious and nutritious apples!" It seemed like one mood wasn't dampened today. Applejack called out her usual slogans, just like any other day. A few ponies stopped by their stand to purchase the red fruit. Applejack kept her smile plastered on. Nobody would want to buy from an unhappy vendor, it was common knowledge. Business seemed to come and go. One moment they would be receive customers, and then it would subside.
Nevertheless, Applejack kept it open. Someone would want apples at some point.
"This is boring." Apple Bloom sighed. Her head hung low and her posture illustrated her feelings. "Why'd you make me come out here?"
Applejack sighed herself. "Ah didn't. Ah asked you and ya said yes." She corrected.
It didn't help to improve Apple Bloom's mood. Everything moved so slowly around her. Everything was the same old routine. "Hey Applejack? Can Ah get something at Sugar Cube Corner?" she casually asked.
"Apple Bloom, y'all spoil your appetite, we're going to have a nice lunch after this." Applejack countered.
Once more, it only worsened the filly's mood. "If my other sister was here, she would buy it for me." She grumbled, utmost certain that would be the case.
Applejack grumbled herself. "Well, she's just a dream, and Ah'm real."
"Well a dream is better than this." Apple Bloom suddenly proclaimed.
A few tense moments of silence followed before Applejack spoke again. "Look sis, A'm really trying here, Ah know I've been a sourpuss recently." it was an attempt at an apology.
Apple Bloom didn't respond at first. She couldn't think of anything to say really. Well save for one thing. "Can Ah go?"
Sighing to herself, Applejack answered. "Fine."
At that point, Applejack was the only person at the stand. Apple Bloom had another destination in mind. This place held no joy recently, but she one that did. XXX
Apple Bloom stormed through the woods. So many thoughts raced through her head. Perhaps she was too much of a brat to her sister? After all, she had tried to make amends. But, stubbornness ran in the family. Apple Bloom was no exception. The path she had memorized well. A habit engrained into her head after doing it twice in a row. The leaves hardly crunched. Too much moisture clung turing them into wet little slappers. Apple Bloom ignored all that, for she saw something up ahead.
The abandoned house stood out like a welcoming sign. At least, it was welcoming to Apple Bloom.
"Well well. It would seem within this gloom," Apple Bloom halted. The voice came so suddenly, it made some hairs stand on end. Turning her head around, she spotted a hooded figure stepping from behind a tree. Despite being concealed mostly by the hood, a striped muzzle revealed itself as the hood flipped back. "I have found you little Apple Bloom." The zebra finished her rhyme.
"Zecora?" Apple Bloom asked, surprised at the zebra's sudden appearance. "W-what are you doing here?" a nervous stutter peppered her lips. She had hoped to go without being seen, perhaps out of fear of someone finding her little secret. If any other pony found out, they may want to have it for themselves. Celestia forbid if Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara found this Other World.
Zecora's eyes directed towards the house. Apple Bloom swallowed; somehow she had a hunch that was why Zecora was around. But for what reason?
"I was simply looking for plants, when you happened to cross my glance." Answered Zecora. "So if I may ask, why are you treading near this grass?"
It was amazing how she could rhyme like that. Least Apple Bloom thought so. But she wondered if perhaps it grew tiresome to do so all the time, every time?
"Oh...well Ah....hmmm." Apple Bloom tried to think of a lie and think of it quick. "Ya see." her hoof dug at the ground before her in uncertainty. "My doll! Ah was playing here the other day and Ah lost my favorite doll." That excuse had to work.
Upon that, Zecora raised her eye in suspicion. "Doll?" was her only response, no follow up rhyme to mention it. Although Apple Bloom thought she heard the faint mumble of "the gall". If Zecora was suspicious, nothing came of it. All the zebra concentrated on was the house ahead. Apple Bloom noticed something. Zecora's face turned dead serious. More she looked at the house it seemed, the more serious her face became. It was more than that however. Zecora backed away just a bit. Her face flinched in the stone set seriousness it had given itself. If Apple Bloom didn't know any better, it would seem as if Zecora was afraid of the place.
"Beware, for your eyes I would not bet." The rhyme started. "What you say, may not be what you get." The zebra then departed off into unknown parts.
Was that a warning? Apple Bloom asked herself. It would certainly seem that way, yet what could there be a need for a warning? It went over the filly's head. Did Zecora know what lay inside the house?
Those were all interesting questions, but Apple Bloom had other things in mind. Going inside was like a routine to her. Down the hall, into the room, past the table, and crawling under, all of these steps led to the door. Right beside it, Apple Bloom spied the key. Just like the two times before, she took it in her mouth, and opened the door.
Immediately, her face was hit with a wave of warm air. A blue glow illuminated everything. All of it was real, she just knew it. With a happy grin, she descended down the tunnel and past the door ahead.
"I'm here!" Apple Bloom called happily. Her ears and eyes waited for any sign of her other family. But no sound came, nor did any sign of their flanks cross her sight. Instinctually, Apple Bloom went to the one place she just knew would have life, the kitchen. Stepping inside, she did find something was there.
"Wow." Apple Bloom awed. Her eyes shined and sparkled. A whole plethora of treats awaited her. Cupcakes, brownies, muffins, and candy apples, why it was enough to feed a whole party, the spread at Diamond Tiara's cutecianera didn't hold a candle.
While the young filly was staring in delight at the sweets, a purple head poked itself from behind the sugar pile. "Hello Apple Bloom!"
Apple Bloom gave a yelp at the sudden appearance. "Spike?" the other one of course. In fact, she probably was more surprised by the button eyes. Perfect as this world was, she still couldn't get used to them.
"What are you doing here?" Apple Bloom asked the doppleganger dragon.
The Other Spike grinned. "I was waiting for you."
If the eyes were not off putting enough, the grin certainly was. "Ya mean, y'all were sitting her all this time?"
"Yes, I have."
"Before Ah got here?"
"Of course."
The dragon certainly was loyal. Apple Bloom had to give him that. A little too loyal. It almost was creepy in its own way.
"By the way, Ms Applejack wanted me to give you this." The Other Spike pushed a box over to Apple Bloom. Opening it she found two things inside. First, was a letter.
Dearest Apple Bloom.
I hope you enjoy this lunch I've prepared, please eat as much as you like.
Also, your friends Scootaloo and Sweetiebelle have invited you to their show.
Have fun.
Sincerly, your Other Sister.
Sweetiebelle and Scootaloo were here? Well, Apple Bloom assumed they were their other versions. Under the letter was a flyer of some sort. The big flashy words and letters drew her in.
Sweetiebelle and Scootaloo's
SUPER AWESOME
Extremely sensational
Magic Stunt Show!
Open today, tomorrow and next day
And so forth
P.S. No zebras or cats of any sort.
A duel magic and stunt show? It sounded interesting. But first thing was first, Apple Bloom was hungry and lunch was waiting right there. Just as she was about to take a bite out of them sot delicious looking cupcake, she noticed something, she was the only one eating. The Other Spike simply sat there looking at her.
"Don't you want any Spike?" she asked the dragon.
The Other Spike waved a claw. "No thanks, it's all for you." He declined.
That was it; the dragon seemed perfectly fine with her enjoying herself, while he just sat there. This Spike may have been a perfect gentledragon, but it wasn't an excuse for her to be impolite.
"Spike, Ah want you to have some." Apple Bloom urged.
The Other Spike looked with uncertainty. "But.....It's yours. I shouldn't."
"Spike!" Apple Bloom chided in a similar tone a parent would a child. "It's okay. Ah don't mind."
Uncertainly looking at the food pile, one of his claws reached for a cupcake. Acting as if he was doing something naughty, he swiftly took a bite. He seemed surprised by the taste of it all. The sweetness spread through his face as he chewed. In no time, he polished off the confectionary delight in no time.
"It's good." he announced and continued eating.
Smiling, Apple Bloom joined him.
The meal passed with not much conversation. When the two children were done, they prepared to leave.
"Boy that was so good." Apple Bloom exclaimed.
The Other Spike licked the traces that clung to his claws. "Yes. It was very delicious."
Suddenly, Apple Bloom gave a large burp. "Excuse me." she blushed. She had not forgotten her manners.
The other Spike simply smiled. "You certainly ate a lot."
"Yeah Ah know, and Ah don't even feel full." Apple Bloom realized. Something else she noticed, the food. Her belly showed no sign of increase, not even from the large amount she ate. Strange, the food would sate her hunger, but she felt nothing inside. It was the same the last two times she ate in this world.
"We better hurry or we'll be late for the show." The other Spike urged.
Whatever thought's Apple Bloom had were soon pushed aside. The pair trotted along the path. Just as before, flowers seemed to sprout beside them.
"So where exactly are we going?" inquired Apple Bloom.
The Other Spike pointed ahead. "Over there."
In the distance, well not that far of a distance, a large stadium sat. More like a dome actually. "That wasn't there yesterday." Apple Bloom realized.
"I know. Ms Applejack just had it made." Answered the Other Spike.
Momentarily, Apple Bloom stopped. All of that built in a single day? Well Apple Bloom didn't really care that much about it. Being as young as she was, she simply chalked it up to magic. Magic wasn't a huge stretch of imagination. Just look at the unicorns, they were chalk full of magic. The pair reached the stadium and entered the open door. Inside, the path was dark. The only way for Apple Bloom to guide herself was the tell tale footsteps of the Other Spike. It was a slight drag of the claws upon the velvet. Yes, there was velvet carpeting.
The path winded into a large stand of seats. They were of the same velvety style of the carpets, which by now in the more lightened area, could be shown as a red color. The seats all directed towards a large gap in the stage, a vey large darkened gap. It was almost like looking into a great big void. Awe inspiring as this was, this place seemed too large. Sure it was big outside, but inside, it looked absolutely gigantic.
"I've saved you a seat up front." The Other Spike announced. Apple Bloom joined him up at the front. Anticipation filled the filly. What could be in store for her this time?
All of a sudden, a bright light filled the black void before her very eyes. Like an exploding star, Apple Bloom had to shield her eyes from the sheer brightness of it all. The glow began to die and when Apple Bloom opened her eyes, she exclaimed a simple "wow".
A large series of loops, ramps, and rings all situated about the stage, stretching high and tall above. A puff of smoke appeared right at the front of the stage. When it cleared, a white filly stood in the center. It was Sweetiebelle, the other one that is. She held the same button eyes as the rest of the other versions, only they were yellow . Additionally, the Other Sweetiebelle was dressed in a traditional magicians cape and hat. Purple, just as her hair, or at least the striped parts.
"Welcome one and all to this sensational show!" the Other Sweetiebelle announced. A wide series of sparkles and flashes accompanied her speech. "Tonight we shall dazzle you! Fascinate you! Mesmerize you! Astound you! Enter-"
"Get on with it already! While we're still young here!" high above upon a ramp, stood a young pegasus filly on a scooter. By process of elimination, this would have to be the Other Scootaloo. She looked very much like her Ponyville counterpart, same blank flank, same color coat, even had Scootaloo's safety helmet. Like the Other Sweetiebelle, her button eyes were a blue color.
The Other Sweetiebelle could see her performance partner was growing impatiant. "Right um... very well. Before we begin, we need a volunteer from the audience. Now who could it be?" the Other Sweetiebelle looked over the crowd of almost empty seats. Despite there being only two people present, the button eyed filly seemed to be having some difficulties deciding.
"No...hmmm...maybe." she mumbled
"Oh come on! Just pick her already!" the Other Scootaloo shouted impatiently.
The other Sweetiebelle immediately pointed a hoof at no one other than, "Apple Bloom! Come on up!"
Apple Bloom let out a tiny gasp. "Me?" looking to her side, she could see the Other Spike urging her to go on. There wasn't any other chance for this, so she wouldn't pass it up. Trotting up upon the stage, another puff of smoke caught her by surprise. When it cleared, a chair stood in it's place.
"Please have a seat." instructed the Other Sweetiebelle.
Apple Bloom did so. Seating herself upon it, she watched Other Sweetiebelle's horn glow. The young filly waved her hoof around. On that command, the chair began to shake, and before Apple Bloom could say anything, she found the ground getting smaller and smaller. It wasn't that, she was getting higher.
"What the?" she cried as she noticed herself floating high in the air.
With another puff of smoke, the chair vanished. Despite that, Apple Bloom still found herself floating. Frantically, her legs kicked around as she tried to grab onto something. But she would find nothing.
"Scootaloo if you would please." the Other Sweetiebelle announced.
The pegasus pony flashed a daring grin. "Finally!" using her hoof for propulsion, the scooter sped down the ramp, fast and furious as it twisted and turned at the many angles and twists. At last it came to a huge gap. The other side stood far away, a mistake would spell certain doom. In-between this all was Apple Bloom. The Other Scootaloo sped down. She was almost to the ramp. Her scooter had gained much speed as it descended. The speed served as an asset as she cleared the jump. While she was in the middle, of her grand jump, she grabbed hold of Apple Bloom.
"Hold on tight!" Scootaloo instructed.
Apple Bloom certainly listened. The scooter landed upon the opposite side. The Other Scootaloo sped along the ramps as fast as she could. Apple Bloom held on to dear life. They were going so fast, she could feel her cheeks parting away leaving nothing but a forced grin. The Other Scootaloo simply grinned deviously as she went over more ramps and around loops. Somehow Apple Bloom managed to hang on, right before another leap.
Just below, the Other Sweetiebelle waved her hoof. From nowhere, a series of rings appeared between the ramp gap. With another wave of the hoof, the rings suddenly exploded in fire. The flames illuminated within Apple Bloom's eyes. They grew larger as did they. Wait! They were getting closer! Apple Bloom frantically looked at her other friend. She couldn't be?
It dawned on Apple Bloom that indeed she was.
Before she could protest, the scooter sped off the second ramp and through the flames. Yet, they were not burnt. The Other Scootaloo maneuvered through the rings without touching the flames. Apple Bloom held tight as she avoided them, only poking her head up as they cleared the jump. More twists and turns followed. Apple Bloom had no idea where they were going, but they were going fast. Everything passed on in a blur. All the little filly could see was a turn, a turn that lead into another ramp. Only, there wasn't a place to land.
What came next was another blur. The Other Scootaloo continued along her path. There was no intent on stopping. The small scooter leapt over the ramp turning in midair. Apple Bloom continued to hold, but suddenly, a nudge pushed her. She found her self falling, gravity pulling her down below. Her tiny mind froze. It still remained that way as she felt a brief pause in the fall. Slowly she found herself gently drifting down. Her hooves planted upon the ground. Her hair was a frazzled mess from the fall. The Other Scootaloo skid across the ground in her descent. A perfect landing.
"TA DA!" the Other Scootaloo and Sweetiebelle announced.
Apple Bloom simply stood there in complete stultification. Her left eye twitched and a quiver danced upon her lips. No tears fell from her eyes however. Her quiver grew larger and her eye continued its ticks.
Apple Bloom let out a cry. One word that summed up her emotions. "WOOHOO!" XXX
"That was so amazing! Scootaloo was like whoosh! And Sweetiebelle was all ZAM with her magic!" Apple Bloom excitedly chattered as she retold the events from her day.
The Other Spike sat by her side, always the eager listener. The dragon had said nothing after they left the show. He merely kept that smile going. It stayed glued to his face. However, at the corner of his lips, the glue began to peel.
"So Apple Bloom? You had fun right?" the Other Spike timidly asked.
Apple Bloom flashed a bright grin. "You bet! Ah've never had so much fin in my little old life!"
"Do you like it here?" the dragon asked.
Again, Apple Bloom's grin could practically be its own sun. "Course I do!"
One last question. "Do you like me?"
"Course I do ya silly little dragon! Y'all are much more fun than the real Spike."
Apple Bloom noticed something the moment she mentioned the word 'real'. The fading smile showed itself upon Other Spike's scaly visage. "Are y'all alright?" the filly asked her friend.
When he heard that question, the Other Spike flashed a brief look of horror. "You didn't see me frown okay? Please don't tell anyone." he begged, keeping his voice low. When his request spurred a quizical look upon the filly's face, the Other Spike quickly followed with, "I'm fine, just...just glad you had fun heh." he added with a laugh.
Apple Bloom paid it no mind. In the distance she saw the shape of the Other Sweet Apple Acres. Waiting at the door was the Other Sister and the Other Big Macintosh.
"Did you have fun sugarcube?" The Other Sister asked.
Apple Bloom pranced at the mares hooves. "Ah sure did! This place is great! Ah never want to leave!"
Hearing that made the Other Sister smile. As she and the Other big Macintosh escorted Apple Bloom into the house, she turned to face the Other Spike. What she saw made her own smile fade. The Other Spike looked up at her. His forced smile was turned upside down. The dragon wrung his claws together as he gazed up at the pony. In his eyes he held a pleading look. It was almost as if he was begging her not to do something. But his pleads fell deaf upon the Other Sister. Instead, she merely took a hoof and with a motion said one thing, "Smile".
With that motion, the Other Spike quickly responded. Although this time, his smile was more half hearted than anything. When he heard the door close behind him, his smile returned to a frown. After all, he was nothing but a puppet doing his job. XXX
"You know Apple Bloom. You could stay here forever if you wanted." the Other Sister said immediately upon entering the house.
"Ah could?" Apple Bloom responded with disbelief.
"Sure could kiddo!" the Other Big Macintosh added. "We could play games, pick apples, anything ya want!"
That made Apple Bloom think. The prospect of staying in this world interested her greatly. It was no secret she loved it. She loved every bit of this world. The toys, the games, the food, but most of all she had a family who had time for her. That and a Spike that didn't hang around with slugs. But she had to ask herself, could she really leave her old life behind?
"There is one little thing you have to do." the Other Sister added.
So there was a catch.
Apple Bloom seated herself at the table, as did her other family. The Other Sister nudged something towards her. "For you my sugar cube." It was a gift box neatly wrapped with a ribbon.
Apple Bloom took the present with glee, nudging it open. Inside wasn't a toy nor a fancy new hat. What she saw made her formally happy position fall into a one of pure question. It was a needle and thread. Next to it was pair of black buttons.
"You know we don't have to go with black, you could pick a different color if you wanted." the Other Sister offered. "We could go with yellow, blue, or even red like your ribbon!" she gave the choices with glee.
As she listened to this, Apple Bloom tried to rationalize what all of this could mean. They had said she needed to do something to stay here. But what could a needle and thread have anything to do with it? Her eyes fell upon something: the eyes of the Other Sister. Something in the back of her mind stirred. Back and forth she transferred her own eyes to the buttons. The stirring grew into a suspicion. Everything in this world held something in common: the button eyes. All except one person that is...her.
At last, the suspicion became realization.
"NO WAY!" Apple Bloom forcefully pushed the box away. "Y'all aren't putting buttons in my eyes!"
"Oh but sweetie you have to if want to stay." The Other Sister reminded.
It didn't help improve Apple Bloom's shock.
"Don't worry kiddo, ya won't feel a thing." The Other big Macintosh reassured. "Although you might bleed a bit-oof!" the stallion's face contorted in pain.
The Other Sister's face broke away from her usual cheeriness. Annoyance, anger, pretty much any expression that said 'shut up'. Then she noticed Apple Bloom was staring at her.
"Well, it's up to you sugar cube." Quickly she put on her former face.
Apple Bloom rose from the table. The other versions of her family were swift to follow. She noticed the other Big Macintosh was walking with a limp in his leg. Almost as if he was kicked. The pretty picture was starting to fade away. No it had long gone past faded. As of now, Apple Bloom didn't mind the prospect of not staying here.
"Ya know Ah think Ah'm going to hit the hay." Apple Bloom faked a yawn when she noticed their surprised or dismayed looks.
Yet the Other Sister replaced it with a smile. "Alright sweetie." tapping the young filly's nose with her hoof she added "I know you'll make the right choice."
Apple Bloom nervously smiled. XXX
The moment she entered her other room, Apple Bloom quickly shut the door. Her eyes looked about searching for a way out.
"What's wrong Apple Bloom?" the toys at her feet asked. "Don't you wanna stay?"
Apple Bloom dashed away from the living dolls as fast as she could. There was only one way out of this world. She had taken it twice. Covering herself under the blanket she chanted repeatedly to herself.
"Go to sleep. Go to sleep."
She continued that chant in her head as she tried to force herself into slumber. She lost track of the time but soon she felt her eyes grow heavy. Or maybe she simply tired herself out. Her sleep wasn't very peaceful. The events of the day played back in her mind. First it started off joyous and then becoming soured with the ending bits. When she awoke, she was more than happy to throw of the covers and find herself back in her old room.
Yet, she wasn't in her old room. To her dismay, her other room stared back at her. Fear gripped Apple Bloom. It looks like they wouldn't take no for an answer. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 6 | Zecora's words had rung true. What she had seen wasn't what she expected. The pretty picture that this place had painted now peeled away into an ugly underside. The moment she realized she wasn't back in her real room, the young filly stormed out of her other bedroom. Down the stairs and to the kitchen she went. She found nopony was there, that left two other places. First was the living room. The door out of this place was behind there. Apple Bloom reached for the door but her hopes were quickly dashed as she the living room door would not budge. The kitchen was a no go so that left one other place.
Her little hooves stormed against the wooden floor. "Where is she!?" Apple Bloom demanded the moment she stepped into the art studio. The Other Granny Smith was nowhere to be found. Only the Other Big Macintosh lay within.
"Where's the other sister!?" Apple Bloom demanded hotly again. "Ah wanna go home!"
The stallion's body language was far different from earlier. When Apple Bloom first met him, the Other Big Macintosh was excitable, fun loving, and generally a joy to be around. Now she could sense a strange sense of sadness. Not just from the stallion but the entire room as well. The paintings that hung on the way drooped, almost as if they were about to fall off.
"Mustn't talk, mustn't speak when sis isn't around." The Other Big Macintosh spoke in a blank tone. He sat at a picture painting nothing really. He only smeared colored lines upon the easel. The joy that went with him was dead.
Apple Bloom didn't have time for this. "Fine! If you won't help me, I'll find the Other Spike." the filly was certain the dragon would be of more use. "He'll help me."
"Won't do any good." suddenly the other Big Macintosh swirled around. His button eyes dead locked on Apple Bloom. "He puuullllled a saaaaaaaaad face!" the stallion's mouth sunk low as he spoke. The tone of his voice darkened into a hiss. Apple Bloom backed away in fear. "Sister didn't like that." The Other Big Macintosh stamped his hooves forward but quickly stepped backwards as if he realized what he was doing. "Mustn't talk, sister mother not here." He droned continuously and went back to his painting.
Apple Bloom's mind didn't know what else to do. So her instincts told her. She ran, and she ran fast. The front door slammed open as she bolted out. She didn't know where she was going. All she knew was that she wanted to escape this world. Her little legs carried her wherever her instincts commanded her. No, it was her fear that commanded her. Past trees and orchards she ran. Everything still held that brightness to it. The moon shone down on her casting shadows that danced about. Her eyes looked to and fro as the shapes and figures. She wanted to go home. She wanted her grandmother who constantly slept, she wanted her brother who seldom spoke, she wanted her sister who treated her like a baby. She just wanted everything back!
Just then her surroundings changed. But it wasn't a way out. It was nothing.
"Huh?" she muttered. The tree's had disappeared. Now all that could be seen was a white nothing. Apple Bloom trotted a few steps forward. Her wide eyes danced about in confusion. This didn't make sense. What was this place? It was as if this world had only what she wanted to see. There was a little hope that perhaps this world had an Other Ponyville. But that would mean other versions of its denizens. Apple Bloom's walk soon ended as she felt land against her hooves. The Other Sweet Apple Acres loomed above. Her face fell. They wouldn't let her go. She wouldn't let her go. Apple Bloom had no other alternative. She had to reach that door. The only problem was the way leading to it was locked. Apple Bloom didn't really have a lot of options. She would have to try something, anything at this point. Tugging at the door knob wouldn't help. She would have to apply force. Charging at full speed, she rammed her hooves into the door. Not a budge, it only knocked her down with an "oof". She tried again, this time nothing.
"Come on Apple Bloom!" She told herself. "You're an apple!" that was true, and members of the Apple Clan didn't give up. Preparing herself, she looked just like a bull waiting to charge complete with a snort. The moment Apple Bloom collided with the doorway, it burst open. A flash of pride welled up inside her. But it was competing with the pain that coursed through her little body as she hit the floor.
"Ow." she muttered. Then again maybe the pride wasn't deserved. That door felt as if it opened intentionally. Whatever the case, Apple bloom could see the door before her. All she had to do was reach it and she would be home free.
Unfortunately for her, luck wasn't on her side. She hadn't noticed it at first, but next to the doorway was a dresser of sorts, a rather large bulky dresser which suddenly began to move. With each movement it took, Apple Bloom noticed certain 'qualities', insect qualities. The dresser had antenna along with a pair of orb like eyes attached to its head. The bug dresser seated itself right in front of the door. Clearly there would be no escape.
"You're being awfully difficult my little sugar cube." Apple Bloom knew that voice. Turning around she could see her. Sitting delicately upon a revolving couch was the Other Sister. The mare put one leg over the other as she lounged. "Why would you want to leave? You have everything you could ever want here?" she asked.
Apple Bloom certainly wasn't in the mood. This creature wouldn't let her leave and she wouldn't let this slide. With a determined expression she stormed over towards the Other Sister. "Ah wanna go home to my real family! I want my real brother! My real granny! And my real sister!" Her real sister. She wanted Applejack more than ever. Every time the Other Sister called her "sugar cube", the more she realized she hated it coming from her mouth.
"Is that any way to speak to your big sister?" The Other Sister asked. Her voice striking an indignant tone.
Apple Bloom's face became dead serious. "You....aint....my....sister." she stated that with the utmost seriousness.
The Other Sister likewise became serious. "Apologize this instant young filly." her voice dropped low.
The only response Apple Bloom gave was "No!" Her body motioned in a sulk. After all, she was a child.
"I'm going to give you till the count of three. And when I'm done I expect an apology." The Other Sister warned. Apple Bloom didn't budge nor alter her disposition. The Other Sister's expression darkened upon her warning.
"One." The mare rose from her seat but oddly she stood upon her back leg. Apple Bloom heard a sound just then. It was like something was stretching itself with a sickening squelch. It was coming from the Other Sister.
"Two." Apple Bloom watched the Other Sister closely. Her eyes transfixed upon her altering form. The mare's body began to grow. The pony shape became elongated and lanky. Something began to form along the body. The coat was changing color at least in some parts. Before Apple Bloom's eyes, a spotted black dress formed along the Other Sister's new body. The front legs were no longer legs but rather arms now. The hooves split apart into long, spiny black fingers. The lower legs remained as they were hooves and all. Yet she looked as if she were a walking devil. Lastly the muzzle shrank back as her hair became long and matted.
Apple Bloom's eyes trailed the falling hat as it hit the ground.
"THREEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Her eyes snapped back to the Other Sister only to see her approaching hand. A sharp pain coursed through Apple Bloom's head as the Other Sister grabbed her by the mane.
"Ow!" Apple Bloom cried. "Let go!"
The Other Sister dragged the young filly down the hall with a scowl upon her face. All the while, Apple Bloom kicked up a storm as she tried to escape the creatures grasp.
"You're hurting me!" Apple Bloom screamed.
Her protests and pleads went unheard. Before the Other Sister stood a mirror located at the end of the hall. The next thing Apple Bloom knew, she was being thrown right at the mirror. Apple Bloom shut her eyes but there was no collision though, for she fell right into it. Apple Bloom felt the cold hardness of stone underneath her. Opening her eyes, she could see the stern look of the Other Sister.
"You may come out, when you've learned to be a good little foal." The Other Sister's body vanished into the wall leaving Apple Bloom alone.
The young filly felt cold as a damp air surrounded her. This place, it felt sad. Apple Bloom pounded her hooves against the stone wall. Her desperation to leave drove her, but it would be of to no use. Whatever magic the Other Sister possessed, Apple Bloom didn't have.
Just as her fear began to sink in, a sound reached her ears. It was a faint whisper of a wail. For Apple Bloom it was just as if a storm made the branches rustle against her window.
"W-who's there?" Apple Bloom whimpered. Whirling around, she took in her surroundings.
They perfectly comprised her feelings: Dark, gloomy, foreboding, and cold. There were nothing but stone walls and floors. Puddles of water were scattered about. This place looked more like a prison than anything. At the very end Apple Bloom noticed something. It was a blanket. But that wasn't the odd part. Underneath it was a faint glow. Curiously, Apple Bloom trotted over. Her eyes were drawn to the strange light. Part of her wanted to leave it as it was, while another half told her this was a way out.
"Mustn't talk, mustn't speak, lest the Beldam will hear us." a voice came from underneath. The voice was that of a young filly's.
"The Beldam?" Apple Bloom repeated the word. "Ya mean the Other Sister?" there could be no other reference.
Stripping the blanket away, Apple Bloom gasped. Underneath were three little ponies. Apple Bloom noticed from their appearance, they were about the same age as her. Yet these ponies were not normal ponies. Normal ponies didn't have translucent blue flanks. The three were each a different pony race, an earth pony, a pegasus, and a unicorn. The youngsters briefly glanced up at Apple Bloom before hiding their heads once more. She caught something before they did. They all had button's sewn in their eyes.
"Who are y'all?" Apple Bloom asked. Her question turned into a gasp as the ponies did something she didn't expect, float. Now it dawned upon her, they were ghosts.
"I don't remember my name." The pegasus pony spoke. He was a young colt, his wings were tattered and his mouth carved into a whimper. "But in my head, I can still see my true mama." The pegasus ghost floated about almost in a strange dance of loss.
"Why are ya here?" Apple Bloom's next question came with a faint whisper.
The three ghost ponies all said one word in unison. "The Beldam."
Apple Bloom took a look at the remaining two ghost ponies. Both were fillies. One was a unicorn lass, her face contorted in a scream. Perhaps the last thing she saw frightened her so much? The last child was an earth pony. Apple Bloom's face locked upon the ghost filly. Something about her mane, her face, her.....bow......it all looked so familiar.
"She spied on us through the doll's eyes." The earth pony recited. Immediately Apple Bloom caught the trace of an accent. An all too familiar accent. It was almost like.....
"And saw that were weren't happy." The voice of the pegasus lad interrupted her thoughts
The unicorn lass floated beside Apple Bloom. "So with treats, toys and games, she lured us away."
"But w'all wanted more." The accent came again.
"So we let her sew the buttons."
Apple Bloom's eyes widened in shock as the children began to circle her.
"She gave us all we wanted."
"She said she loved us."
"But she locked us here in the dark."
"And she ate our lives."
The ponies finished their tale. Apple Bloom had remained silent throughout it all. The only thing that changed were her expressions. She wasn't the first. There were others and she was staring right at them. This fate......it could have happened to her. Or rather it will happen if she didn't do something. Inside, Apple Bloom felt something stir within. Frightened as she was, she came to a conclusion.
"She aint doing this to me." The filly spoke softly to herself.
Easier said than done, Apple Bloom knew her words were held no strength. She still was trapped here. She had to escape.......somehow.
"Maybe you can help us miss?" The ghost ponies emerged again. The unicorn pony was the first to speak.
Apple Bloom had walked back to the wall in all of this. "But how can Ah help? W-what could Ah possibly do?"
"If you find our eyes maybe y'all can set us free." The earth pony answered with her accented voice.
"Find our eyes miss! Please!" The pegasus pony pleaded.
Apple Bloom stepped back even farther as the children gave their pleads. Sympathy was what she felt. So much she felt she didn't know what else to say besides "Ah....ah'll." but before she could finish, something reached out from behind the wall and dragged her in. The moment she saw the light of the hallway, Apple Bloom gave a mighty buck for one her size. She bucked whatever had grabbed her. A picture frame fell to the ground as something collided with the wall. Apple Bloom held a look of pure fury upon her brow, but it fell when she saw who had grabbed her.
"Spike!" or rather the Other Spike.
The button eyed dragon looked up at the filly, one of his claws against his chest from where Apple Bloom had bucked him.
"Oh Spike Ah'm so sorry! Ah didn't-"
"SHHHHH!" the Other Spike silenced her.
Apple Bloom kept quiet.
"We have to get you out of here! She'll be back any minute." The dragon motioned for Apple Bloom to follow him. Apple Bloom followed the young dragon through the hallway and into the living room. Luckily, they found the room completely empty. There was no trace of the Other Sister. The Other Spike and Apple Bloom hurried to the insect dresser pushing it on its side.
"Apple Bloom is that you?" from some part of the house the Other Sister called.
Quickly the pair opened the door. Gazing inside, Apple Bloom could see no glow. The tunnel was nothing but a brown cob web filled corridor.
"Apple Bloom! How dare you disobey me!" the Other Sister bellowed.
The Other Spike urgently pushed the young pony towards the door. "Hurry or she'll find you!"
"What about you!?" Apple Bloom asked with concern. "Can't you come with me?" the dragon was risking a lot by helping her. She didn't know exactly how, but she somehow knew that.
The Other Spike looked at the young pony seeing the pleading and concern in her eyes. His button eyes darted away with uncertainty. Above them came a creak. The Other Sister was getting closer. Before she could protest, the Other Spike pushed her inside and closed the door. Stunned by the action Apple Bloom almost turned back.
"APPLE BLOOM!"
That voice quickly got her running. Her little hooves scurried along the path. All of a sudden, it began to shake and shift. Apple Bloom hurried along all the while trying to make it to the door above her.
"YOU CANNOT!"
The path continued to shake. For a brief moment Apple Bloom lost her grip.
"GET AWAY! FROM ME!"
That was the last thing Apple Bloom heard as she bolted to the outside. Her eyes looked around until it caught sight of a familiar looking key. Taking it in her mouth, Apple Bloom locked the door behind her. The filly fell upon her back breathing heavily. This place. The musky smell that hung in the air. She knew where it was.....The old house! She had made it!
Apple Bloom's legs moved as fast as they could carry her. She scurried down the hallway towards the door and escaped into the outside. The fresh air was like a godsend against her flank. Her mane swung in the breeze as she tasted the air. She only thought of one place.
"Applejack! Big Macintosh! Granny Smith!" she called as she bolted inside the door of the real Sweet Apple Acres. Her true home. Apple Bloom excitedly looked through the rooms expecting to be greeted by her family.
"I'm home!" she called again. Up the stairs she went to the bedrooms. But when she went up there, she found nothing. Going back down she gave a second sweep. Several sweeps to be precise. However, there was no trace of anyone. Confused, she went outside. Perhaps she had missed them on her way in? But outside she could find nothing at all. The apple baskets were left unattended. Even Big Macintosh's plow was just left there.
Apple Bloom felt fear well up in her tiny chest. "Where is everypony?" she asked. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 7 | Smack!
The pain coursed through his body.
Wack!
It came again with a slap. His little body skid across the ground. He tried to lift himself up with all of his strength. The ground trembled as she approached him, her hooves were gave off a sound like thunder. At least from his point of view.
"Tell me my little doll." She hissed.
Before he could move he felt her hand wrap around him. Her cold button eyes met his as she held him up to her view. "Why did you help her escape? HMMM!?" before he could answer, she threw him at the wall. Another spike of pain ran up his spine as he fell to the floor. Goodness, it hurt so much. Yet he didn't have a scratch on him. He supposed he was durable like that. All of them were. It wasn't as if he had any real organs or bones to think of.
"S-s-she's my friend, I wanted to help her." Came his honest response.
She looked down at him in apparent surprise. Then from within her came a laugh. A cruel mocking laugh that echoes througough the room."Friend? Oh my poor little dragon, you are simply nothing more than a doll I made," she explained. "all your feelings of friendship towards that filly are simply ones I put into you. You were simply to play your role and lull her in." her voice dripped with venom as she glared down at him.
The dragon curled himself up into a cowering ball. Was that it? Was everything he felt fake. Maybe it was, she had created him after all. That was it. He hadn't been born. He was simply created. Stitched up by her to do her bidding. He broke his balled position looking at one of his claws. IF he wasn't real, then what were the scales made of? What of the rest of his body?
"Well, you did perform your job admerably," He heard her coming again. "but I'm afraid I'm going to have to punish you now."
His eyes looked up and what he saw made him cower even more. Within her hand she held a needle and thread. Her smile grew into an insane wickedness. It wasn't just the escape. He had broken another of her rules. It had been broken before and it was broken now. He wasn't smiling. XXX
Apple Bloom felt numb. If numb could be considered the correct term. But she didn't now how else to describe her emotions. She had looked high and low, covered every inch of the barn and orchards. Nothing. With nothing else to do, she trotted to Ponyville. She asked everyone in town, including the fellow holders of the elements of harmony. She had asked the same question to them and everyone she came in contact with.
Each and every time she received the same answer "They hadn't seen them."
So Apple Bloom trotted up the path to her home. But she knew one thing was for certain. Her family was gone.
Slowly she trotted along the path. There was no other place besides home. An empty home wasn't any home at all. During her questioning search, she had left out one detail, a detail that weighed heavily on her mind.
"Hey Apple Bloom!" She heard the cheerful tone from above. Sitting high upon a tree branch was Spike. And of course, sliding upon the tree branch with him was Wybourne. Apple Bloom's melancholy expression was interrupted by a brief mask of disgust at the appearance of the slug.
"Hey Spike. What are you doing here?" Apple Bloom's depression etched in her voice.
Taking his slug upon his shoulder, he slid down the tree landing without any trouble. "Oh Twilight has some new "house rule"." Spike frowned. "Apparently she didn't think Wybourne was so cool and Owlicious tried to eat him." Spike covered Wybourne protectively. "Poor guy was so scared. So I'm trying to find someplace to keep him."
The affection Spike displayed towards the creature never ceased to confuse the filly. "Why don't ya just keep him outside?"
Spike's face flashed in horror. "And expose him to the elements! No way!" he started to scratch Wybourne underneath his slimy underside. "Like Rarity, Wybourne is a delicate creature who deserves the best." With a grin that he only reserved towards the aforementioned mare, he held up Wybourne to his face. "And I can't deny this guy anything. Who's the best slug in the world? You are! You are!"
Within this out of character display, Apple Bloom widened one eye, and narrowed the other. Suddenly her depression was far off.
"You know I was thinking of using that abandoned building Snips and Snails mentioned."
Suddenly Apple Bloom's narrowed eye widened to match to the other one.
"You know turn it into our own special hideout or something."
Spike was jolted from his fantasy when Apple Bloom tacked him. While covering Wybourne he glared up and was met with Apple Bloom's own gaze. "No! don't go in that place! It's dangerous!"
Now Spike was starting to get confused. "You mean like rotting boards or something?" His response was only more ranting.
"First she lures you in with all this great food and stuff and gives you whatever you want. It all looks perfect but it's really all a trap." Spike attempted to worm his way from under the filly, but was met with another force of the hooves. "Oh mah gosh the ghost ponies! Their still trapped in there!"
The dragon cocked a confused eye. "Ghosts?"
Apple Bloom didn't bother with the dragon's emotions; she was too lost in her own. So much pondering played out in her mind. "Mah granny's sister. She had to be one of them."
"One of who?" Spike's confusion continued to grow. Suddenly he felt another thud against his chest.
"The doll! That's how she spies on ya!" Apple Bloom's realization grew as she came to that conclusion
Through the little doll's eyes.
At last Apple Bloom removed herself from Spike. The dragon still kept a protective claw over Wybourne. "Um yeah Apple Bloom. I can see you are a little stressed out, so I'll leave....leave you alone." Spike slowly began to turn away back towards Ponyville.
"Wait! Spike you have to listen to me!" Apple Bloom charged towards the dragon pleading with her hooves upon his chest. Her emotions were starting to run wild. Spike definitely could see that and in all honestly it frightened him.
"Uh yeah Apple Bloom I gotta go. Oh what's that? I think I hear Twilight calling me bye!" Spike announced before running off.
The dragon ran off without ever looking back. Apple Bloom on the other hand wasn't finished. Depression, anger, confusion. Every one of these swirled around together into a deadly bitter shake. "None of this would have happened if ya'll hadn't given me that stupid doll!"
Spike was far beyond ear shot when she said that. Apple Bloom found herself alone once more. XXX
The Apple family home was eerily silent. Save for the trots of one. Apple Bloom went through every room. Starting with the kitchen, then with the living room, and finally the bedrooms, she stood there for all but three minutes each, soaking in the solitude. Celestia's sun soon fell underneath the hills giving way for Luna's moon. Apple Bloom didn't bother with dinner that night. Instead he curled up underneath her covers.
Images became so vivid she could almost see them right before her eyes. Big Macintosh working hard in the fields, Granny Smith sleeping in her rocker, and Applejack being her usual self, bossy yet caring, always treating her younger sister like a baby, but somehow Apple Bloom missed that.
Apple Bloom cried herself to sleep that night. Her tiny body shook and her tears drenched her pillow. Her family admittedly annoyed her at times. But she didn't want this. XXX
Wipe Wipe
Apple Bloom shot awake at the sound. Darkness surrounded her.
Wipe Wipe
There it came again. One by one she trotted.
Wipe Wipe
Where was it?
Wipe Wipe
Something was there.
Then right before her stood a mirror. Frost covered the glass. An icy chill spread around the filly causing her to shiver.
Wipe Wipe.
Something appeared in the mirror rubbing against the glass. It was a hoof.
Wipe Wipe
The fogginess cleared up revealing an orange leg, furthermore an orange body. Behind it was a yellow mane topped off with an ever present hat. Behind it came coats of red and green all faded with the cold that surrounded them. Their eyes looked pleadingly at the young filly.
And then Apple Bloom woke up XXX
A sweat ran down her forehead as the dream ended. Panicked, Apple Bloom leapt out of bed. Her tiny head looked frantically around. Then she stopped as she noticed something peeking from underneath. Kneeling down she saw a pair of eyes staring back at her. Button eyes; no not just that, doll's eyes. It wasn't just any doll. It was the little doll version of her staring back at her.
She spied on us through the doll's eyes.
And saw that we weren't happy.
So with treats, toys and games, she lured us away.
Lured us away
Lured us away
Apple Bloom's formally frightened eyes filled with rage. Her family wasn't just missing, they were stolen. With a cry she grabbed the doll tearing it apart bit by bit leaving nothing but filling upon the floor and torn fabric. With a look of determination, Apple Bloom stormed out of the house. She had places to go. XXX
Going to Ponyville would have been the smarter choice. After all, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash, were the fellow wielders of the elements of harmony. Just like her sister. They would certainly want to know the full story. Apple Bloom nearly told them it. But something inside her wanted to keep it silent. Okay, that went against her better judgment. But in a way this was entirely her fault. She opened the door, she fell into the Other Sister's....the Beldam's trap. She had been the one who almost willingly abandoned her old life. A part of her wanted to escape from the responsibility. The responsbility of being the one to seal her familie's fate. Perhaps it was for these reasons that she choose to tread into the Everfree Forest. There was one other she knew could help her. Well honestly she didn't know, she just had a very good hunch. From her encouter the following day, she knew that this one would help her.
She just hoped she was awake. Apple Bloom pounded her hoof against the wooden door. She did it severla times when no immediate answer came. When she was about to do it once more she heard a clip clopping. The door creaked open and a black and white face stared back at her.
"Why little one, why are you here when there is no sun?" Zecora asked.
The night especially in Everfree Forest was definently unsafe for a young filly. The zebra ushered the pony inside.
"So tell me little flower, what brings you here at this hour?" Zecora used the term flower due to the fillie's name. After all, a flower bloomed.
Apple Bloom didn't know where to begin. But she tried. She poured out every little detail starting from the bare facts to just about everything else. It all came out similar to how she had ranted to Spike. Although now she had time to calm herself to a degree. Zecora took it in rather well. As Apple Bloom finsihed her tail, she stared intently towards a boiling pot filled with a brew she had been working on.
"Your tale so sad and full of woe. And alas, you have no where to go." Zecora spoke in her tongue. "But when I stepped foot on that unholy ground, I knew things were not sound."
Apple Bloom blinked. "Wait ya knew about everything?" she asked.
The zebra shook her head. "Not everything child. But the evil I suspected there has gotten wild." Once more it was amazing that the zebra could rhyme so flawlessly. "But I may ask you, what will you do?"
The question immediately fell upon the filly. It was so sudden yet appropriate. Something in Zecora's eyes told she knew more than she let on. Apple Bloom thought hard on that. Indeed this all was on her. If she hadn't gone in that house none of this would have happened. While at first glance it seemed as if the zebra was selfish in placing all of this on a child, but something in her eyes told the filly she knew more than she let on. But if anything Apple Bloom knew she had to do this herself. It wouldn't sit right with her if someone else cleaned up her mess.
She knew what she had to do. "Ah'm" her words hesitated in her mouth. There was a small selfish, childish part that told her to just sit back and let someone else go through with this. But being the strong willed pony she was, she cast that aside. "Ah'm going after mah family!" the filly boldly declared. This surprised Zecora somewhat, but it seemed to be appropriate.
"Well then I shall say this quest shall be your test." Zecora went to the back of her hut digging within. In her mouth she pulled out a saddlebag. From the way the bag drooped in her muzzle, it held something within. "Perhaps on your journey, you will be helped from some items of my native country."
Again the rhyming amazed Apple Bloom. Curious about these items, Apple Bloom peeked inside. All she found however was a strange triangular shaped jewel. The other was a glowing glass jar. Looking closely at it, Apple Bloom could have sworn it held a ......no it couldn't be.
"How are these supposed ta help me?" Apple Bloom turned her attention away from the jar.
Zecora opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by Apple Bloom. "On second thought nevermind. Ah'll just figure it out for mahself."
Although this seemed like a random interval of progression, Zecora had one thing to say. "The creature of whom you speak, a word of caution if you please." Apple Bloom stopped at the zebras speech, "You may very well be able to break her chain if you were to challenge her to a game."
"A game?" Apple Bloom repeated.
The zebra grinned. "The kind of creatures of similar breed would seem very keen to such a thing."
That advice absorbed into the filly's brain. She wasn't sure how it would affect anything, but it would be a useful gambit. Everything seemed settled. It all was prepared. Apple Bloom stared out the open doorway into the darkness of Everfree Forest. Turning back with a smile, she said. "Thank ya Zecora." Without another word she strode outside. Zecora remained looking at the little filly with an accomplished smile. She had sensed great evil within that house. Yet the evil wasn't her's to slay. No it would seem fate favored the young filly. The spirits told her so. Her kind was taught to belie in such things from a young age. And she certainly believed so; Along with fate. XXX
Apple Bloom stromed through the Everfree Forest with a goal in mind. The goal centered upon the house before her. Dilapitated, old, worn and evil. Apple Bloom fought back a gulp as she entered. Stepping through the old doorway, down the hallway, and into the living room. The room held a cold feeling as she searched for the tiny key. It was right where she had left it. On the ground right next to the accursed doorway. Taking it in her mouth, she opened the door and was met with the familiar feeling of warmth. Yet it felt cold in a way. Taking the key, Apple Bloom situated it in her mane. She wouldn't let it out of her grasp so easily.
The path itself had lost its sheen. Treading down it didn't fill her with joy as it had before. But something she saw did fill her with joy.
"Apple Bloom?"
She stopped. The voice was familiar. So familiar she didn't need to ponder on who it was.
"Applejack?"
"Apple Bloom can ya hear me?" The voice was coming from the end of the path.
"Applejack!" Apple Bloom cried with excitement. The little filly ran down the path as fast as she could. Soon she made it towards the end stepping into the Other Sweet Apple Acres.
Apple Bloom looked about for any trace of her sister. "Applejack?" she called again.
Suddenly the door slammed behind her. A dark shadow cast over her.
"So glad you could make it sugar cube." Apple Bloom turned around, staring into the gaze of the Beldam. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 8 | Apple Bloom stepped backwards as the creature's long bony arm reached down towards her. The arm didn't swipe, but it grabbed at something Apple Bloom felt the witch pull at her mane until something gave. The filly looked up with wide eyes as the key dangled from the Beldam's black, pointed fingertips.
"We can't have you running around with this now, can we?" The Beldam held the key up high sticking inside the keyhole and locking it. Then to Apple Bloom's amazement, she opened her mouth and swallowed it.
There would be no escape now.
The Beldam's expression changed to pure sympathy in that instant. "You poor little dear, your family just up and left you all alone like that."
"They didn't leave me! You took them!" Apple Bloom shouted.
The Beldam turned her back to the young pony. "Did I? Maybe they grew bored of you?" she suggested.
Apple Bloom didn't respond. The thought did cross her young mind... for about ten seconds. Her family would never do that. They loved her. The Beldam could pick up on that.
"Fine," the creature sighed, "so I did." She twirled around to face her young captive. "What of it?"
Apple Bloom took a full glance at the Beldam's current form. She had long shed the form of her sister, mostly that is. She still held the transformed state she had taken from before. The orange skin stretched against the elongated body. The only remainder of the pony form were the hooves. The rest of the body however seemed like a poor imitation. Maybe it was the length of the body or perhaps just the lingering equine features. Something seemed out placed.
"You poor thing, you must be hungry." The Beldam spoke in a soothing tone. "Now to come to the kitchen for breakfast dear." The last request was spoken more like an order.
Before the young filly could bravely retort, the creature sauntered out of the room. "Well......that didn't go like Ah planned." Apple Bloom had expected to dash in and save her family from the so called Other Sister. But so far that plan had yet to be realized. The key was gone and she had no way of getting home.
For a moment she felt defeated. She was trapped once more. So what else could she do? At the moment there didn't seem to be an option. The only other option was breakfast and that more than likely was a trap. Had she come this far to fail? That thought occurred to her just as long as the possibility of her family abandoning her: ten seconds.
So therefore that failure was nonexistent.
Her brave face returned.
She would see this to the end. Even if that meant going to the kitchen. So she did.
As bravely as she trotted she couldn't help but feel a slight fear in the air. It felt as if the walls were watching her. Then again, maybe they were. As she neared the kitchen she could hear a faint humming. Memories of her first arrival played back in her head. She kept going despite the seemingly cheerful melody. She wouldn't be fooled this time.
Just as before she could see the Beldam preparing some kind of meal giving off the cheerful undertone. As stated before, she wouldn't be fooled.
"So you've decided to join us sugar cube." The Beldam greeted cheerfully.
Apple Bloom hated that phrase. At least coming from a certain mouth. Reluctantly, the filly took a seat at the table. A clang of porcelain broke her serious look of determination.
"Eat up."
Below her was a simple meal of hay browns, waffles, and fruit. The Beldam really had pulled out all the stops. Next to the plate however she noticed a box. Unsurprisingly, there was a needled and thread next to a pair of black buttons.
Apparently the button eyes were not up for discussion.
"Like I said Apple Bloom, you're being awfully difficult. This could be so easy." Chided the Beldam. "But now you're here so we can discuss your living arrangements." She added that line with a giggle.
Apple Bloom didn't find it funny. She knew the Beldam would not let up. This meal would have one result and it lay beside the needle. That is unless she did something. She had one ace up her metaphorical sleeve. Would it work? She didn't know. But what choice did she have?
"Actually, Ah was wondering if we could play a game?" Apple Bloom posed the question.
A curious thing happened just then. The Beldam stopped. "A game?" a glint appeared in one of her button eyes. "What sort of game?" she asked curiously. The witch turned around slowly advancing towards the filly.
"Well... Ah," Apple Bloom felt a twinge of intimidation as she watched the creature's steps. "thought it could be a game where you hide something and Ah try to find it." Apple Bloom presented the notion of the game.
The Beldam held a consideration in her face. Her mind went over the details and Apple Bloom attentively watched. "And what would happen if by some chance you win this game?" the Beldam inquired. "What would be at stake?"
For a moment Apple Bloom grinned. Zecora's idea had worked! She hid the grin away; now it was time to do what her sister did when haggling with a customer. Putting on a straight face, she gave the details. "If Ah win, you have to let me go," that was part one, "but not just me, my family too and the dead ponies you trapped here." Apple Bloom kept her "business" face plastered on, trying her best to imitate Applejack. "Take it or leave it!" The filly added with emotion in her voice.
The Beldam had her back turned the entire time as Apple Bloom explained the game. Then at last she turned around. "Now what happens if you lose?"
That was a good question. As much as Apple Bloom didn't want to think of loosing, she did have an idea that would sink this whole thing in. "If Ah loose, then Ah'll stay and let you sew the buttons."
As Apple Bloom's voice grew low, the Beldam's smile grew larger. "I have to say sugar cube, I'm intrigued; you have a deal." the Beldam agreed at last.
Apple Bloom had succeeded. Although happy as she felt she still had one thing to make certain. "Ya promise y'all do what ya said if Ah win?"
A creak gave away, an almost metallic sound as the Beldam raised her right hand. "I swear on my right hand." The creature offered her hand to the pony. Apple Bloom was confused for a moment at the action but realized what it meant. Taking her hoof, the Beldam grasped it and they shook. The deal was solidified.
"Hmm you better get started." The Beldam suggested with a chuckle.
Indeed she should. Problem was Apple Bloom had no idea. "Wait! Can ya give me a hint?" Although the quest had begun, Apple Bloom had no idea where to look.
The Beldam could see that as well. "Very well." she spoke as she turned, her body moving in symmetry with her words. "In three wonders I've made for you." She moved her hands over Apple Bloom's eyes. "I have hidden three things for you to find." she moved her hands away as she finished.
"That's it?" Apple Bloom asked. "How am Ah supposed to understand that? Can't ya give me another hint?"
A smirk crossed the Beldam's face as she tapped her button eye. "Oh dear, if I gave away everything the game would be no fun." The smirk grew larger as she placed her hands on her hips. "Any more and we would have to call the whole thing off." That sentence made Apple Bloom understand what the button tap meant. Semi vague as it was, the filly had nothing else to go by.
"Fine." Apple Bloom sighed with a slight defeat in her voice. Turning her head, contemplated everything. "Ah'll do it."
The smirk shrank. "The game starts.... now." that was the last thing the Beldam said. Apple Bloom turned around for more but found no trace of the Beldam. She was alone. Getting up from the table her hooves made the only sound as she trotted out the door and into the outside. Although she had no idea what "three wonders" could be, she figured it had to be something.
"Come on Apple Bloom think." She told herself. "Three wonders? What in the hay does that mean?"
Her tiny mind wrapped around the word "wonders". It had to relate to something. She had mentioned three. Something inside her clicked. Besides the house, she had been to three other places in this world. At last the gears inside turned the clock that was her brain. The rest of the gears followed in suit as she gazed towards the apple orchard. Best place to start.
Her trots to said orchard were not filled with joy as before. She would not be filling her belly with the succulent candy apples that hung from the branches. Something else was here and she sure as heck had to find it. Easier said than done for she didn't know what she was looking for. Her mind first drifted to the apples. Perhaps they could be what she sought. That or her appetite was craving sweets. Apparently this would be another thinking situation.
Really she had no way of finding anything. She had no tools or even magic to help her. Then she remembered she did have something in her knapsack. Setting herself down, she rummaged through the gifts Zecora had given her. All she had was the glass jar. Looking at the contents she knew those wouldn't be any help and she certainly didn't want to open it. Then there was the little green triangle. Apple Bloom gazed at it as it fell to the ground. She attempted to pick it up but it proved rather hard with her hooves Each time she would try to grab it, it would slip and fall upon the grass. At last she managed to trap it in between her two hooves and held it up for examination.
"Just what exactly is this thing supposed to do?" she asked herself. About now she wished she had asked Zecora but she didn't want to sit through another rhyme. It was a curious little thing, green like an emerald with a hole in the center. Apple Bloom held it closer to her eye and peeked through the hole, and inside she noticed a glow.
"Whoa!" she exclaimed at the suddenness. Holding it close again, she peered through the hole once more and realized this was no ordinary trinket. Through the hole Apple Bloom saw an entirely different world. Everything was lit in an emerald glow. It made her wonder where Zecora found such a thing. Presumably she must have picked it up before she settled in Everfree Forest.
"Wow." Apple Bloom remarked with a childish joy at the wonder. Her eye trailed thought the jewel vision but then stopped when she noticed a certain illumination. Settled just between a branch, there was a round shiny object. It glowed far more brilliantly then the surrounding orchard. Taking the triangle away, she put it inside and trotted over to the tree. Sure enough situated in the branch was some kind of ball. It was too far up to make out, but a little buck could set it loose.
Apple Bloom smiled proudly to herself. "Apple Bloom ya outdid yourself!" a bold exclamation but she felt elated enough to do so.
"I wouldn't do that little un." Apple Bloom halted at the voice. It sounded like an all too familiar baritone mixed in with a growl. Behind she could hear trots against the grass; deep, heavy ones. A gust of hot air hit her backside creeping up her neck. Slowly she turned around and gasped.
"Nice to see ya again sis." The Other Big Macintosh greeted. What Apple Bloom saw however was not the carbon copy of her brother. Besides the change in voice, there was also a change in body shape. His already large frame had bulked up considerably. His coat and mane had turned into a shaggy dressing of fur. Just past the hair, Apple Bloom could see the button eyes peeking through the crazy mop. Then she noticed the teeth or rather fangs that hung out as he spoke.
"What ya doing here girly? Ya snoopin' around?" his hooves practically thumped against the ground. Apple Bloom trotted backward in fear. "Hee... you've been a bad girl... sister says Ah gotta give you your medicine." He flashed his fangs again. Drool dribbled down into a slowly forming puddle.
Apple Bloom didn't want to find out what this kind of "medicine" was. The Other Big Macintosh didn't give her a chance. The demon pony charged forward like an angry bull. Apple Bloom turned tail and ran with as much strength her little legs could carry her.
Behind she heard the thumping of her demonic false brother.
"Where y'all going? No place to run honey! Besides, the family just wants to say hello." the demon pony spoke.
Apple Bloom didn't bother stopping. That is until she tripped. She didn't hit the ground hard but it hurt. She cursed silently figuring she must have hit a rock. Suddenly she heard a sound from behind. It wasn't the thumping of hooves. It sounded more like digging.
"Told ya they were coming. Aunt Brown Betty wants to see how big y'all gotten." The Other Big Macintosh grinned.
Apple Bloom could see she hadn't tripped over a rock. From the ground, several colored bumps emerged. The bumps shoed themselves in full now. They were heads, pony heads that is. These ponies however were not healthy so to speak. Their coats were horribly discolored, patches of skin even missing revealing muscle and bone. One thing they all had in common were the black pair of buttons for eyes. That wasn't the worse of it though. All of these ponies, they were doppelgangers of the Apple family. Her cousins, aunts, uncles, they were all there.
"Well howdy Apple Bloom!" a zombified Braeburn greeted in a raspy voice. "Been a while since Ah seen your bright face! Ya'll should come on down to AAAAAPAAAAALOOOOOOOSA!"
"Oh Apple Bloom come over here so Aunt Apple Brown Betty can see you!"
"Hey cousin how's it going? Why don't you come over here?"
Their voices all mixed in together. The sight was frightening to the child. She turned to run, but was cut off by the rest of the herd. Decayed as they looked, they were still fast enough to surround the filly. Apple Bloom frantically turned her head looking for any sign of escape. Yet there were none available. She was boxed in. In the back the Other Big Macintosh grinned wickedly.
Apple Bloom hoped for a miracle at this point. Luckily one answered. From out of nowhere, a flash of purple landed in front of Apple Bloom leaping from the branches it seemed. In it's hands, it held a long stick, more than likely a branch.
"Spike!" Apple Bloom cried happily. Indeed it was the Other Spike. The tail, scales, and green spines were a dead giveaway.
The Other Spike swung the branch in the faces of the zombified pony. Whilst they tried to avoid it, Apple Bloom followed after the dragon knowing that was his intent. Through the tron they went. Apple Bloom could feel then snapping at her tail. Their dead bodies brushed up against her as they ran. Relief washed over the filly as soon as she could see the apple trees clearly. Now if she could just head back to that tree. Suddenly it came again: the thumping. She looked to see a red bulk literally charging through the crowd of zombies. The Other Big Mac held a furious look on his face as he emerged. He looked intent to kill any that got in his way.
The Other Spike turned around.
"Why did ya stop!?" Apple Bloom asked.
The Other Spike said nothing and merely pointed towards the area they had just come from, or at least behind the crowd of death.
Before Apple Bloom could question him further, the dragon was off. With branch claw, he dove right at the large earth pony. The Other Big Macintosh bit down hard on the wood attempting to wrest it free. The dragon however wasn't ready to just give up though. Apple Bloom did not waste in taking her chance. She ran as fast as she could. She remembered where she had fled from. The zombified Apple clan chased after her. They were fast, but not fast enough to deal with an adrenaline filled earth pony. Apple Bloom looked about the numerous trees that surrounded the area.
"Which one was it!?" Apple Bloom asked to herself.
Her eyes darted around for anything out of place. In the dark it was hard, but she managed to spy something at last. There it was, just in-between the branches. Apple Bloom rammed herself forward as she bucked the tree with her hind legs. Nothing doing apparently. The thumping came once more. The Other Big Macintosh thundered through the zombies again. Apparently family didn't matter in fake terms.
Apple Bloom bucked again and again, then finally it shifted.
"Almost there little sis!" the Other Big Macintosh roared.
Apple Bloom became more frantic in her bucking. Each kick moved it closer and closer and closer. And then it rolled right off. As soon as it landed, Apple Bloom put both hooves atop it.
Crack!
The sound came out of nowhere. The moment she had touched the ball, something began to spread. A strange whiteness spread like an infection. The white ness quickly covered the whole Orchard. From every square inch. It was as if everything had died.
"Thank you miss! You found my eye!" Apple Bloom was startled by a sudden voice. It was coming from the ball. The ball in question was actually a false apple. A very small apple that is. There was a face that appeared. The face of the ghost pegasus colt. So this was it? A ghost eye? Apple Bloom had to smile, she was actually helping those poor ponies as she promised. The face then disappeared. Opening her sack, she deposited the ghost eye inside for safe keeping.
Accomplished pride welled up inside her. She had passed part one of the game. But still there were two wonders left. Suddenly she remembered something. "Spike! Ah better go-agghh!" Apple Bloom nearly screamed. Staring right in front of her was the Other Big Macintosh. Frozen in place that is. The copy of her brother was stuck in his position just as dead and white as the land. Apple Bloom sidestepped him and travelled back towards where she had run from. The entire fake Apple clan was frozen just as she expected.
"Spike?" Apple Bloom called. "Spike?" There was no sign of the dragon. Apple Bloom continued to search for him. It was discomforting to walk through the frozen bodies but she sucked up her fear. Just then past the immobile form of Braeburn, Apple Bloom saw a limping purple figure. "Spike!" She trotted happily toward the dragon. The Other Spike didn't budge when he heard his name called. He just stood there, his branch broken in two.
"Spike! You saved me! Thank you so much! Ah would have been done for if you hadn't come!" Apple Bloom knew how to react when a dashing hero saved her. At least Sweetie Belle said that was what her sister Rarity told her.
Apple Bloom noticed something about the dragon. Something she hadn't noticed before in the tense situation. He was wearing a mask. Closer inspection she recognized the pattern of the shape. It was one of the oven mitts she had seen in the kitchen now stretched to accommodate the face.
"Spike?" Apple Bloom reached for the mask pulling it away before the dragon could stop her.
Immediately she dropped it. Spike's face was held up in a smile; literally held up. His faced had been stitched up into a perpetual smile.
Amidst her shock, Apple Bloom asked. "Spike what happened?"
Spike attempted to speak, but with his face the way it was he could only get out some form of gibberish.
"Did she do this to you?" Apple Bloom asked.
Spike tried to speak again, but she caught the confirmation. Giving him a look of sympathy, the filly bit down on one of the threads pulled it out then with the other one. With his face free, the Other Spike rubbed his sore cheeks.
"Better?" Apple Bloom asked.
Spike nodded. "She didn't like I helped you so she punished me." The dragon replied with a frown.
"Punished you? You mean your face?"
A clattering reached her ears, along with a whimper from the Other Spike. At his feet were a small pile of purple scales; his scales. They had fallen from Spike's right claw along with bits from his arm. Underneath was nothing more than withered pink flesh. Withered was right. The claw itself began to shrink even further. Spike swiftly hid it behind his back.
Apparently the punishment had shown itself. Apple Bloom found it nothing short of cruelty. How could anyone do this to a child? Heck the Other Spike was younger than herself and the real Spike. Just how twisted was the Other Sister? Sympathy rising, she proposed an idea. It came so sudden she didn't know if it would work.
"Spike, please come with me. Ah'm trying to save everyone she trapped here." Apple Bloom explained. The Other Spike listened attentively. "Maybe if Ah win, you can come with me."
The idea sounded half comforting at best. Neither of them knew if it would work. Then there was the matter of the punishment. Would it be on a limit? Again, neither of them knew. The Other Spike held the same worries as the filly, but that didn't matter to him. All that mattered was helping her.
"Okay." At last he grinned. So did Apple Bloom. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 9 | The fire cast a low glow within the room, yet she took in the darkness. It always held her, comforting her, soothing her. Her black eyes looked about her parlor. Moments ago she had felt something, a loss. Although she couldn't see it, she knew the full moon had changed. So the filly had actually gotten one. In all honesty she had half expected her to win. She had to admit, Apple Bloom was far more resilient than the others she had ensnared. The last three had given in so easily to the luxury offered to them. Yet not this little pony. Something about her reminded her of her last visitor.
How many years had it been?
Thinking back, they had the same look, the same twang in the voice. Although one had been lime green, the resemblance was more than just by appearances, close as they were.
What was her name? Oh she had forgotten, but it had something to do with apples.
Apple Bloom
It made sense now. She wondered why she didn't see it before. Maybe it had been fate providing a bounty. A light chuckle parted from her lips. Perhaps she should have faith in her dear little sugar cube. Two more eyes to find, and the night was still young.
Something more comfortable would be needed to properly greet her little guest.
So her body began to contort and shed away the half equine form. One should be true to oneself after all.
Up above, a shadow crept over the moon. XXX
Apple Bloom and the Other Spike hadn't said a word to each other since they had left the orchard. Frankly she didn't know what to say to the fake dragon. No, fake wasn't a nice word to say. Other Spike was just as real as anypony else, even if he was copied off someone she knew. The dragon kept up with her hiding his arm all the while. But she knew what it truly looked like: pink and shriveled. She would have asked how it felt, but she didn't want to seem rude. She had better manners than that. But the childish part of her mind egged her on.
Come on ask him! Don't be yellow!
If Scootaloo was present, she would have probably asked him right away. Sweetie Belle would probably have been more polite.
No don't ask him! It's not polite!
The more her mind wrestled, she found the two voices starting to resemble her two friends. Of course she found herself listening more to the one that sounded akin to Sweetiebelle. Her mind thought back to their other versions. It made her wonder...would they obey the Other Sister just as the Other Big Macintosh? It raised a good question. They were all created by the witch so there was reason to think they would obey if given the command. Although that left out the Other Spike. He didn't seem to be the kind to betray. Something about his concern seemed genuine. Thinking back to when everything in this world became clear, the Other Big Macintosh slowly collapsed into insanity, while the Other Spike defied his creator's orders. But it made her wonder all the same. Would he turn on her? The risk seemed great, especially seeing as they were close now. Though whenever those thoughts crept into her head, they would disappear just like that.
He wouldn't betray her, her gut advised her against it.
"We're here." The Other Spike spoke for the first time since they had set out. Before their eyes was the rodeo. Granny Smith's rodeo to be precise.
When Apple Bloom thought of the possibilities of the "three wonders", she had remembered how mesmerized she had been by the rodeo. If that wasn't a wonder than she didn't know what was. Her little hooves nearly trotted herself over to it, but stopped at that moment. Her eyes trailed to the Other Spike's arm, the one he was trying his best to hide. Apple Bloom could still see the faint outline of the pink under flesh. Or rather the withered remains of it. Again the question of the arm sprang up in her mind. Once more she ignored its calling. Politeness reigned over her.
Still she had to ask though. "Spike?"
The dragon looked up at her.
"Do y'all still want to come with me? Ah mean, ya could stay behind if ya want." A silly question, contradictory even seeing as she had asked him to come along. It may have been selfish then, partially, but she was in a desperate state. She had nearly been killed by zombified versions of her family that would make anypony want help (or so she assumed).
The Other Spike forged a perfect smile. "Of course I do! I don't want to leave you."
That had to make her smile. He was a determined little reptile. It spurred a ponder of how he would react to meeting the real Spike and vice versa. That had the potential for comedy. But this wasn't the time for such things. This was a serious matter. As the pair strolled towards the rodeo, Apple Bloom could feel the loss of joy in the air. The atmosphere of this jolly location was washed over in the tide of gloom. It made sense considering the circumstances.
A brisk wind briefly blew past the field. Dirt and dust kicked up into tiny twisters. What horrors awaited them inside? The filly could only imagine it and the imagery wasn't good. Most certainly the ghost eye would be hidden around a fantastic, challenging trap.
Apple Bloom found herself wrong. Both counts to be precise.
There it was, situated upon a barrel, was the ghost eye. It was too far away to make its appearance, but she knew from the round shape what it was.
"Well this is easy." Apple Bloom commented confidently.
She trotted up towards the barrel with hope in her step.
"Apple Bloom wait!" The Other Spike called. The dragon looked around worriedly with his button eyes. In his moment of worry, he had pulled out his withered arm then quickly retracting it the moment he noticed he did so.
Apple Bloom paid the warning no heed as she continued to trot forward.
"Going somewhere deary?"
Apple Bloom stopped dead in her tracks.
Right on cue came the cold wind against her mane. Running up her neck and down her spine. The chilling voice held a tone of familiarity. It held an echo in it's underlining rasp, but the voice linking it had a corrupted version of the joyous drawl she had known both outside and inside this world. Turning around, she noticed a strange could covering the rodeo grounds. The wind kicked it up sending more twisters in their wake.
Behind the twisters, she could see the Other Spike with a worried tone etching his scaly face.
"Spike!" Apple Bloom called as the wind continued to speed up more dirt. She closed her eyes as it spread.
Crish Crish.
The sound came over the wind. To Apple Bloom it sounded just like when Big Macintosh plowed the fields. Only it had a metallic undertone to it. Apple Bloom kept her eyes peeled for anything. As much as she wanted to close it, she kept them open, forced herself even.
Crish Crish.
The sound came again. Amidst the dust, she could see a glint the glint vanished for a moment, and then it came again.
"Oh don't be scared deary; Granny just wants to take a peek at you."
The voice rasped in its hideous tone. She couldn't shake what it was. Her mind tried to think up a possibility to who it belonged to. Honestly she didn't think she could handle her possibly correct assumption.
Crish Crish
Apple Bloom could feel a breath followed by a swish of the wind. Something was behind her, observing her, watching her. As she turned her head, she could feel whatever it was had vanished. Then she felt it in front of her only to turn and find herself facing thin air.
"Granny has such big eyes. All the better to see you with."
The movement grew closer and in the dust, she could see two black buttons. The metal glint shone through clawing at the ground. Yes they were claws; claws where there were once hooves. The dust continued to blow as a long shape slithered through. The shape was long and lime green, but it held the appearance of scales instead of a flank. Before Apple Bloom could react, it came into full view moving right up in front of her face. Face to face she met her grandmother. Or rather the other version of her. Just like the Other Big Macintosh, she too had changed. No longer did she have the shape of a pony. What she could see was described only as a reptile of sorts. Almost like a snake. A long neck of scales and ridged stood out like plates against the neck the face of the Other Granny Smith had become just like a serpents. The same applied to the rest of the body. The legs however were like the skinny legs of a centipede. At the end were the hooves, split apart into three knives clawing at the ground. The demonic pony dragged her way across the field. As she did, Apple Bloom could make out the rest of her body. The legs were of the same manner of the one she could clearly see. The same pattern and design complete with the knife feet. The button eyes peeked out from underneath the matted, long gray mane.
A cold breath hit her face as the Other Granny Smith opened her mouth to say something. When she did, Apple Bloom could see rows of sharp teeth behind the gums. "Granny's got big teeth, all the better to eat you with my dear."
A bead of sweat ran down her face. The monster version of her grandmother, it reminded her of a story she once read. But that story involved a wolf and some pony in a red hood. The Other Granny Smith reared her head back to strike. Of course it gave Apple Bloom the chance to duck just as the serpentine head dove. It didn't last forever as the Other Granny Smith was quick to act. Quick and deadly that is. Apple Bloom ran with much fear carrying her along. The monstrous grandmother whirled around and whirled underneath. Apple Bloom could feel the air against her body as she trotted underneath the beast. While she ran she caught a glimpse upward and noticed the plating didn't apply to the underside which was tender looking.
"Don't run deary. Granny just wants a look at you!" The voice echoed in the back of her head. It only made her run faster. But it wasn't fast enough even after she made it back into open air. The Other Granny Smith simply twirled around using her sinuous body to maneuver herself around. Apple Bloom found herself back to square one. Another snapping of the jaws made her leap upward and duck as the claws came next. The monster's long body served as a great means for movement. Apple Bloom didn't have much to react to herself. In moments she found herself coiled within. As much as the filly struggled, she couldn't break free.
"Ungh! Uh!" she grunted. A blast of air hit her face as she stared into the eyes of the Other Granny Smith.
"Don't struggle deary. You'll only make Granny mad." The creature warned.
Her mouth opened again showing off the silvery fangs. Slowly she leaned in, it made the stories of monsters under the bed seem all too real. Apple Bloom couldn't find anything she could use. Well there was something. Although the monster was plated, she noticed something she had noticed underneath.
"Well, here goes nothing." She thought and so she dug in.
At that moment, the Other Granny Smith let out a wail as her granddaughter of sorts bit down hard into her bare underbelly. In the grip of pain, she uncoiled herself to sooth the reddened area, marred by the teeth marks. It proved an unwise endeavor as Apple Bloom took that moment to run. Where she ran was obvious.
"NO!" the Other Granny Smith cried out in horror. Despite the pain, she resumed her chase snatching at Apple Bloom with her knifed claws.
Apple Bloom felt like her chest was on fire as she ran, but she kept going and when she saw her moment she dove. Her tiny body crashed into the barrel, not the most graceful of landing nor even where she wanted to go, but she found what she was looking for knocked within reach.
CRISH! CRISH!
The sound became louder as the demonic granny weaved herself ever closer. With wide, frightened eyes, Apple Bloom placed a hoof upon the round object. It was a round red ball, actually more like the nose one would find on a rodeo clown. Yet she knew its true nature: a ghost eye.
The Other Granny Smith let out a shriek, but that was it. The shriek ended right then and there as her whole body stiffened and froze. The dust storm that had reigned since they had began instantly died. Just as the apple orchard, a strange cracking sound came and in moments, everything, including the Other Granny Smith was covered in the deathly color. Apple Bloom felt a heavy fire in her chest. That had been a push for her, but she had made it.
"Be careful girl, the Beldam won't relent."
Apple Bloom looked to the clown nose to see it had taken on a glow. The image of the unicorn filly stared back with her button eyed gaze. Then she vanished. With a wide grin, Apple Bloom deposited the ghost eye along with its fellow. Two down, one to go. Strangely she found herself quickly reacting to this all. She had nearly been killed by another copy of a family member and she hardly seemed fazed. Although it could mean she was growing used to this place...that worried her. But really her only worry that she cared more about was someone.
"Spike!" she called as she noticed the limping purple shape.
Apple Bloom trotted over to the copy dragon but skid to a halt with a gasp. A pitter patter of scales fell to the ground the moment she did. More than just a pitter patter, a whole pile fell to the ground. The Other Spike hadn't just lost a limbs worth, he had lost practically his entire lower body leaving only his right leg scaly. The rest revealed only the same pink flesh which withered upon exposure to the open air.
"Apple...Bloom," The Other Spike wheezed out a breath, "I'm sorry... I couldn't... see. I would have... helped if... I could." Then he collapsed.
"Spike!" Apple Bloom rushed to his side helping him up.
Above unnoticed by the little pony, the shadow over the moon grew larger. From her hidden perch the Beldam smiled as she felt the pain her little puppet dragon was in. Apple Bloom would have to learn that no action goes unpunished. Although Apple Bloom wasn't the one being punished.
The game still had one more round. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 10 | The fire burned brightly in the dark room. The Beldam's hands stitched the new doll carefully. A tune hummed from her throat with each verse tuning with the needle and thread. A simple little project to pass the time. Stitch by stitch, thread by thread, in with the needle and out with the needle. The Beldam gazed at her new little creation. Its button eyes stared up at her.
"Poor little doll. So weak and fragile." She cooed to the doll, the perfect replica of the purple dragon, her latest "son", a disobedient "son" to be precise. She really should have put more care when she programmed him. Really she put too much into the whole friendship aspect. In a way he was a fulfilling his design, but now he had deviated from what she had planned.
This wouldn't do, but she had made precautions for his disloyalty. Even if she didn't know it, Apple Bloom was helping with said punishment.
"If only you had remained obedient." Sighed the Beldam.
Casually, she tossed the doll into the fire. A crackle of embers engulfed the doll, its black eyes staring up the whole while. XXX
"Am Ah goin to fast for ya Spike?" Apple Bloom asked worriedly.
The Other Spike wheezed out a breath before he responded. If he could even respond that is, he was in terrible shape since they left the rodeo. Apple Bloom wanted to look away but could not find the strength nor the pull to do so. The Other Spike had lost a great number of his scales. So much that his entire lower body looked like a withered pink mess. The only scales that remained were his head and left arm. He had tried to walk only to collapse onto his feet or if they could even be called feet any longer. So Apple Bloom had taken it upon herself to carry the dragon. It was no real trouble at all strangely. She was still a young filly, so she wouldn't be able to carry anyone at this point, or rather shouldn't. However, the Other Spike was so light. That alone worried her.
They had visited two wonders, so that left one more. Going on from her last visits to this world, she knew of one place she had yet to visit. The filly stopped as she saw the stadium looming in front of her. The last ghost eye lay inside. Once she got it then she would be out of this place with her family in tow.
Just as she was about to embark forward, a wheeze upon her back made her come to a decision. "Spike you wait out here okay?"
The Other Spike opened his mouth to protest but found himself shushed. "Look, y'all aint in no condition to walk." Said Apple Bloom.
The filly gently deposited the dragon upon the grass making sure he was comfortable. Again, Apple Bloom wanted to look away but could find herself unable. Perhaps it may have been because she was a kid. Kids like her seemed to always be interested in the weird and the unknown, and this certainly fit weird, weird but sad as well.
The Other Spike raised up his still scaly arm. "A...Appl.....Apple......B....B....B.....loom." He pathetically called out.
"Shhh, just relax. Ah'll just get the last eye and we can go back to mah world." Apple Bloom smiled at her companion and he smiled back.
Turning around, she trotted inside the stadium. The Other Spike forced his head up feeling the strain his weakened body was undergoing. He wanted to tell her, goodness knows he wanted to, but he couldn't. If she knew the truth, she would give up everything, racking herself with guilt. Then the Beldam would have won.
"Good luck." He wheezed."
This was the best thing he could do for her. XXX
Just as she expected, the stadium was dark. She couldn't even see her own hoofs. Trot by trot, she stumbled occasionally bumping into something yet managing to keep herself on the carpeted path. How was anypony supposed to find anything in here? Was this her test? Trying to find the eye in the dark? Apple Bloom had the answer to that. At least in regards to seeing where she was going. Still remembering her pack, she pulled out the emerald colored seeing eye Zecora had lent her. Positioning it in the same way she had back in the other apple orchard. Holding it up, the familiar emerald view lit up the room. She could make out the chairs now raveled in the darkness. But what got her attention was the round shining object upon the stage.
"Hu hu *sniff*"
Apple Bloom heard a strange sound coming form ahead. There was a bright flash as a spotlight illuminated the stage. There standing upon a pedestal was the round object, another ghost eye no doubt. Apple Bloom would have lit her face up in joy that is if she hadn't seen the Other Sweetie Belle hunched over. Her tiny filly body shook while a series of sniffles followed. It dawned on Apple Bloom that she was crying.
"Sweetiebelle?" Apple Bloom asked not even hiding her concern.
"You don't want to stay with us do you?" The Other Sweetiebelle sobbed.
A look of guilt flashed across Apple Bloom's face. "Well that's true but-"
"Why? What do you have at home?" The Other Sweetiebelle asked. "Just ponies who ignore you, give you chores and rules. Here you can play all day, we'll have fun, why would you want to go back?"
The questions filled Apple Bloom with guilt. The way they were poised by the Other Sweetiebelle seemed innocent and sad. If the crying wasn't evident enough that is. Apple Bloom found it hard to say what she said next.
"Ah'm sorry, but Ah don't belong here." She stamped her hoof with affirmation. "Ah have to go back to my real home."
The Other Sweetiebelle sniffled again. "I get it, me, we, this whole place isn't real enough for you." Anger began to creep within the false filly's voice. The Other Sweetiebelle turned her head. As with the last two fabrications of her family, Apple Bloom found it the same with the fabrication of her friend. Initially, Apple Bloom believed the Other Sweetiebelle to be sweating as her face shined in the light. A trickle beaded down her forehead. Then another followed, and another, and another. Then it dawned on Apple Bloom, it wasn't sweat. The Other Sweetiebelle's face began to sink and started to grow transhumant. The "sweat" then flowed from other orifices, her ears, her nose, her mouth. Just then the Other Sweetiebelle began to heave her head back.
"Ah! Ah! Ah! Choooooooo!!!" The Other Sweetiebelle let out a mighty sneeze. A massive bubble formed in front of her face as she did. The bubble only grew larger as she sneezed twice more. The bubble then started to melt as did the rest of her body. It slowly spread, growing larger into a gelatinous blob. The snot blob (as Apple Bloom could tell it easily was snot from the way it oozed) spread around the stage. Apple Bloom backed away from the grossness of it all, but now here eyes indeed went wide as they gazed at the ghost eye slowly sinking into the body of the Other Sweetiebelle. Apple Bloom almost cried out until she felt something hot breath against her back.
"Going someplace Apple Bloom?" The voice echoed behind her with the voice of many within it.
Apple Bloom gazed up to see a massive creature leering down at her. It was big, tall, and held a reptilian appearance not unlike a dragon. Yet this dragon had a very sickly, skeletal body, the bones were outlined through the skin. The creatures back held a pair of torn wings, useless for flying. Its eyes were the same button pair she had seen before. There would have been no need for an introduction. There was only one other who resided in this part of the Other World.
"Scootaloo." Apple Bloom whispered. The Other Scootaloo that is.
Opposite to her, Apple Bloom heard a squish and turned her attention back to the transformed Other Sweetiebelle. The filly snot blob shifted a portion of its body to resemble a head. Her buttons eyes gleamed with the slimy substance. "You can't leave us Apple Bloom. We're the Cutie Mark Crusaders after all!"
"That's right! On the quest to find out who we really are!" The Other Scootaloo mocked using the lyrics from the talent show.
Per usual, Apple Bloom's mind told her to run. This time was no exception. Both monsters lunged at her, and she dodged but not without a bit of slime hitting her face. The Other Sweetiebelle dove first followed by the Other Scootaloo. The dragon pony was covered in her slimy friend but she didn't seem to care, she merely got up and charged after the little filly. Apple Bloom did what she had done twice before, run that is. Her goal was simple, grab the eye and then everything would be fine. She could see the eye on front of her just within reach. Before she could even act upon her thoughts, a claw swiped at it sending it flying into the stands. The Other Sweetiebelle smirked at what she had just done.
"No!" Apple Bloom cried but simply ran towards the seats. There would be no time to dally so she ran as fast as she could. The moment she touched the ground however, she felt something over her. Looking up, she noticed the overlapping shape of the Other Sweetiebelle. A sickening gloop followed as she smooshed her way into the floor. Apple Bloom tried to run, but she found it hard. She gave a pull in her back leg as a cold, wet feeling covered it.
"Please don't go Apple Bloom! I wanna play!" The Other Sweetiebelle pleaded as her body tugged furiously upon Apple Bloom's right hind leg.
Apple Bloom tried to break free but the Other Sweetiebelle did her very best to drag her in. Another thundering crash followed as the Other Scootaloo leapt down onto the floor smashing into several chairs leaving nothing but splintered wood. With a pull, Apple Bloom managed to free her leg. Her mind racing frantically, she dove underneath one of the still standing row of chairs. Behind she could hear the glooping followed by more crashes. She crawled and dug underneath rows as she felt the overwhelming presence of her fake friends. Her eyes darted around for any sign of the ghost eye, but found it impossible within the darkness. Her little hooves clattered against the floor as she attempted to reach out for anything.
"You can't hide from your friends!" Bellowed the Other Scootaloo.
Looking to her right side, she saw a sea of snot spill forth. A pair of button eyes swirled around to view the frightened filly. To her left she saw the snarling mug of the Other Scootaloo. Frankly she found herself trapped. Slowly they began to advance. Apple Bloom knew she had no chance. Without much thought in her mind, she mindless moved her hooves forward.
"Come on! Come on!" She screamed as she felt for anything.
The Other Cutie Mark Crusaders moved even closer. Apple Bloom crawled and felt but only touching the cold, hard floor. Crunch and slither the monsters went. The closer they got, the faster Apple Bloom went. But she found nothing each time. Desperation moving her, she became frantic, frantic and hopeless at the same time. She was like a fish out of water, a cat up a tree, a pony who had just touched something round, something that wasn't ground.
Something that wasn't ground?!
With a spring of what appeared to be hope, Apple Bloom leapt forward, as did the Other Sweetiebelle and Scootaloo. Although their leaps were ones of desperation, for their very existence hinged upon this moment. Unfortunately, their existence ended right then and there. Apple Bloom placed both hooves upon the ghost eye and then everything went gray. XXX
The Other Spike felt a constriction in his chest. It was as if someone had just stabbed him in the lungs. A crackled came from his side and spread up to his head. He could feel the feeling growing along with the cracking sound. It became more painful with each surge it brought. He knew what this meant.
Apple Bloom had succeeded.
Cricck Crack!
More scales fell. They fell right off his arm.
Crick Crack!
Some fell from his forehead.
The pain spread becoming more and more of a sting. But then it started to fade. In fact, Spike could feel himself getting lighter, as if everything around him was fading. His vision started to blur, the trees night sky becoming fuzzy.
Crick Crack! Crick Crack!
With a pitter patter they fell. Her started to feel lighter and lighter as if he were air. Yet somehow, he didn't care. He had helped someone in need, someone he cared about. But most of all he now realized.
He had helped his friend. Those were his last thoughts. XXX
The light from the ghost eye filled the dark room. Apple Bloom looked away for a moment from the brightness. However it died as an image appeared inside. Apple Bloom looked down at the now ethereal blue eye. Like the other two it held the appearance of a ball. Several paths of leather stitched together making it look impossible to bounce. But from the firmness, the filly concluded it wasn't that sort of ball. But she didn't care about that, what mattered was the image within the ball. Looking up at her was the ghost earth pony filly.
"Y'all need to hurry! Her web is starting to unravel!"
Apple Bloom was about to question her but the image faded. Wasting no time, Apple Bloom tossed the ghost eye into her bag. A grin spread across her face for she knew she had one the last test. Her smile faded momentarily when she glanced around. The entire room had turned dead gray, including the Other Cutie Mark Crusaders. Their faces were frozen in fright. More so because they had failed. Apple Bloom felt some degree of pity towards these creatures. They were slaves more or less with no choice in the matter in regard to choice. But for once, Apple Bloom felt happy, she had won and so she trotted outside. The night sky had never comforted her so, at least in this world that is.
"Spike!" She called out to her traveling companion. "Spike!" She called again. But no answer came. "Spike?" Concern began to creep into her voice. Walking over from the stadium entrance, she headed toward the last place she left him.
"Spike? Spi-" Her voice stopped as she saw what was at her hooves.
There was no trace of the dragon but a single scale. Horror filled her eyes as she noticed the crack starting to form. It spread from the edge and spread until the whole scale crumbled into nothing, just like a dead leaf.
Apple Bloom knelt down. She was too late; she couldn't keep her promise to him. That promise of course was bringing him back to her world. But how did this happen she wondered? When they started, he had appeared fine save for the mutilation the Other Sister had inflicted upon him. Then the scales had started to fall. Each and every time they traversed, his condition had steadily gotten worse. Each time they got a ghost eye that is.
The ghost eyes?
Oh Celestia! Apple Bloom didn't know why she didn't see it before! There would be no denying it, this was her fault. The ghost eyes were connected to the Other Spike. In all honesty Apple Bloom wondered why the Other Sister hadn't killed the Other Spike for helping her escape. That seemed to be a real lapse in logic for the otherwise crafty witch. This must have been what she wanted, another way to discourage the filly.
So far, it worked.
Apple Bloom felt the tears fall down her face. A sob hiccupped in her throat. Back and forth it went bobbing up and down. Her emotions and spirit drained into a mere puddle. Not even that, but a small trickle of a stream. Then could it even be considered that? In any case, Apple Bloom felt like a rotten apple core left in the sun for days. The Other Spike had been there for her, defended her, protected her, and she had just gotten him killed. Friends didn't get friends killed.
Her sobs grew larger but with a subdued hush to them. Apple Bloom truly felt alone.
"Spike." She whispered staring up at the sky with reddened eyes.
The stars looked down at her in all their false glory. The moon shined the brightest of them all. At least what the shadow didn't cover. A shadow had formed over the moon turning it into a crescent shape. Staring at it, Apple Bloom felt a cold tear drip down. As the shadow formed, Apple Bloom could make out four holes. They were just like a button.
Button.
The earth pony's red eyes squinted with anger. It reminded her of the one who was truly behind everything. Standing to her feet, Apple Bloom held her head up high and her tear stained eyed wide.
"Listen here ya evil witch! Ah'm not scared of you, ya hear!?" Apple Bloom declared. There would be no use in giving up for the filly wouldn't. All the ghost eyes had been accounted for, but there still remained one obstacle.
The Beldam awaited, and so did the rest of the Apple clan.
Apple Bloom kept along the path, trotting with triumph in each step. So much had been risked to get this far. Apple Bloom couldn't give up now. The house lay in the distance; the sheer mockery of it infuriated Apple Bloom. No witch got away with stealing her family. The only guide was the moon. At least, it had been. Somehow, the moonlight had grown dimmer. Looking up, Apple Bloom noticed that the shadow had covered the moon completely. A black shadow of a button overlapped the celestial body, the fake representation of Luna's symbol.
Then everything fell apart......literally.
A great rumble overtook the Otherworld. Apple Bloom had no idea what was happening, but she ran as fast as her little legs could carry her. The rumble continued, great cracks in the earth formed, the entire world had started to crumble.
So this was what the filly meant, the Beldam's web, this world she had set up to trap her in was no starting to reveal itself for what it truly was. Apple Bloom could see the door in front of her. Behind she knew there was nothing waiting for her, again literally. The rumbling continued forcing Apple Bloom to run faster. The door laid right in front, just a littler farther. Her front hooves pushed against the wood and she trotted inside closing it behind her. |
Apple Bloom | Chapter 11 | The house felt very cold inside. Apple Bloom noticed that right away. Even after she had discovered the truth of this other world, the false Sweet Apple Acres still held some warmth to it. Now it felt cold, cold and dead. The death inside reflected the scenery. The walls chipped the wallpaper peeling. An overcast of darkness had overtaken her surroundings. It would seem the web truly was unwinding. As the outside had fallen, so was the inside apparently. In her mind she could feel the fear starting to creep in. Somehow she trotted forward. It had to end, she couldn't dally. Her hooves carried her down the hall and towards the living room. It had grown so dark she had a hard time seeing her own hooves. Though there was no need for Zecora's seeing eye, something inside guided her steps. The creak of a door reached her ears as her hoof pushed it open. A green glow reached lit up her eyes shining in the darkness. The light came from the fireplace illuminating the furniture. As she trotted she noticed the warped condition the chairs, tables, and cabinets were in. Warped could be the only way to properly describe them. Hardly had it seemed normal the way they looked.
SLAM!!!
The door shut behind her as soon as she got inside making her gasp at the sudden rush of air. Hesitantly she trotted along. "Ah'm a big pony, Ah'm a big pony." She thought to herself. That kept her going through the scary room. She neared the fireplace, her tiny head turning around for any sign if life.
"So you've come back."
The familiar voice made her come to a halt. Although she hadn't noticed it before, a large shadow lay still upon the couch. Somehow the fire had lit up that particular area. The shadow revealed itself rising up into a looming figure...the Beldam. No longer did she show any trace of an equine form. Her skin had smoothed into a pale tone. The pony nose had been replaced with curved pointy protrusion of the skin. Her hair no longer held the held the shape and color of Applejack, it instead held was black as night in a matted down yet messy fashion. Her body still was long; in face she seemed taller than she had been. A black polka dotted dress adorned her body. It fit perfectly against her lithe figure. In the back it spread out like a fan and went up into a large pointed collar. Underneath the dress was the same pale skin. Unlike the face, the skin if it could be called. It appeared to be bone, pure white pone. The boniness applied to the arms and the legs which showed underneath the dress. Both sets of limbs were ling and spiny, like an insect, that or perhaps an arachnid. Going back to the arms, the fingers came next. Though they were not bone, instead they were needles. Even both hands were made of metal. Apple Bloom stared long and hard at the face, or rather the button eyes that bore down upon her. Then she noticed something else about the creatures facial features, several cracks formed as if she were a porcelain doll.
Apple Bloom gulped as a cold seat ran down her face. The Beldam rose in all her horrific glory. Goodness was she always that tall? It seemed as if she had grown taller than last time.
"So? Where's your little friend?" The Beldam suddenly asked. "Did something happen to him?" Apple Bloom immediately remembered the Other Spike. The dragon had sacrificed his very existence to keep her safe. His success had saddened her, but that sadness turned to anger as she noticed the smirk upon her captors face; A smirk at the very death of her own creation and Apple Bloom's friend.
Apple Bloom furrowed her brow. "Ah beat your tests." She spoke with seriousness.
The Beldam clasped her metallic hands together remembering the goals she had set for the little filly. "Ah yes ,that's right; the ghost eyes." The green flames reflected upon the black buttons, the eyes that would be Apple Blooms lest she finished one last thing. "So where are they?"
Holding out her side pack, Apple Bloom held it out to the Beldam. "Hold on a minute!" Apple Bloom took the pack away just as the Beldam snatched at it, narrowly missing. "We still have one loose end, don't we?"
The Beldam narrowed her eyes. This certainly was a clever little filly, much smarter than the other three whom she had drawn here. "I suppose we do, you still have to find your real family." Crossing into a defiant smirk, she quipped. "So? Where are they?"
Apple Bloom flashed her own smirk. "Easy." She remarked. Reaching into her bag, she reached in and pulled out the emerald Seeing Eye. However, right before Apple Bloom could put it on, it vanished from her hoof.
"We can't make things too easy for you can we?" The Beldam asked. Twirling along one of her needle fingers was the Seeing Eye.
"No!" Apple Bloom cried in fear as the witch flung it into the fire. The Beldam turned around chuckling as the embers sparked from the mystic object. Apple Bloom felt at a loss. Without the Seeing Eye, she wouldn't be able to find her family. They would have been anywhere within this place. In the midst of her fear, a small hum reached her ears. It was coming from her bag. While the Beldam was still entranced by the fire, Apple Bloom peeked inside to see the three faces of the ghost ponies appearing within the eyes.
The image of the earth filly spoke. "Be careful, even if y'all win she ain't gonna let ya go."
Apple Bloom believed that. The Beldam for all intents and purposes still held the upper hand. Frankly when they first started this game, Apple Bloom never trusted the Beldam. This Other Sister had taken her family away and willfully killed off her own creations just to get what she wanted. She had no trust, no friendship, nothing that Equestria stood for. Then there was the matter of her family, she had to get them out but she had no idea where they were. She was trapped and the only way out was the door. It remained locked behind her. The only key lay within.........she had an idea.
"Ah know where mah family is." Apple Bloom blurted almost without thinking.
The Beldam turned her head curiously. "Hmm? You do. So where are they?"
Apple Bloom had never felt so nervous in her entire life. "T-t-there right over there, behind that door."
The Beldam glanced over towards where the pony pointed her hoof. "Oh are they now?" The witch strode over to the door flashing an evil grin as she did so. Apple Bloom almost breathed a sigh of relief, but avoided that for fear of alerting the creature. She had distracted her for the moment but she still had no idea where her family was hidden. Without so much of a thought, she trotted over to the fireplace. There had to be something she could use. Briefly glancing at the fire, she found herself momentarily entranced by it.
Wipe Wipe
There it came, the sound.
Wipe Wipe.
She had heard that sound once before, in a dream not so long ago. Searching for the source of the sound, Apple Bloom noticed something just beside the fireplace. It was small end table, and situated upon it was a snow globe. Curious, Apple Bloom trotted over to it.
Wipe Wipe
The sound came again. Apple Bloom could see her tiny face reflected off the glass of the snow globe. Staring inside, Apple Bloom could not make out anything discernible, just fake white snow. Closer she looked however, that changed. Just like she did in the dream, she could see three different colors staring back: Orange, red, and lime green. They all belonged to a trio of shivering ponies.
Apple Bloom's face lit up. It was her family!
Right before the revelation could fully take effect, Apple Bloom was alerted by a cough behind her. Looking back, the witch held out her palm as the key to the door coughed out of her mouth. Looking back at Apple Bloom, she flashed a smirk.
Nevertheless, Apple Bloom still held a new form of confidence. "Look they'll be there, just like I told ya."
Amused, the Beldam chuckled. "You're wrong Apple Bloom." She said in a sing song fashion. Taking the key, she stuck it into the keyhole and twisted. When she opened the door, there was nothing. "See? They're not there."
Apple Bloom knew that, but now her plan was starting to come together. Or rather her plan she had just thought up of in the last minute or so. That would hardly seem reasonable for a filly her age, but hey she was in a desperate situation so going by adrenaline and stress levels... the simpler version would be she thought up a plan quick in this desperate moment. There was still one item Zecora had lent her before she departed on this rescue mission. Taking the jar out, she set it down upon the ground.
"Now, It's your turn to stay here forever." The Beldam rasped as she turned around wit ha sewing needle in hand. Her grin faltered as she noticed the jar at the filly's feet.
Apple Bloom stared defiantly at her. This would be the last stare the Beldam would see. "No...Ah...ain't!" With a mighty thrust of her back leg, Apple Bloom bucked the jar as hard and fast as she could. It soared through the air, the force that several generations of apple buckers sending it on its course. The glass shattered against the wall and its contents spilled out. Apple Bloom hadn't believed her eyes when Zecora showed them to her. She was certain Pinkie Pie had driven them out of Ponyville with her own well...Pinkie Pieness. But here they were, a small group of parasprites. The insects had an insatiable desire to consume, and the Beldam happened to be in their way. The tiny critters swarmed the witch, gnawing and biting at her bony frame. The witch grunted as she clawed at the little pests. She could feel them swarming up her body right to her face. Apple Bloom took the moment to grab the snow globe, place it in her bag, dash right towards the open door, and grab the key in her mouth right from the keyhole.
The Beldam clawed at her face in her attempts to get the parasprites off her body. All she succeeded in doing though was clawing her own eyes out. As the buttons fell, the Beldam seethed with a sightless rage. "YOU HORRIBLE CHEATING FOAL!!!!!!!!" Then everything fell apart. As the witch lost her composure, the whole room collapsed. The floor boards, walls, furniture, everything dissolved into a white void.
Apple Bloom felt herself fall. Letting out a scream, she found her descent halted as she fell into something solid yet springy. The void was not entirely empty for some kind of net had been cast. But it wasn't a net, it was a spider web. Now her web had truly unraveled.
"WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?" The Beldam screeched.
Apple Bloom turned her head to see the witch moving about her web. Her head darted in all directions as she searched for the little filly. The Beldam was like a wild animal, deranged and turning her head about. She would move about, the web shaking with her own movements. It dawned on Apple Bloom, the Beldam couldn't see her. Wasting no time, Apple Bloom crawled up the web as fast as she could.
"YOU SELFISH BRAT!!!" The Beldam's rage had not gone unquenched. Without sight, she was lost in her own trap. That is until she sensed the vibrations of the web. Laughing triumphantly to herself, the witch attempted to move about the web, yet without sight she still held a disadvantage. Apple Bloom moved with all of her might as did the Beldam whose haphazard movements made it harder for her to even maneuver properly. Apple Bloom clambered as fast as she could, never looking down for fear of being caught. Below she could feel the Beldam coming steadily closer. The little pony climbed and climbed and climbed right until her hooves felt the hard ground. The moment she saw the open path, she quickly dove inside.
"YOU DARE DISOBEY YOUR ELDER!?" The Beldam screeched. Apple Bloom responded to that statement with a feeling that completely emphasized her feelings: A kick to the face.
Turning the key around, Apple Bloom stuck it into the keyhole and pushed hard. "Come on close!" She urgently thought. Behind the wooden frame the Beldam hissed and her metal hand attempted to claw its way in. Mustering whatever hidden strength she had, Apple Bloom pushed harder and harder, giving it all she had. Suddenly, she felt a push give way and followed by two sounds. The first was that of the door closing, the other was a metallic plink. Apple Bloom's eyes trailed down beside her to see something that nearly made her gasp. The Beldam's hand had been completely severed. There was no time to dawdle though; she still had to lock the door. Turning the key, she quickly hid it away in her bag.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! APPPPPLLEEEEE BLOOOOOOOM!!!!" Apple Bloom scampered away at the sound of the shriek. The tiny filly ran up the path as fast as she could, all the while she heard a pounding behind her.
"DON'T LEAVE ME!!!! DON'T LEAVE ME!!!!" The Beldam screamed. The creature had lost all restraint in her voice; it didn't deter Apple Bloom who simply kept crawling ahead, never looking back. All the while, the pounding grew louder. "I'LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" That was the last voice Apple Bloom heard as she shut the door behind her, the one on the outside. Taking the key, she locked it just as she had done to its twin. A loud pound against the wood knocked the young pony down. For a moment she remained still, awaiting for whatever happened next. A few seconds...nothing, several seconds more...again nothing. Swiftly taking the key, she deposited it in her bag.
Immediately she bolted right out of the room, past the hall, and out of the old dilapidated house. Apple Bloom ran through the dense series of trees to the one place that lay on her mind: home, her true home. But she wondered, what was waiting for her there? Honestly she had an idea, or rather a hope. But what if it was gearing up to be one disappointment? Those thoughts didn't matter, not when she saw the familiar barn house up ahead. With a smile, she bolted into the real Sweet Apple Acres.
"Ah'm home everypony!" Apple Bloom greeted excitedly. The filly perked her ears up for any affirmation she wasn't alone. "Applejack!? Big Macintosh!? Granny Smith!?" She called again. Once more she heard nothing. The hope that had been springing in her heart slowly began to shrink. But how? She had won the game. Looking into her bag she found a distressing sight that made her hope absolutely vanish. The snow globe was gone! But how? Apple Bloom didn't understand, she had won the game, gone through so much and now it all had failed.
"Apple Bloom?" Apple Bloom departed from her despair when she heard the voice followed by several, patters of hooves. In the hallway, two adult ponies entered. One was mare with an orange coat, a cowpony hat atop her blond mane. The other was a sturdy looking stallion; his coat has bright red as an apple.
Apple Bloom's face lit up in happiness as she tackled the mare. "Applejack! Big Macintosh! Y'all are okay!"
Applejack and Big Macintosh stared down at their youngest sibling with confusion etched on their faces. "Okay? Course we are, we've been home all day." Applejack answered.
"Eyup." Big Macintosh added.
Apple Bloom looked up with her own confusion. "But don't y'all remember? You were trapped in that snow globe, you Big Macintosh and Granny Smith."
Applejack put her hoof to her sister's forehead. "Ya feelin alright sugar cube? Like Ah said, we've been here all day and Granny Smith has been napping in her rocker." A loud snore came from the adjacent room along with the creak of a wooden chair.
"Maybe ya should lie down?" Big Macintosh spoke concernedly towards his little sibling.
"Nah, ah'm fine. Ah'm just glad to be home." Apple Bloom hugged both of her siblings which only made them more confused. "Ah'm sorry for being such a pest lately Applejack. Ah haven't been the most grateful little sister."
Applejack was surprised by that statement, but returned it with a smile. "Well it's not like Ah've been treating you nice like little sis, how's about I make it up with an Apple Pie tonight?"
Apple Bloom looked up at her sibling with a small plead in her eyes. "Can we have ice cream with it?" XXX
Desert had been wonderful. An apple Pie with a hint of cinnamon and a side of ice crea"Boy howdy that was good." Apple Bloom praised the good meal. Suddenly a loud burp broke her lethargic position. The filly chuckled, "Applejack."
The mare blushed. "Who? Where that come from?" Her face still had traces of pie crumbs.
Big Macintosh tucked Apple Bloom into the covers as did Applejack fluff her pillow.
"Comfortable?" Big Macintosh asked.
Apple Bloom snuggled into the covers. "Yup, nice and snug!" The Stallion smiled at his sibling, happy to see her happy. "So, Ah guess y'all will be working tomorrow huh?"
"Not so much little sis, we've bucked most of the apples and Ah heard from Rainbow Dash that they cleared up most of the weather, so Ah was thinking we'd have a little get together with our friends tomorrow."
Now that was something Apple Bloom liked to hear. A yawn escaped from the filly. That told the family it was time fore Bed. Making sure their sibling was perfectly comfortable the left. Applejack took one moment to peck her sister on the cheek.
"Goodnight mah little sugar cube."
"Love ya big sis."
The sisters exchanged their love for each other as a family. The door shut and so did the light. Apple Bloom was alone in the darkness of her room, but it was a comforting darkness. This was her home, not a fake imitation. Although it wasn't grand, her toys didn't have the shine and prestige as some others did, but it was hers and no one else's. This was good enough for her. Right before she fell into the comforts of slumber, Apple Bloom took a look under her pillow. Three objects stared back at her, for she had put them there. The ghost eyes had been freed and hopefully along with their owner. Apple Bloom put the pillow down and rested her head. Soon sleep overtook her, as did a dream. XXX
Apple Bloom found herself in a pastel void. A myriad of colors surrounded her on all sides. It was lovely and amazing all at once. The tiny filly looked up to see three golden shapes floating above. The shapes drew closer showing themselves as ponies. Apple Bloom had met them before, but they had been tortured spirits. Now, they were lovely angels with shining halos atop their heads.
"Ya'll did a fine thing for us." The earth pony filly spoke. She looked like a normal filly now, no frown or hint of sadness. The resemblance towards Apple Bloom and her grandmother as a filly was now fully uncanny.
"Thanks to you, our souls are free." The pegasus colt no longer had tattered wings nor a frown. What was before Apple Bloom was a young colt at last free to spread his wings. The unicorn filly was the same. The look of terror that once marred her face before was now gone replaced with a bright and happy glee.
Apple Bloom felt very proud of herself. Although she had yet to earn her cutie mark, she still had accomplished something great. Perhaps helping ghost's was her special talent? "Well, Ah'm just glad it's all over. The dumb ol' witch can't get anypony now."
Just then, frowns of uncertainty appeared on the angel ponies faces. "Well ya did save us..." The earth pony filly trailed off.
"But you're still in danger!" The unicorn filly warned. "The Beldam still wants you and she won't rest until you're hers."
Apple Bloom widened her eyes in fright. "B-b-but how? Ah closed the door, there's no way she can escape."
"The key." Said the earth filly. "So long as it's in Equestria, the Beldam can still escape."
It wasn't over. Even after all she had done, she had not been free from the creature's grasp. The pride that had so recently swelled up in her had come crashing down.
"Don't worry miss, you still have a chance. You're still alive." Reassured the pegasus colt.
The three angels floated down to the filly. Although intangible, their closeness consoled Apple Bloom in a way. Slowly, her smile started to return.
"Please, tell mah sister Smith Ah miss her." The earth filly asked.
And then the dream ended. XXX
Apple Bloom awoke with a start. Steadily she breathed, her body in a cold sweat. Removing her pillow, she was pleased to see the ghost eyes were not there. At least that chapter had been closed, but the danger still was present. The Beldam could still escape and she had the key that she would use. Bolting out of her bed, the filly grabbed her bag, looking inside it to see the key still remained much to her relief. She wouldn't let this happen to anypony else. Not so long as this member of the Apple family had anything to say about it. XXX
Apple Bloom.
The old house had been silent since the filly had escaped. Lifelessness had returned to the abandoned hovel. Until now that is. A green glow illuminated the room coming from the small hidden door. A great raking followed as metal scratched against wood. Something crawled out from underneath and skittered across the floor. The Beldam's hand knew its target guided by the thoughts of its master.
You won't escape from me Apple Bloom. YOU... ARE... MINE! XXX
The night air had never been so creepy before. Apple Bloom watched the shadows of the trail, making certain that nothing jumped out at her. When she left Sweet Apple Acres, she hadn't put a plan together, all she knew was she had to get rid of the key somehow. First, she had thought about maybe dumping it down a well, but she didn't think Ponyville had any deep enough. No, it would seem the Everfree Forest would be the place. Somehow she knew its only denizen would have some way of helping her. But first, she had to pass a grove of trees along the way. Said trees were awfully close to a certain house.
Clink!
Apple Bloom halted. "Who-who's there?" She fearfully called, but there was no answer. Must have been her imagination playing tricks on her, nothing more. She continued along with her goal set in mind.
Clink!
There it came again. Apple Bloom hastened her trots.
Clink! CLINK!!!!
The sound had grown louder. Apple Bloom kept her eyes and ears peeled for anything. The moon parted through the claws shedding some light upon the path. More shadows cast from the influence of the celestial body. Then there was a glint. Apple Bloom caught it just out of the corner of her eye. Right above on a tree branch, something waited. It had kept its patience long enough and it sprang. Luckily, Apple Bloom was faster. The filly dodged as another metallic chick signaled the arrival of the predator. The hand of a monster that is.
It couldn't be, but it was. The Beldam's hand scurried across the ground like a hungry pest towards Apple Bloom. Apple Bloom turned tail and ran. Behind her, she heard the metallic scratching. In her head, she heard a voice.
It's like I said my little sugar cube, you can't escape from me.
Apple Bloom would defy that warning. She ran without a clear path ahead of her. With the fear of the chase upon her, Apple Bloom randomly ran through the thicket. Her run went uninterrupted until something hard hit her. Dazed for a moment, the filly immediately saw a purple figure grumbling something unintelligible.
"Spike?"
The dragon got up at the sound of his name. Rubbing his sore side he griped "Geez, can't you watch where you're going? Man, you farm ponies really are sturdy." Spike's complaints went unheard as Apple Bloom embraced the dragon in a hug.
"Oh Spike, Ah'm so glad to see you!" Apple Bloom's memories of the Other Spike still remained. Seeing the real thing brought those memories to surface.
Spike felt a blush across his face. "Um, uh sorry...yeah." Spike stammered, uncertain of what to make of it.
Apple Bloom came to a realization. "Wait, what are y'all doing out here?"
Before the dragon could answer, his face fell upon what approached. "What the heck is that!?"
Apple Bloom couldn't answer herself as she felt the cold metal touch against her coat. The Beldam's hand pounced upon her, scratching and grasping at her body. Spike stood dumbfounded at the sight. He watched as Apple Bloom fought back with all of her might, but the hand still held the upper...hand. "Spike! Help!" Apple Bloom pleaded finding herself unable to escape.
Spike looked around for anything that could aid him. Strange as this event was, he knew trouble when he saw it. "Hang on Apple Bloom!" Spike looked around. Perhaps a stick? No that wouldn't work, he needed something heavier. Then it hit him. Or rather he nearly broke off one of his foot claws on it. It was a rock, a strong sturdy looking one. Apple Bloom struggled against the detached limb, but still to no avail.
"Apple Bloom, stay down!" Suddenly something hard and hast struck the hand with a great shatter of metal. At her side, Apple Bloom saw the hand break apart against the force of the rock. Still not wanting to take any chances, Apple Bloom scooped up the pieces in her bag.
"Quick tie it up!" Apple Bloom directed to Spike.
Still not understanding, Spike obeyed and tied a tight knot around the bag making sure it remained closed.
"Are you okay?" Spike asked.
Apple Bloom dusted herself off. She had a few scratches but nothing too bad. "Yeah, thanks. Ah was almost a goner, but y'all saved me." The filly fluttered her eyes causing a second blush to redden the dragon's purple face.
"Uh, it was nothing." Spike hide his blush. "But what are you doing out this late?" He asked.
Apple Bloom raised one of her eyes. "Ah could ask you the same thing. Ya are a baby dragon after all."
Spike fell silent when asked about his reason. With the danger passed, Apple Bloom noticed the dragon's eyes; they were red and puffy, as if he had been crying.
"Wy-Wybourne's dead. I was burying him." Spike admitted.
Apple Bloom gave a tiny gasp. "Ya mean your slug?"
Spike nodded. "I brought him inside to get him something to eat; Owlowiscious wasn't inside so I thought it was safe." The dragon sniffled. "I just set him down for a moment, I didn't know the book would fall over." Another sniffle escaped him, as did a tear.
"I-I wanted to bury him here......he really liked this place for some reason." Spike sniffled.
Although how a slug could actually communicate such a feeling as fondness for a certain place, Apple Bloom knew for certain Spike had truly loved that slug. Slimy and disgusting as Wybourne may have been, but Apple Bloom sympathized with the young dragon. Once more, Apple Bloom embraced the dragon in a hug. Spike hadn't been the only one who had lost a friend. The two of them hugged underneath Luna's light. All the while they thought of the two who had been lost this day. XXX
Zecora stirred her special brew carefully. All the while, Apple Bloom and Spike watched with anticipation.
"Is it done Zecora?" Asked Apple Bloom.
Zecora continued her stirring examining the fumes that rose. "The perfect temperature I do presume. Please bring it over Apple Bloom."
Gladly, Apple Bloom handed the zebra the bag. Zecora dunked the bag in which sizzled, the contents dissolved instantly, both the key and the Beldam's hand.
"Thanks Zecora." Apple Bloom breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the ordeal was done at last.
"It was my pleasure, I may make some more for good measure." The zebra spoke in her rhyming speech. The word choice both amazed and confused the pair. Seeing as it was late, Apple Bloom and Spike exited the hut and set along the path back home. For Spike, Ponyville, for Apple Bloom, Sweet Apple Acres.
"So you were telling the truth about all that other world stuff huh?" Asked Spike.
"Yup. It's all true." Apple Bloom confirmed.
The dragon had felt he had missed a lot. "It would take a long time to explain it to me now right?"
Apple Bloom nodded. "Ah could tell ya tomorrow, we're having a get together up on the farm. Ya'll can come if ya want?"
Spike thought about it for a moment. "Count on it! Besides, Rarity is busy taking care of her sister and I don't want to catch anything."
It was here the two bid their farewells and went their separate ways. The only one not content currently stewed in her own little world. The Beldam sat and waited but in time, she soon perished. Either from the lack of nourishment from a child's soul or because she had no one else to love besides herself.
One little filly had triumphed against her, and now she was forever locked from the outside world.
So she died, and no one wept. XXX
Apple Bloom shut the door carefully as she stepped inside. She trotted the same way up the stairs. The wooden steps creaked ever so slightly. For now, all she wanted was the curl up in her bed and dream her cares away.
"Apple Bloom?" A voice startled her just as she reached the last step.
In the darkness of the hallway, a lime green coat walked toward the filly. "Granny Smith?"
"What are you doing out of bed deary?" The old mare asked her granddaughter.
Apple Bloom tried to think up a reasonable excuse. "Uh, the bathroom?"
Granny Smith neither looked suspicious or as if she bought the excuse. What was surprising was the fact she was awake after spending most of the following days sleeping. "Ah'll tuck you in." Granny Smith led her youngest grandchild to her bedroom. Apple Bloom found herself once more tucked in by a loving member of her family. Just as her siblings had done earlier, the filly was given a kiss goodnight. With a creak of her ailing hip, the old mare turned to go back to her own room.
"Granny?"
Smith stopped. Another creak of her hip followed as she turned to face her granddaughter. "Hmm?"
"Do you mind if Ah tell you a quick bedtime story?"
For the first time in many years, a small unrest in Smith's heart was no put at rest. The unrest revolved around one who had been dear to her heart, one who had vanished without a trace. Thanks to Apple Bloom, she felt at piece.
The End. |
The D.S.P.I. | pre | "While the flintlock has superior power and range, it loses speed, accuracy, and silence, both of which can be the difference between living till tomorrow, or taking a dirt nap by evening," Spike continued, staring down the line. "You will practice with these crossbows until you can take them apart, put them back together, and hit a full magazine of bullseye's. Am I understood?"
"Sir, yes, sir!" they answered.
"Then stop wasting time and get to work!"
And so began the most grueling marksmanship class Silver had faced. Admittedly, it was maybe his second in his entire life, but grueling nonetheless. While the pneumatic crossbow did not have much in the way of recoil, the power of the bolts as they slammed into the target was almost surprising.
It took some time to get used to the slight drop on the bolts, as well as the the sheer speed in the rate of fire that the pneumatic crossbow offered. Even so, despite the apparent accuracy of these weapons, Silver was having trouble, and wound up unloading half a magazine to the left of a target.
The crossbow simply fired far too fast, if he held the trigger down for longer than five seconds the magazine would need to be replaced completely. If he was off target when he fired, anywhere from five to ten bolts stuck into the side missing completely.
He was just not having luck with it.
And the second and third day was not better.
"Hold fire!" The Commander yelled on the fourth straight day of firing practice.
Silver sighed as he brought up his crossbow. At least most of the bolts hit the target this time.
Spike walked down the line, smoking another one of his paper cigarettes, and checking the targets. "Silver, stop re-aiming. Keep your groupings tight, then work on accuracy."
"Sir, yes, sir!" he replied.
"Mandible, good to see you can finally hit the target now."
The changeling grumbled something that sounded like a thank you, sir.
Silver took a second to snort out the scent of burning paper and stared down at his target again. As he waited for the Commander to order him to collect their bolts, he found himself wondering once more why the dragon insisted on smoking empty cigarettes. It took him a while to identify the smell of paper smoke in the cigarette, as he was sure that it would have to be something else. Yet here it was that--
"Silk," the Commander said, nodding. "Now that is some excellent shooting!"
"Sir, thank you, sir!"
Silver looked over, to the mare's target, and almost gaped at the tight group of forty bolts all piercing the bullseye.
"Do that again," Spike ordered, handing her a full magazine.
Silk Star nodded, and took aim, firing her bolts in disciplined bursts, forty new bolts shot forward, each digging straight into the bullseye with ease, and Silver felt a twinge of jealousy at the sight of her shooting. Spike nodded, impressed as she kept hitting the center of the target with every shot, until only the hiss of air sounded, signalling that the magazine was not empty.
"Do it again," Spike said, handing her another magazine.
Again she fired into the target, and again her accuracy was spot on.
"One more time and I can move you up to the next training stage," he said, handing her the last magazine.
Once more she emptied the magazine into the target, and once more Silver felt a twinge of anger at the sight of her marksmanship.
Spike nodded again. "We're probably going to move you to sniper," he said, as he looked at the target.
"Ah, so zees are zee new recruits, ja?" a new voice said, and all eyes turned to a mare that was making her way down the stairs. The yellow-coated unicorn smiled as she descended, her snout at a thirty degree angle in the air with a pair of large, fashionable sunglasses hiding her eyes. Her baby blue mane was hidden behind a hunter green cloth hat that clung to her head.
She smirked as she finally stepped down onto the firing range, and removed her sunglasses, revealing the two, blood red eyes beneath them.
Silver instantly felt captivated by those eyes. The depths of which almost swallowed him whole. His world simply became a great swirling pool of red and darkness. There was nothing beyond those eyes, nothing before, and nothing after. There was only those eyes.
And then, as if he was suddenly released, the world around him returned, and the new mare's horn was in her hoof.
A fake.
"Ja, ja. Zees are fery strong, no? Zey schoult do vell," she said, before a previously hidden pair of leathery wings stretched out from her sides.
"Ah, Fluttershy," Spike said, giving her his attention. "I was wondering when you would get back."
"Atatatata!" The pegasus chided as she held up her hoof. "Kommandant Shpike, you schoult know better by now. I am Dame Butter Streusel, and Dame Flutterschy vill shtill take some time to adjust. But don'ten sie vorry, Herr Shpike, you vill shtill receive your report."
Spike gave a long-suffering sigh. "How long before the report?"
"At least until after lunch," she said, removing the hat, and revealing the blue wig and her flowing pink hair beneath. "Ve schall zee, sough."
Another sigh from the dragon. "Fine," he said.
The vampire nodded with a smile, before walking away, heading back up the stairs.
Spike then stood, and said in an incredibly commanding voice. "But you will eat in the cafeteria."
The mare froze, and Silver could swear a tiny little "eep" escaped her lips.
"What?" she asked, the strong accent gone from her now almost pitiful voice. Her posture had transformed from that of a confident mare to that of a tiny filly, hiding from the dark.
"I let you get away with it for long enough, Fluttershy. You're going to eat in the cafeteria."
"I..." she squeaked, and Silver wondered that had happened to the strong mare once known as Butter Streusel. "I..."
"Fluttershy," Spike said, in an admonishing tone.
"O-o-okay..." she finally said, before backing away from the dragon.
When she finally left the room, Spike sighed. "That poor mare..." he then turned to the others and spoke. "Alright, rookies, break for lunch, when you come back, we'll discuss team composition, and all kinds of good stuff, dismissed."
===ᐁ===
The mess hall was a large room with a low, domed ceiling. A hundred and fifty feet long, there was more than enough room for everypony in the entire facility to sit down and eat all at once.
As it was, many of the long table were empty, but Silver did see a few familiar faces; Caramel Crystal, Velvet Storm, Fluttershy, and the almost-as-green team Gamma.
Team Gamma had apparently arrived two days before Silver's own team Alpha, and while they did tend to stay apart, this massive brick wall of a pony named Chestnut had done whatever he could to be amiable.
Even so, Silver's attention was being split between his team's conversation, and the mysterious mare he had first met just minutes before.
"Luna's Teeth, Silk!" one of the earth ponies in his team exclaimed. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"
"Oh, it's nothing," she replied. "My uncle just owns a farm out by Baltimare, and I spent a few summers out there shooting his musket. It was pretty much the only fun thing to do out there...so I guess I just had a lot of practice is all."
"Oh is that all?" Mandible sneered.
Silver rolled his eyes. "Easy prisoner," he said.
"I hope you choke on your meal, Guard," he answered back.
Mandible was perhaps the most problematic member of the team. He grunted, growled, and spat bitterness at every opportunity. Every other word he spoke was filled with vitriol and disgust, up to the point where he pushed everyone else away.
To be fair, though, Silver wasn't the most social of ponies himself, and there were a lot of ponies on his own team that he still didn't know the names of.
As they grabbed their aluminum trays with their plates of rice, oats, and salads piled high, Team Alpha quickly found a place to sit, and began eating away. All the while, however, Silver watched the neighbors. The Headless Horse, miss Caramel, had opened the top of her jar and dropped ground lettuce into the green, jelly-like liquid.
Velvet Storm sat alone, eating slowly as she enjoyed the salad with a simple oil and vinegar dressing.
And then there was Fluttershy. The pegasus with the leathery wings and the blood-red eyes stared, not at the blood pack he assumed would be there, but at four apples sitting on her tray. She didn't make a sound as she stared at them, and didn't so much as move for them, even as everypony around her ate.
Silver was fascinated with her as she stared at her food. There was an obvious hunger in her eyes as she stared at the apples in front of her, and yet she did not eat. She carefully lifted her hoof, and traced the gentle, sloping curve of the bright red apple, in an almost disturbingly loving way. She smiled as she watched her hoof trail against the soft, shiny surface of the fruit, and she licked her lips to wet her mouth, and revealed the fangs behind her smile.
And then, she suddenly looked up, and her eyes glanced around the room.
And then Silver saw those eyes once more. Those impossibly deep, red orbs that commanded his attention and sapped at his will.
"Look away."
The words echoed in his head like a bell knoll, and he turned away out of a compulsion he could not explain. The second he turned away he wanted to watch again, eager to see the vampire that wanted to eat apples, and try to understand her shyness.
But he couldn't. He had to stare at his tray. He literally could not turn around. Sweat began to bead on his forehead as he tried to so desperately hard to turn and watch.
Then, his head finally sapped back, staring at Fluttershy and her tray.
Or at least...the tray.
Fluttershy was already gone, and her tray sat on the table, with only four desiccated apple, no larger than a core.
===ᐁ===
"A team is composed of eight different duties." Spike explained as team Alpha sat in the training grounds next to the armory. "They are; Assault, the close quarters combat specialist; Sniper, long-range support; Medic, pretty self-explanatory; Heavy Weapons, again self-explanatory; Support, the all around; Scout, the guy who's going to give you all the info you need; Demolitions, for when you have something big to get rid of; and Infiltration, guess who's going to get that job."
A few chuckles from the ponies in the team as a few glances were shot Mandible's way.
Spike continued without losing a beat. "Each duty or class has their own special equipment and kit. Two of you have already found classes that fit your skills, so now the rest of you have to figure out your placement. First, you're going to run through various tests and training regiments to figure out where you fit best," he said, picking up a strange looking rifle.
"In the meantime, you all will continue using the pneumatic crossbows until you can consistently hit something in the morning, in the evening, you will work on trying to find your niche. But, as a taste of things to look forward to, Silk, catch."
He tossed the rifle at her, and Silver looked at it with a curious gaze. It's long, sleek barrel was encased in an angular, heavy-duty plastic casing. Down the rifle, closer to where the chamber should be was a gem, glowing a dull red like hot steel. Silk looked it up and down, feeling the weight of it in her hooves.
"That is a Thermal Shot Long-range rifle, or the TS longrifle for short. Unlike the pneumatic crossbows, the TS fires beams of heat-based magical energy. It has no projectile drop, and a far greater range than any other weapon here, and the only reason why it's not the standard, before any of you get smart enough to ask, is because of the rate of fire. The gem takes too long to cool after a shot that powerful, so it's not suitable for close range combat, where you can be surrounded by few dozen zombies.
"But," Spike continued, as he grabbed a couple of bundles, "the important thing is, this is only the start of the equipment you get to get your hooves on here, so the lesson to learn is, the harder you work, the sooner you get your toys. Am I understood?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"Then move out, Alpha Team."
===ᐁ===
It took two weeks before Silver was given his class. He still had a few issues hitting things with his pneumatic crossbow, but his guard training did leave him with quite the proficiency in melee combat. The Commander did make a crack that maybe he'd hit something now that he'd be closer, but Silver was willing to live with that.
His special gear was the same bog standard pneumatic crossbow, but he did also a very nice short sword. A strange thing with a silver blade with a magically reinforced obsidian body. At first, he was incredibly confused by the stone composition in the blade, but he was soon informed by Sweetie Belle that obsidian was able to affect ghosts and such.
Apparently, that was part of rule 27.
"How many rules are there?" he asked.
"How many?" Sweetie answered, as she floated next to him. "As many as Spike wants at any given time. But he does have a few important ones that he repeats constantly."
"Which ones?"
"Rule number one, typically," she said, before turning on her back and continuing to float forward. "Whatever you do, don't die. Then there's rule number two, if you have to die, try to die in such a way that you don't make the enemy stronger."
"Make them stronger?"
"You know, becoming a zombie, vampire, lycan, being the last sacrifice to release a Great Old One, that kind of thing."
Silver's brow furrowed. "Does that happen often?"
"Often enough that it's a rule!" she replied.
Silver looked her over, an eyebrow raised. "Are all ghosts as chipper as you?"
"Nah," she said, righting herself, before she continued. "I'm not like most ghosts. I was a soldier here. I knew there was a good chance I wasn't going to finish my business here, I was prepared for it."
Silver shivered, suddenly very aware how cold it was in this hallway.
"No...most ghost think too much about how they passed. They all think about the one who murdered them, about how their life was stolen from them at their most vulnerable moment."
The hallway was getting darker, but Silver could only stare at the ghost beside him as she appeared to swallow the light around her, her eyes now glowing orbs surrounded by shadow.
"No, all they think about is how everything they have was stolen from them, how the world has ceased to be their home. They think about how the stallion that murdered them still walks this earth as their own body rots in the earth if it's not already gone!"
She was seething, and the hallway seemed to breath with her every word, shuddering as her anger filled the darkness around them. The very foundation of the world seemed to pulsate with her every word.
"And they think about how they want to kill them! How they want to strangle them! How they want to pierce his body with every single item in his house! How they want to kill him so that feels every single thing and I felt when he killed me!"
Her voice was that of a dark lord, resounding, terrible, and full of malice.
"I want to watch his life bleed from his eyes as I strangle him! I want to watch him struggle to breathe! I want to watch as his soul is yanked from his body and flies straight into the abyss!"
Silver was backing up slowly.
"I want him dead!" she wailed, and her voice screamed through his soul.
He backed up again, and as he did, he felt old wood touch his flank.
The ghost stopped suddenly, and the world went back to normal, but she was in his face, her big green eyes panicked and pleading. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Are you insane?"
He felt ethereal hooves pull him away, and he stared at the thing behind him that broke the ghost from her monologue of revenge.
And he saw a door.
A simple, wooden, red, triangular door with a simple candle carved into its front.
He blinked as he looked at it, confused for a number of reasons.
The first was the door itself. Every other door he had seen in the entire complex was a thick, steel door that opened by some hidden mechanism that slid them down into place. This was the first wooden door he had seen since...well since he got here.
The second was the absolute terror that had flashed in the eyes of the ghost next to him.
"W-what is that?" he asked, baffled and confused.
"That's the door to the Commander's room," she whispered, as though they were the words of some dark tome.
"The Commander's room?" he asked.
She turned to him, and she shook her head. "You know rule number one?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Rule zero: Do not, under any circumstances, enter that room."
Silver blinked again. "Why? W-what's in there?"
"You don't need to know," she said, gently pulling him away. "All you do need to know is that the Commander killed the last pony that went in there, himself. It was not a pretty death."
Silver blinked once more, letting himself be dragged away by the ghost who so desperately wanted to get him away.
And yet, even as he was being pulled, he chanced one last look back.
And the little red door, with the little yellow candle burned into his mind stronger than the memory of the sun itself. |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Lost Hawk | Spike continued through the pages on his desk, longing for the days where the Department wasn't so steeped in bureaucracy.
He took a drag on his cigarette, breathing in the paper smoke and letting it settle in his lungs before expelling it in a nice, smooth breath.
Another signature, and he moved on to the next form.
The door slammed open, and Velvet ran in, a panicked look on her face. "We have a situation!"
Spike moved without so much as blinking, shifting the papers to the side a clearing his desk. "What's the problem?"
"We have zombies, Baltimare area."
Spike nodded. "Get Manticore, Caramel, and Alpha Team to the situation room A.S.A.P."
Velvet nodded, before rushing out of the room.
And Spike took another drag on the cigarette and sighed.
Time to test the rookies.
But why did it have to always be a trial by fire?
===ᐁ===
Team Alpha sat at their table, eating away while they laughed and talked among each other. With the exceptions of Silver and Mandible of course, both of whom stayed quiet, the first out of principal, the other out of sheer spite.
"And then he says to me, 'You can't park here, this is private property,' and I tell him 'I know it is, why do you think I'm here?'" one of the stallions regaled, recounting one of his worst experiences as a driver for private cart service. "So, long story short, he doesn't know I've been called here, and holds me up for half-an-hour at the gate! He would have even held me longer if not for--"
The crackling of a loudspeaker broke the story in an instant, and a voice echoed over the mess hall. "Attention! Alpha Team! Report to the Situation room immediately! This is not a drill! Report immediately!"
Silver began spooning the salad from his plate into his mouth, trying to finish his meal as fast as possible, before shouldering his pneumatic crossbow. Everyone else in his team blinked, before they all quickly followed suit, stuffing their faces before running after Silver with all haste.
Weapons were shouldered, the last plates of armor strapped on, and food was frantically chewed as they ran through the facility, moving to the executive wing.
The situation room was a large, board-meeting-esque room with a large table dominating its center. A map of Equestria sat on the table, underneath a heavy pane of glass. Spike, Caramel Crystal, Velvet Storm, and Fluttershy were all there, waiting for them. The headless horse held up various forms for her head while Velvet was running about, setting forms, and looking generally panicked.
Fluttershy, on the other hand, seemed to command the room. She stood almost taller than before, and a scowl seemed to be branded on her face. She glared at the soldiers as they walked in, and even Silver was slightly unnerved by her.
Spike, however, simply sat at the head of the table, continuing to smoke the tobacco-less cigarettes. "Alpha Team, it's time for your first mission. You're going to Baltimare, to face some zombies. Velvet, fill them in."
"Yes, sir!" she said, before turning to the collected soldiers. "We have a zombie outbreak out in the outer fields of Baltimare. Normally not a big issue, we could set you up in a building, and you could mow them all down by daybreak. Unfortunately, we have reports of a survivor in the area."
The glass on the table shimmered, and the face of a pony magically formed and floated before them. "A pegasus named Cedar Leaf. He's wounded, and unable to evacuate." A flash, and his face disappeared, being replaced by a semi-transparent farmstead with three buildings, a barn, farmhouse, and a storehouse. "Our last report has him in an abandoned barn," Velvet explained, as the building slowly disassembled, revealing the floor plans, and a glowing yellow dot.
"Your first priority is saving the civilian," Spike said. "As such, heavy weapons, demolitions, and sniper classes are to stay close to his location. Assault, support, medic, scout and infiltration classes will be up front in the fields. Manticore," he said, motioning to Fluttershy, "will lead the field team while I will lead the team inside."
"You're coming with us?" a mare from the team asked.
"No," Fluttershy replied sarcastically. "I'm going to be leading you from my easy chair."
Spike sighed. "Yes, we're going with you, it's the best way to give proper orders and stay up-to-date."
"But what about you two?" the mare asked.
Fluttershy barked a laugh.
"Don't worry about us. Now, unless there are any questions, we need to move out. We won't have much time," Spike said.
"That's...actually my question," Silver said, speaking up. "How are we going to get to Baltimare in time? Form the sounds of it, we only have a few minutes, or an hour at best before Cedar loses any chance of being saved. How are we going to make it?"
And Spike smiled.
===ᐁ===
It was a Delta-class Airship: Specialization Heli-ship, or DASH.
It was perhaps the strangest acronym Silver had heard, but Spike assured them that the long, thin, airship with the bright red envelope and the massive, lighting bolt-shaped prow was the fastest thing in the sky.
The cabin of the airship was surprisingly small, no bigger than a classroom, although a large portion of it was dominated by a coffin that Fluttershy immediately claimed. "Wake me when we get there," she said, climbing in.
"Is that..." Neon Kick began, staring at the vampires as she slipped into the wooden box.
"Normal? For her it is," Spike said, behind him as he stepped in. "Tinker?"
An earth pony stood at the front of the cabin, checking dials and flipping switches. "Ready, sir!"
Spike nodded. "Take a seat everypony, the DASH-1 can kick a bit."
Alpha team obeyed, taking to the seats the ran along the sides of the cabin as the pilot pulled down a speaker mic that connected to a hidden PA system. "Good evening fillies and gentlecolts, my name is Tinker Bolt, and I will be your pilot this evening. It's going to be a three minute trip to Baltimare from our HQ here in the San Palomino desert, so I would suggest that you buckle up. The Commander doesn't need to scrape you off the back of the cabin."
The airship suddenly jostled, as if coming free, and the whirring of gears could be heard outside. Silver turned, staring out the window behind him, and could see moonlight pouring through from above.
The DASH-1 floated into the air, lifting easily as they began to pass yard after yard of concrete. Silver blinked, and before he knew it, they had passed a set of steel doors, both five feet thick.
And then, in another second, they were off, disappearing into the night sky.
Neon was sitting next to Silver as the ship rocked and rumbled, speeding past the ground below. The DJ-turned-soldier looked carefully around the cabin, before he whispered to Silver. "Do you think we can trust Mandible?"
"What?" Silver asked.
"The changeling, do you think we can trust him?
Silver shook his head. "Of course not," he said, simply, "but, he's going to do his job."
"He is?"
Silver nodded. "Let's just say there are measures in place to catch him."
"You sure?"
"How did you think we caught him in the first place?" Silver asked.
"Hey!" Fluttershy said, throwing the coffin door open. "I'm trying to sleep!"
And they said no more.
===ᐁ===
The DASH-1 was hovering over Baltimare in no more than three minutes of departure. Massive floodlights, connected to the hull of the ship, lit the field and farmhouse beneath it, leaving no shadows except those cast by the writhing forms of the zombies beneath.
The cargo bay door of the DASH-1, situated at the back of the cabin slowly dropped open, and ropes dropped to the ground below. The earth ponies and unicorns repelled to the ground, while those who had wings used them. Massive propellers turned sideways, holding the DASH-1 still in the air as the team hit the ground.
"Field team, follow Manticore, house team with me!" Spike said, speaking into a radio headset. "Thundercloud, report in!"
"Thundercloud reporting in, Commander," Tinker answered inside the headset, heard by everyone present.
"Manticore?"
"Hear you loud and clear," she answered, galloping into the field with Silver, Neon, Amber, Mandible, and the scout that Silver still could not name.
"Alright, Medic," Spike called.
"Sir?" Amber Breeze answered.
"We will need you to fly back here when we need you, be ready for that."
"Yes, sir!" she answered.
"Alright, rookies," Fluttershy said, skidding to a halt, "Scout, run up ahead, see if you can't find a source, or try to get the zombies coming to us."
"Yes ma'am!" the scout said, before running ahead, horn shining as he leveled his pneumatic crossbow.
"The rest of you, form up. Get ready for the hordes."
"Yes, miss Fluttershy," Neon answered.
"Manticore!" Fluttershy growled. "The name is Manticore. I am not that spineless wimp!"
Neon blinked, pulling away from the sudden outburst.
She growled, again. "She's a worthless wimp, and I'd be running this show, if she weren't friends with the freakin' god of chaos!"
Neon slowly backed away, quickly regretting ever speaking.
Another growl, and Manticore grunted. "Just shoot the zombies, alright?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" he replied.
Silver noted this, but said nothing, raising his crossbow and the silver and obsidian blade.
This was going to be an interesting night.
===ᐁ===
Spike and company burst into the room, his own, special pistol in his hand while his free claw stood outstretched.
The heavy weapons pony instantly turned, setting up his experimental mini-cannon to hit anything coming towards them. The Demolitions pony was outside, if she followed orders correctly, and was setting up mines and preparing her portable potion cannon with molotovs and acids.
Silk Star was setting up in the barn, checking her weapon to support the field troops.
All these action ran on the holo-magical eye display that R&D was trying to push for production. It also, quite nicely, gave him a nice readout and image of Cedar Leaf. "Are you Cedar?" he asked, addressing the cowering pegasus knowing full well that it was exactly who that was.
"Stay back!" the pegasus whimpered.
"Are you Cedar Leaf?" Spike repeated, trying to get an answer.
"I don't want to die!" he whined.
Spike slapped him gently on the cheek, as though he were trying to wake him. "Hey! Hey! Listen to me! Are you Cedar Leaf?"
The pegasus' eye slowly focused on the dragon before him, and a panic was glowing behind them. "Hah-huh-w-who are you?" he asked.
Finally responsive.
"We're the DSPI. We're here to save you, Cedar."
"The who?"
"We are here to save you, do you understand?" Spike repeated.
"I understand?" he said, unsure.
"Good. Can you walk?" Spike asked.
"N-No..." he replied. "They broke one of my legs, and my wings are broken too."
Spike swore. "Looks like we're in for the long haul, fillies and colts. We can't get Cedar out of here safely. We're going to have to thin the zombies first."
"Wasn't that the plan anyway, sir?" the heavy weapons pony asked.
"The plan was pull him out, and then hit the zombs from Thundercloud," he replied. "Now we need to do some pest control from the ground." Spike readjusted the grip his handgun, with the six pointed star etched into the handle, before checking the firing crystal matrix.
"Alright, Twi..." he whispered to the gun. "Let's go. After all, I need my number one assistant."
===ᐁ===
Stainless Spur, Scout of Alpha Team, ran forward, holding his light pneumatic crossbow close to his chest as the undead shambled toward him. They weren't as bad as the ones he had seen in movies, most were intact, and fresh. In fact, if you cleaned the blood from their mouths and the dead, glazed eyes, they could almost pass for the living.
The thing that gave them away, however, was the smell. A horrid mix of sewage, body odor, and rotting meat assaulted his nose at every turn, and Stainless Spur was doing everything he could to keep himself from gagging.
What he saw did not fill him with confidence either. Everywhere he looked there were zombies, and they were getting thicker the further in he went. The magically enhanced horseshoes he wore allowed him to zip between the zombies' hooves, but as the crowd thickened, he was less and less willing to move in between them.
"There are a lot of them out here," he said, nervously.
"Not a real surprise," Manticore answered through his headset. "The important thing is where are they coming from?"
"Everywhere!" Stainless Spur said. "They've all but surrounded the farm, and--Sweet Celestia!"
A zombie had appeared out of nowhere, moaning and assaulting Spur's nose with the awful reek of the undead. Spur practically spun on his hooves, and if it were not for his enhanced speed, he would have been caught in a crushing bear hug.
"Scout?" Spike's voice called. "Are you still with us?"
"Yes, sir," he answered, before firing a bolt into the monster's head. "One of them snuck up on me is all."
"They do that," Manticore told him. "Keep your eyes open, that's how they get you."
"Where did they all come from?"
"Graveyards," Manticore answered.
"What?" Silver's voice asked over the line.
"Despite what you might have seen in the movies, Assault," Spike said, "Zombieism is not a virus. Equestria has so many ley lines running through it that if anyone messes with magic, anywhere on the entire, dumb planet, we get the magic backlash. If there's a necromancer in Cowmandu, or an oil spill of the coast of Saddle Arabia, our ground gets magically charged. Every now and then, it builds up and gets released in a massive, nation-wide burst that has a chance of kick-starting the electrical impulses in the brain of the deceased. The result is a mindless, incredibly primitive, pseudo-lifeform. The Zombie."
There was a beat of silence across all lines.
"It didn't use to be a big problem, not until about seventy years ago. That's when Griffonstone's electrical power demands skyrocketed," the dragon explained.
"A-a...C-Commander, are you serious?"
Manticore laughed. "The rookies never believe it."
"They don't need to believe it," Spike said. "They just need to shoot the creeps in the head. Scout, rendezvous with Manticore. Stick together, we don't need to lose you to a random ghoul."
"Yes, sir," he replied, before he began running back.
Stainless Spur just wished they could use their names.
===ᐁ===
Silver's blade cut through the air, and digging straight into a zombie's brainpan. Sweat was running down his head, and a he couldn't help but pant as the horde around him simultaneously moaned and staggered toward him and the farmhouse behind him.
When the horde had finally stepped completely into the DASH-1's floodlights, Silver had been slightly perturbed by Manticore's groan of disappointment. "Is this it? Celestia's Crown, Scout! You made me think I was going to have fun here! This is like, three hundred zombies, max!" And then she just wandered off into the giant crowd of zombies, mumbling to herself.
On the one hoof, the fact that he hadn't seen her since was more than slightly worrying, on the other, the fact that Commander Spike didn't seem worried, meant that she was probably okay.
Probably.
A burst of fire from his pneumatic crossbow riddled another zombie as he tried to juggle his weapons. He was doing okay, honestly, he had already taken ten or so of the shambling corpses, without giving any ground. Neon was cursing behind him, almost panicking as he emptied magazine after magazine into the oncoming ghouls.
Amber was hovering nearby, eyes wide and on the verge of tears as she fired her bolts. Unlike Neon, however, she was doing her best to make her shots count. She was taking huge, almost exaggerated breaths in order to keep her shots steady and accurate.
The Scout, whatever his name was, was running back and forth, speeding along on magical horseshoes, and making sudden, close-range shots with his dual, light pneumatic crossbows, mounted on a special brace that kept his hooves free.
Mandible was nearby, cursing as he disappeared and reappeared thanks to his so-called "mirror cloak," firing every time he came back to shoot a zombie in the face with his own light crossbow. "I was not properly armed for this!"
Silver suddenly felt a pair of hooves grab him, and he spun his head around just in time to see a zombie bearing down on him, mouth open and ready to bite.
And then the zombie's head turned to ash as a bright, red beam shot by.
Silver pushed the body away, shaking, before he took a breath to try and compose himself. Silently, he thanked Celestia that he didn't have time to scream, but he couldn't convince himself that his heart was beating at a thousand times a second. "T-thanks, Sniper."
"Just keep your eyes open, Assault," Silk answered back.
Silver grimaced. He was supposed to be the veteran here. He was the one with the guard training. He was supposed to be better than this. Gritting his teeth, he gripped his sword tighter, and leapt forward, chopping into the zombie ranks with renewed fervor.
And then he heard laughing.
He fired another bolt into a zombie, narrowly avoiding another bite, and quickly looked around, searching for the source.
And then he saw the shower of blood.
A literal wave of visceral geysers burst into the air, and Silver had just enough time to see a blood-stained, yellow-and-pink blur burst by. Zombies went flying in the wake of the vampire, practically exploding as Manticore destroyed them.
What she was doing, Silver would never know, as she was simply moving too fast for his eyes to properly see. What he could see, however, was the smile of utter, terrifying ecstasy on her face. Punches from her caused undead torsos to disintegrate, and Silver could swear she literally ripped one or two of them in half with her bare hooves.
In a matter of a little more than a second, she had cleared the space around her of zombies completely, and smiled as a long, triangular tongue slowly pushed its way past her fangs. She licked the blood clean from her hooves, enjoying every drop of the crimson liquid, greedily slurping her hooves clean, and loving every second of it.
The sight was absolutely, morbidly captivating.
Silver watched, horrified and fascinated, and he did not look away until he heard a scream behind him.
The Scout had been standing still, perhaps as fascinated as he had been with Manticore's display, and had not noticed a pair of zombies approach him. Another scorching shot from the TS longrifle turned one of the zombies into a burnt matchstick, but the other zombie was already on him. There was a scream, the sound of ripping flesh, and a moan, and the next thing Silver knew, the Scout was down, bleeding from where his leg once was.
Silver turned, firing a burst, and the zombie's head became a pincushion. "Medic!" he cried as the zombie went down.
Amber was on him in a second, fumbling as she tried to find the proper syringe that had been strapped to her hind leg.
"Get him out of here!" Manticore growled, tearing her attention away from the blood on her hooves. "Take him to the Commander, he can rest at the farmhouse."
"Yes, Ma'am!" Amber cried, before pulling the stallion onto her withers, before flying for the farmhouse.
"Now," Manticore said, with a smile. "Where was I?"
===ᐁ===
Amber burst through the doorway, flying past the heavy weapons pony. She panted as she prepared her syringes, stabbing him in his stump to try and staunch the flow of blood.
The heavy weapons pony cursed. "Hey, Medic, you might want to get upstairs."
"What? Why?"
"You've brought some guests with you."
Amber looked back, looking over the large pony's shoulder, before she hissed a curse herself. A large crowd of zombies followed behind her, shambling behind moaning and hungry.
"I'll take care of them," he said. "Just get Scout upstairs."
She nodded, before running inside, grabbing her patient and running upstairs. She slammed open the door to a room, fluttered in, barely recognizing the shivering form of Cedar Leaf hiding in the corner. Stainless Spur was falling in and out of consciousness, trying to hold on despite the pain and blood loss, and she did her best to keep him awake. "Hey, hey, stay with me!"
An explosion rocked the building from outside, and Amber fell to the ground. "Commander!" the Demolitions pony cried. "They've hit the perimeter I set up!"
Amber heard a sigh on the line. "I'll be right there. Medic, keep Scout alive until I get there!"
She prepared another syringe, this one filled with synthetic blood. Hopefully enough to keep him alive.
"Medic! Answer!"
She jumped, before shaking herself. "Yes, sir! I understand!"
"Good."
She shook, trying to keep it together, as the pony before her slowly died.
"Holy Celestia..." Cedar mumbled, staring at them both.
Amber kept working trying to keep him alive.
And slowly, so very slowly, the Scout began to mumble. "I'm sorry...I'm so sorry..."
===ᐁ===
Spike's pistol rang like thunder as he pulled the trigger, and a super-dense mana crystal, shaped like a needle shot at supersonic speeds, ripping through the line of rotting flesh and tearing zombies to pieces.
Spike's number one assistant barked needle after needle, kicking back with enough recoil that it could dislocate the arm of a normal pony. Spike was no pony, though, and every shot of his tore through zombie after zombie with ease. "Demo! Acid grenade there!" he ordered, pointing at a large herd of zombies.
The demolitions mare nodded, before preparing her Portable Potions Cannon with a bottle of magically enhanced Sodium Hydroxide. The potion loaded, she took aim, firing a long, arcing shot that hit the herd of zombies dead on. The dissolved lye splashed into the crowd, and quickly began eating away the flesh, sped up to an almost terrifying degree by a magical catalyst that was never divulged to her. "I think I prefer the molotovs," she said, watching as the zombies began to turn to sludge before her.
"Yes, because having flaming zombies is so much better," Spike replied. "Fire a bait grenade over by the mines," he ordered, pointing to the side.
She obeyed, loading a foul-smelling potion into her PPC for another arcing shot. The bottle smashed, open, and a small breeze carried the awful reek over the zombies. They all turned as one, before marching towards the impact zone, ignoring where they stepped and the resulting explosions as the mines erupted.
"Good job, Demo. Can you handle it from here?"
"Yes, sir," she answered.
"Good, I have to check on--"
"Oh Buck!" the heavy weapons pony said.
"Heavy?" Spike called.
"I'm out of ammo!" he called out, panic in his voice.
"I'll be right there!" Spike called. "Try to keep your distance!"
"I'm--I'll--Ah! Celestia! Help!"
"I'm coming!" Spike yelled, before his powerful, draconic legs sent him flying forward, running towards the farmhouse with a speed that left the demolitions pony gaping.
Spike came skidding around the farmhouse, sending a crystal needle directly into the heads and chest of more incoming zombies as he ran. He ran to the door, and saw the bodies of twenty dead zombies, and the Heavy weapons pony, torn apart by the strength of the zombies.
He didn't stop, leaping over the dead soldier, and running to the stairs.
He heard the the screams of both Cedar and his Medic. He leapt up, firing his way through the zombies that were crowding up the stairs. His one-of-a-kind pistol tore through the zombie and passed through them, digging into the wood and stone behind them.
He spun into the room, claws ripping through zombie flesh, and his pistol rang out as the needles pinned them to the wall.
"I've got you!" he cried.
"We're done out here!" Manticore reported. "We're moving to support you now!"
Spike didn't answer, but his aim was true, taking down the last four zombies is just as many shots.
Spike turned to the ponies in the room. "Are you alright?"
"S-Scout's dead..." Amber muttered.
Spike nodded. "Cedar?"
"I-I'm here..." he muttered.
Spike nodded. "Alright. Thundercloud, get us out of here."
===ᐁ===
When they finally returned to HQ, Silver was tired. Spike had apparently gone to debrief Cedar, and made a crack about wiping his memory.
Although, Silver did have to admit that he wasn't sure the comment had in fact been a joke, but he just couldn't care about it now. The mission was a success, even though two ponies had been lost, and Spike had almost been proud of the numbers. "Not bad for a rookie team."
But Silver didn't really care, he was too exhausted to do anything other than sleep. He trudged to his room, dragging his kit behind him, and slumped onto his bed. He rolled over, pulling to the covers over his head, hoping to hide from the world for a few hours.
And then came a soft knock on his door.
Groaning, Silver turned over, and saw the Medic, Amber Breeze standing in the doorway. "Um...hi..."
"Hey," he grumbled, sitting up. "What is it?"
"Um...I...I know you're probably tired...b-but I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight unless I tell you."
"Tell me what?"
"S-Stainless Spur...before he died, he...he wanted me to tell you he was sorry."
"What?"
"I-I don't know, he just wanted to say he was sorry, for letting you down I guess?"
"No, why apologize to me?" he asked.
She blinked, confused. "Well...you're the leader."
"What?" he asked, now awake. "What are you talking about?"
"Commander Spike said you were team leader."
"He did?" Silver asked.
She nodded.
"I...I...What?"
"Why do you think he recruited you?" a voice said, and both ponies looked up to see Sweetie Belle hovering above them.
"What are you talking about?" Silver asked.
"You, you're a guard. You've had proper training for almost a full year. You have experience and training that no one else does. When Spike picks guards, he picks leaders."
"Well why didn't he tell me?" Silver yelled. "This is important! I...I don't even--" He caught himself from finishing the sentence. He had almost said that he didn't even know everypony's name in front of the Medic, er, Amber.
"Because you took to it well enough during the training exercises."
"That's not the same!" Silver said. "All these ponies are looking up to me, and I had no idea!" Like the scout, who had apologized to him for dying.
The scout whose name he did not know.
Sweetie sighed. "Well that explains why Spike was not impressed with your performance."
"I didn't--!"
"I'll talk to him," Sweetie Belle said, "but now you have no excuse."
Silver just stared, now fully awake as the ghost disappeared.
And suddenly, the weight of that apology, the last words of the scout, meant so much more. |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Red Night | Alpha Team received a new scout in about two days. His team had not been as lucky as Silver's, and almost all of them had been KIA'd on their first mission. His name was Spark Speed, although Silver noticed that almost everyone just called him Sparky.
They still did not have a replacement for their heavy weapons pony, but seeing as how he would have to come from another decimated team, Silver was not quick to wish for one.
In the time since finishing their last mission, Silver had been throwing himself into the team, learning their names, histories, and the like. Silk Star was a singer in some rundown bar, Neon Kick was a DJ in a club that had almost no one coming in, and Amber Breeze was a nursing student that was so deep in debt she couldn't afford her next classes.
Lemon Bubble was the name of the Demolitions pony, and she used to be in child care, before an accident happened and she failed her psychiatric test after a minor bout of pyromania sparked up in her psyche.
Mandible was a mystery, and proud of it. He said nothing, revealed nothing, and was incredibly smug about how much he was hiding.
That really only left Sparky, and Silver was still trying to learn everything he could about the pegasus. He was short, shorter than Amber by a few good inches, but he made up for it in sheer attitude. Even a novice in psychology could tell he had small-dog syndrome, and Spike clearly had wanted to channel Sparky's sass and attitude into speed, and according to the reports of his training he did a very good job at it.
Silver's eyes scanned over the report of Sparky's last mission, trying to study the stallion from his single time out in the field, when the loudspeaker crackled above him. "Alpha team, please report to the situation room."
Silver quickly dropped the papers, grabbing his kit and making sure his armor was straight before booking it across the compound.
He was the first one into the room, after Spike, of course. The dragon simply nodded, noting his punctuality but not much more than that. The rest followed in after him, filling the room. Amber, Silk, Neon, Lemon, Mandible, and Sparky and filed in, each taking a seat around the table, until finally Fluttershy, or whoever she was today came in last.
"Alright, Alpha," Spike said, once he was sure everyone was in. "I have a new mission for you."
"We're still down a pony," Mandible noted.
"Good to know you can count, Mandible," Spike grumbled. "This mission is going to be a little light. You shouldn't need any explosives, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to go along, Lemon."
She nodded. "As long as I don't have to watch melting zombies."
"We have a vampire in Vanhoover," Spike said. "He's not strong enough to worry about, but if we don't stop him he will become a problem."
"So we find him, and shoot him," Sparky grunted. "What's the big deal?"
"If it were that easy, Sparks, then I wouldn't still be here," Spike sighed. "He's hiding, and he's doing a good job. There have been a few disappearance which could be linked, but we've only found one body. Exsanguinated, and bone dry."
"A good sign, at least," Fluttershy said, her nose slightly in the air.
Spike nodded. "He's not strong enough to risk making a thrall, so he drained the victim."
"Thrall?" Sparky asked.
"Thrall, sir," Silver corrected for him.
"Aye, aye, Commander Hand-flank," Sparky grunted.
"A minor vampire," Fluttershy explained. "Created with only a single bite from a vampire, without killing the victim. It creates a vampire servant that has to follow its master's every command, until the master is killed, or...some extraneous circumstances."
"If a vampire is weak," Spike continued, "the thrall may attempt to kill the vampire that created him. Chances are the drained body shows that our perp is not confident in his powers to risk one."
"It won't, however, make him easier to find," Fluttershy noted.
"It never does," Spike agreed, before his eyes turned to the changeling. "And that, Mandible, is where you come in."
"I was wondering," Mandible said dryly. "I doubt infiltration works well for zombies.
"You and..." Spike paused, looking at Fluttershy for a moment.
"Oh...uh..." she said in a quiet, hesitant voice. "I...I think it's Diamond Dream's turn."
"Of course it is," Fluttershy said, confirming her own sentence. "Besides, I handle vampires better than the others, it's simply the logical choice."
"Until you need to stake them," she said in the rough voice of Manticore, "then you all come crawling back to me."
"Fluttershy?" Spike said, questioningly.
"I'm fine..." she said in the quiet voice. "Just...just a small argument. It's okay."
Spike regarded her a moment, before continuing. "Mandible, you'll be working with Diamond Dream to locate our Vampire before the rest of us swoop in to take him out. Do you all understand?"
"Yes, sir!" they all replied.
"Good, move out!"
===ᐁ===
Diamond Dream always thought Vanhoover was nice this time of year.
She and all the rest of her sat beside one of the city's man cafes, enjoying a cup of cafe au lait, while dressed in a lovely pale green dress, a large, pale yellow sun hat, and pair of round, sunglasses.
The rookies were surprised to learn that vampires could move in sunlight, they always were. And, as always, she to explain that vampires do not turn to dust when they touch sunlight. They do, however, lose almost all of their powers and abilities, which is reason enough for most to avoid the sun like the plague.
She sipped her coffee, watching the crowd around her through the glare of the orb in the sky.
A stallion approached, carrying a cup in a magical aura beside him. "May I have this seat?" he asked.
"Of course," she replied, motioning to the seat beside her. "Any luck?"
"Sadly not," he said. "There just isn't a pony around who knows where I can get one."
She nodded. "A tragedy, truly," she sighed. "It seems nopony knows where to find a decent silk vest these days."
A voice crackled in her ear. "And why is the location of a vest so important?" Sparky grumbled. "Or better yet, why are you two having coffee while the rest of us stay cooped up in this hotel room?"
"Luxury, my dear," Diamond said, looking at the stallion. "It's all about luxury. A vest such as this would be lusted after by the most discerning eye, and would gather more of the common people to whoever would don such a thing."
"What?" Sparky asked over the line.
The stallion beside her, Mandible in disguise, sighed.
Another voice, Silk's, cut in on the line. "She's saying that vampires like luxury, it attracts people to them."
"There are other wonderful advantages to luxury, dear," she said, staring at Mandible as though she were talking to him. "But none as great as the attention of the common pony, remember that."
Mandible straightened, getting back into character despite the ponies droning in his ear. "If luxury is indeed the greatest of things, then I must wonder, why Vanhoover? Is Manehatten not the most luxurious of cities?"
"If every vest was made in Manehatten, then they would be easy to find," she said, sipping her coffee.
"Yeah, so what about my other question?" Sparky grunted.
"If you go out there, dressed like that, you're going to tip him off," Silver said. "Mandible is good at hiding, and apparently so is Diamond Dream. They can hide and move without alerting the target. I doubt you can do the same."
"Yeah, well what about the boss? A dragon sticks out like a sore hoof, and you can't tell me otherwise."
"That's his business," Silver said, and Fluttershy nodded her approval, even though none could see it.
"Well I'm not happy about it," Sparky grunted.
"Noted," Silk said with a frown.
Diamond sighed, before she lowered her chin and whispered into her headset. "You don't need to be happy about it. It's your job. Now, no more names. Security is important, ponies."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Diamond then raised her head, and smiled. "Well, I wouldn't worry dear, there are plenty of shops to check before the night is out."
"I just worry that there will be too many," Mandible said, before he stood, ready to leave.
===ᐁ===
Silver watched over the room. For the past three days they had stayed in this tiny hotel room, all six of them, watching the city for any sign of their vampire. Silk was at the window, using the scope on her TS Longrifle to scan the horizon while the others sat at various instruments and maps, checking and re-checking with the infiltration agents to try and narrow down their search of the city.
Commander Spike did not stay with them. He showed up every morning asking for news, and asking to be kept posted before disappearing again. Running the Department, if Silver had to guess.
Likewise, Mandible and Fluttershy did not stay with them either. They had been moving through the city, never staying at the same hotel twice. This served both to keep the vampire becoming suspicious, and keep their cover of a rich couple touring Vanhoover.
"Shower's free!" Amber said, coming in from the bathroom, drying her mane in a towel.
Neon was in right behind her, slamming the door as he claimed the bathroom for the sake of common decency and his bladder.
The pegasus medic strode into the room, mumbling to herself. "How come everytime I walk into this room, I feel dirty?"
"Because the whole place is a pig sty?" Lemon suggested, toying with a lighter in her hooves. She hadn't opened it yet, but her constant toying with it was making Silver nervous.
"Yeah, probably," Amber agreed, before she began putting her armor back on.
Silk swept her scope around once more, searching the cityscape for signs. A raven that clings to a cloud, a stallion that avoids glass and mirrors, or a pony that was perhaps a little too interested in their room.
Silver moved up beside her. "Anything?"
"No," she answered, with a sigh, "Can't see anyone after us, and I don't think we'd be so luck at to him walk by."
"It's never easy," Silver agreed. "Keep your eyes open, though."
"Always," she said, continuing her watch.
Moving over to the radio equipment and magic-sensing radar displays, Silver took a quick look around. The radar was showing hundreds of faint, green, signatures, the nearby residence of Vanhoover, but none of the bright ones that marked a magic user with abilities in the Gigaprimes.
About two months ago, he would have been sure that the only that would have blipped on this thing would have been the Princesses themselves. The very idea that a pony could have enough magic in them to have more than a Megaprime was ludicrous. Of course, that was before he met a mare who drank apples, transformed into mist, and could punch through an inch of steel without trying terribly hard.
Amber wandered over to the radar, turning a knob to flip through various locations, before finally stopping on a single screen. A bright dot stood out on the radar, shining brightly against the background interference of the ponies.
"Infiltration team, please confirm," Amber said, speaking on the radio. "Confirm location, area C6. Repeat, confirm location C6?"
"Oh yes, dear!" Diamond answered on the radio, talking to mandible. "I love it, it's certainly not the vest we are looking for, but I do adore it on you. "
"Yes, dear, I do think you are right. I'll take it, my good sir."
"Roger that," Amber answered after hearing to the affirmative, before she took her headpiece off and began flipping through channels again.
Silver nodded, before checking with Sparky, who sat down listening to the channels between the infiltrators, trying to pick apart their code for any sign of their quarry. The scout looked utterly bored, staring up at the ceiling on the verge of falling asleep as he listened to the two drone on and on about fashion.
That was fairly bad, Silver would admit, but is was going to be worse. Watching the scout slowly nod off was making him tired, himself. Silver gave the scout a shake. "Stay up," he said, with a hint of a growl.
Sparky grumbled, before rolling on his hooves and stretching.
The thick clunk of the switching screens of the radar suddenly stopped.
"Silver?" she called.
Silver wandered over. "Names, Medic," he warned, before looking over her shoulder. "What is it?"
"That," she said, pointing to the screen.
Silver looked, before his eyes went wide.
The location read C6, and two glowing green points shone on the screen. Silver spoke into his headset. "Infiltration team, we have a possible sighting in C6. Please confirm?"
There was silence on the other end of the line.
A beat, two, and still no response.
The bathroom door opened once more, and Neon walked in, before suddenly becoming confused by the sudden tension in the room. "Um?" he began, only to be shushed by Lemon.
Another beat. A fourth, and then finally, finally an answer came.
"My dear," Diamond Dream said. "I do believe we have found the vest we were looking for."
===ᐁ===
"Alright, everyone," Spike said over the radio headset. "One last time, just so we're all clear. Manticore will approach the target in five minutes with the 'offer.' Assault, Sniper, Scout, and Infiltration will set up an ambush. If we're lucky, Demo, Medic, Support, and I won't need to be there, and I can take a nap."
Silver nodded, checking and rechecking this pneumatic crossbow. Dusk had settled over Vanhoover, and the sun had just dipped under the North Luna Ocean, leaving nothing but a dying red glow in the salty air.
Fluttershy was going to lead their quarry to the docks. "A perfect place for hunters to meet, isn't?" she would say, smiling just wide enough to reveal her fangs.
"Are we clear?" spike asked over the radio.
"We get it already!" Sparky groaned. "Can we get to it?"
"Do I need to remind you of what happened last time you rushed into something, Scout?" Spike asked.
Sparky went quiet, and even Silver felt the sting of the comment.
"That was not cool, sir." Sparky said after a moment or two.
"Noted. Are you going to cut the sass?"
"Yes, sir," he said, subdued.
"Good. So we all understand, yes?"
"Yes, sir," Silver said.
"Good," Spike said again. "Good hunting, Assault team. We'll be right behind you."
Silver nodded. "Alright, let's find a place to set up. Scout, why don't you go ahead and run through the docks. Find a good location for an ambush and report back."
"Whatever," he said before he ran forward, his magic horseshoes sending him flying forward, disappearing between the warehouses.
"Sniper, get us an aerial view, help Scout pick a place out, and find a perch," Silver said.
"You got it, Assault," Silk said, before spreading her wings and taking to the sky.
"Agent," Silver said, turning to Mandible, who simply stared at him with raised eyebrow. "You're with me. Keep an ear out for Diamond Dream's radio chatter. If she says something, let me know."
The changeling nodded, pulling his mirror cloak closer about himself, before together they walked down the wharf, waiting for an sign.
They plodded along, in silence, passing through the old, salt-encrusted buildings, and the fog that was beginning to form around them on all sides.
Past Warehouses 1A, 1B, 1C, and 1D, they walked, coming down to the end of the block, before turning, going up from 2D to 2A, when the changeling suddenly asked a question. "Why do we call Diamond Dream be her name?"
"What?" Silver asked.
"Well, we're all called by our duties, but she's an exception. I don't get--"
"No, no. I understand your question, I'm wondering why you're asking."
"What?"
"Well," Silver began. "You typically don't talk much, especially not to me. You hate me."
"I do," Mandible replied, "but I suffer from curiosity. Besides, if there's anypony here who would know it would be you, right? You are our fearless leader after all."
"What makes you think I know?" Silver asked.
"Well how about the fact that you spent three days stalking the team?"
"That was not stalking!" Silver cried indignantly. "I'm the leader, I need to know how the team works!"
"Yeah, yeah," Mandible said. "I've heard it all before. Heck, I've said it all before. Can you just answer the question?"
Silver glared at the changeling for a moment or two, before he spoke again. "We go by the codenames because we're still alive. There's a lot that can be done to us, we can be captured and held hostage, or killed and they can pretend they have us hostage. Real names have a way of identifying ourselves without giving things away to the enemy. Not to mention the fact that vampires tend to hide in positions of power, and they can track us down through our history.
"Fluttershy, or Manticore, or whichever, doesn't need to worry about it. Their history has practically been forgotten by the archives, and none of that can be used to hurt her anymore."
Mandible grunted.
"Assault," came Silk's voice from over the headset. "We have a spot."
"Where?" Silver asked.
"Fourth block, between warehouses 4E and 4H."
"Roger, we'll be right there," Silver said, before looking to the changeling.
"I heard her, I heard her, seesh."
===ᐁ===
Diamond Dream and her guest walked down the boardwalk onto the wharf. She said nothing, but continued to walk with an air of superiority and class.
Her guest, Sangery Lance, was a deliciously large earth pony. He carried himself like a lord, and had the bearing to earn it among those that he deemed unworthy. His coat was a dark, sanguine color, and his eyes, when not hidden by his enchantments, were the same crimson as all vampires.
"So, are you going to speak to me yet?" he asked, cautiously.
"Not yet, not yet, dear Sangery. Have a little patience," she said, dancing through the growing fog. "There are eyes and ears out here yet, and though our prey is weak alone, you do not want for them to call upon their sun."
He nodded, but looked around, growing increasingly nervous as they moved deeper into the docks.
"Ah, the sea," Diamond said, sighing wistfully as she took a deep breath of salt air. "I've always loved the sea, always moving, yet never running. As free as water will ever be."
Sangery sniffed the air. "It smells of pony."
"Of course it does," she replied. "They work here. They sweat here, bleed here.Their scent is as strong as the fish they catch."
Sangery nodded, but kept moving cautiously.
They walked between the warehouses, the mare leading him deeper and deeper into the mist. "If nothing else can you tell me what you wished to talk about?"
"We are creatures of lust, are we not?" she asked. "Lust for power, wealth, blood, and the warmth of a companion in the night. Nor are you the only one in Vanhoover, and we all need warmth tonight."
Sangery began to smile. "I get it...wonderful. I have to say, you have quite the command of the Equestrian language."
"It comes with time, my friend," she said, smiling as she danced in the fog. The October evening was chilly and clear, leaving the starlight above them unfiltered. Sangery watched as she danced, staring as her crimson eyes sparkled in the moon, and her form cast a shadow against the blue air around her.
It was captivating, enchanting, mesmerizing, fascinating. He could not look away as she led him further and further down the docks.
She spun and twirled, and Sangery followed, his gaze roaming over every inch of her body. Hunger grew in his eyes with every moment, and it took much of his control to wait for his promised reward.
And then she stopped moving forward, slowing her spin until she finally came to rest before her guest. She smiled, and brought a hoof up under his chin, and caressed him. "Oh, my sweet, pitiful fool," she said, sweetly.
Sangery blinked.
"Not even strong enough to turn to mist," she said, before she faded away, becoming one with the fog.
Sangery Lance had just enough to blink in confusion, when a crossbow bolt shot from the darkness.
His eyes saw it moments before impact, and he had just the time to shift toward the right, away from his heart. The silver-tipped yew bit into his skin, and he cursed as he felt it. The wood famous for growing through the bodies of the dead worked quickly, sucking the energy from him, out through the wounds.
He turned, ready to run, when he saw two ponies behind him, both armed with the pneumatic crossbows of the dreaded D.S.P.I.
He turned again, and saw another department agent, and the vampire who led him, her eyes hard and steely. He looked up, at the clear sky, and saw no one to stop him that way.
He took it in an instant, transforming into a bat, and taking wing. He flapped crazily, desperately trying to escape when his ears picked up a whisper on the wind. "Sniper?"
A scorching shot through the air, destroying the air around it, and slamming into one of his batwings.
He fell to the ground, transforming once more, and landed hard on the wooded decks.
"Well, you didn't kill him," one of the ponies around him said, before he pushed himself up onto his hooves.
His right foreleg was useless, burned to the point where the flesh almost slid off the bone.
He was not liking his odds.
He looked around, to the crossbow-armed ponies and hissed. "I will kill you all."
"Not likely," the steely voice of Manticore answered as she took a step forward.
"You! Why? Why are you helping them? They're prey!"
Manticore's face, normally serious and reserved, broke into an amused smile. "Prey? They are pery? Well, if I were a normal vampire, I suppose."
He looked up at her, confused, and caught sight of her eyes.
Her deep, fascinating eyes.
"If I were a normal vampire, they would be my prey, but I am not normal. I can survive off apples if I want to, and I can mesmerize almost anyone I want if their will is weak enough, but that's not my real power."
She was walking toward him, and leaving herself open. He could strike. Take her hostage. Barter for passage or even the odds.
But he did not. He did not even move as Manticore's eyes lay on him.
"No, the real impressive part is that I can drink blood. Any blood. Living or dead."
Sangery's eyes widened. Or would have, if he were not prisoner to her gaze.
"No, these ponies or not my prey. You are my prey."
She was close now, staring into his eyes only inches away. With his wound he was no match for his strength, and his will and energy was being drained every second by the crossbow bolts in his chest.
Her hoof pressed against his side and he fell over, still staring into her eyes. Then she pressed harder, and he winced in pain before she finally looked away.
"You are my delicious, delicious prey."
He tried to struggle, tried to break free, but his wounds weakened him too much. He could not push her away. Could not save himself as her snout and fangs grew closer and closer to his neck.
And so she drank.
And so he screamed.
===ᐁ===
"So..." Sparky said to the vampire once the rest of the team had arrived to deal with the body. "Why did we need to be here?"
"Vat do you mean?" Butter Streusel answered.
"You dealt with that vampire well, it didn't look like you needed our help."
She smiled. "Do not underestimate sie power of a vooden bolt," she said with a smile.
"Sure," he said, neither believing her, nor impressed, before walking back to the rest of the team.
Spike meanwhile stood by the desiccated body of the vampire and sighed. "Well...she did it, I was just hoping for something a little quicker."
"Sir?" Silver asked.
"I wanted a clean kill," he said, before grabbing the body by the hoof. "Ah well, he's dead, and the rest of us are still on our hooves. Mission success everyone. Let's head home."
Silver nodded. "Alright, form up everyone! We're heading home."
The ponies gathered together, forming ranks to move quickly through the city back to the subtrain they had arrived on, while Spike dragged the vampire to the edge of the dock. Still holding it by the leg, reached back, and with all his draconic strength, threw the body into the air. It spun and cartwheeled, flying up into the foggy sky, before Spike took a deep breath.
A jet of green flame shot out, engulfing the body, before it splashed into the sea.
And the body continued to burn.
It quickly turned to ash as it floated on the surface, ablaze in dragonfire.
And Spike stared at it, his face hard.
"One day," he whispered.
"One day." |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Frozen Grave | Spike sighed. He always hated when he had to show up for Royal Court. While the opportunity to see Princess Celestia, his surrogate mother, was always welcome, dealing with the ponies that constantly surrounded her was not.
"Sir, please stay five feet away from the throne," a guard said firmly, interrupting Spike as he gave his long list of budget items.
Spike looked over at the guard that spoke up and sent him a glare.
"He is aware of the rule, Brass," the soft voice of the Princess said. "He is exempt."
The Princess was as radiant as ever, in the two hundred and twenty years since his hatching, the Princess had not changed. She did not appear a day older, and no wrinkle blemished her face. Her coat, as white as driven snow almost sparkled in the light of her throne room, and her horn, long, and powerful, was enveloped in an aura of gold as she daintily held a tea cup aloft.
The guard nodded, and stepped back, allowing Spike to continue.
"New recruits, supplies, as well as all previous matters, brings the total expenses for the year to fifteen million bits."
"Princess, if I may, this is outrageous!" a stallion said behind him. "That is far too much money for a...what do you do again?"
Spike sighed as the latest in a long line of bureaucrats tried to take money from him. "That's classified," Spike said.
"So you say, but this is the national budget we are talking about," the bureaucrat said. "This is money that could be used to fix roads, build hospitals, create and distribute medicine! Don't we, as representatives of the people to her majesty have a right to know where this money is going?"
Spike sighed. He had heard this argument a hundred times, and far more elegantly put. Every time it was the same. "Oh, we have a right to know!" "Oh we deserve the money more!" "Gimme gimme gimme!"
He really hated bureaucrats.
Spike looked up to the princess, who offered a sympathetic glance before speaking up. "I know what he does, and that is enough. Fifteen million bits is granted to the DSPI for the coming year."
"Thank you, your Highness," Spike said, bowing.
"B-but Princess Celestia," the pony complained, "we could--!"
"If I deem your duties as crucial as his, then I will grant you the same funding," the Princess replied coolly. "Of course, it would help if you were at least as trustworthy as him."
The stallion went quiet, and the older, wiser politicians simply shook their heads.
Spike sighed once more, and excused himself from the throne room, and stepped outside, followed by Silver every step of the way.
The dragon looked back at the assault following him, before grunting. "Everything you dreamed it would be?"
"Yes, sir," Silver replied.
"You were expecting that?" Spike asked. "You are just asking for pain, aren't you?"
"I actually wanted to ask you a question, sir," Silver said.
"Ah! Of course. That makes way more sense," the dragon nodded, checking his belt.
"What happened to Miss Fluttershy?"
Spike stopped, and there was a long second of silence.
Finally, Spike spoke again. "So...what's your question?"
Silver furrowed his brow. "I asked already."
"No, no you did not," Spike growled, before turning to face him. "You did not ask that, because you're not stupid enough to ask that question. Try something else."
"I was just curious, sir," Silver said.
"And that will get you killed," Spike grunted, before he began walking once more. "If you still haven't learned any better by the time we get back, you can ask Fluttershy. Or Discord, if he ever comes back for tea. What's your question?"
Silver sighed, before staring up at the ceiling. "Who's our new Heavy?"
"Chestnut, from Gamma team. A little less than half of Gamma wound up annoying a Lycan we were trying to bring in for parole, and died because of it. Gamma is being broken up and repurposed, so you're getting a new heavy, and he's not going to be a rookie."
Silver nodded. "Very good, sir."
===ᐁ===
Chestnut was big. He was bigger than their last heavy by almost a foot, both height and width. He also constantly wore the biggest smile Silver had ever seen. "So you're the new boss, huh?"
"Um...I guess you could say that," Silver admitted.
"Good to meet you boss!"
"We've met before," Silver noted.
"We have?" Chestnut asked, sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I'm bad with faces, and not so great at names either."
Silver shook his head. "Don't worry about it..."
"Yes, sir," Chestnut said, smiling still. "So what are the orders today, sir?"
"Well," Silver said. "Actually I was coming to get you for our next mission."
Chestnut blinked. "Did...did I miss the announcement?"
"No, no announcement. It's not an emergency, but we're being called in," Silver told.
"Oh, thank Celestia's forehooves! I thought I was going deaf there a second! I'll be at the situation room in a minute, sir."
"Yeah..." Silver said, "good...you can...uh...lay off the sir stuff, though."
"You got it!" Chestnut said, before he dipped back into his room to grab his equipment.
Silver shook his head. Maybe it was the giant earth pony's smile, or his apparent slowness when it came to names and faces, but Silver was beginning to wonder if maybe they could get the heavy from a different team.
===ᐁ===
"This," Spike said, as a magical holo-map hovered before them, "is Evenlight Manor, located on a hill just outside of the rural area of Manehatten. It's famous for being 'that old haunted house' that everyone talks about. You know the kind. The one where colts throw rocks at the windows, and dare each other to touch the doorknobs. Just rumors right?"
The ponies of Alpha Team all stared at him from around the table, silent and waiting.
Spike grinned. "Of course not. We don't deal in rumors." He walked back around the table before sitting at it's head, Sweetie Belle's ghostly form floating beside him. "The house builder, a stallion by the name of Marble Moonlight, had some dealings with a cult. This is not a good sign, especially when he decided to sacrifice his young daughter to some crazed demon, and sealed his fate.
"Demons don't actually want pure souls, they're no good for them. The demon wasn't happy, so he unleashed the daughter back on Marble. Now, that would be a nice enough story for us, but one of the things you learn here is that demons like to screw everyone over. So the daughter, a miss Primrose Gemlight, has been stuck haunting the the mansion ever since."
Spike waited to make sure that everypony was on the same page. "Now, normally, Miss Primrose is rational and reasonable pony, but every now and then, the isolation and some residual magic of whatever curse has bound her to the house causes her to turn into a slightly manic, bloodthirsty ghost.
"One of our responsibilities, as the DSPI, is to care for the citizens of Equestria that have managed to resist the various urges of their transformations, and miss Primrose is one such citizen. Every six years, on the sixth day of June,the demon's curse disturbs the remains of Miss Primrose' body. Today, is the sixth of June, so your mission tonight is to enter the manor, find the crypt, and locate Primrose Gemlight's remains, before returning her grave to it's proper state."
"What do you mean 'find the crypt?'" Silk asked, staring at the holo map of the mansion. "Don't we have a floor plan?"
"Of course we do," Spike said. "It just doesn't matter. Every time her body is disturbed, she changes the house. Not by any conscious effort on her part, mind you. She couldn't even lead you through the house herself. That's the bigger issue, here. Luckily, we have Siren," he said, motioning to Sweetie Belle. "Her duty is to try and navigate the house and aid the scout in locating the crypt."
"Of course that's my job," Sparky grunted.
"You're a scout. That's your only job," Spike said.
"When do we leave?" Silver asked.
"You leave as soon as possible," Spike said. "I am needed down in Las Pegasus with Delta Team, investigating a murder that may involve another vampire."
"Another one?" Neon asked. "How many vampires live here?"
"Enough," Spike said. "You'll take a subtrain to our Manehatten hub, in half an hour. Be ready. Siren will be leaving with you, and she'll lead you to the manor. You are to leave with Primrose Gemlight as alive as a ghost can be. Any more questions?"
"No, Sir!" Chestnut said with a smirk.
"Good. Move out, Alpha Team."
===ᐁ===
The rural area of Manehatten, a large stretch of farmland that provided the city that did not sleep with thousands of pounds of grain, roots, and fruit that fed the city, was silent. On the outside of one of these farms, was a single hill.
Time and weather had not been kind to the hill, one whole hillside had been eroded away, leaving a side that was so steep it could be called a cliff. At the top of this cliff, along with a single, withered oak tree, sat Evenlight Manor.
"Huh...is it just me,or is it creepier in real life?" Neon asked as Alpha Team hiked up the hillside.
"Happens all the time," Sweetie Belle told him. "Magical ecto-energies tend to throw people once they arrive. It tends to produce an air of nervousness and anxiousness in anyone who gets too close."
"So...it is just me?" Neon asked.
"Basically," Sweetie said, floating ahead "but not without reason."
"Lovely," Neon said.
"Siren," Silver said as they all tread the ancient gravel path that crunched beneath their feet. "Do you have some kind of 'spirit sight?'"
"I do, in fact," she answered. "Although, not by that name."
"What do you see?"
"Pain," she answered. "A lot of pain. Insanity, loneliness, fear. This is by no means a good place."
"Lovely," Spark muttered.
"Do you see miss Primrose?"
"Yes," Sweetie Belle answered. "She's on the top floor. It's her room I believe."
"Do you think she'll take visitors?" Silk said with a smirk.
They quickly climbed up to the ancient house, and before long, they all found themselves before the large, heavy, dark oak doors with Silver at the lead.
Under most circumstances, the door would have been an imposing piece of carpentry. Here, in the soon-to-be open maw of Evenlight Manor, it was nerve-wracking. The doors were almost terrifying, and stood so tall that even Chestnut felt tiny in front of them.
Silver took a deep breath, before he slowly knocked on the great door, doing his best not to shake.
His knocks resounded against the dark oak like the rumbling of timpanis, and the sound echoed in their bones. Silver could almost feel the sound shake his legs and rumble his rib cage. The silence that followed, however was worse.
The silence was deafening. It somehow rang in their ears, tolling like a bell in their minds even though there was not a sound.
The silence was so encompassing, that when the door creaked open, the sound of the rusty hinges seemed to roar in their ears. The open door stood before them, yawning with darkness, eager to swallow them and the light whole.
"Is the fact that my hair standing on end more of that ecto-energy crap?" Sparky asked.
"Yup," Sweetie answered.
"Great," the scout said, raising his pneumatic crossbow, and stepping inside.
The team quickly stepped in, and the found themselves in a large, foyer. The room was perhaps fifteen feet wide, with a second floor balcony. To the left and right were two sets of two doors, all identical, all impossible to see beyond. Directly ahead of them, on the far side, was a set of double doors, both carved from the same dark oak that the front doors were made of. Two set of stairs, flanking the set of doors at the far end of the foyer, led upwards, into the foyer, where three doors sat, one on the left, one on the right, and one right above the double doors.
The room itself looked destitute. Cobwebs hung everywhere, and a thick layer of dirt covered every surface. A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling, but for the dust and webs, Silver could not be sure if it were made of crystal or simple stones.
He was willing to bet it was the former.
"Alright, everyone, stay close," Silver said. "Scout, Support, up front with me. Heavy, demo, on the back. Sniper, Medic, Agent, in the middle."
They all nodded, and got ready. Chestnut and Lemon were obediently in the back, both the mini-cannon and portable potion cannon pointing back at the space behind them. Mandible, Amber, and Silk took up positions in the middle while Spark and Neon fell in directly behind Silver. Sweetie Belle joined the formation last, floating above them.
The house groaned in response.
"So," Sparky grunted. "Where do we start?"
Silver looked up at Sweetie Belle. "Well, Siren? Anything we should worry about?"
"Not that I can see," she said.
The assault shrugged. "Then that first door is as good as any," he said, pointing to the right.
No arguments arose as they began to move to the first door on the right. Their weapons were raised, searching for anything that might move against them. Silver kept ahead, both his crossbow and blade out and ready, before he opened the door.
Silver, Sparky, and Neon swept the room, checking it over for any sign of life or unlife.
Nothing but dust and cobwebs met them. "We're clear!" Silver said, before stepping in.
The team moved in, entering what seemed to be a study. Bookshelves lined with ruined titles, all destroyed by time and a the grey-black mold that clung to them. Between a pair of shelves on the left wall was another door, leading, if logic still had dominion here, to the second room on the right from the foyer. A desk sat in the middle of the room, decorated with a lamp, an ancient, dry inkwell, and a open book. A pony skull sat opposite the lamp, and a rune was painted across its forehead in dark brown ink.
It could have been blood.
Every inch of the room, from the rotting curtains to the worn, green rugs, was covered in that same dust and cobwebs from the room before. "Siren, is everything normal?"
"So far," she answered. "This room is where it is supposed to be," she said, floating down to the ground, and staring at the skull.
"That's some good news," Silver answered, before he moved towards the other door in the room. He passed the great windows that looked over the distant cityscape of Manehatten, and moved to the door that lead deeper into the house, his team slowly forming behind him.
He grabbed the knob, weapons ready, as Neon and Sparky flanked him, ready to fire into the doorway.
With a twist, it was open.
And Silver blinked as he found himself staring into Chestnut's eyes.
He spun back, toward the door they had just entered through, and could just barely see himself staring at the back of his own head.
Silver slammed the door shut, and the door they had come through slammed just as loud.
Sweetie Belle gave a short laugh. "That's always a fun trick."
"Siren, what's going on?" Silver asked.
"Spatial manipulation. Any ghost can do it in their own territory."
"Can we get out of it?"
"Yeah. When a ghost kills you it needs to be violent. Locking you in a loop like this is just to get you panicked."
"Good to know," Silver said, before opening the door again.
Once more, he was staring into the same room he was still in. "Is there any reason to not walk through?"
"No, it might speed up the release," Sweetie Belle told him.
Silver shrugged, and walked through the door.
There was a sight shiver that ran down his spine as he passed over the threshold, but beyond that, nothing happened as he crossed back into the room.
"Should everyone else go through?" Silver asked.
Sweetie Belle shrugged. "No idea. Each spatial manipulation is a case-by-case thing. Probably wouldn't hurt though."
"I'm glad you're so sure about this," Sparky muttered before stepping through the door. He shivered as he stepped out on the other side. "That was weird."
Chestnut volunteered for the next passage through, followed by Amber, and Silk. Lemon was the next one to go through, and took a single step towards the open portal that defied space-time, when the doors suddenly slammed shut.
She jumped, surprised by the sudden sound, but recovered just quick enough to keep the various potions on her belt from agitating. "Is that supposed to happen?" the demolitions pony asked.
"It's a sign that we should be able to get through," Sweetie explained.
"Great," Silver said. "You heard the lady, let's move, everypony."
The team reformed their marching order, support, scout, and assault at the front, medic, infiltration, sniper in the middle, and heavy weapons and demolitions in the back. "Are we ready?" Silver asked.
"Yes, sir!" they answered back.
He nodded. "Let's move," he said, before opening the door.
Nothing.
An open, yawning darkness faced them.
Silver had just enough time to blink, before he felt an odd pull toward the door.
Another blink, and he was becoming aware that forward was becoming down as gravity pulled him through the door.
Another beat, and he began to scream. Neon was falling with him, tumbling into the darkness, while Sparky's wings spread, throwing him backwards into the room.
Another second, and Silk's own wings were spread. "Silver!" she cried, leaping after him into the darkness.
And then the door slammed shut behind her.
"Assault!" Chestnut cried, shoving his way forward, before he slammed into the door, throwing it open.
And then, they stood in a lounge.
And Neon, Silk, and Silver were nowhere to be found. |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Frozen Grave - Laid to Rest | That's it, Silver thought, I'm dead. I've gone and broken rule number one. I've died, I'm dead, it's over.
This complete, encompassing darkness is death. This utter silence is death. The cold floor beneath him...was death? Probably? It did suck the warmth out of him with incredible speed, and left him feeling alone and desperate.
Then again, he was feeling stuff, and feeling stuff was typically a sign of being alive.
A moan escaped his lips.
No, not his lips, someone else's.
His guard training kicked in before anything else. "Sound off," he moaned.
"Still here..." Neon groaned.
"Ow..." another voice called. "It feels like I crashed into a mountain."
"Sniper?" Silver said. "What are you doing here? You were behind us."
"Sir, saving your flank, sir," Silk grumbled, as Silver heard the shifting of a pony behind him.
Silver grunted as he got to his hooves. "Well, that's what you get for doing the medic's job."
Neon gave a short, hollow laugh, quickly followed by the sound of a horn ringing with magic. A light appeared, a ball of soft, ever changing light. It danced from orange to red, purple to green, and green to orange once more, throwing the room into long shadows against the multi-colored walls. "So where the heck are we, Boss?"
"Well," Silver said, grunting, "it's dark, it's cold, and we're surrounded by stone. So, probably the basement, if I had to guess."
Neon groaned. "Why?"
"Well," Silver said, "Siren said that the whole spatial manipulation thing was supposed to get us panicked. It could also be used to split us up, for the same reason, I guess."
Neon groaned.
"Sniper," Silver called, getting Silk's attention.
"Sir?" she asked.
"Contact the rest of the team, try to let them know where we are while you follow behind me, Support keep the light ahead," Silver ordered, before he began walking down the hallways. "Come on."
"Come in, Alpha Team, come in," Silk called on her headset.
No answer came.
"Um...Assault, I'm not getting anything."
Silver nodded. "I was afraid of that. What about you, Support?"
Neon quickly checked. "Nothing."
Silver tried once on his own, just to be sure.
Silence.
He sighed. "Well, it looks like communications are down for us, team."
"Great," Neon groaned. "Well, at least we're closer to the crypt now."
"Not necessarily," Silver replied. "With the whole spatial manipulation thing, the basement could be in the attic for all we know."
"Thanks, Assualt, you really know how to inspire confidence," Neon said, rolling his eyes.
"It could be worse," Silk offered.
"How?" Neon asked.
"Have you not watched a horror movie?" she asked. "The fact that we haven't seen the ghost yet is a great sign. You always see the monster by this point, so we're doing great."
"That's an odd take on it..." Neon said.
"Nah," Silk said, "we're going to be fine. Just remember, no sex, no drugs, no alcohol, and no going off on your own."
Neon gave her a look. "It sounds like you've watched a lot of horror movies," he said, sarcastically.
Silk beamed with her biggest, proudest smile. "Nightmare Moon Movie Marathon! Every Nightmare Night, haven't missed a single one!"
Neon shook his head.
Silver nodded. "Can't say the same."
"It's okay, it's not an easy thing to do," she answered with a smile.
"No, I've never watched a horror movie."
"What?" Silk all but screamed.
"Not a one," he said.
"What do you mean you haven't seen a horror movie?" Silk asked aghast.
"Never watched one. I didn't want nightmares as a foal, so I didn't watch them."
"Not even the old ones?" Silk asked. "Nightmare Moon on Elm Street? Camp Crystal Plains? The Ritualist? Seance?"
"Nope," Silver said.
"Changeling? Changelings?" she continued. "Look, I'll forgive you as long as you don't tell me that you watched Changeling vs. Hunter."
"Is that the one where changelings come from space?"
"You need some serious re-education," Silk sighed.
"You..." a hoarse voice whispered, and all three ponies turned.
A mare floated behind them. Her skin seemed to glow a pale blue-green, and almost appeared to be made of tattered rags. She bounced before them, hovering like a buoy on the wind. The only part of her that seemed alive were her eyes, both shimmering a beautiful shade of hazel. "You should not be here...now you have to die."
"We're with the D.S.P.I.," Silver immediately said.
"The...department?" the ghost asked. "Then...maybe you won't die."
Silver nodded. "We're here to find your body and lay it to rest once more."
The ghost nodded. "Good...Commander Spike was always so nice to me...but...I don't know the way to my body..."
Silver nodded. "Don't worry ma'am, we'll take care of it."
She nodded, before her body began to fade from view. "Thank you...Please...don't die."
Once she was gone, however, the three ponies turned back once more. "So..." Silk began again, "what about newer stuff, like Hacksaw?"
"Nope, never seen that one either," Silver said, leading his team of three deeper into the basement.
===ᐁ===
Chestnut bust into the room beyond the study, his cannon whirring to life. "Assault! Support! Sniper!"
No answer, simply a lounge with a dusty pool table, and worn furniture.
The rest of the team ran in, with Lemon in the doorway, wedging it open. The ponies ran in, spreading out in the fan-like pattern their Commander had taught them.
"Where are they?" Chestnut asked.
"Somewhere else in the house," Sweetie Belle told him, hovering behind the team as she did her best to shepherd them inside. "I can't tell where."
"I'm not reaching them on comms," Amber said.
"Oh, no...they must be dead, what a shame," Mandible said, snarkily.
Chestnut kicked the next door, sending it flying off its hinges. A short hallway met him, and he roared into it. "Assault! Support! Sniper!"
"Heavy!" Sweetie Belle cried after him. "Heavy, stop!"
He ran down the hall, and was about to hit the next door, when Sweetie Belle appeared ahead of him. She stood before him, mouth open wide, and screamed.
The sheer force of the cry halted the heavy in his tracks, and every pony behind them all covered their ears as the piercing wail washed over them. It shook them to the bone, and it sent shivers in their souls.
When the cry ended, the ponies finally began to recover, and they immediately faced the stern face of Siren.
"Stay together!" she growled. "If you go charging in like that, the house will kill you. If you stay together, you will be able cover, if you split, you die. Am I getting through to you?"
"B-but..." Chestnut said, standing, "but Assault, Sniper, and Support are alone!"
"They have each other," Sweetie Belle said, "and that's the best they have right now."
"But what if they die?" Chestnut cried.
"If they die, it'll be sad," Sweetie Belle said, "but if all of you die? That's a failure, and then more ponies will die. I need you to live, understand?"
Chestnut sighed. "Yes, Ma'am..."
The ghost nodded. "Alright, collect yourselves, and we'll move on. Move into the same room all at the same time, and don't get separated."
The group gathered themselves once more, and Chestnut sighed.
He hoped the others didn't die. He liked the new boss.
He just wished he could remember their names.
The filed into the next room, a dining room with a massive table. The plates were piled high with food, and decorated with enough silverware that the table top glistened. Fruit pies, oat dishes, fried grain patties, all sat, oozing oils and sugar so that it shone in the oddly beautiful light.
No one made a move for it.
At this point they knew better.
"Which door?" Lemon asked as she unbarred the door they just came through, and let it close behind them.
"I'm hesitant about using the double doors," Sweetie said. "Double doors should only lead to double doors, even with spatial manipulation."
"So we're looking for another single door?" Sparky asked, taking lead again.
Sweetie Belle nodded. "That only leaves us with one option..." The door opposite them, on the other side of the table.
"Looks like it," Sparky said, as the team began to move around the giant feast. They quickly bunched together, getting ready to enter the next room, when Sparky turned the knob.
The door did not open.
He tried again, still nothing. "It's locked," he said.
"Keep trying," Sweetie told him.
"Uh...guys?" Amber said.
"Have you tried pushing it?" Mandible asked.
"No," Sparky said, turning to the changeling with all the sarcasm he could muster, "I've never opened a door before. Please, tell me how!"
"Guys?" Amber called again.
They turned.
The food had spoiled since they turned around, or perhaps it had always been spoiled, and simply revealed itself to them after all this time. What's more, it began to move. The mush of old, maggot-ridden fruit began to undulate and shake.
"Um..." Mandible said, as the food began to coalesce.
The mush began to rise, a terrifying mass of grey ooze stood on the table, forming pseudopod legs, eager to swallow the ponies alive.
"Heavy..." Sweetie Belle said as the creature rose before them. "Why don't you work on the door."
===ᐁ===
"What about The Wabalook?" Silk asked.
"Now I know you're making that up," Silver said.
"No, that one is a thing," Neon said. "Monster from a children's book comes out of the children's book and haunts a single mother and..what was, her nephew?"
"Something like that," Silk said.
The discussion of horror movies had continued on for the past half hour. In all honesty, Silver was getting tired of it, but he did his best to add to the conversation, if for no other reason that to steady his nerves. Something in this house was pricking at his will, poking into her side, and shaking his resolve. Talking about movies he had never seen was certainly a distraction from it. That, and Silver was sure the others felt the same. "And it was called the Wabalook? That is the weirdest thing I've ever heard."
"Well, it certainly isn't the weirdest movie out there..." Silk said. "There was that one that was about STDs..."
"It Chases?" Neon asked.
"That's the one," she agreed.
"What now?" Silver asked.
"It was weird..." Neon said.
"It kinda was..." Silk said. "I mean, I liked it, but it was weird."
Silver nodded, before he took the corner, and froze. The other two were quick to follow, and likewise stopped at the sight before them.
A door.
A heavy, peaked, wooden door with a massive chain sealing it shut. Gigantic locks held the chains in place, and an arcane symbol, written in blood decorated it's face.
"Support?" Silver said.
"Well..." he replied. "In my limited experience, that's definitely a blood seal."
He dropped his bag, and quickly searched his kit. It took him a moment or two, but he finally pulled a manual from his bag. "Blood seal, blood seal..." he muttered, flipping through the pages. "Ah, here we go. Alright, this looks like it is something called a four-element blood seal."
"Does it it tell you how to break it?" Silver asked.
"Yeah, and it's not an easy process," he answered. "We're going to need some of the four classical elements."
"Of course we are," Silk grumbled. "Why is it always the four elements? What's so special about them?"
"It could be worse," Neon said, flipping through the manual. "There's one here where we would have to find a fresh blood sample that matches the seal."
"Alright, so...I guess air is easy enough..." Silver said.
"My thermal crystal will probably get us our fire," Silk offered, motioning to the longrifle on her back.
"I guess that leaves earth and water," Neon finished.
"Do you think we can throw a rock at it?" Silk asked.
Both Silver and Neon gave her a look.
"What? I'm not a unicorn," she huffed.
Neon flipped through the manual again. "Hang on, let me...just...check..." He flipped through a few pages. Then a few more. "It...says...it...says..."
He closed the notebook. "We...we throw a rock it..."
A beat.
Two.
"We what?" Silver said.
Silk began to smile.
"We...we throw a rock at it..." Neon repeated. "It's...it's in the the manual."
"I..." Silver said, "I'm not sure how to..."
Silk smiled.
Silver sighed. "Support, go find us a rock."
===ᐁ===
The monstrous ooze of moldy food was not going to go quietly. It roared, a giant maw of tarnished silverware drooling yet more ooze onto the floor beneath it.
Chestnut slammed into the door, throwing his shoulder into it again and again as the monster began to move for them.
Mandible was swearing up a storm, firing his light pneumatic crossbow ineffectively as the bolts slapped into beast, piercing it's hide, but little else.
"Why does he have steak knives?" Sparky yelled. "We're herbivores!"
Sweetie Belle, being dead, did not feel as pressed by the danger of the situation, and watched for a bit. "Well, there were rumors of Mr. Moonlight being a cannibal. We never managed to confirm those, however."
"Help us!"Amber screamed, while Lemon stood to the side, trying to pick one of her potion grenades.
"Is mold acidic, or basic in nature?" She asked, even though she knew she would receive no answer.
Sweetie, however, took another second or two, before acting. Another wail tore into the monster, forcing its membrane to shake and wiggle at an amazing speed, but still, it did not stop, nor slow.
"What are you talking about?" Chestnut asked, punctuating each word with a slam into the door.
"You can clean mold with bleach!" Lemon said, before she grabbed one of the potions. "I just can't remember if bleach acts like an acid or base!"
Chestnut slammed into door, and still it did not give. "Just shoot it with one, and if it doesn't work, use the other!"
"What do you think I'm doing?" she asked, before aiming her Portable Potion Cannon. A satisfying thwump sounded as the glass canister fired directly into the ooze. The canister smashed open on contact, and a clear liquid splashed harmlessly against its body.
The ooze still did not slow.
"Buck! It needs the acid!" Lemon yelled, loading her next potion.
Chestnut slammed into the door again. "Anytime now!"
A long arm of ooze grabbed mandible by the gut. He screamed as the grey slime streaked cross his chitin. "It's got me! Ugh! It's disgusting!"
Thwump!
Lemon's second canister flew forward, smashing into the ooze, this time followed by a hiss as the acid began to work. The ooze screeched, screaming with a voice it should not hear, a voice that made everypony present oddly aware of their teeth.
Mandible fell to the ground, dropped as the pseudopod writhed and curled in on itself. The changeling's mouth hung open and it looked like he might say something, before he ran behind Chestnut, slamming into the door with the earth pony. "Get you fat flank moving!"
"Call me fat flank again, and you're going to be guts on a windshield!" Chestnut grunted, before he threw his shoulder into the door once more.
The ooze still screamed, shaking the table and rattling the dusty, crystal chandelier above them, but they all knew it would recover quickly through some sixth sense they could not explain.
"If you would like to remain alive, I would suggest you move," Sweetie Belle said, hovering above them.
"Really!" Mandible screamed. "Because I was totally planning to just stand here and let it eat me!"
The door still did not give.
The monstrous mold gnashed it's sharp, silverware teeth, before it drew itself up, like a massive sentinel of goo. Lemon fired again, and another acid bottle smashed against the ooze's skin.
It writhed again as the acid began to eat away at its flesh curdled.
Chestnut slammed into the door again.
Again.
Again.
Finally there was the sound of splitting wood, and the door came off it's hinges.
"Move! Move!" Chestnut yelled, before he turned, firing his mini cannon as he stood in the doorway. Bullets made from both silver and cold iron screeched through the air as the team began to rush for the door.
Sparky flew in, followed by Amber, Lemon, and Mandible. Chestnut fired one last burst before he dived in, throwing the now free door back into the doorway, closing off the ooze.
And then, almost as if the door had never been torn from its hinges, it clicked shut.
There was a scream.
"Medic?" Chestnut cried, answering the scream as his world transformed to darkness in the blink of an eye.
No answer.
"Medic? Where are you?"
Nothing.
"Scout?"
Silence.
"Demo? Agent? Siren?"
And then he realized, he was alone.
===ᐁ===
"Okay," Silver said, as he stood over his small fraction of a team, "we have a rock, a shot from the longrifle for fire, and we're using the atmosphere for air."
Both Silk and Neon nodded.
"That means we still need water."
Neon nodded again. "It's a shame Lem-er...Demo isn't here. I know she carries Sun-blessed water."
"That would be an expensive key," Silk noted.
"Still, it would probably save us."
"Yes, but she's not, so there's no point discussing it," the pegasus said.
"So, brainstorming," Silver interjected, trying to get them back on track.
Neon opened his mouth to speak, when a scream echoed behind them. All three ponies turned their heads and stared into the darkness.
"That...that sounded like our demolition's pony," Neon said.
"Get your kit," Silver ordered, as he drew his silver and obsidian sword.
The others obeyed, shouldering packs, and prepping weapons.
"Support, grab the rock."
"Seriously?"
Silver looked back at him. "We fell down through a door, I'm not taking chances, here."
Neon shrugged, conceding the point, before he grabbed their little stone, and began following Silver back down the hallway.
Another scream, this time more masculine.
"That sounds like Scout," Silk said.
"So it does," Silver said. "Come on, let's move out."
===ᐁ===
Absolute darkness.
Chestnut stumbled in the darkness. His flashlight wasn't working, his weapon provided no light. All there was was darkness.
Screams, all far away, echoed against unseen walls, and those faint, bone-chilling cries were the only reminders that he was lost in this void that surrounded him.
It was so, incredibly dark...
When the screams went silent, all he was left with was the ragged sound of his own breathing, which sounded far too loud, and the thud of his heartbeat ringing in his ears.
Why was it so dark?
Why?
Where was...
Was there... It...
So dark.
His hooves were shaking around his mini cannon's handle, and he quickly began to regret never praying late in his life.
He should have known better, growing up in a Celestrian school. He could still remember his his morning classes beginning with the same morning prayer over and over and over again until he almost swore he would never say that prayer again.
"Celestia is sunlight, warm and nurturing. Celestia is fire, severe and judging. Celestia is hope, everlasting and abundant.
"Kind Celestia, grant me mercy. Mighty Celestia, give me strength. Watchful Celestia, walk with me always.
"Grant me the warmth of dawn, the cheer of noon, and the serenity of twilight."
He tried reciting the prayer aloud, but the words sounded far too loud for to actually speak those words.
Nonetheless, he prayed them, if only in his head, for the first time in years. The tiny prayer repeated in his mind in a tiny circle of mantras, turning over and over until he wasn't sure which end he started from.
And then he heard a noise like booming thunder.
"Alpha Team! Alpha Team! Are you out there?" the words roared passed him, but he knew that voice.
"Assault?" he answered back, the sound nearly making him deaf. "Assault?"
"Heavy?" came back an answer.
"Assault!" Chestnut cried again, before a shaft of light shot into his eyes.
"Heavy!" Silver said, before he ran up to the great earth pony. "Where is everyone?"
Chestnut blinked wildly as the light stung his eyes, but he spoke nonetheless. "We ran into a doorway to escape this...ooze thing...and we lost each other."
Silver nodded. "I was afraid of that, I think the house is getting harder on us..."
More light flooded around the heavy weapons pony as the support and sniper ponies came up around him.
"Do you know where the others are?"
Chestnut shook his head, before he set down his cannon. "Man, boss, am I glad to see you!" he said, taking out a flask and taking a swig. "I was getting worried I wasn't gonna make it."
All eyes went to the flask in his hooves.
"Heavy..." Silver asked. "What's in your flask?"
Chestnut blinked. "Oh! Oh! No! No! It's not what you think it is! It's water! I sweat a lot! I need to drink a lot! It's not alcoholic, I swear!"
The other ponies all looked at each other.
"Heavy," Silver said, "when we get out of here, I'm putting you in for a medal."
===ᐁ===
Amber swam in the darkness.
It was a complete and total darkness.
Or, at least, she had been.
She blinked as she stared up at the rough stone above her, and wrestled with the nagging sensation that too much time had passed.
Finally, she groaned, sitting up to find the others all surrounding her. They too were slowly recovering, as if from a dream.
She held her head, groaning.
And that's when Chestnut, Silver, Silk, and Neon all turned the corner.
"What..." she asked, her mind in a haze. "Assault? What happened?"
"We got through," Silver explained. "Heavy here got us through, we were able to put Primrose to rest."
She nodded. "Oh, okay then..."
"There you are!" Sweetie Belle said, appearing through a wall. "Are you all alright?"
"Medic?" Silver asked.
"Give me...give me a couple of seconds, I'll check everyone once the room stops spinning."
===ᐁ===
The mission was a success.
When Commander Spike was notified, he was impressed that no one had died, and that they managed put Miss Primrose to rest in record time. Chestnut did not get a medal, but the idea to permanently add water bottles to all kit certainly was considered.
Silver was just happy to be home, where ponies would call him by his actual name. Dropping his kit down in the corner of his room, Silver climbed back up on his bed, with every intent to sleep.
This was then quickly interrupted by a knock on his door. "Silver! Silver! You in there?"
The unicorn sighed, and rolled back off the bed, moving to his door. "What is it?"
The door opened, and Silk stood on the other side, smiling. "Guess what I have?" she asked in a sing-song voice.
Silver remained unamused.
Silk still smiled, before she shifted her wings to reveal a film reel. "This is the original, uncut, unrated Changeling Movie!" she said with a squee. "Can you believe this? Apparently Miss Storm can get her hooves on any movie ever produced in Equestria for the past hundred years! I can catch you up!"
Silver blinked.
Silk kept smiling.
Silver stared.
Silk kept smiling.
"You're not going to leave me alone unless I watch this."
"It's necessary!" she said, her smile finally breaking. "It's like never seeing Star Mares."
"Never seen those either."
She stared at him, eyes wide. "You need serious re-education," she said, grabbing him with her hooves and dragging him to the movie theater in the rec-room. "You're coming with me!" |
The D.S.P.I. | R&R | It was the third movie marathon that week, and Silver was beginning to feel like he was sitting in his own filth. He had not moved from his seat for eighteen hours now, and he was beginning to get antsy.
Silk, on the other hoof, was as enraptured as she had been eighteen hours before, a single kernel of popcorn sitting between her lips as she gaped at the movie screen, giant bucket of the buttery snack sitting on her lap.
Honestly, he would've left by now, if not for the death glare the seemingly comatose mare would shoot him whenever he began to get out of his seat. Of course, the truly impressive part was when she then returned to watching the screen, mouth all but hanging open as she ate her popcorn kernel by kernel.
Who does that anyway?
Why doesn't she just grab a hoof full and eat them like a normal pony?
He watched as she lifted another, single kernel to her mouth, chewing slowly as she stared into the giant screen that held the image of a screaming mare, about to meet her doom.
If he was perfectly honest, all these movies were beginning to blend together. Whether it be ancient burial grounds, psychos, demonic dolls, it all seemed the same after a while.
They hadn't had a mission for the week, and the days off were beginning to blend together. Commander Spike was offering jobs to the other teams, and Silver was beginning to worry about it. Did he do something wrong? Was their last mission not good enough? Were they being relegated to guard duty of the most boring door in the Department?
Silver didn't know. It could have been just as likely that Spike was just giving them the week off.
So, instead, he was sitting here, watching boring movies to keep himself from flying into a panic about his performance.
And, if nothing else, the movies were definitely boring.
Honestly, watching Silk eat popcorn was just as exciting, and she was eating it wrong.
He watched, as yet one more buttery piece of popcorn came up to her mouth, and past her two...luscious...full...hypnotizing lips.
He blinked, and shook his head, trying to rid himself of that thought.
That was...weird, at the very least.
He needed to get out more.
===ᐁ===
When mealtime came around, along with a great case as to why they should leave the Department's theater, Silk and Silver finally emerged, blinking in the light. Silver was quick to duck away and run himself through a shower, just to get the stench off of him.
When he finally returned to the mess hall, he saw all of Alpha Team sitting at the table, laughing as he came in on the tail end of yet another story. "And-and that's why--" Neon said, trying his best to speak through tears. "That's why there's a fence around it!"
"They built a fence?" Sparky asked, laughing.
"They built a fence."
"Hey, hey," Chestnut said scooting over to make way. "Here's the boss!"
Silver took the seat, happy to be sitting in some proper light. "Afternoon, Alpha team. What's been going on?"
"Just enjoying the downtime, boss," Chestnut answered.
Lemon nodded, as she threw her lighter between her hooves. "You have to love the vacation hours we get here."
"Well, I'm not surprised," Mandible grunted. "They have to give us something to keep us docile, considering we lay our lives down all the time..."
"Always the ray of sunshine, Prisoner," Silver noted as he popped open a can of soda.
"One of us need to be the grounded, logical one," Mandible said, "and quite frankly, I just don't trust any of you ponies to have the mental capacity for it."
Chestnut laughed.
Mandible shot him a glance.
"What? That was funny?" the heavy weapons pony said.
"You do realize I'm insulting you, right?"
"It was still funny," Chestnut answered.
The changeling shook his head.
"So where have you two been all day?" Amber said, smiling knowingly at Silk and Silver.
"Watching horror movies," Silver answered, as though it were obvious.
"Good horror movies," Silk stressed. "If I'm going to reintroduce him to this, it needs to be the cream of the crop."
Amber seemed slightly disappointed by the news, but continued on. "So how has that been going?"
Silk turned to him.
Silver sighed. "They're...okay, I guess..." he said. "I liked maybe two or three of them, but I'm not the biggest fan."
"Oh, don't say that..." Silk said.
"I'm sorry, Silk," Silver said, exasperated. "I'm just not that into them."
The pegasus sighed, before she sighed. "Well, at least now you know how to have good taste."
Silver smiled, and was just about to dig into his meal when a voice rang out. "Alpha team!"
They all turned around and saw Spike standing on a small balcony. "Report to training room 3 in five minutes!"
The others nodded, and quickly began to finish their mostly-empty plates, and finished their lunch as quickly as they could. Silver, meanwhile, blinked as he stared down at his own tray, stacked high with food.
He sighed, grabbed the apple off his plate and his can of soda. "So glad I'm got to eat something other than popcorn today," he muttered.
Then again, at the very least, he knew how to eat it right.
===ᐁ===
"Welcome to the Danger Room, rookies," Spike said, standing in the middle of a large, white-tiled room.
Silver had never been in training room 3 before. They had passed it back on orientation day, but the Commander never spent more than a passing sentence on it. Of course, if the perfectly blank room was as empty as it seemed, that would make sense.
Of course, the large yellow line that read "DO NOT CROSS" in big, bold, black letters quite a giveaway to the contrary.
"This room is perhaps the most technologically advanced room in all of Equestria. And as it name implies, it is also the most dangerous room in all of Equestria," Spike continued, before he began to pace along the tiles. "Whenever a team manages to win a week of R&R, like you did, they need to spend one session in the Danger Room."
A claw stepped one of the tiles, and in quickly shot up, revealing a strange nozzle beneath it. There was a spark, and a jet of flame shot out, burning orange in the air where Spike was. Or had been, because he had leapt into the air in the time it took to blink, leaving the flame to sputter uselessly.
He did not have time to rest as he landed, however, as a tile on the wall slid open, and stream of darts shot forward, all towards Spike. The dragon simply raised a claw to catch them in the air as they flew at him. "The point is to keep every member sharp and ready during times of rest. The last thing we need is for one of you to get just rusty enough that you wind up dead."
A third tile shot up like a pedestal, and a ball and chain spat out and swung around, nearly taking out Spike's legs.
But the dragon was fast. Far too fast for the traps of the Danger Room, and the ball did nothing but bounce along the tiles.
Spike dodged through the room, as darts, arrows, blades, and gouts of flame, a the while carrying on his conversation with Alpha Team. "Regardless of your performance in the Danger Room, you only need one session. If you do well, great."
He spun around, catching a spear that had been thrown at him, and threw it back in a single motion. The spear slammed into the tile right beside the spear launcher, and it began to glow an angry red. "If you do poorly, well...then I suppose your medic will have a little more practice than she wanted."
Spike then walked back, across the line. "Set difficulty to level one," Spike ordered.
"Yes, Commander," came a voice from the ceiling.
"And lock the door until they've completed the session," he said, as he stepped through the doors, only for them to close behind him.
"Yes, Commander," the voice repeated, as a very large bolt slid into place.
Alpha Team all stared at the door, before looking at the rest of the white-tiled room.
"Please cross the line, Alpha Team," the voice said.
There was a beat.
"Well, he lowered the difficulty, right?" Sparky said. "It can't be that bad?"
"Well," Mandible said, "technically speaking, we don't know how difficult it can be, without a sense of scale, anyway."
Silver did his best to fight back a sigh, before finally speaking. Well, there are exactly two ways to find out."
"Actually trying it, and...?" Silke asked.
"Um, hey!" Silver shouted, "Voice in the ceiling?"
"Yes?" it answered.
"What is the most difficult setting for this room?"
"It is not advisable to use that setting," it answered.
"I understand that," Silver said, "and I do not want to use that setting. I just want to know what is the maximum setting."
"Maximum available setting is undefined."
"Undefined?" Silver asked.
"Undefined: adjective, not clear or defined."
"What? No, no," Silver said. "I know what undefined means, I just...what do you mean that the maximum is undefined?"
"The Danger Room has no theoretical maximum," the voice answered. "It is based off of an algorithm, defined by the late Princess Twilight Sparkle, which slowly builds difficulty over time. The inaugural session is typically used as a reference point, on which all future session are based."
"I...see..." Silver answered.
"For reference," the voice continued, "Commander Spike was using a level 50 program."
"Level 50?" Neon said. "Somehow I expected him to be higher."
"Level 50 is the highest recommended setting for normal ponies. However, it is Commander Spike's recreational setting. His current maximum is 362."
"Oh."
There was a moment of silence.
"Well, level one can't be that hard, right?" Chestnut asked.
"Ah, quit your whining!" Sparky said, crossing the line. "It's level one, not--"
Clang!
Sparky was immediately silenced as a cast iron pan slammed into his face. Knocking him out cold.
Amber sighed, before she flew over, dragging his body back over the line.
"Spark Speed," the voice said, "currently failing level one. Deadly foe is equivalent of grandmother with a frying pan."
Neon snickered.
"If the rest of the team could proceed across the line," the voice asked.
"Sure," Silver said, "just let us collect ourselves."
"Of course," she answered, as Amber slowly brought Sparky back up.
"And...could you discount Sparky's first try?" Silver asked.
"Deleting file...Complete."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. When you're ready, Alpha Team."
Gathering themselves up again, Alpha Team crossed the line.
===ᐁ===
"Well done, Alpha Team!" the voice from the ceiling said, as the ponies crawled back across the line. "You have reached level 20! Your chances of survival are 25% higher than average!"
Chestnut groaned, with a large, hypodermic needle stuck in his flank. "Make the room stop spinning..." he moaned.
Sparky, who had been hit with yet more frying pans, cradled his head in his hooves, trying to keep a headache from forming.
Amber had managed to got out mostly unscathed, but she looked liked she had suffered with the rest of them. Panting, she crossed the line, muttering about her kit having been completely used, before yanking the needle out of Chestnut's flank.
"Ow..." he muttered.
"You did well!" the voice continued. "In three more levels you reach potentially deadly attacks, so level 20 is an optimal level for your training."
"Good to know..." Silver said, following behind his team as they slowly made their way back to safety across the line.
"I will send a digital copy of your result to the commander, post haste. Congratulations once more, Alpha Team! Unlocking doors now."
The door hissed, before sliding open, letting the ponies free.
Silver grunted. "Thanks--" he began before pausing. "Um...I...I actually didn't catch your name," he said to the invisible voice. "D-did I miss it or...?"
"Running introduction sequence," the voice said, before continuing. "Welcome, Department Employee! I am TWI, and experimental, artificial, arcane-based intelligence. I am a tool in charge of the various security measures of the Department, as well as various administration roles, including power and emergency communiques. How can I help you?"
Silver looked up, blinked. "Um...no...Thank you TWI."
"You're welcome," she answered.
===ᐁ===
The next day, Alpha Team was enjoying lunch once more. Neon, Chestnut, and Sparky were swapping stories again, while the mare listened and laughed. Mandible, while he did sit with the ponies around him, did not interact, instead remaining quiet, and brooding.
Silver, meanwhile, was focusing on eating, because he was not going to let some surprise training exercise keep him from a meal.
A lull appeared in the conversation, and the team and a collective sigh escaped the ponies around the table. In the resulting silence, they all heard the clack of the claws on steel. A handful of the ponies looked around, to see Spike walking behind them, down into a hallway.
Neon watched him before nudging Silver, pulling the assault's attention away from his meal. "Hm? What?"
"Do you know the Commander goes all the time?"
"What? You mean his room?" Silver asked, his mind thinking back to red, wooden door with yellow candle carved into its face.
"Yeah, have you seen it?"
"I've seen the door, sure," he answered.
"Have you ever been inside?" Neon whispered.
Silver blinked, before he realized that everypony around the table was listening intently.
"No..." Silver admitted. "Sweetie Belle told me that Spike killed the last pony who entered it."
"What?" Sparky whispered under his breath. "That's crazy..."
"Makes you wonder what he's hiding," Mandible said.
"What makes you say that?" Amber asked.
"Everyone has something to hide," the changeling answered.
"It..it is pretty serious, considering he killed a pony," Lemon whispered.
"Well, you say that," Silver began, "but we've all seen Spike in battle. I would not be surprised if he could snap my neck without really trying. It could have been an accident, and we just don't know."
Mandible smirked. "Aw...is someone making excuse for their boss?"
Silver raised a eyebrow in the changeling's direction. "And I thought projecting was below you."
Chestnut laughed.
"Look," Silver said. "I think it should be pretty clear, that we should just avoid that room, alright? That just makes sense."
"Totally agree!" Silk said, sitting beside him. "I mean, sure, he didn't really respect our privacy when he recruited us, but I'm rather a fan of living."
"Well, for as long as we can, anyway," Lemon said with a smirk.
===ᐁ===
Cold hooves dug through cold earth.
They moved far beneath the ground, deep under even the Department's headquarters.
They were given orders, and they were eager to carry them out.
They moved quickly, clawing through the rock and soil, as if their lives depended on it.
Or, at least, whatever remained of their lives.
They dug, slowly moving their way, driven by hunger, but still as strong as the day they started.
They were so very, hungry.
They stopped.
This was it.
This was the silver-laced concrete they were looking for.
Rushing water was just beyond the wall.
But it was not going to slow them down.
They were so hungry, and they were finally ready to feed.
===ᐁ===
Silver finally finished his lunch, and was returning his tray to its little collection station, when an ear-splitting klaxon blared in his ears.
"Danger! Danger!" TWI cried over an unseen intercom. "Security Breach! All members, active and inactive, must gather all gear and prepare for battle!"
Silver dropped the tray, and ran for his room.
At the very least he had a proper meal this time. |
The D.S.P.I. | This Means War | Silver slammed into the room and grabbed his kit as quick as he could. He loaded a magazine of bolts into his pneumatic crossbow and ran, heading back to the mess hall with all speed.
TWI's voice rang out again, through hidden speakers. "Multiple breaches detected. Areas A and C are in imminent danger. Teams Alpha, Gamma, and Omega, report to A. Teams Beta, Phi, and Tau, report to C!"
Silver took a sharp right, barreling down a hallway to head towards the Armory. He was the first one there, and what he saw was terrifying.
Ponies, or what once were ponies, climbed into the hallway. Their fur was basically gone, and their skin was a pale, disgusting grey. Their teeth, once flat, were ground down to thin, needle-like points, and their eyes were sunken into their heads. Their skin was stretched thin against their bones, and their lips were stained red.
He didn't even think twice about firing into them.
Bolts slammed into the monsters, and they stumbled in the onslaught. The silver-tipped bolts pierced their thin, grey skin, and two of them fell to the ground.
There was not a drop of blood.
He fired until the magazine went dry, and was quick to reload.
And that was not quick enough. The monsters already began to recover, standing again, even though they were completely filled with bolts.
A string of cursing followed his reloading, and the beasts were quick to begin their advance. They stamped forward, moving toward him with hunger in their eyes and teeth bared.
Only for the heavy fire of Chestnut's mini cannon to interrupt them. They deadly rounds bit into the grey skin, snapping bone in half as the heavy weapons pony moved closer. "Got your back, Boss!"
"And I'm glad you are!" Silver said, as a thermal shot scorched overhead.
"You need to stop running ahead, Assault!" Silk said, as her long rifle whined to cool. "I can't keep saving your flank all the time."
"I'll take that under advisement," he replied, before he began to fire his crossbow once more.
Three of the beasts were down, hopefully for good now that they had been hit with something more serious. Unfortunately, whatever beasts went down there were three to replace them climbing from the breaches below.
Sparky shot by, unleashing a pair of bolts into the monsters, while Neon and Amber both shot into the room, firing their weapons.
"Molotov incoming!" Lemon yelled, before a glass bottle smashed into the mob, lighting them ablaze.
Mandible leapt up next to Silk on a catwalk, firing bolts from his light crossbow.
"Keep laying down fire!" Silver yelled. "Don't let them get up!"
Chestnut laid down suppressing fire, aided with shots from Amber, Sparky, Neon, and Mandible.
Silk was slower waiting before one of those monster's popped up above the lip of the hole in the floor before sending a searing shot over the heads of her teammates. The beasts' heads fell, charred and cooked, and one of the monsters stopped to smell his now fried comrade.
The other teams, Gamma and Omega, finally appeared, laying down their own fire as all three heavies began to cover the field. Silk was joined by another two snipers on the catwalk, and together, they began to fry to ghouls where they stood. Sparky began running with two more scouts, and before long, all three teams were working together, each meshing together with his own duty.
"Hey," a dark grey pegasus cried, sliding up next to Silver with his own obsidian/silver blade. "You guys doing alright?"
"Be doing better if you weren't late!" Silver answered with a grin.
"You hear that boss?" the new assault yelled to the unicorn with the potion cannon, "They're saying we're late!"
Unicorn demo smiled. "Well I guess we'll just have to hit the ghouls twice as hard to make up for it! Let's go Gamma team!"
A cheer went up, followed by the air filling with crossbow bolts.
"You hear that, Omega?" an earth pony agent said, draped in her mirror cloak.
"Sir, yes, sir!" replied the last four ponies. They were bandaged, slower, and looked like they had recently gone through hell.
"Well I'm not going to let them do the job for us, even if we're not back up to full. I say we double their kills, what about you?"
"Sir, yes, sir!" they answered, before they practically threw themselves at the enemy, the five ponies eager to prove themselves, injured though they were.
Silver's radio suddenly burst to life. "Alpha Team, come in! This is Heavy of Beta Team!"
"Beta Heavy, this is Alpha Assault, I read you!" Silver answered, firing into the monsters.
"You're the new guys, right?" the Beta team heavy asked.
Silver blinked. "New...ish?"
"Alright, you about these?"
"Info would be good," Silver admitted.
"These are ghouls. Smarter than zombies, twice as hungry, and more importantly, intentional. This isn't an act of nature, this is an attack."
"Oh, wonderful," Silver muttered.
"Go for head and neck shots!" the Beta Heavy continued. "Everything else is wasted ammo."
"Roger that," Silver said before he began yelling at his team. "Go for head and neck shots!"
"You got it, Boss!" Chestnut said, before he adjusted his aim to be slightly higher. Half-inch balls of sun-blessed silver slammed into the ghouls, ripping their skin and tearing them apart as every barrel of Chestnut's mini cannon was beginning to glow red. "I can't keep up the suppressing fire, my canon's starting to overheat!"
"Support, Agent, Scout, Medic, Demo, keep them pinned while Heavy cools his weapon."
"Yes sir," Lemon said, before firing another grenade. It exploded in a shower of glass, and the liquid hissed whenever it touched the dead flesh of the ghouls.
"Sniper, keep knocking them out," Silver ordered, before drawing his blade.
"Can do," Silk replied, before another shot of heat and light slammed into a ghoul, leaving the air smelling of smoke and cooked flesh.
Silver jumped forward, bringing his obsidian and silver sword down into the skull of the monster in front of him, and felt it split the bone.
He ripped the blade away, and swung for the neck, cleaving it apart before he moved to the next ghoul, who swung wildly as he tried to attack the unicorn.
Silver ducked beneath the blow, and made his own, driving the sword straight between the eyes.
He really did love this blade.
"Teams Phi and Tau!" Beta Heavy cried into the leader's radio channel. "I need back up, here! My team's occupied, and I need to cool down."
Silver thought about letting the heavy know he was still on the radio, but instead focused on striking another ghoul. His team and the others hitting the enemy hard, and were slowly gaining ground on the breach.
"Keep pushing forward!" Gamma demo yelled, firing potion grenade after potion grenade.
"You heard the stallion, push!" Omega Agent said.
Silver smiled, and began pushing with the rest, forcing the enemy back to the hole they dug through the concrete. "Let's go, Alpha Team! We're pushing them back!"
And suddenly a scream cut in on the radio, and all three of the leaders heard Beta Heavy's last, panicked shriek.
"Calling all teams!" a new voice cut in. "This is Phi! We need support! They ghouls have something big over here, and we need back up. Beta Team is down, I repeat, Beta Team is down!"
Silver shared a look with both the Agent and Demo from the other teams.
"We'll take care of this," Gamma Demo said, before he fired a grenade into the hole.
Silver nodded. "Alpha Team! With me! Beta's down, and they need backup!"
They picked themselves at his order, and quickly began to pull back, retreating from the room as the both Gamma and Omega Team took up the reins.
They left the room, turning to run through the hallway, and running straight for the training rooms. They quickly turned the corner, and were instantly met with the sight of three corpses littering the hallway.
"Always a good sign," Mandible muttered, before they found themselves staring at the breach, and the monster responsible.
The beast was massive, five time larger than a pony, and three times as wide. Its chest and forelegs were massive, while its head was minuscule. Its skin was the same pale grey of the ghouls, but its muscles were massive, leaving the skin stretched thin and splitting across its body.
Phi and Tau had both taken heavy casualties, leaving both at half strength, and most of their comrades on the floor. Some already were missing chunks from their flesh.
"Demo, hit 'em hard!" Silver yelled.
Lemon responded with an explosive round straight for the beast's head, and fire and sound answered her.
"Move up, Team!" Silver ordered. "Move up and bring him down!"
Chestnut answered with the roar of his mini-cannon.
Silk took to the air, trying to find a good firing position, while the others began to move forward, firing into the beast. Silver-tipped crossbows dug deep into the monster's skin, and the scorching shots of the TS longrifles seared its flesh.
"Hit it with everything you have!" Silver yelled, before a pony walked past him.
Fluttershy simply sauntered past Silver, as if the entire battles was simply not happening. She walked through the crossfire, completely unbothered for the silver and flying wooden stakes that filled the air around her.
"You know," she said in Manticore's voice, "for once, all of us were enjoying the time off. We were all happy for thirty minutes, and then you come along," she said, speaking to the ghoul that was trying to defend itself against the onslaught of attacks the ponies were pouring on him. "If I'm honest, I'd be using words my hostess doesn't like, so let's just say peeved. I am peeved beyond belief, and I am going to make sure you feel every second of it."
She hissed, baring her fangs, and spreading her leathery wings in fury, before leaping into the air, pouncing for the monster's neck. Her teeth bit into the beast's flesh, and she ripped the muscle free, tearing the ghoul apart.
She spat the flesh out as the beat moaned in pain, before growling. "I've always hated ghouls. You taste the worst." She bit again, before tearing through the monster's arm.
"Sniper!" Silver yelled.
"I have a shot!" Silk yelled, hanging from a pipe by her hind legs.
"Well, don't keep Manticore waiting!" he told her.
"Roger, sir!" she answered, before a scorching shot fired straight into the ghoul's head.
Fluttershy smiled as the ghoul screamed as his flesh bubbled. "Let's see if you taste better cooked!"
She bit him again, ripping and tearing at him while the ponies around kept firing into it, trying to bring it down.
Silver's radio crackled again. "Alpha Team, where are you?" Spike's angry voice asked him.
"We moved to C to support Phi and Tau," Silver answered.
"I already moved Manticore towards C! Omega has taken damage, and Gamma can't keep these creeps down."
"We'll be right there!" Silver yelled. "Alpha Team, back to A!"
"But we just got here!" Sparky grumbled.
"Double time!" Silver yelled, ignoring the complaint, and leading them back across the compound. "Spike's mad at us for moving."
"Great," Mandible replied, "so the boss is going to chew us out after this too."
"Just be happy he's not big enough to actually chew us out," Lemon replied.
"Less talking, more running!" Silver ordered as they galloped back down the hallway.
They burst back into the lobby in front of the armory, and were met by a sea of ghouls. It seemed they were trying to overcome with quantity what the other side had tried to complete with quality.
Omega team was down to just their agent, firing her lone crossbow into the ghouls, while Gamma, down to seven ponies, tried to take on the hoard.
Luckily, the Commander was there. His strange flintlock firing its trademark, purple needles, and each one found its mark in a ghoul's forehead. His free hand cut through throats, and broke necks with a furious, frightening ease.
"If you are assigned to a post, you stay there!" he growled as Alpha team entered the room, and Chestnut began firing his mini-cannon into the crowd of ghouls.
"Sorry sir, we were--" Silver began, before Spike interrupted him.
"Don't apologize, shoot!"
Silver obeyed, firing his pneumatic crossbow into the crowd before drawing his blade.
Crossbow bolts and scorching blasts of magical heat filled the air, and ghoul bits and pony blood began to litter the ground.
But slowly, eventually, they pushed the mob back, beating back or killing the ghouls back towards the breach.
"Demos," Spike called, as they moved closer to the edge of the pit. "Special Grenade designation 00-AB1!"
Both Lemon, and the leader of Gamma team both loaded a glass flask.
"Where do you want it, sir?" Lemon asked.
"The pit!" Spike yelled. "Where do you think?"
Both ponies answered with a shot into the breach, where a thick, clear, viscous liquid covered the ghouls in the breach.
A Spike took a deep breath.
Dragon fire caught the ooze, and it went up in an instant, transforming the breach into a massive bonfire. Ghouls transformed to ash before their very eyes, and the heat was so great it even began to melt the concrete.
The blaze lasted ten seconds, no more, but it was just enough to do the job.
Spike looked down at the scorched breach, and shook his head. Another puff of flame lit a cigarette, and he took another long drag before he spoke into his radio. "Manticore, how are we doing?"
"We're pretty much finished here, Commander."
"Roger that. Velvet Storm, can you order us some concrete and give me a report of our losses?"
"Right away, sir," came the reply.
"The rest of you are dismissed until further notice," he said, before he turned, and walked away.
===ᐁ===
It took three hours before a full report came across Spike's desk, and he was not happy about it.
Phi and Tau were both down to half strength, and would probably have to united into a new team. Beta was gone, Omega was down to one person, and Gamma was down a pony. The only team that had managed to get through this attack was Alpha team, and the only reason they had done so well was the large amount of time they had spent traveling between point A and point C.
And that was just casualties.
The tunnels the ghouls dug were some fifty miles long, before reaching a collapsed section. With the point of origin unreachable, the only option at this point was to fill it back up, and seal it. The cost in concrete alone would be a fortune.
Of course, the meaning behind the tunnel was far more alarming.
The ghouls could not move quickly, not without tools, but searching the tunnel revealed nothing in terms of excavation equipment. Conservative estimates had the ghouls digging for twenty years.
This was a deliberate, intentional, and long-term attack, and it was an attack. This was an act of war. Someone, somewhere, wanted the D.S.P.I. destroyed. Someone with patience, and someone with the means to mobilize a small army of ghouls.
It...could it be Him?
Spike almost froze at the thought.
It...it...
It couldn't be. Ghouls were below Him.
But He had the lifespan.
He had the power.
Spike claws clenched at the thought, almost ripping the report he held as rage began to flood his being.
He...if He were behind this...
Spike threw the reports down onto his desk, and stormed out of his office. The dragon fumed as he walked down the hallway, and smoke rose from both his paper cigarette and his nostrils, both thick and black.
If He were behind this...if He was somehow behind all of this.
Spike came down to the old wooden door, the one with the simple candle carved into it's face, a replica from a bygone time, and entered, roughly.
The room was as dark as he left it, and filled wall-to-wall with his things. He ignored them all, however, as he walked up to the centerpiece of his hoard.
The smooth, crystal surface was almost glowing in the darkness, and Spike's fury seemed to subside as he rested a claw along it.
It...it couldn't be Him.
It didn't seem like His handiwork.
He would be more precise, more devastating, and would leave Spike alive and cursing. The ghouls were too clumsy. They could have killed him and left the department alive, and that wasn't how He played things.
Spike sighed, as he stared at the transparent magenta crystal beneath his claws.
If...if it wasn't Him...
"Not yet..." Spike muttered. "Not yet..."
He stared at the crystal, and its center, before signing one more. "Soon..." he promised. "Soon."
Spike took another breath, and let his claw slip off the immaculate, transparent surface.
He turned back to the room, in all its darkness, and all the memories that hung from wall to wall, the monument of everything...everything that was taken from him.
"Soon..."
===ᐁ===
Silver sat with the leaders of the last three teams. The demo from Gamma, named Chrome Shift, and the Sniper from Phi, named Hunter all looked down the briefing table.
Spike sat at the end of the table, frowning, cigarette still in his mouth. "Gentlecolts," he said, addressing the team leaders. "This was nothing less than an attack on the department."
They nodded, listening intently.
"And this, whether you realize it or not, means war," Spike continued. "With this attack, the Princess has authorized me to activate all projects of the department, including some projects which have some...psychological effects on the subjects."
Hunter and Chrome both frowned.
"We will also be receiving aid from both the Crystal Empire and the Griffonstone branches," Spike told them.
"And what about us?" Hunter asked.
"You are going to be working," Spike answered. "While we have been attacked, we have no idea as to who is behind this. The first thing we need to do is identify the threat, then we can begin to properly engage them."
"So..." Chrome began.
"So you're going to have a week. Heal up, prep yourselves, acclimate to your new arrivals, and then you'll be sent on a few reconnaissance missions."
"Yes, sir," they replied.
"In the meantime, I'll keep my ear to the ground, use my contacts. We're not going to let this go. This, gentlecolts, is war." |
The D.S.P.I. | Regroup | "Clear!" Sparky yelled.
Neon and Silver then filled into the room, pneumatic crossbows leveled. They both crossed to the next doorway across the room. They took a moment to gather themselves before Silver opened the next door.
His crossbow swept across the room, and he found nothing. "Clear!" he yelled.
"Contact! Contact!" They heard Sparky yell into his radio.
Silver turned, leaving the room immediately as the team began to file in the hallway back for Sparky.
The sound of thunder roared as flintlock's fired, and Sparky yelled in pain.
The lights went up, and Spike shook his head. "Sparky, stop running ahead."
The pegasus growled, sporting a nice red welt covered in fluorescent purple paint. "I'm the scout! I'm supposed to run ahead!"
"You're supposed to lead," Spike said from his observation post above the mock building they were raiding, watching along with the other teams. "That means the others should be able to follow you."
Sparky sent up a long string of curses.
Spike stared down, unimpressed. "Keep whining, but we're going to keep running this until you can clear a room without getting shot. Gamma, you're next."
Silver sighed, before he led the team back up the steps to the observation deck.
Sparky muttered behind him. "It's not fair. That target wasn't there the last time."
"That's the point," Silk told him, saving Silver the need to point out the very same thing.
"Yeah, yeah," he grunted.
Mandible shook his head, obviously not impressed with his teammate.
Gamma got into position below them, and the lights dimmed as the exercise began.
For the past three weeks since the attack, Spike had been drilling them on urban exercises. "This isn't the good ol' days," the Commander had told them, "where vampires took titles like count, and cultists hid in haunted castles. We're going to find them in warehouses and office buildings. So you need to know how clear a room before they can get a spell off, because you won't make it if you can't."
And so it had begun.
"Ivory! Watch those corners!" Spike ordered as Gamma's scout dropped to the ground, narrowly avoiding the paintballs that flew over his head.
Chrome Shift, the demo and leader of Gamma team, answered with a timed grenade, bouncing it off the wall and exploding on the target.
"Good move, Chrome," Spike called.
A shot took down their support in a burst of green paint.
"Thunderwing! Make sure the room is clear. Just yelling clear isn't going to help anypony!"
The lights went up, and Spike ordered them back up. "You're not leaving until I get a perfect run, ponies."
Omega prepared themselves for their next run, as the ponyquin targets and they're paintball turrets ran on rails to randomize their locations in the building as doors and walls switched up.
Sparky quickly lost interest. He turned from the team down below, and let his gaze wander over to Silk. "So, Silk...you doing anything later?"
She turned and glared at him. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah, tonight. Are you doing anything tonight?"
"Not with you," she answered.
Neon suppressed a snort.
"Hey, c'mon, don't be like that babe."
"Babe?" she repeated.
"Look, I'm sure we can do just fine," Sparky said, sliding up next to her.
She moved away. "Look, I'm busy...I have...a ton of...training to do. I just can't."
"Look, babe," Sparky continued, "let's face face, I'm the best looking stallion here, and you're quite the looker yourself--"
The whine of a TS long rifle sounded, and its barrel pressed against his chest. Whatever Sparky was saying died in his throat, as Silk made her feelings about this perfectly clear.
"Don't call me a 'Looker,'" she warned.
"Alright! Alright!" he said, "I get it! You're busy! I'll ask another time."
Silver thought that perhaps the best time was never, but he kept quiet about it. Even if the idea did annoy him in an oddly specific way.
He wasn't even sure why it annoyed him, but he did have a suspicion that was very quickly growing.
He...well...he might have a crush on Silk.
The thought wasn't terribly surprising, especially with this sudden burst of annoyance and or jealousy, but still, he wasn't really sure why.
She was a good mare, he would admit. She was nice, sure. She had a strange obsession with horror movies that he kind of understood. She had saved his life more than a few times during their missions...
And...apparently she was a quote-on-quote "looker."
Honestly, he was not best judge on looks. He very rarely thought of ponies as "beautiful," "handsome," or even "ugly." He had only the faintest awareness of the spectrum, when it came to his fellow pony. The only ones that really hit any obvious milestones were the Princesses, and well...they were the Princesses.
It was usually a strength of his. As a guard, he was expected to just stand still, regardless of what passed by him. It could have been the royal sisters themselves, and he'd have to stare straight ahead, ever vigilant.
However, if she was beautiful, it would certainly explain this subconscious draw toward her. It would also explain that weird moment in the theater...
Honestly, it made him feel better about this instant flare in his anger towards Sparky. It meant he wasn't totally irrational, and subject to forces he didn't truly understand.
He was also very happy to hear that Silver did not want to give Sparky the time of day.
She gave a final snort before she turned back to the exercise going on below them, standing next to Silver as they both stared over the catwalks.
"You don't like being called a looker?" Silver asked, trying to keep things casual.
"Too many years in too many bars," she answered.
Silver nodded. "Got it."
He stood next to her in silence, letting her cool, before speaking again. "The rifle, though? I mean, he deserves a lot, but pulling a gun on him?"
"There is no such thing as overkill," she answered.
"Well," Silver began. "I can't really argue with the results."
She smiled at that. "It's a good policy," she told him.
"At times," Silver agreed. "At times."
===ᐁ===
It was evening by the time Spike was satisfied with his teams. He let them go, off to enjoy an hour or so before he lights out.
A construction team had come by earlier, having been blindfolded for safety's sake, and began reconstruction on the floors in both A and C, and already things were looking expensive. Once they finished with the first layer of concrete, they'd have to add a layer of silver, which would have been bad enough, but the holes were too deep for a quick job.
He pushed these thoughts aside,and focused on his latest correspondence.
The letter on his desk had come from the Crystal Empire branch of the Department. The Crystal Empire's branch had always been the experts on cults and other underground gatherings, and Spike quickly turned to them for any information. He was pleased to hear they have been keeping their ear to the ground and they offered all they knew concerning the various Old One cults, vampire worshipers, and necromancer covens that might have had the power to attack the Department.
He had already received information from Griffonstone's D.S.P.I. equivalent, but they had to offer was that they were dealing with some sort of necromancer.
Spike was very tempted to answer with a letter that simply read, "No, duh."
At least they told him that he wasn't dealing with any of their problems. It was unique to their shore.
Between the two, and his own informants, he had narrowed it down to a handful of possibilities. At the top of the list was the Ashen Heart Organization. The Ashen Heart had been around for almost as long as the Department. They had originally tried to take over the world, but they slowly turned to a proper business, selling the...harder-to-get alchemical ingredients only available from the pits of alternate worlds. They had the power, certainly, and it was possible they had the motive, but they has also come to an agreement, and Spike wasn't sure they were willing to risk that.
Still, it might do well to have a small conversation with the current CEO.
Next on the list was some no-name cult named the Crimson Covenant. It was possible, in terms of motive, but there was no way they could have pulled this off without backing. However, they were the new kids on the block, and that meant they weren't to be taken lightly.
The Brotherhood of the Astral Skull was another possibility. The Brotherhood have been a problem for a long time. Originally founded by a vampire, the Brotherhood has tried numerous times to gain power for their founder/lord, including, but not limited to, blotting out the sun, trying to assassinate a minor lord and taking his title, and staging a thousand minor crimes across the country to fund an organized crime family.
Of course, Spike made sure to leave them with nothing, but it's entirely possible that little miss Lily La Croix may have shifted her attention.
That's how vampires work, after all. Obsession. They shift their focus, and everything becomes about the object of their attention. Even Fluttershy's personalities suffered from it, and Spike had enough experience in the matter to know well enough. Whether is causing pain, gaining power, an unending unlife of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, vampires obsess.
If Lily decided to obsess about the Department, then she could easily gain the means and motive to attack.
Finally, there was the Followers of Shadow. The Followers were another Necromantic Cult, serving a now dead vampire. They could be responsible, if only because said vampire died by Spike's own claw. On the other hand, the last time Spike met them, they were little more than a book club, only focusing on bringing the dead back to life, as opposed to reading through the latest romance book.
He didn't want to rule it out though. It only takes one crazy, charismatic cult leader to redefine the objective, and revenge was always a fire-starter.
He sighed, before running through the list again. The Ashen Heart, the Covenant, the Brotherhood, and the Followers. Anyone of them could be responsible. Or it could be another organization, one that Spike and his informants hadn't heard of.
And that scared him more.
If they could keep them out of the ears and eyes of his network, then they were a much bigger problem than the others.
He shifted his attention again to the other programs. Now these were the heavy stuff. The research that had been put into any one of these projects made the concrete and the silver lining look like a paltry sum. These were billions of bits, spent over decades of magical research.
Of these programs, the softer one took a longer time to repair, and the other...
Well, it would be a while, it seemed, before either of them really took off. Though, honestly, it was probably for the best.
The Princess had voiced her concern over these projects several times already, but every time she said anything, Spike returned with the very maxim that was responsible for the Department's creation. "Better safe than sorry."
Now that they were about to use them, to bring use their full force to bear, he felt uneasy. He had heard enough discussions about the line that separates the civilized from the monsters, and Spike was sure this began to blur the line.
He sighed, before he muttered his hope. "If we do this quick enough, we won't have to resort to this."
That was his only hope now.
===ᐁ===
"One more time, soldiers," Spike said.
Silver nodded, holding up his pneumatic crossbow, his team at the ready. It was the seventeenth run on the fifth day of their urban breaching training.
"You may begin," Spike said.
Sparky kicked the door open, pointing left while Silver took the right side. The hiss of firing paintballs sounded from the left, and Silver ducked as a handful of green balls flew over his head, returning a crossbow bolt in answer.
The bolt struck true, and turret went silent.
"Move in!" Silver ordered, and they quickly flooded the room.
Splitting up, they moved to the two other doors in the room, and quickly began to rinse and repeat their way through the compound. Up next to the door, use the wall as cover, scan corner to corner, shoot anything that moves, move on.
Mandible, along with Silver and his team moved into what basically amounted to a living room, when there was the sudden hiss of a paintball gun. "Get down!"
Silver slammed into the changeling, tackling to the ground as the wall to their left exploded into color.
"Did you forget you're supposed to clear a room?"Silver growled.
"We did clear it!" he answered, before he rolled off the floor into cover. "You were there when we did!"
"And apparently, I can't trust you!"
"Newsflash! I'm a changeling!" Mandible answered.
Both fired into the target, turning it into a pincushion.
"So I noticed," Silver sighed. "We're clear!"
"Clear!" Chestnut answered.
"Clear!" Lemon Bubble sounded.
"All clear!" Silk told them.
And the lights went up. "Good job, Alpha. Good job," Spike said as he clapped from the observation deck. "Silver, that was good save."
Silver shrugged.
"Mandible, you should know better, and because of that, you and your team are going to keep running this training all day tomorrow."
Alpha Team groaned.
"For now, get some rest. Alpha Team, you are dismissed," the dragon told them, before turning to Omega Team.
Alpha team, meanwhile, was eager to leave. Together, they wandered out of training room 5, moving back towards the mess hall. A few moaned, and groaned as sore joints and limbs complained against the near-constant training they had been facing for almost a full week now.
Yet...Silver stayed silent, his mind elsewhere. It were on the mare in front of him, armed with a very powerful magical heat rifle that could vaporize him given a good hit.
Coincidentally, his eyes were also on the mare in front of him, watching her walk and sway. Yeah...thinking back on it, she does look good, and...well, asking her out wasn't technically possible, but...he could watch a movie with her...but...well...
He heard a grunt beside him, and turned to see Mandible walking beside him. "What?" Silver asked.
"Look," Mandible said, "I'm a changeling. I do that whole eating love thing, and let me tell you, I can smell that pre-asking-someone-out nervousness, and yours reeks."
"Thanks," Silver grunted.
"Look, look," Mandible said, shaking his head. "Take me it from me, just ask her, it'll turn out alright."
"Says the guy who, moments ago, said I shouldn't trust him."
Mandible smirked. "Yeah, well, this statement is false and all that."
"You're citing a paradox for your defense?"
"Reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly reasonable logical argument," Mandible argued. "But seriously, go talk to her. You're making me nauseous."
"Yeah, yeah, shut up..." Silver muttered before he sped up, pulling up alongside their sniper. "Hey, Silk."
"Yes?" she asked.
"You wouldn't..." he began, "you wouldn't happen to have any more movies you'd like to watch?"
She blinked, and smiled. "Yeah, yeah. There are a few favorites of mine."
"Well, would you like me to join you?" Silver asked.
"I wouldn't mind," she told him.
"Tonight then?"
"Absolutely."
And Mandible smiled as he watched.
But Sparky did not.
===ᐁ===
Another few days came and went, and Spike felt that they had recovered enough to begin the offense again.
A knock sounded on his door.
"Come in," he called.
"Guten Tag, Kommandant," Butter Streusel said, entering the room. "I am here vis zee report you vanted."
"Good, good," Spike said, motioning to a seat. "What did the Organization had to say for themselves?"
"Zey deny eferythink, of course," she told them. "Zey shpeak of zeir ingredients and zeir perfectly legal operations."
"And do you believe them?" Spike asked.
Butter shrugged, "It's possible. I am unsure sough..."
"Any evidence?"
"Nein..." she grumbled.
"Then they're an innocent business for now."
She offered nothing else.
"Alright, has Diamond found anything?"
"Perhaps," Butter began, "I do not know."
Spike sighed. "Fine, send her in."
"Hello, Commander," the vampiric pegasus greeted, accent gone, and a sultry smile on her lips. "It's been a while."
"Yes..." Spike agreed. "What have you found?"
"What? No 'How are you?' No 'what have you been doing?' It's always business with you, Commander."
"Diamond..." Spike began.
"I just want to know why I'm getting the cold shoulder, Commander," she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
"You know why," he said.
"Oh, come now, Spike, she's been gone a long time and--"
"Another word about it, Diamond," he growled, flame flashing from his nostrils, "and you will be in more trouble that you could even begin to imagine."
Diamond decided not to push her luck. "The Brotherhood isn't behind the attack. Miss La Croix is too busy running around to get her money back to attack us. She has neither means, nor time."
"So that leaves the Covenant, and the Followers," Spike muttered.
"So it does," Diamond replied.
"Now, which one, is the question," Spike said, before taking a drag on his cigarette.
"Well, if there was ever a time to find out, it would be now," the vampire replied.
"What now?"
"The Followers have been moving lately, they've found Ceasar De Vile's tomb."
Spike raised an eyebrow, before pushing a button on his intercom. "Velvet?"
"Yes, Commander?"
"Send Alpha team to my office." |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Vengeful King | The DASH-1 pulled over the rolling hills in the south of Equestria, purring like a great jungle cat. They were making excellent time, and Tinker smiled as the airship rumbled beneath her. Behind her, Alpha team sat in the cargo hold, along with Manticore's coffin, waiting for the word to move.
They checked and re-checked their weapons, making sure their ammo was secure, yet easy to reach on their bodies.
Commander Spike had given them a very rapid briefing. A group named Followers of Shadow were closing in on the tomb of a powerful vampire. One they happened to worshiped, and perhaps wanted to raise.
Their job was to make sure that the vampire, or worse, didn't get raised.
"Alright!" Tinker said as they began to slow the DASH-1. "Any closer, and they'll see us."
Spike nodded. "You heard the mare. We move out and hoof it from here."
There was a groan.
"Come on, let's go!" Spike ordered as Alpha Team gathered towards the cargo door, which opened slowly before them.
"You heard the dragon, let's go!" Silver said, standing, holding his crossbow up.
Sparky growled. "Yes, sir, captain kiss up," he muttered.
As the ponies stirred to their hooves, Spike knocked on the coffin lid.
Manticore opened it from inside. "Are we there?"
"Almost. We have to move on hoof for the rest of the way."
She groaned, but moved, stepping out of her coffin.
"Alright, let's move," Silver order. "Go, go, go!"
The ponies repelled out of the DASH-1, landing on the ground and quickly setting up a perimeter. With their weapons pointing outward, they secured a small landing zone, just big enough for Spike and Manticore to land in between them.
The Macintosh hills were silent.
"Alright," Spike whispered to the team. "We move forward, and keep silent. Once we locate the Followers, we determine their goal. If it's trouble, we stop them. Try to arrest them first, if they gives more trouble, then we deal with them as necessary. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Silver said, nodding. "Scout, up ahead, Agent, with him, try and get close enough for some answers. Sniper keep an eye out for high ground."
"Sir, yes, sir!" they answered, before both Sparky and Mandible broke from the group, heading up towards the east.
"Thundercloud," Spike called into his headset, "do you read?"
"Sir, yes sir, Thundercloud reading you loud and clear," Tinker answered.
"Be ready to move in at my word."
"Roger that."
"Let's move," Silver said, leading the team forward.
And the Macintosh Hills were still silent.
===ᐁ===
Mandible hovered just outside the band of cultists, listening to them as they chanted in a language that made his brain hurt.
The bright yellow runes burned his eyes, and the giant eyes painted on the rough, stone altars made him nauseous.
The lead pony, a unicorn with a crazed gleam in his eye led the chanting, and spun a wicked looking dagger that was both there and not there in his magical grasp. It also had a large jeweled pommel, shaped like an eye, of course, that may or may not have winked.
They were definitely up to no good. Mandible just didn't know what kind.
Admittedly, this wasn't what he was expecting when he had heard "Necromantic, Vampire-worshiping cult." He imagined blood runes, fresh zombie hordes, and suicide pacts at worst. This...this looked like something else completely.
Still, he had a job to do.
Keeping still, and under the protection of his mirror cloak, Mandible crouched beside a large stone, keeping his ears peeled for any sign of information he could use. That alone was much harder to do with the chanting that droned in his head with the same force of a jackhammer against his chitin.
At this rate he'd go mad...
===ᐁ===
Sparky ran back to team, making double time on his enchanted horseshoes. "We've found them," he said, dipping into his place in the team. "Up ahead, 156° south from our location."
"Roger, what do you have to report?" Silver asked, keeping low so that he would not be so easily seen against the red clay, rocks, and tufts of tall, brown grass.
"They have some weird runes and eyes painted everywhere," Sparky said, "they're doing some weird chanting too."
Both Spike and Manticore looked at each other. "Runes and eyes?" Spike asked. "Are you sure?"
"That's what I saw," Sparky answered.
Manticore sighed. "Idiots, can't even keep their cult straight."
"New orders, soldiers," Spike whispered. "Move in fast, hit hard. Any chanters are to be taken down immediately. If you can take them out without killing them, fine, but top priority is stopping that chanting at all cost. Am I understood?"
"Sir, yes sir!" Alpha team answered.
"Let's move."
===ᐁ===
Mandible only knew agony.
The chanting roared and droned in his head, as though it were trying to turn his brain to goo.
The constant, impossible syllables were trying to rip his sanity apart, and he could feel every tear and gash.
Everywhere he looked, an eye stared back at him, glaring into his soul with a stare that burned his psyche. Behind the eyes was that mark. That mark that spoke of things that could not be spoken of, that whispered things that should not be whispered.
The chanting filled his ears, surrounded him on all sides, dug into his mind with hooked claws and barbed teeth.
The eye watched, never-blinking, witnessing his suffering as Mandible bit his tongue and tried to stay silent.
"It hurts!" he cried.
Mandible looked up at himself and watched as himself who was not himself burn in yellow fire. "It burns! Can't you see it burns? Don't you feel it?"
He felt it. The fire was alive as it crawled along his skin, leaving a warm cold that left a burning frost on his body. It ate his body like acid, and kissed it like a summer breeze. It twisted his stomach, and emptied his lungs.
It was wonderful.
He knew it was wrong, but it was too lovely to ignore. He wanted it so bad, but dared not take it. He grabbed it with both hooves, but cursed himself in the same breath.
And then, to his horror, he discovered he was screaming.
A hoof pressed into his back, and he hit the clay so hard, it knocked the wind from him.
The jeweled eye, the pommel in the dagger stared at him as it was lowered into his field of view. "Well, well, well," the leader said, staring down at changeling, whose mind suddenly cleared. "You see this, brothers? Our lord provides! We have a sacrifice!"
Mandible cursed as hooves grabbed him, and a blow to the head turned everything black.
===ᐁ===
They found the cultists.
Their altar stood on the highest hill, with pillars of stone, painted with yellow runes.
They hurt to look at.
Silver looked around at the other hilltops, trying to find the best place to begin an assault.
Spike, meanwhile, had his eyes on the altar itself. "They are...They're actually going to do it..."
Silver whispered. "Sniper, see that tree?"
"The only tree around for miles?" she asked, pointing to the lone tree that stood on a hillside to the left.
"I think that's your best vantage point," Silver said.
"Unfortunately, I think you're right," she agreed, before she spread her wings, and flew, gliding close to the ground until she made it to the tree.
"Heavy, Scout, Support, I'm going to need you to stay close, we're going to head into the valley, and charge from there. Demo, can you arc some grenades from here?"
Lemon smiled. "You better bet I can."
Silver nodded. "Medic, stay with Manticore and the Commander, and back us up as you see fit."
"Uh...Assault...we have a situation." Silk's voice crackled in over the headset.
"Go ahead, Sniper."
"Our Agent's on the altar."
"What?"
"I repeat, Agent is on the altar."
===ᐁ===
Mandible swallowed hard.
He tried, tried so desperately hard to keep his composure as the Followers of Shadow chanted around him. The eyes stared on, and the runes continued to burn, and while the changeling was doing his best to avoid looking at them, he spinning dagger in the magical grip of the leader held enough threat in its edge to make him worry.
The surprising thing about it was that Mandible didn't even mind the dying part.
I mean, it was going to suck, don't get me wrong, but the blood he was going to provide promised a much worse fate for everyone else.
He didn't even understand what it meant, just that it was going to be bad.
Very, very bad.
Death was going to be a much better alternative.
The cult leader came up to him, smiling manically. "Well my little Lamb, it's almost time."
That's another thing. If this guy could cut it out with all the "lambs to the slaughter" or the "sacrificial lamb" analogies, that would make this entire thing so much more bearable.
"Soon, my Lord shall return, and the tyrannies of the Sun and Moon shall be brought low to nothing," the cult leader whispered. "Every eye across the world will see the power of Rno'chotsa, and they will know the truth. The truth that all of the other gods, the laws and morality of life, our very lives themselves are but lies, and it will all be thanks to you, my little Lamb."
So much more bearable.
"It's almost time...almost time...the world will see. They'll see because of you. All because of you, my little Lamb."
Oh gosh...when will it end?
The moon was high, and the chanting was coming up to a crescendo that reverberated in Mandible's chest.
The leader smiled, and up came the dagger, with it's awful, all-seeing eye.
A sudden ray of scorching heat tore into the dagger, and the leader leapt back in shock. The ray super heated the metal, and the air exploded. Mandible's ears rang and his sight went white for a moment or two.
The ringing quickly faded, as did the field of white just in time to hear a cry from just over the edge of the hillside."We are the D.S.P.I. We have you surrounded. Keep your hooves, horns, and wings where we can see them."
The leader cursed. "The Department's here. Do not stop the summoning!"
The ponies around him continued to chant, and the the leader stood over Mandible and sneered. "I haven't forgotten you, Lamb. You are too important now."
He went for his knife.
But nothing met his grip. He cursed again, and ducked beneath the altar, searching for his dagger.
Mandible blinked, and realized that he had just one chance to save himself.
So he did the only thing he could do. He began to gnaw through the zip ties that kept him bound.
===ᐁ===
"Hit 'em hard!" Silver roared.
The chanting ponies did not stop, repeating their eldritch mantra with a zealous fervor that Silver wasn't prepared for. They didn't even fight back, they just redoubled their efforts even as bolts struck their sides.
Not that they needed to fight back. The evil yellow eyes painted on the stones had almost reacted to the sight of them, bubbling and boiling on the stone before they erupted into great, groping masses of slimy tentacles.
The tentacles, bathed in a light that was a color that should not be, and struck, whipping out against the incoming ponies, and stretching to lengths they couldn't possibly reach.
But they did, of course.
Sparky, Chestnut, Amber, and Neon were all firing into the monsters, doing their best to keep them at bay, and pin the chanters to the ground so that they would finally stop that awful sound that escaped their lips.
"Sniper, do you have a shot on the chanters?" Silver yelled into his com.
"Still charging," Silk answered. "There's a reason I don't like hotshots."
"We need the leader alive," Silver said, "any other time I'd let you take the shot."
"Yeah, yeah. Still charging. You'll know when I'm ready to shoot."
"Good to hear!" Silver said, before looking back on the hill they were just on.
Manticore was there, stretching her legs, like an athlete preparing for a workout.
Commander Spike, on the other hand, was in the thick of it. He fired his powerful needle pistol, and his claws cut through flesh with ease. The little dragon cut the tentacles down as they appeared, and disappeared before they could get close.
It almost wasn't fair.
Spike far outclassed the tentacles, moving faster than they ever could.
The only thing that was in their favor was their numbers, which seemed to be endless. Yet even still, Spike was cutting through them. He would be free to strike at the chanter before long.
Of course, if Manticore actually got to work it would be better.
"Heavy, keep pushing forward!"
"You got it, boss!"
"Scout, how's the flank?"
"No better," Sparky replied.
"Demo?"
"Last calculations are being made...alright! I have an angle! Danger close artillery in coming!"
A flash of light burst from the eastern hill, and a grenade smashed onto one of the stone, splattering acid that began to eat the rock beneath it.
The tentacles that grew from the stone began to hiss and writhe, trembling as their anchor into reality was being eaten away.
"Good hit!" Silver yelled. "Keep it up!"
===ᐁ===
Plastic tasted horrible.
Especially the plastic used for this zip tie.
It would not have been accurate to say that he didn't care about the taste of this particular of the zip tie he was gnawing through, but it certainly wasn't the most important thing on his mind.
No, the most important thing was living through this whole ordeal.
His fangs suddenly snapped through the first zip tie, and he pushed himself up to stare at his hind legs.
The idiots had fastened the zip tie through the holes in his leg.
He tried to lean forward enough to snap at them, but he was short by a foot. He sat back up, and began looking for his kit and the small obsidian knife that every pack came with. His eyes glanced around frantically, before the cult leader appeared back over the altar. "Where are you going, little lamb?"
He smiled, his eyes glinting with that evil insanity that threatened the whole world. The dagger came up, and stared into Mandible's soul with it's awful, topaz eye.
Mandible answered with a punch across the cultist's mouth, leaving the dagger to spin, end-over-end into the air, before digging into the stone of the altar beside him.
Mandible didn't even think as he grabbed it.
He moved forward, ready to cut the zip tie open with the eerily sharp blade.
"Yes. Now plunge me into his heart."
Mandible paused, and stared into eye of the dagger.
"He tried to kill you. It's only fair you return the favor, no?"
That...well...that sounded pretty good, actually, but...
"But what?" the dagger asked him. "The only thing you need to worry about are the fools around you, and what do you owe them? What obligation do you owe them? You are above them. You hunt them. You consume and wither them. You are more important than them, and if you complete the ritual, you will be more important than any other being in the world. Rno'chotsa always rewards those who serve him. Far better than what you receive now."
It...well...the dagger wasn't wrong.
He was a hunter of ponies.
He owed these ponies nothing.
He was being offered only his life, and anything more than that would be a better deal.
He looked down at the cult leader who was still recovering from the blow.
And...of course....there is always the promise of revenge.
"Do it. Complete the Ritual. Be worshiped as you deserve."
It wouldn't be hard.
Just a quick slash downward, and it would be over. The fool would be dead, and Lord Rno'chotsa would rule over the quivering masses form his topaz throne. His voice would speak in the Ancient tongue and how do I even know about that?
Mandible blinked, trying to shake thoughts from his head, but his gaze wandered back to the unprotected back of the cultist.
Just one strike.
He brought the dagger up, and it sliced through the plastic zip ties like air.
Now free, Mandible leapt to his feet, and off the altar.
And the dagger continued to stare.
===ᐁ===
A scorching shot tore into the air, catching a tentacle with full force, and knocking it aside for Silver to bring his blade up and around the base, removing it completely.
Manticore had finally joined in, ripping the tentacles in half as she waltzed into the fray.
With the vampire's strength and speed aiding the battle, the tentacles posed no threat for Spike. Now able to move freely, Spike had leapt in, throwing powerful punches to the temples of the chanting cultists, to hopefully silence them for a while.
As the chanting died, and stones were being dissolved by Lemon's bombardment, the tentacles began to fall back, losing numbers fast as the spell keeping the ritual active slowly died and the eyes that were their portals began to disappear.
Before long, the only thing left were the ponies and the stones.
Mandible stared down at the dagger in his hoof, and the leader of Followers of Shadow, who simply stared at the sky.
It was obvious that whatever was left of his mind had finally left him.
"Well, we won't need to execute him," Spike said, "but he is worthless to us."
"No snacks, I imagine," Manticore muttered.
Spike sent her a glare. "Funny," he said, before turning back to Alpha Team. "Alright, round 'em up. Thundercloud is incoming and will be ready to receive prisoners."
"Yes, sir!" Silver said, before he began directing everyone. "Let's move people."
Mandible still stared at the dagger.
"Agent?" Spike called, walking up beside the changeling.
He looked over at the dragon, tearing his gaze away from the dagger.
"Hand it to me," Spike ordered.
Mandible blinked, before he slowly extended his hoof with the dagger and its evil eye.
Spike took it, and did not look at the jeweled pommel. "Thank you, Agent. You did good."
The changeling nodded.
Spike walked away, keeping the dagger out of everyone's sight as they began to move the cultists into the newly-arrived DASH-1.
"Hey, Agent," Silver said, approaching the still stunned Changeling. "Are you alright?"
"Y-yeah...I'm okay."
"You sure?"
Mandible shrugged. "I guess. I mean, I didn't end the world."
Silver blinked. "Um...that's good."
"Yeah," Mandible admitted. "It's just..."
"What?"
The changeling hesitated.
Silver waited.
"Hey, you two, it's time to move out!" Spike said from the open cargo bay of the DASH-1.
Mandible nodded, and turned, heading for the airship. "Just...nevermind."
Silver slowly nodded, and the rest of Alpha team piled into the ship.
But Mandible sat silent.
Because, the truth was, even through the didn't end the world, he was left with a singular, haunting question.
Why didn't he end the world? |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Burning Law | She smiled to herself as she walked in Canterlot's many hallways as she searched for Celestia's little door, wings fidgeting in excitement. She moved, invisible to the ponies around her as she walked passed the innumerable Castle rooms, searching for the one that would bring her to Canterlot's darkest secret.
She chided herself for her enthusiasm. It was getting a little out of hoof if it kept her from finding the door.
After hearing the call from the Equestrian D.S.P.I., she had immediately began to mobilize her information network. If anything so much as whispered in her domain, she found out about it. The cults she was dealing with were tapped for information, and now it had finally paid off.
She had a name.
Now, yes, she could have been boring and sent a letter, but that just wasn't personal enough.
Besides, it had been quite a few years since she had seen Old Uncle Spike, and a visit was long-overdue.
===ᐁ===
"Come on!" Spike yelled as he leaned over the "Do Not Cross" line in training room 3 as the Alpha Team worked through yet another session in the Danger Room. "You can do better!"
"Glad you have faith in us, sir," Silver yelled, leaping over a stream of flame.
Spike grunted. "TWI increase difficulty by one level."
"Affirmative," TWI answered.
A large, bladed pendulum swung by. Ponies leapt side to side, dodging fire, bolts, and blades.
Spike nodded, apparently pleased with what he saw.
A chime sounded, and TWI spoke up. "Forgive the interruption, Commander, but Caramel Crystal wishes to speak with you, she insists that it's urgent."
Spike sighed. "Alright, everyone. You get a break. Unseal the room, TWI."
The tiles ceased to move, and with a hiss, the door slid open.
Caramel walked in, her head and it's container sitting on her back. "Commander, you have visitor."
And right behind her, walked something that Silver would have never believed.
Which was ironic, considering his choice of profession.
A light pink alicorn walked into view. "Hey Uncle Pipsqueak, how's it going?"
She looked no older than sixteen years, yet seemed thin and perhaps slightly tall for her age, only a step or two away from being considered lanky. Her mane, a lovely, well kept tuft of violet and arctic blue hair, was bobbed, hugging her head and letting her curls frame her face.
She wore some light armor, a few plates here and there to protect her otherwise naked body.
Spike looked her up and down. "Hey, Squirt."
The alicorn frowned. "You can't call me squirt. I'm taller than you."
"Still younger, though," Spike said, before he began rolling his neck and shoulders.
"So! You're shorter than me!" she yelled, stomping into the room.
"Still older than you, too," he muttered, before motioning Alpha team back behind the line.
Silver obeyed, still gaping at the appearance of a young alicorn.
"By twenty years!" she yelled. "That's nothing! That's like saying you're the older twin by two minutes!"
"Still older, Squirt."
She growled, and Spike smirked.
Silver heard the sound of Spike's pistol before he saw the dragon draw.
A trio of the magenta needles shot forward, yet the alicorn dodged each one, spinning around the projectiles as she took to the air.
In response, a flurry of beams shot from her horn, striking the tiles that Spike had been standing on milliseconds before. The tiles scorched under the magical energy, and that was when Silver suddenly realized that he had never seen the tiles discolor ever before.
The alicorn spun again, throwing her body into a drilling attack that started a small whirlwind. Another shot from Spike's gun was sent spinning away by the sheer force of the winds, before the spinning alicorn moved to slam into the commander.
Yet again, Spike moved, flying to the left as the new pony slammed into where he had been standing. "Not fast enough, Squirt."
"Don't want to tire you out in front of all your people, Pipsqueak," the alicorn answered, standing. "You're getting old, after all."
Spike raised an eyebrow, a smile threatening to show itself. "Well you should be careful, young'un," he said, holstering his gun and changing his stance, keeping his claws open. "Don't want your elders to show you up, now, do we?"
The alicorn smiled. "Like you could."
The two slammed together, rocking the room as an incredible power shot through the gathered ponies. They could almost feel the blows as the two fought.
And then, with a move that Silver couldn't even see, it was over.
Spike stood, his foot pinning the alicorn's forehooves to her back.
She struggled, and pushed, trying to free herself.
Finally, she sighed. "You win."
"Not good enough, Squirt. You know what you gotta say."
Her eyes narrowed. "Not a snowballs chance in Tartarus, old man."
"Say it," Spike said, leaning forward, and causing her legs to bend at an angle they were not meant to reach.
She grit her teeth.
"Come on," Spike said.
She grit her teeth once more, before a strangled cry escaped her lips. "Uncle!" she cried. "Uncle, uncle!"
"And don't you forget it," Spike said before releasing her.
Alpha team stared on, horribly, horribly confused.
Spike looked up, before he introduced the alicorn mare. "Alpha Team, this is my niece. Princess Flurry Heart."
The alicorn groaned. "Do you have to introduce me as your niece all the time? It makes me sound like I'm four."
Spike looked back at her and smirked. "You are to me, dear."
She sighed, and rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
Spike shook his head. "Anyways, she is the first naturally born alicorn since Luna and Celestia, Princess of the Crystal Empire, and the head of the Imperial branch of the D.S.P.I."
Flurry Heart stood. "I go by Skyla for undercover purposes."
"Don't call her Skyla," Spike said.
"Come on, Uncle Spike, I call you 'Commander.'"
"That's because I'm the Commander. You're Princess Flurry. That's that. Anyways, any questions, Alpha?"
There was a moment of silence or two before Sparky spoke up. "A-are you really her uncle?"
"Yes, yes I am," Spike said.
"H-how does that work?"
Spike stared at him a moment, before he began to smile. "How else?" he asked, before he began to walk out of the Danger Room. "How do you think alicorns are made. It's not just pony DNA."
Sparky blinked, before he suddenly yelled. "That makes so much sense!"
Silver watched as Sparky ran out of the room, as though he were a researcher that had just experienced Eureka. Then he turned to the Princess. "Is Commander Spike joking, because...that...seems odd."
Flurry Heart raised her own eyebrow, before she smiled. "He could be. But he might not..."
===ᐁ===
"So what are you doing here, Flurry?" Spike said, as he walked her down to his public office.
"What? Am I not allowed to come see my uncle?" she asked, taking the seat opposite him and kicking her hooves onto the desk.
Spike pushed them off. "My desk. Yes, you are allowed, but you don't. There's always a reason."
Flurry sighed. "Alright, alright. So I have some info," she said, before producing a crystal cylinder.
Spike looked at it, before he turned back to the alicorn. "And since when have you taken the courier jobs?"
She smiled. "Just can't pull the wool over your eyes, huh, Uncle?" A magical aura gripped the canister, and set it on his desk. "The data's incomplete. I'll need to check out the Crimson Covenant to be sure, and if anyone's going to check, it needs to be the most powerful alicorn in Equestria."
"Oh, don't start that again," Spike groaned.
"Celestia got taken out by the bug Queen," Flurry said.
"1, Changelings. 2, she severely underestimated her opponent," Spike answered.
"Yeah, and you know what happens when you underestimate your opponent. If Celestia underestimated bug queen, then she revokes all rights to being the greatest alicorn--"
"Don't talk about your Great Aunt that way!" Spike grunted before staring her in the eyes. "Flurry, you're my Niece. I love you, but if you talk about my Mom like that, I will bend you over my knee."
Flurry sighed. "I'm not sixty anymore, Uncle Spike. That's the kinda threat that's getting weird now."
"Then don't talk about her like that."
"Fine. Point being, I figured I'd do the job. It's been awhile since I came down here, anyway."
Spike sighed, and grabbed the canister, before popping it open. "So, the Crimson Covenant?"
Flurry nodded. "I've gotten reports that their leader, or at least the puppet that's masquerading as one, has been ranting about the 'evil of the alicorns,' and all that crap."
"Yeah, but so does every other crackpot on the street. What's your point?"
Flurry smiled. "Simple. It's his name."
Spike opened the scroll, giving it a quick read, before he stopped short.
"No..."
"Yes," Flurry said, putting her hind hooves back on the desk.
Spike pushed them off again. "No, there's no way this is right."
"It's what my sources say."
Spike shook his head. "If...if this is right..."
"It changes everything," Flurry finished.
Spike just nodded.
===ᐁ===
Silver shook his head.
"I can't believe it's an actual princess..." Amber whispered.
Flurry Heart was everything anyone wanted to talk about at lunch. The idea that a Princess had just shown up to help them fight the monsters of the night.
"Like, is she even allowed to do that?" Neon asked. "Like, what if she dies, does the Crystal Empire just have to deal?"
"I don't know..." Lemon whispered back. "Why does she run the D.S.P.I. in the Crystal Empire? Why doesn't Celestia or Luna run this one?"
"What did the Commander mean by saying 'naturally born' alicorn? What does that mean?"
"Do you always talk behind your guest's back?" a voice asked, and everyone turned to see Flurry Heart glaring at them.
Alpha Team went silent.
And then she smiled. "Oh relax. My soldiers have done far, far worse," she said, pulling up a chair, and hovering a tray with her own food over. "So to answer your question, I was born as an alicorn. My mom, and my aunt, Princesses Cadence and Twilight, both rose to alicornhood."
"You can do that?" Silk asked.
"Kinda," Flurry admitted. "You need to jump through some hoops, and you only get a horn or wings, or whatever. It's not really worth it."
"Really?" Chestnut asked.
"Yeah, I mean, you might get a bunch of magical power, but if you don't know how to use it then what's the point, right?" Flurry asked.
"So you need to be born with it?" Silver asked.
Flurry raised an eyebrow and smiled. "That stallion gets a gold star."
A series of chuckles sounded around the table.
"Yeah in order to be a decent alicorn you do need to be born with it," Flurry said. "Besides, that's where the immortality comes from."
"Wait, wait," Mandible said. "When you say Twilight and Cadence, do you mean Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, alicorn of love and Princess Twilight Sparkle, bearer of the Element of Magic?"
Flurry looked the changeling up and down. "Has there ever been another Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight?"
"So that's why they're not around anymore!" Chestnut cried, the revelation of their death offering something that hadn't occurred to him.
Flurry shook her head, before turning to the others. "What were the other questions?"
"What would happen to the Crystal Empire if you died?" Neon asked.
Flurry snorted. "That's a good one. Me, die." She gave a soft chuckle before she finally said, "there's supposedly a plan in place if that were to happen, but it's been a hundred and thirty years now, so I don't think there's too much to worry about."
"So what are you doing here?" Silver asked.
Flurry looked up at him. "What?"
"Well, it's not everyday you show up, so why are you here?" Silver asked.
Princess Flurry stared at him for a long moment, before she spoke, her voice a low, almost conspiratorial whisper. "We have evidence to suggest that a very dangerous pony, Dark Crystal, has founded the Crimson Covenant. While this may not seem like much, Dark is now some eighty years old, and doesn't look a day over twenty five."
"Is he an alicorn?" Chestnut asked.
"No, he's a necromancer," Flurry said, "and quite possibly the same one who attacked your headquarters." She paused a second, and looked over the ponies. "If that's true then, we have a very big problem."
"Why?"
"Because he's not just any necromancer," Flurry told him. "He could raise an army in little over a day, and if he is as old as my sources say, then there's only one possibility."
A heartbeat of silence passed, and when Flurry Heart spoke next, her words seemed to carry the power of hammer strikes.
"He's a lich."
The PA suddenly crackled to life. "Alpha Team! Report to the briefing room immediately."
"Well," Flurry said standing. "Let's go see what Uncle Pipsqueak wants."
===ᐁ===
The briefing room's magical holo-map revealed the city of Manehatten. When Silver and the others entered, Spike and Manticore were already there, pouring over documents as Alpha Team began to pour in.
"Aunt Fluttershy!" Flurry cried, flying inside through the space between the ponies and the door. "I have been looking all over for you!"
The pegasus almost seemed to jump at her name, before her bearing changed, and she began to desperately try to hide behind her own mane. "Um...hi...Flurry Heart," she said, her voice just barely above a whisper. "H-How are you?"
"I'm doing well," Flurry said, landing next to the yellow pegasus vampire. "What about you?"
"I'm okay," Fluttershy replied. "It's good to see you again."
"It's good to see you too, Aunt Fluttershy."
"How many Aunts do you have?" Neon asked.
Spike cleared his throat, getting everyone's attention. "Alright everyone, we have ourselves a situation."
"Well obviously," Flurry said.
Spike ignored her. "We have news of some zombie activity in Manehatten."
"Manehatten?" Silver asked. "That seems odd."
"It gets worse," Spike said, before a rectangular section of the holo-map began to flash red. "The Manehatten graveyard occasionally has zombie problems, and typically they flood into the nearby sewers." The flashing red highlight then spread to a series of tunnels that ran beneath the city.
"Normally," Spike continued, "the zombies are sparse, and the sewers themselves make taking care of them like bobbing for apple without water. On any given day, I'd just arm you with a bunch of flamethrowers, and I'd just have you cook them out. Unfortunately, that's not the case today."
When no one interrupted, Spike resumed. "These zombies are being led."
"What?" Silver asked.
"Exactly what I said," Spike told them. "With a combination of ghouls and some kind of strange zombie that I have never seen before, these guys are being directed."
"That's terrifying," Neon said.
"Yes it is," Spike agreed. "Luckily, the sewers will help us keep them in check, and they'll have a hard time overwhelming us. Now, even with these new threats, I'm not expecting a hard fight, but you do need to know that this isn't a run of the mill mission. Am I understood?"
"Sir, yes, sir!" Alpha Team answered.
Spike nodded, before turning to his niece. "You want to join us Flurry?"
The Princess smiled. "You couldn't keep me away if you tried."
===ᐁ===
Sparky ran through the tunnels, speeding past the river of waste that ran through the sewers. He rushed past zombies and ghouls that were chasing after him, speeding along as he led the horde behind him towards his team.
All he had to do was follow the laughter.
He was getting sick of it.
Silver knew he was making the moves on Silk, he saw it, and then made his own move anyway. That wasn't cool. That broke like, at least two rules of Bro code.
He turned the corner, coming into view of Alpha team, all of whom were armed with flamethrowers for this mission only. And there were Silk and Silver, laughing at a joke that only twisted Spark's gut in disgust.
He ran up, scowling as he approached the line of flamethrowers. "Here they come."
"Alright," Silver said, still smiling even though his voice went serious, "you heard the stallion, get ready to open fire!"
The zombies came, charging through the tunnels. At their head came the ghouls, who yelped in fear at the sign of the flames, along with the glowing green "Leaders" that the rest of the horde followed.
The flamethrowers roared, drowning out any other noise as the water at the zombie's feet bubbled and steamed, and flesh crackled. Between the stone and the flame, the zombies were cooked.
But Sparky didn't really care.
He just stared at Silver's back.
Wide.
Open.
Defenseless.
"So the where's the Princess?" Sparky asked, after the flamethrowers died down to the fierce glowing of their pilot flames.
"She and Manticore took the east tunnel," Silver answered. "They said they had some catching up to do."
Sparky nodded. So the Chaperones were nowhere to be seen.
It wouldn't take much.
Just a tiny cut from his obsidian knife.
That would be all it would take.
But not yet.
Not here.
Not with his friends next to him.
Besides, there was always another day.
===ᐁ===
It took three hours to clean out the sewers, but Silver, Spike, and Flurry Heart were all happy with the time.
Of course, Flurry and Spike both saw something else in the attack.
"These Leaders aren't normal," Flurry said as she stood in his office.
"Really? I didn't notice," Spike muttered, sarcastically.
"My point is, this reeks of necromancy, powerful necromancy."
"So it does," the dragon admitted. "What's your point?"
"My point is this is Dark's MO. This is exactly what I'd expect of him."
"I agree," Spike said, "but I'm not going to take my eyes off the others until I know for sure."
"Then you're wasting our time," Flurry grunted. "We could have already found the Crimson Covenant by now if we weren't sitting on our hooves."
A knock sounded on Spike's door, and the dragon yelled. "Come in."
Velvet Storm strode in, her pace a brisk walk as she carried in a set of papers. "We've found them, sir."
Spike smiled, and turned to his niece. "I guess we can get off our hooves now, huh?"
Flurry gave a smirk, and nodded. "It's about time." |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Skipping Stone | The DASH-1 shot through the air like arrow. The briefing was short and sweet, and Alpha Team was still raring to go after the easy mission they had the previous night. In short, the Covenant had located an old site of ancient power, surrounded by thirteen standing stones, and chances were, they were planning something terrible.
Fluttershy opted to stay behind this time, but Spike and Flurry Heart both stood in the airship's cabin. "We seriously need one of these," Flurry muttered as they flew north towards Galloping Gorge and the Unicorn Range.
"Then buy one," Spike said. "You have the entire Imperial budget."
"Yeah, because a city-state empire makes so much..." she grunted.
"Sounds like an excuse to me," Spike said.
"Hush."
Tinker spoke over the intercom. "We're closing in on their position, but it doesn't look like there's a good LZ for the DASH-1, it looks like you're going to have to rappel out."
"Don't worry about us, Thundercloud. Alpha Team knows what they're doing."
"Roger that, Commander," the pilot answered, as she pulled around. "Turning to run silent," she said as she flipped levers and the powerful whine of the engines died down to nothing.
"Alright ponies, let's move, we have some climbing to do out there."
The large cargo door dropped open, slowly yawning open as they faced the mountain side of the Unicorn Range.
"Let's go, ponies!" Spike yelled, before he grabbed one of the ropes that had automatically dropped from the roof above the door.
Alpha team followed his lead, grabbing the ropes and rappelling down to a stone ledge.
"Keep the meter running!" Flurry cried as she hovered next to the cargo door, before she dived for rock ledge, pulling up just in time to keep herself from splattering against the stone.
Spike drew his weapon. "Ready? Let's move."
===ᐁ===
They moved carefully, walking along a terribly thin mountain trail. The pegasi hovered trail, with Flurry leading them as Spike and the others carefully navigated the stone. It was hardly wide enough for a single pony to walk down, and with the entire squad traveling the trail, every loose pebble threatened to send them all to their deaths.
Silver stayed silent, running through the rules that Spike had laid down.
First and foremost, do not touch the altar.
"And don't climb on top of it either, Mandible," Spike joked.
The changeling had muttered something rude in response.
The second rule was to not touch the standing stones.
Third rule was far easier. Leave one alive for questioning.
The sound of loose rock sliding caught his attention, and he looked back to see Chestnut beginning fall sideways, towards the cliffside and the great, open space that sat beside them.
Amber dove in, crazily flapping her wings as she tried to push the Heavy Weapons pony back onto the ledge. She pushed and shoved, and with the help of Neon pulling him, they just barely managed to get him stable.
Once his hooves were under him, he sighed. "Thanks, Medic, Support."
"Just don't take me with you, big guy," Neon said.
"Just keep on the straight and narrow," Amber told him.
Silver sighed, keeping quiet as they continued on their way, trying desperately to avoid the drop that yawned beside them.
They moved further into the mountains, and continued to walk along the dizzying heights that shadowed them.
"We're almost there," Spike whispered, before Flurry spoke over the communicator.
"Sniper, Agent, Medic, Scout, with me, we're going around to offer assistance on the other side," the alicorn said, before she led the winged members of the squad down in the open darkness below them, before they flew forward, ahead of them.
Spike then spoke in a whisper. "No talking from here on out, we don't need any echos giving us away."
Silver nodded, as did the others as they slipped into silence.
They continued forward, this time without their pegasus entourage, as they pushed through a hidden pass. It was an agonizing pace without their winged companions, and Chestnut took extra care, moving slowly as he tried to maneuver his massive auto cannon so it wouldn't scrape against the stone or push him over the edge.
Finally, they saw the stones.
On a massive, natural platform, a strange stone plateau that was reminiscent of clearing in a forest, stood the thirteen standing stones. The perfectly round platform seemed naturally carved, if not for the perfection in its curve, and the smoothness of the sides that disappeared into the darkness below.
The full moon peeked past the mountain tops, and filled the platform with silver light. The thirteen stones cast long shadow that stretched into the darkness, and in the center was a single altar, decorated with a brilliant, red banner.
Thirteen ponies, each standing in front of the equidistant stones, droning in some terrible language as the moonlight kissed their bright, crimson robes. In the center, however, were two more, one, a unicorn mare tied to the altar, and a fourteenth cultist, wielding his own knife.
This knife was far different from the one Mandible found. It had no eye, but rather, its entire blade was carved from ruby. The handle was decorated with tear-shaped garnets, each surrounded in gold. Its wielder did not spin it, like the mad man from a few missions before, but rather it sat, perfectly poised over the white-furred neck of his sacrifice.
The mare whimpered quietly, gagged as she was, and her two, blue eyes welled with tears.
Spike's breath caught in his throat as soon as he saw her.
"Sir?" Silver whispered, only to be silenced by a quick wave from the dragon.
And then the dragon moved. He charged the circle, leveling his weapon before a single shot tore the dagger from the cultist's grip. "D.S.P.I.! Wings, Horns, and Hooves where I can see them!"
The leader hissed. "Kill them!" he ordered, before he pulled a tome from behind him.
The thirteen cultists from the stones began to move, drawing swords and flintlocks as the unicorns began to prepare spells.
Silver sighed. Well, this isn't going to end quietly anymore.
A sudden burst of light and heat rained down above, and Silver looked up just in time to see Silk above them, her TS Longrifle ready to put a hole through another cultist skull.
Silver roared. "Move, ponies! Move!"
Flintlocks roared, filling the air around them with thick, grey smoke that made it hard to see, and whistling lead shot past his ears as he dove for the open ground.
Silver could see the leader of the cultist chanting from his tome, hear him intone his spell, even as Chestnut began covering the area in automatic fire.
His silver, sun-blessed bullets simply slammed into an invisible shield, stopping a foot away from the leader as he chanted away.
Sparky, Mandible, and Amber began firing from behind, shooting their crossbows from the air, and catching a good number of the cultist by surprise.
The leader continued to chant, coming to a crescendo.
Spells, smoke, and steel filled the air as Alpha squad poured into the clearing. The cultists threw everything they had, falling as fast as Alpha Team's bolts.
Spike leapt into the air, flying through the air towards the altar, and the mare that lay there, screaming through her gag. "I gotcha!" he yelled, landing next to her and slicing her binds away with her claws as he leveled his weapon at the cultist leader's face.
And then the leader's spell finished.
The emptiness around the platform erupted to red.
Giant geysers of red shot into the air, and the sky above them became crimson.The remaining cultists that lived began to scream, turning to pools before their very eyes. They oozed, and flowed down, towards the leader, gathering around him as he smiled maniacally.
"Crap," Spike grunted, before he picked up the mare, and leapt away from the altar.
The cultists gathered, transforming the leader before Alpha Team's eyes as they slowly, instinctively knew that they stood in a place between places.
A monster began to form, five stories tall, with tough, sinewy muscles on long, thin, lanky arms and massive claws. A massive pony skull crested the top of the monster, and it howled like some kind of rabid dog.
"What's the plan, Commander?" Silver asked.
Spike opened his mouth.
"Leave this one to me," a voice said, as a pink blur dropped from the sky.
Flurry Heart stood in front of them, giving the biggest, cockiest smile Silver had seen as her horn shimmered with a golden light.
The monster looked at her, cocking its head as it regarded the alicorn, before it's left arm exploded.
It howled in pain, before Flurry shot forward, an aura of gold surrounding her. The aura sliced at the ropy cords of muscle, causing them to snap and whip through the air.
Spike growled. "You can't just take that thing by yourself!" He roared, before signaling Amber over and handing the would-be-sacrifice over.
"Watch me!" Flurry laughed as the monster took fast and powerful swipes at her as she danced around him.
Spike began yelling. "Heavy, fill that thing with silver! Assault, Sniper, everyone else, shoot that thing down!"
Alpha Team lept into action, pouring every ounce of firepower they had into the beast. The Monster screamed and howled as Lemon hit the beast with grenades, and the whirring of Chestnut's auto cannon filled the beast with silver bullets.
All the while Flurry heart flew around the monster, mere inches from its stringy flesh as she dug blades of magic into the exposed muscle.
The monster howled again, and from bright red muscle surrounding its chest opened to reveal a massive bloodshot eye. The eye glared at them, pouring all its hatred into the gathered ponies, before it unleashed a crimson beam of heat that would have torn a pony apart if not they did not leap out of the way.
Spike answered with his number one assistant, firing straight for the pupil.
The needles of solidified magic slammed into the eye, and the beast howled in pain as Flurry flew above it, arcing with her blades of magic above the massive pony skull. "You're going to have to do better!"
The beast raised its right arm, and spoke a word in a language that no one there could understand. Flurry could feel the magical energies ebb and pull around her, but she was not ready for the bolt of lighting that arced through her back and struck the extended finger of the monster.
She screamed.
The bolt of scarlet lightning ran down the monster's arm, electrifying the monster's body, before it began to split apart, transforming into a thousand pony-sized copies. The monsters charged, filling the clearing with their awful shapes and howls, before they swarmed the Department ponies.
Spike cursed, staying close to the now-screaming mare, before he began cutting down the monsters that threatened to take them down.
"Flurry! Flurry!"
"I'm okay," she yelled back, even as she hovered erratically through the air, recovering from the thousands of volts that had run through her body.
"How many times do I have to tell you not to take everything on by yourself!" Spike yelled as Alpha Team tried to push back the tide of monsters.
They were not doing well. While they were not faster than the trained soldiers, they were powerful, and were quick to push Alpha Team back.
Silver's blade sang through the air, and was firing his crossbow indiscriminately into the horde of monsters in front of him. A claw bit into his while another cut his face, missing his brain by inches as his honed reflexes kept him alive.
The other thing that saved them was Chestnut's auto cannon. The high-speed, rapid fire bullets tore through the ranks of the monster's, shattering bones and ripping muscle apart with ease.
Unfortunately, these were not zombies. They had minds, or at least one mind between them, and it was sharp enough to recognize a target.
The swarm began to concentrate there, slowly piling at Chestnut's hooves as he slowly emptied his auto cannon. A mound of bodies, both living and dead began to grow in front of him, but he didn't back away.
And then a vicious claw dug into him.
The blow went deep, up to the wrist, and Chestnut's auto cannon went silent.
"Chestnut!" A voice cried from above, and Silver looked up just to watch Amber dive for him, emptying her crossbow into the mass of red flesh.
She'd never make it.
"Medic!" he cried, as he tried to move, trying to close the distance between them.
And that's when Flurry arrived.
Having apparently recovered from the bolt to her back, she dove to fallen body of Chestnut, her golden blades of magic digging into the monsters' brains as she landed. "Don't you dare!" she roared, before the blades shot outward in a tornado of magic and atomically-thin edges that divided bones and tissue in perfect segments.
"I'm trying to show my uncle that I'm a responsible team leader, and I can't prove that if you're killing his ponies!" she roared, before she dove through the monsters, tearing through them like a hot knife through butter.
The monsters fell by the wayside, even as Amber opened her medicine kit, and tried so desperately hard to save Chestnut as he lay bleeding on the floor.
"Don't die on me, now, Heavy," she said, as she poured a healing lotion on the wound before reaching in and holding the cut closed. "We still need you down here."
Chestnut glanced over at her, his eyes trying to focus as blood continued to gush out of him, before he grunted. "Don't cry now, I ain't worth the tears," he muttered in his delirium.
"Shut up!" Amber yelled. "You are too, worth it!"
Silver stood, trying to pretend that he couldn't hear as Amber yell and scream at him to stay alive.
"I'm not..."
"Yes, you are!" Amber yelled. "You are worth it, and you are going to live, you hear me?"
Chestnut gave a resigned smiled. "Yes Ma'am."
Silver shifted his attention, focusing on Flurry Heart and the carnage she carved ahead of her.
She cut a swath through them, slicing the monsters as where they stood.
And then, in a flash, it was all gone.
The walls of red water were gone, the beasts were gone, all that remained were the thirteen stones, the altar, and the ragged body of the leader, panting heavily as he lay in a gory puddle of red goo.
"Alright, buddy!" Flurry said as she hovered above him, smirking. "Time to fess up!"
The leader smiled. "Go to Tartarus..." he said, before he fell backwards.
And then he died.
===ᐁ===
Flurry sighed.
Well, this mission could have gone better. Between nearly losing their Heavy, and having the trail go cold, this whole thing was nearly a bust.
It didn't help that she vaguely felt that the whole thing was her fault.
The heavy was being carried up by the DASH-1's sky crane, lifting him up as he lay on a stretcher.
The medic followed him the entire way, flying beside him.
And that bucking leader died before she could get any actual information out of him.
She sighed again, before she hovered over to the gathered squad, watching as their teammate was taken up into the airship while Spike spoke to the poor mare that had been tied up just hours before.
Now that was whole separate can of worms.
The Support looked over at her, before he whispered. "Um...Miss Flurry?"
"Yeah?" she answered, hoping that he wasn't going to ask what she knew he was going to ask.
"Do...when the commander ran in like that...was it because he saw a mare in danger, and tried to save her, or...was there more?"
Flurry looked him in the eyes. "No. There was no other reason than a mare being in danger. That's it."
She could tell the unicorn didn't believe her.
She rolled her eyes. "Okay, look," she began again, glaring at him. "Are you allowed into Uncle Spike's room. His personal room, are you allowed to go in without being killed?"
The support blinked. "Um...I..."
"No," the Assault said, walking up to her. "No, we're not."
"Then Uncle Spike's not ready to talk about it. Just leave it alone, okay?"
There was a long, unbroken silence.
She sighed again, already feeling like an old mare, before she spoke again. "Look, I don't...I only barely know what happened. It was before my time, and it took years before he opened up to me, and I'm the only living family he has, besides Celestia. It's...very personal, to say the least."
The Assault nodded. "Don't worry about it, Neon. It's just the commander's thing. He has secrets."
Neon sighed. "I guess we all do."
===ᐁ===
Spike sat in his office, going through the various forms that would give Ivory, the mare he pulled off the altar, any necessary care and/or therapy she would need to deal with the fact that she had nearly been sacrificed for a blood ritual to bring a horde of monstrous terrors to the world.
Personally, he thought she was taking the whole thing rather well.
A knock sounded on his door. "Come in," he said, before Flurry Heart walked in.
"Hey, Uncle Spike," she said dejectedly, as she walked in.
"You seem chipper," Spike noticed sarcastically.
"Look, I'm sorry Uncle Spike," she said.
Spike leaned back. "About what?"
She sighed again. "I shouldn't have taken the big guy alone, and because I did, your squad didn't have my support, and you nearly lost your heavy. Not to mention the fact that we didn't get the info we were looking for."
Spike nodded. "Well, at least you know when you have a problem. Then again, I suppose you should have learned something after a couple of hundred years."
"Thanks, Uncle, you always know what to say," she said in a deadpan.
"It's a gift," he said. "That being said, it's not as bad as you think."
Flurry raised an eyebrow and listened.
"For one, the Heavy's going to make it. He'll be out of action for a bit, but he will make it."
"That's good to hear," she said.
"And second," Spike said, reaching down below his desk for the large red tome that the leader used, "this isn't just any spell book. This is Crystal's."
Flurry blinked. "Like, Dark Crystal's?"
"The very same," Spike said. "In short, Flurry, you were right, like you always thought you were."
Flurry blinked, and smiled. "Well of course I was right about that, the Empire does have the best info network known to ponykind."
Spike smiled, and shook his head. |
The D.S.P.I. | Project Firebrand | Alpha and Gamma were both taking some well-deserved time off. Both of them had been working hard to find any signs of the Crimson Covenant, and had mostly come up with nothing. Instead, the only thing they had come up with was the time Gamma ran into a lycan that was breaking parole and had to be restrained until Commander Spike could wade through that flood of paperwork.
The dragon shook his head. "Why'd you make it so tough on yourself, Cinnamon?" he muttered.
Cinnamon Toast was a nice pony by all accounts, ran a bakery in Northern Appleloosa. The now-bustling city enjoyed his cinnamon rolls, and he had no small number of friends there. The only issue is that he becomes a half-pony, half-coyote every month.
Cinnamon was doing his best, to be fair, he took the proper precautions, sealed himself in the proper vault with the timed door provided to him by Department's Lycan Aid Program, but it seemed the coyote in him was a little too smart for the door.
Honestly, it was definitely one of the most interesting cases Spike had seen. He had seen a tiger, a bear, a boar, but never a coyote before. He and the eggheads in R&D still weren't sure if the coyote was the background magic of the desert environment working on his lycanthropy, or if he was bitten by a very rare lycan and he was likewise a rare breed. Regardless, Cinnamon, who was already a smart pony, had become the most devious patient the Department had.
The poor guy was nearly impossible to hold now, but took a bit too much confidence from the weakened bloodlust, and refused to move away from his bakery. Now, he seemed to be paying for it. So far there hadn't been any casualties, but Spike was beginning to wonder if he shouldn't be moved to a more secure location.
His pen hovered over the check box, the one that could end Cinnamon's normal life.
He didn't want to. He really didn't, but if Cinnamon didn't start finding a way to keep that door locked, then he was going to be some serious trouble.
He sighed. "One more time, Cinnamon. That's it."
A knock sounded on his door, and Spike looked up to see Velvet Storm enter the office. "Sir?"
"Yes?"
"The Bio program is ready."
Spike nodded, before he signed the papers in front of him. "It's about time, call in Alpha and Gamma. They're going to have time off anyway."
"Yes, sir."
===ᐁ===
Alpha and Gamma Team were in the common room in fifteen minutes, standing at attention as they waited for the Commander to arrive.
Silver, as team leader, stood two steps ahead of Alpha, while Chrome Shift, the unicorn in charge of Gamma, stood next to him. Both teams were both the perfect picture of discipline, and Spike approved as he approached.
"Looking good, ponies. You just might make some decent soldiers yet."
They continued to stand at attention.
"At ease," Spike ordered, before he spoke again. "As some of you may or may not know, after the attack on our headquarters here, we were given permission by the Princess to activate some of our more experimental programs. Among these is what we're calling 'Project Firebrand' where we have decided to fight Fire with Fire.
"If that sounds like a bunch of poetic garbage to you, then there might be some hope for you," Spike joked. "Project Firebrand has been thoroughly tested, so it is theoretically sound, however, Celestia did have some misgivings, and so wants me to make this perfectly clear to all of you before I accept volunteers.
"What Project Firebrand hopes to achieve is the creation of more powerful soldiers through the use of DNA modification. As an example, if we were take the muscle density genes in a manticore, then you become stronger, and faster than you can possibly be, without becoming a massive monstrosity that makes Chestnut here look like filly in kindergarten," Spike said, motioning to Alpha Team's heavy.
Chestnut smiled.
"We have a few options to choose from, all gene sequences that we've isolated from various sources, including that of some of our enemies. They range anywhere from eyesight improvement, to the ability to transform into a bigger, badder you," Spike told them, before he frowned. "Now there are a few problems. First and foremost is the time it'll take for your original genetic material to flush out so that the new stuff can take over. The lifespan of cells ranges anywhere from four months to a year for blood, a little over a month for skin, to 25 to 35 years for bones, while brain cells last a lifetime.
"We do have a solution, however, it will cut the time down, but it will still take a few months to get the transformation complete. There's also the possibility of cancer, which is bound to happen when you mess with genetic code. And then the other problem that this program creates is that you will be rendered sterile. Personally, I don't think it's that big of a deal, since the chances that you guys are going to live long enough to actually have foals are pretty low, but, It's another one of those things that you need to know."
The ponies nodded.
"Now, I have some flyers with all the options and side effects, so you can read them over and make the informed decision that Celestia wants. If you agree, the whole team gets time off until you recover, so try and get a couple of you to join the program and be efficient with the department's time. You have until the end of the week to make the decision. You're dismissed, take a flyer on the way out."
===ᐁ===
Silver re-read the flyer, not entirely sure if it was real or not.
It wasn't that he thought the program was fake or anything, but the cartoonish type in bright yellow colors that read like some kind of early-TV advertisement that made him wonder.
"Amaze your friends as you turn invisible before their very eyes!*
See for miles with improved vision!
Face your enemies with newfound bravery with armored skin!
Talk to your Commander about Project Firebrand today!
*not actual invisibility."
He shook his head.
As for the actual program, it sounded fairly useful. The subdermal armor sounded useful, as did the internal camo option, but Silver was still on the fence about the whole infertility thing. Now, yes, chances were his little swimmers weren't going to be put to use anytime soon, and as far as vasectomies go this was probably the least painful.
Of course, there was also the "heightened risk of cancer," that the Commander mentioned in passing.
"Have you decided?" Silk asked as she sat next to him for lunch.
Silver looked up at her, before he returned to his untouched meal. "Um...not really...I'm kinda on the fence about it. I mean, there is the whole cancer thing, not to mention the other side effects," he said, referring to the long list of things that could happen to a gene-altered pony.
Loss of sense of touch was pretty high up there, and linked directly to the subdermal armor that was oh-so-tempting. Becoming far-sighted was listed next to the eye improvements. And of course, was all the cancers.
It was somewhat off-putting, if he had to admit.
"What about you?" Silver asked.
"Well," she began. "I'm probably going to do it."
"Yeah?" Silver asked.
"Well, it's kind of a long story, but...well...I'm not going to lose anything if I go in," she said, before she turned away.
"Oh..." Silver said blinking.
"It's a birth defect," she muttered. "It's not...There isn't some tragic backstory, I just...I just pulled the genetic short straw, okay?"
"No, no, I understand," Silver said quickly, trying his best to be delicate. "I...just...never would have guessed is all..."
She nodded, and went back to her food.
Silver hoped he missed a landmine before he quickly tried to change the subject. "So...what are you thinking about getting?"
"Probably the vision enhancement," she said. "The better I can aim, the better shots I can make. The better shots, the better I can keep you boneheads alive," she added with a smile, as eager to change the topic as he was.
"Anything else?" Silver asked. "Cause, personally, the subdermal armor sounds awesome. Can you imagine taking a flintlock round to the face and just walking that off?"
"Yeah, but I don't get shot at as much as you," she told him. "Armor is much less important for me. But, the idea of the internal camouflage would certainly help."
"That I can see," Silver said. "Although I suppose the point is that I can't. But the medicated bone marrow idea does have me intrigued."
"What are you lovebirds up to?" a voice said, and they both looked up to see Mandible, staring at them with an eyebrow raised.
Silver blushed. "Excuse me?"
"You look like you're picking your dream house. What are you working on?"
"We're talking," Silk began, her voice sounding more than a little annoyed, "about this Project Firebrand, and the possible options we can take with it."
"Yeah, I'm thinking about the medicated bone marrow and the subdermal armor," Silver said. "It should help me stay alive."
"And I'm thinking about the internal camouflage and the vision enhancements," Silk stated.
"What about you," Silver asked the changeling, "anything stand out to you?"
"No," he answered.
"Why not?"
Mandible stared at the two of them with a deadpan glare. And then his skin erupted into emerald flame. "I wonder why?" the now-pegasus answered, before he changed back. "I have all the tools I need. If you need more to do your job better that's your problem."
"You're all heart, Mandible," Silver said.
"No, that's what I eat, not what I am," Mandible said.
"Unless you are what you eat," Silk replied.
"Cute."
===ᐁ===
"So, you're the Alpha volunteers?" Spike asked as he looked the three ponies over.
Silver nodded.
He was kind of surprised to see Sparky here. He hadn't heard anything about the program from Sparky, and could have sworn that he had basically no interest in the idea, but nonetheless, he was here, in line.
"Alright, then, just go ahead and tell me what you want, and we'll get you set up," Spike said.
"What? No waiver?" Silver asked.
Spike snorted. "As far as the world outside's concerned, you're already dead. You'd have to find a court that'll take a dead stallion's case, first. Let me know how that goes."
"Good to know," Silk answered.
"You'll be fine," Spike said, as he grabbed a clipboard. "Alright, Silver, what do you want?"
"I'll have the medicated bone marrow and the subdermal armor, sir," Silver answered.
"The stay alive pack," Spike nodded. "Alright. Silk."
"Internal camouflage and vision enhancements," she told him.
"Good, good, better to hide, and better to shoot. Spark?"
"Internal camo and dense muscles." He answered.
"An odd combination, but that's what field tests are for," Spike said, before he led them away to a new room where eight massive glass tubes waited for them. "So, here's how this is going to work. You are going to be placed in one of these tubes, you will then have an anesthetic applied to you so that you don't feel the six dozen needles that will inject your cells with the enzyme that will replace various sections of your DNA.
"After that, we'll fill the tube with a solution that'll promote cell growth, and the dying cells will be replaced with new cells with this new DNA. While we wait for that, we keep you asleep, and keep you fed on an IV, and monitor you to make sure you don't become a horribly mutated mess. Any questions?"
"The chances of the horribly mutated mess?" Silver asked.
"Well, the enzymes are magically guided, but it's hard to direct anything at that size. But our tests came out with a 98% chance of success, so..."
"Uh..."
"You'll probably be fine," Spike said, before directed them back to the tubes. "Pick a tube, it'll be your home for a month, so choose wisely."
"Well," Silver whispered to Silk, "that explains the cleansing he made us go through..."
She looked back at him, unamused.
Well, you have to strike out eventually...
They each picked a tube, and mentally prepared themselves, as IV drips were inserted into their legs, and breathing tubes were attached around their faces. They lay down in the back of the angled tubes, their backs against the cold glass, before one of the nurses came around with a needle, and carefully injected them with the magically-activated anesthetic.
"Sleep well, guys," Spike said as he watched the tubes close and the ponies fall unconscious. "I'll see you on the other side."
===ᐁ===
Weeks went by.
Spike paced down the room, back and forth, as the clear, green liquid held the five ponies aloft in their tubes.
Only two ponies from Gamma decided to join Project Firebrand, but that was fine by Spike. The only major issue was all the work Phi was now stuck with.
Back up the room, checking clipboards, data points, and monitors as he watched the ponies' vital signs.
All signs were clear. No unforeseen mutations. Everything was fine.
He checked his clipboards again.
"You're caring again." A voice in the back of his head whispered.
Of course he cared. This was a seven million bit investment, the culmination of fifteen years of research. This might even be the key to getting soldiers to retire without leaving in a coffin.
"No, you are caring about the ponies."
Spike double checked a print out of the latest data set.
"You know what happens when you care about your ponies."
Of course he knew. You don't live for more than two hundred years and not learn that ponies die. No matter what you do, and how much you love them, they are going to roll over and croak.
"They'll be lucky if that's all that happens."
This was also technically true. He had watched friends beg for death before the end, weeping as their dreams were ripped away before their eyes.
"So why care? Why do you keep doing thisto yourself, Spike? It'll only end in pain."
It will. He knew it would.
"How long, then? How long until the Department has the new Silver Dust rifle? Or the Silk Star jet pack?"
He paused to look up at the five ponies, all floating in the green fluid that was slowly changing them into something new.
They reminded him of Her.
Appearing so blissful, yet trapped in a crystalline prison. Silently sleeping as the world moved on without them.
Silver bobbed in the solution.
Well, it's probably the ponies' fault that he cares too much. The whole species was too dang charismatic for their own good.
===ᐁ===
Silver slowly became aware of the strangest sensation. There was a strange pressure on him, and yet despite that, he felt like he was floating.
A second later he became aware of the fact that he had just now made a conscious thought.
He slowly cracked open an eye, only to slam it shut as a liquid flooded into his eye and burned the whole way.
That really woke him up.
He grunted and rubbed his eyes with his fetlocks, swirling in the thick fluid that surrounded him. He tried to open his eyes again, this time, ready for the burning, and was only met with a blurry view of his own reflection.
He reached out and pushed, feeling cold glass at his hooves and back as he pressed against the tube.
He was starving.
The realization hit him like a sack of bricks, and his stomach roared in hunger.
He tapped the glass, just to try and communicate with the world outside his tube.
He felt the liquid shake as a tap sounded back.
And then he felt the suction. He felt his tail being gently pulled downward, and watched as the top of the tube began to fill with air. His head broke the surface, and he could see out of the glass.
Spike stared back at him from the outside, and waved.
The tube emptied shortly, and it popped open to let the ponies of alpha team slide out. The Department's nurses moved quickly, removing breathing tubes and IVs to free the ponies.
"Good morning, ponies. Did ya have a nice nap?" Spike asked.
Silk sat up, and blinked as she looked around. "Oh...wow..." she muttered.
"What do you see, Silk?" Spike asked.
"The...colors...they're...wow..."
Spike smirked. "Well, you and Sparky here will both be receiving some training over the next month so you can stretch your new muscles. For now, though, why don't the three of you go eat. It's been a month, and an IV can only do so much."
===ᐁ===
"So..." Chestnut began as he watched the three returned ponies. "How was the gene manipulation?"
Silver, Silk, and Sparky didn't answer.
They were too busy shoving food into their mouths as fast as possible. Any decorum they even pretended to have was out the window as they ate plate after plate after plate of food. Fruit, vegetables, grains, anything and everything that could fit into their mouths went down the hatch.
The team waited for answer.
They got none.
And Spike just smiled and shook his head as he watched. "Crazy kids," he muttered. "Heh, listen to me, I'm sounding like an old man."
"Vell you are one, Kommandant Shpike," Butter said as she walked up next to him.
"I don't remember asking for that opinion."
"No, but you did ask for zee report. Zee sholdiers of zee Crystal Empire have been performing vell. Zere are no signs of any Covenant acktivity, but zey are keeping zeir eyes open."
"Good," Spike said. "Phi will be happy for the break."
Butter Streusel and Spike both stared out over the cafeteria, as their soldiers ate their last month's worth of rations in one go.
"I hope they do well," Spike said.
"I hope so too, Herr Shpike." |
The D.S.P.I. | Operation Patient Serpent | "Alright ponies!" Sweetie Belle said as the DASH-1 opened its cargo door. "We get in, clear the building, get out! Those are our orders, so let's put some Covenant down!"
The DASH-1 hovered over the Las Pegasus skyscraper, and the squad quickly dropped to the roof. Silver landed hard, and raised his pneumatic crossbow to check the rooftop. "Sniper, what's below us?"
Silk was exactly 453 yards away, on a different rooftop, her longrifle and new eyes scanning the floor below them. "I'm not seeing anything directly below from this side, but I do see a target one floor beneath that."
"Okay, keep him in your sights, but do not engage until we have."
"I know, I know," she said, "-this isn't my first rodeo."
"Hey, Assault," Lemon said as she loaded her flash cocktails, "Quit talking to your marefriend and get ready."
"She's not--I-it's not like that!" Silver said, realizing that he was perhaps louder than he needed to be.
Also probably blushing.
"Oh, come on," Neon said, pulling his mic away to talk without being heard by the mare herself. "We all know you joined Project Firebrand as her emotional support."
"Enough chatter!" Sweetie said, hovering above them. "We're moving in. Scout, Agent, take the stairs, I'll go straight down and report back with what I see. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!" Silver said. "You heard the mare, Scout, move out."
Sparky nodded, before his internal camo transformed him. His skin and fur rippled and shifted as the melanin in his skin was being altered by a new enzyme, and before their very eyes, he disappeared.
Not completely, you understand, but enough. A shimmer in the air was all the gathered ponies could see as Sparky made his way to the door, and slipped inside, down the roof-access stairs.
Mandible was better hidden, his mirror cloak making him completely invisible to the naked eye. Sparky was certainly good, but Mandible was better.
Sweetie Belle smiled. "Alright, if I'm not back in 5, something happened." She said before she disappeared into the floor.
"Alright, like we trained, we wait for Scout or Agent's clear signal and we move to the next floor. On his not clear signal, we wait for a regroup, and clear it room by room, secure the stairs to the next floor, and either hope that they don't notice, or that they come to us so we can mow them down."
"We get it!" Neon said. "We've done this for a month!"
"We cleared rooms a month," Silver corrected. "A refresher on the process leading up to that won't hurt."
Las Pegasus was alive, even during the night. The bright, yellow bridges that allowed the earth-borne races to walk the cloud streets were filled with unicorns and pegasi eager to spend their bits at tables and shows. In a place that thrived on money so much, he was hardly surprised that the Covenant could buy the use of a few floors.
Of course, they were idiots, because the love of money does not mean you want to see the end of the world.
So a little bird came by Spike's ear and sang him a pretty song of a bunch of ponies that were painting runes on the floor in the top four floors of the Royal Rose Casino.
The entire team suddenly heard a pair of clicks on the radio, the sound of a mic being tapped gently by a hoof. The first floor was clear. "Let's move," Silver said, leveling his crossbow at the stairs.
They moved slowly, coming down the stairs carefully so they didn't make too much noise, they couldn't count on the crowds or the slots to mask them so high up.
They fanned out into the floor, taking the halls at practiced points, double checking Sparky and Mandible's work as they went. The first floor was clear.
Just as they finished, another tap was heard over the radio. One tap. The next floor was not clear.
Silver led the others back to the stairwell and waited for the scout and agent to regroup with them.
It took a few, long minutes, before Sparky arrived, and another long minute after that before Mandible showed up. "Sorry I'm late," he said, raising his blood-drenched obsidian knife along with a new, ruby one. "There was an opportunity I couldn't pass up."
"You're supposed to wait, not give us away, Agent!" Silver hissed.
"Don't worry, everything's fine, I'm a professional," he said. "Sniper can back me up on that, right?"
"I'm not seeing any activity," Silk confirmed. "Just let me know when you're in position and I'll open fire."
Silver sighed. "Alright, we move up, like we practiced."
They began to move, with Chestnut immediately breaking away to secure the stairs from the floor below while the rest began to move out. They divided into two small fireteams of no more than three: Silver with Neon and Mandible, and Sparky with Amber and Lemon. Both took a corridor, and began to make their way down between the faux walls that had been set up as dividers for who knows what.
They slid forward, the agent and scout both leading each team.
"Scout," Silk whispered into the radio mic, "You're closing in on the first target, on the left. Once you make contact, I'll take him out. Focus on any other contacts, don't worry about the left."
Three taps to the mic was all she needed for an answer.
From 453 yards away, through her 20x scope, Silk watched as the thermal signatures of the scout fireteam moved closer and closer to the lone covenant pony. She didn't need the scope to see that, of course. She could make this shot with the iron sights now, but the scope was already keyed in, so she didn't see a need to change it.
Besides, old habits die hard.
Sparky was closing the distance fast. He was going to hit the cultist in seconds, and the manure would officially hit the fan. She took a deep breath, and lined up her sights. This wasn't a hard shot for her under normal circumstances, but with her eyes it was now as simple as a 5 yard shot. Still, she had to make sure it would take him down. None of this, 'missed his heart by an inch' stuff, this had to put the pony down.
Three seconds to contact.
Breath in.
Two seconds.
Breath out.
One.
A scorching beam of heat flew across the Las Pegasus sky, a red-hot shot that hit the window, passed through, and vaporized the cultist's head before he even knew what was happening.
That was it.
Contact was made.
===ᐁ===
Silver and Neon both slammed into a room, sweeping their crossbows across it's whole space with practiced precision while Mandible held the hallway. "Clear!" Silver yelled, before taking the lead, as Covenant cultists began to fill the hallways.
Thermal Shot rounds hissed through the window, setting the dividers on fire as Silk picked her targets.
The heavy, staccato thud of Chestnut's mini cannon roared from the stairway, mowing down ponies as they tried to climb.
A pair of ponies moved into the hallway, scared out of their minds, and they both went down like sacks of potatoes. Another room to the right, and they slammed into it hard. Two bolts hit the ponies against the burning far wall, and a scorching ray shot through it like it was tissue paper. The sprinklers turned on, dousing everyone in water as the firefight continued.
Far below, an alarm sounded, and panicked screams filled the air.
Silver broke out, turning back down the hallway as another pony stood, flintlock pistol out and shaking.
Silver made it quick.
It sickened him to see what this covenant did to these ponies. Militarized and zealous beyond doubt and fear, they attacked and would stop either until they're dead, or the ponies they're shooting at were.
He slammed open another door, and was met with a flash of light.
"Assault!" Neon yelled as he filled the pony that just shot Silver in the face with bolts.
"Assault?" Silk's voice called over the radio, worry filling her voice.
"Ow," Silver said. "That's going to be a headache tomorrow."
"Hey, you're not dead," Mandible said, using his magic to pick the unicorn up, "that's more than what most ponies can say after being shot point-blank."
A sigh came over the radio from Silk's side, before she spoke up. "Um, guys? I just saw a massive thermal signature appear on the fourth floor down."
"It appeared?" Silver asked.
"Out of nowhere," she confirmed.
A head suddenly appeared through the floor. "There you are!"
"What's the news, Siren?" Silver asked.
"We have some friends coming up from a few floors down, we're going to go home soon at this rate."
"Friends?"
"You'll see!" she said, before she floated away towards the stairs.
"We're clear!" Sparky yelled from the other side of the burning dividers.
"We clear down here," Silver yelled back.
"Uh...boss?" Chestnut said through the radio. "We, uh...you might want to see this."
"I'm coming," Silver said, nursing his head.
The team began to gather, getting ready for the next floor. All the way until they got to the stair case.
And then they stopped.
And they stared.
"What are you looking at?" A deep, growling voice emanated from the taller, red dragon at the landing.
Any answer that Silver and the others could have given him was then cut off by the smaller, teal one with a strange cane. "Garble, be polite." She said, before turning to the ponies and smiling. "Hello there, allow me to introduce myself, I am Dragon Lord Ember, and this is my bodyguard, Garble."
"Why are we going to ask for their help? They're just a bunch of lousy ponies," Garble muttered.
"Garble," she said, chidingly. "Apologize."
"Oh, come on!" He whined.
"Hug that pony and apologize," she ordered, as she pointed to Silver.
Garble groaned, and climbed the stairs before he grabbed Silver, hoisted him in the air, and squeezed him. "I'm sorry and I hate you."
"Garble..." Ember chided again.
The red dragon mumbled before dropping Silver.
"So Ember," Sweetie Belle said as she floated past. "What brings you here?"
Ember smiled. "I want to talk to Spike."
===ᐁ===
"What are you doing here, Ember?" Spike asked.
"I came to talk to you." she said innocently as she twirled the Bloodstone Scepter.
"So you've said," Spike noted. "But why?"
"What? I can't come and help my Dragon Lord?" she asked.
Spike groaned, as if he head been waiting and dreading this very conversation. "I'm not the Dragon Lord, Ember, you are."
The Scepter stopped spinning. "And yet we both know that you were the one gifted with the knowledge, secrets, and inner flame to rule them. I didn't get those."
"They aren't that important, Ember," Spike told her repeating his point from a hundred previous conversations.
She gave a snort, and a cloud of smoke began to fill his office. "Either way, I've decided I'd come by and see how you were doing. Shoot the breeze, and all that other crazy pony stuff."
"Fine," Spike grunted. "So what did you want to talk about?"
"Well, I heard that you were dealing with some crazier ponies than usual, and it just so happens that we have some nutjobs down in the dragon lands that need taking care of."
Spike sighed. "Ember, I'm not an asylum service."
"I should hope not," she retorted, with a grim smirk. "We're looking for more of a 'dead pony removal service' than anything."
"Ember, look, it's--"
"They've gotten dragons on their side, Spike," Ember said. "I can't give them orders."
Silence fell over the office as the two dragons stared at each other.
"I need the real Dragon Lord, Spike."
"That's not me," Spike said.
"You can't keep running from this Spike."
"I'm not running," Spike growled.
"You are the real Dragon Lord, Spike. You can't ignore that. You are the best Dragon Lord we could possibly have, and you are running from it. The dragons need you."
"My family needs me," Spike growled again.
"Family? You're talking about your girlfriend under glass. She's not family, she's--"
"Leave. Her. Out of this," the Commander ordered.
Ember felt her lips shut, and her throat tightened anytime she even thought about the mare.
"Th-th--" she hissed, trying to speak. "The-they're holding you back," she finally said, her vocal chords loosening once she said "holding."
"They need me, Ember. I've told you this a hundred times. I cannot leave them. I will not abandon the country my family fought for."
Ember snorted again. "I know..." she muttered angrily. "It's just not fair that you're going to let us fall apart when you're the best Dragon Lord we can ask for."
There was a long second of silence, and Spike sighed.
"Ember," Spike began, "I made you the Dragon Lord because no one would listen to some runt that grew up with ponies, even if they had to. You listen, and that makes you the best Dragon Lord in history."
===ᐁ===
Silver worked quickly and quietly, cleaning his pneumatic crossbow and checking the o-rings as he set his kit down in the corner of his room.
He'd just make sure that everything was as it should be before hitting the hay, and then it would be up at the usual time for yet more missions and training.
His door suddenly slammed open, and he jumped a full foot into the air, before he turned to see Silk standing in the doorway. "What's this about me not being your marefriend?"
And just like that, Silver was in more danger than any of his previous missions to date.
"Uh..." he began.
"What is this about me not being your marefriend?" she repeated.
"I...um..."
She stepped into the room, slamming the door shut behind her and closing the distance. "Yes?" she asked.
"I...wasn't sure if you wanted to move that fast?" he said, speaking slowly enough that he could test each word as he said it.
"And what makes you think I didn't?" she asked, angrily.
"Um. I just didn't understand your intentions?" he offered, before he felt Silk's lips press against his.
She pulled back, smiling with half-lidded eyes. "Have I made my intentions clear now?"
"Yup," nodding stupidly.
"Good," she said, before kissing him again, "and who am I?"
"My marefriend."
"Correct answer," she said, before she pulled him into a long embrace.
===ᐁ===
Garble was bored.
Why did the runt have to like ponies so much?
Why did the Boss like the runt so much?
Like, honestly, if he could get rid of the runt, all his problems would disappear. The Boss would stop all the sighing and whining she does when she thinks no one is listening. She would cut out this whole "talk and listen to each other" stuff she's been pushing; and get back to some good, old fashioned "fight for what's yours" negotiation.
He wandered around the runt's little pony cave, so bored he couldn't even sleep in the little guest bedroom that was offered to him and the Boss.
Besides, he had to go around and point out how stupid all this pony stuff was.
Like that empty room there, with the white tiles and the bright yellow line that said not to cross. First of all, why have an empty room? You could use that to store junk at least, but no, it just sat there empty. And then there was the line. Why have a room and not allow anybody to use most of it? That's stupid.
Yup the whole thing was stupid. Stupid ponies.
You know what another stupid thing the ponies had? That stupid noise that kept ringing through the complex.
Garble, as bored as he was, figured he might as well spend time finding the source of the noise, if for no other reason than to point out how stupid it was to someone later.
He kept wandering, looking into the scorched rooms when he finally found Spike. He stood at a bench, with a variety of stupid pony weapons around him, and was taking aim at a bunch of targets at the far end of a long room.
"What are you doing up?" Spike asked without turning to face him.
Garble frowned. "I'm bored, and I can't sleep in your stupid little pony beds."
Spike gave a grunt as a response, before picking up a pneumatic crossbow. He didn't say a word as he fired the silver-tipped, yew wood bolts ll down range, and hit the pony-sized target with ease.
"So why are you up, Runt?" Garble asked, so bored he decided he might as well ridicule the little dragon.
"I don't sleep much," Spike answered, before he emptied the crossbow and traded it for a small, hand-sized pistol that shot needles of hard magic.
Garble blinked.
That...that almost sounded cool.
We can't have the runt being cool.
That's just...not cool.
He needed something that he could pull, something that would make the runt show his true colors.
"So, are you and your pony friends going to come? Or did the Boss come all this way for nothing?"
"No," Spike said.
"You're not coming? Figures. I guess you're too much of a coward to--"
"They're not coming, it's just going to be me," Spike said, setting the handgun aside to pick up a TS longrifle. "My team may be able to take on one dragon. More than that, and it'll be a bloodbath."
Dang it... Uh...
"Heh, whatever," Garble mumbled, trying to play it off. "Look, if you're playing it cool to impress the Boss, you can go ahead and drop it. She's taken."
Spike blinked, but did not stop firing as another scorching shot dug through the target. "Really? That's news to me."
"Yeah, she and I--"
Spike chuckled. "No."
Garble paused. "What?"
"You are not her type," Spike said.
"And how do you know what her type is?" Garble asked.
"How do you think?" Spike responded.
Garble's eye twitched. "Listen, Runt."
"No, you listen, Garble," Spike said as he set the rifle down. "You've seemed to mistake me for someone that cares about your little crawl to alphadom. I don't care. I've spent the last two hundred years fighting things faster than you, stronger than you, and most certainly smarter than you. You, and your pathetic little attempts to prove to anyone that you matter, mean nothing to me, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner we can move onto more important things."
Garble blinked and snarled. "Shut up, Runt. You don't get to tell me--"
Garble moved, his claw coming down on the smaller, purple dragon in a vicious strike. And then, the next thing he knew, he was on his back. By the time the red dragon blinked, he could just barely see Spike through the purple dragon's back claws as he pinned him to the ground.
He couldn't move. His head was stuck beneath Spike's foot, and his arm was twisted awkwardly behind his back.
"Wow..." Spike said, so unimpressed that a computer has more emotion in its tone, "You're not... even stronger than me."
Garble tried, until he felt his wrist begin to bend at a threatening angle.
"Don't. I don't want to explain to your boss that you fell down a flight of stairs and broke your wrist. Just listen, and maybe try to comprehend what I'm going to say if it doesn't burn your brain out. I don't care about what you do, just leave me out of it. Got it?"
And then Spike released the dragon and left, taking a rifle, and his number one assistant with him.
===ᐁ===
Silver slowly woke from his sleep.
The habit of waking early, that had been drilled into him as a Royal Guard just wasn't going to give up easily, it seemed.
He shifted, and a moment later, Silk shifted beside him, still snoring away.
Yes, all things considering, she had defined their relationship rather well. Now all he had to do was let the Commander know.
Honestly, he was not looking forward to it. Chances were one of them was going to be switched out from someone in another team. That's what the Royal Guard would do. No fraternization! Focus on your job!
Still, the chances of hiding a relationship like this were very, very small. It would not go over well if Spike were to found out--
His door slammed open. Silk woke up screaming, before literally trying to blend into the wall as her internal camouflage activated. Silver fell out of his cot, and blinked, bewildered and blinded as light flooded his room.
"Morning, Silk," Spike said, before turning back to Silver. "Silver, if we're under attack, you're leading the defense until I get back."
"Sir?" Silver asked, still wondering what was going on.
"I'm heading to the dragon lands. You're leading the defense until I get back. Do I need to repeat myself again?"
"N-no, sir."
"Good. You two have fun," Spike said.
"You're...not mad about it?" Silver asked, confused.
"Why would I be?" Spike asked. "You're shooting blanks, she couldn't use them even if they weren't, and you're both probably going to die anyway." Spike said, turning away and walking down the hall as he carried a TS Longrifle and a pneumatic crossbow on his back.
"Heck," he whispered, "Maybe having someone watching your back just might save you one day." |
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