Nothing At All

Nothing At All

~Chapter 1 - Starlight~

By Chimpso

“Life isn’t fair, and that’s good. If life were fair, life wouldn’t be interesting.”

Cities sleep.

No matter where one is, from the lofty constructions of Manehattan to the surplus of showy lights that is Las Pegasus, they will find that every city sleeps.

Las Pegasus sleeps you say? Ha! What a nonsensical musing. The city is always alive and on the ball, filled with an energy that fluctuates between the joys of a lucky seven and the despair of a Blackjack bust. But please, I urge you to look deeper. While they may call it the city that never sleeps, Las Pegasus indeed slumbers. Away from the Casinos and general blunder of the strip, the dainty suburbs rest. Or at least they try, their neighbors never seem to stop partying, always awake, fueled by money and coquettish charm, never taking a moment to sit down and embrace the night, never thinking to stop and enjoy a fleeting moment of peace.

Where am I going with this you ask? I care not about pathetic personifications of cities you say. What relevance does this serve? Well my friend, my reasoning here is simple, almost too simple for such purple rumination.

My point is that cities sleep, there is not one that is ever fully awake. And strolling through the lamp-lit streets of a sleeping city is like taking a long, revealing walk through a familiar being’s soul: you recognize everything, but it all seems... different.

Canterlot at night was a very different city.

While the sunlight hours saw much jubilation and praise from the denizens of the mountain fortress, its nights were, for lack of a less morbid word, dead. The upper echelons of society who rightly chose Canterlot as their home city quite enjoyed their sleep after what they would call ‘busy days’, as if lifting teacups and gossiping around the drama between or within Canterlot’s many rich families was a huge tax on their energy reserves. As a result, Canterlot’s night scene was virtually non-existent, and the streets and sidewalks were always empty in the late hours of the night. The only thing that would even assure you that the whole city hadn’t been abandoned in preparation for some horrible natural disaster was the fact the the street lamps still glowed faintly to assist the moon in providing some illumination to the quiet night.

Under one such light, a white pegasus mare with a yellow-striped mane so long it was surprising that she could even fly, adjusted her cloak to better warm her body against the evening chill. Her wings were tucked away under said cloak, there was no need for flying tonight. There was no rush, her destination would not run away, and there was nothing to hinder her on her way there. The only thing that time affected was the duration of the night, which was no worry as it was the very early hours of the morning, long before the bustle the city slowly filled the streets and buildings with its common, repetitive routine, the same for everyone, everyday.

The night was something few cared to notice, and most decided to skip it entirely, slipping into unconsciousness willfully to take a shortcut to the beginning of the daytime hours. What what was so different about the night? Nothing really changes, evil spirits don’t roam the streets murdering anyone temeritous enough to walk out. Gravity doesn’t decide to flip you onto your head if you don’t stay under the covers of your home’s warm and cozy bed. The only thing that changes is the light, but is that really cause for ignoring the phase of the day which lasts for almost a third of its total duration? Is lack of interest for the night so prominent that a day is sundered and the gap filled by simply lying in bed and disabling your critical faculties, just so you can take a break from the life which you claim to enjoy so much?

Aurea slept very little. Her stance saw it as a waste of time, a great inconvenience that ponykind through all its achievements in magic and technology should have already transcended. Her grey eyes, though always in argument with her eyelids—which insisted on closing—remained open, feasting on the knowledge of the world around her, not so much as to satisfy a deep thirst for such knowledge, but more to fill a gap in between the seams of knowledge in her mind. Sleeping would certainly not help with that.

The silent streets of Canterlot's more posh commercial districts echoed the faint clopping of Aurea’s hoofsteps as she passed row upon row of quiet shop fronts, The interiors were so dark that looking through the window was like staring into a void. These shopfronts continued, one after the other, blackness without end, the light from the streetlamps treading only a few inches into the windows before halting, not bold enough to dare venture further, only providing a reflection off the glass windows in which to see oneself painted against the blackness beyond. Aurea could not imagine herself standing in a place so dark and quiet, without the gentle touch of the moon, with nothing but the blackness and the noise of her own body to keep her company.

And yet she knew that the darkness and silence were merely a phase of the district’s existence. The stores were not always silent and opaque. For during the time of the day when the sun was highest in the sky, those dark shopfronts and empty streets were filled with ponies going about their business. And then, come night, a place so welcoming and full of light turns into a haunting, lifeless place.

She was nearing her destination now, leaving the light of the street and walking into what would seem to the burdened tourist like one of Canterlot’s many fabricated parks. Not that Aurea could blame them for jumping to such a conclusion, from the outside the park indeed appeared uninteresting. A simple strip of green with a single cobblestone path leading to several park benches shaded by a few delicate trees that rustled gently in the midnight breeze. It was a piece of nature sandwiched between two commercial business buildings, and seemed quite out of place. But Canterlot is a bigger city than most thought, most of the time you didn’t know where you were. You could be walking down any street and not know if you were in the center of the city, or on its outskirts with the breathtaking view of Equestria just down the road.

This park was more special than most believed however. It was backed by a tall hedge, which to most would appear to be the back wall of the park. Aurea herself had thought this at first after she had stopped there to rest one evening, but after looking around, she found a piece of Canterlot to call her own.

To the far left of the hedge, hidden due to poor planning by an untrimmed bush, was a gap in the green wall. No path lead to said gap, and the only way it could be noticed is if someone rested on the grass nearby. But even then it would be unlikely that they would spot it, as the bush that prevented it from being noticed from center of the park was in dire need of some serious trimming. Most of the gap in the hedge was covered by the bush, and walking through was not pleasant.  Aurea usually would have to remove the leaves and twigs from her hair after emerging on the other side. The discomfort however was well worth it.

The gap opened up to a short flight of plain grey stone steps which lead down to a very small patch of greenery with only a lone tree and a park bench, made of the same stone as the steps, to adorn it. But that bench was backed by the hedge wall which ended the original park, what formed the back border of this small extension was the most stunning view of Equestria Aurea had ever laid eyes on.

Leaning on the short stone wall that separated the park from a deadly fall down the Canterlot mountain, Aurea checked the land below her for the usual and familiar landmarks. Peering over to the left, she saw the town of Ponyville, only just distinguishable from the Everfree Forest by the few lights left on in the town at such an ungodly hour. There Cloudsdale was, sitting above Canterlot far off to her right, its rainbows dimmed and faded from the dark and its waterfalls shimmering with the glow of the moon. When she looked forward, the canopy of a luscious forest and the encroaching facade of mountains that didn’t nearly match the size of Canterlot stood before her, dominating the landscape as far as the eye could see.

But although the view was beautiful, and worth coming to the secluded haven for, Aurea’s night trips to the little patch of green on the outskirts of Canterlot were to stare in wonder at an entirely different view. Unfastening the cloak from her neck and pulling it off her shoulders, she draped it on the overgrown grass, several years worth of growth present for what had to have been years without a trim. The chill of the night washed over her as she unfurled her wings, glad to have them free again after the long walk with them tucked away under the cloak. She evened out her cloak, the thick grass bulging the fine material which soon gave way under her weight as she sat down, fell onto her back, and looked skyward.

No city in Equestria, not even Cloudsdale, provided an as profound, immersive and outright mesmerising view of the night sky as Canterlot did. While Ponyville was too low on the ground to provide the best view of the sky over the clouds and Cloudsdale’s constantly active weather factories produced too much light pollution for the stars to be visible, Canterlot’s position high above the ground and its dark and dead nights provided the clearest view of the sky in Equestria. Stars, rows upon rows of stars, dominating the blackness, impossible to count or even comprehend the number of glowing white specs that were visible with a pony’s naked eye. Aurea had tried several times to count them, but always gave up several minutes after starting, there were just too many. How, she wondered, did ponies from cities where the stars could never be seen, such as Manehattan with its ever-present skyglow, react to the realisation that their eyes had never shown them the full picture after looking up while standing in a long, empty field. She had always been brought up with the night sky in Canterlot, and had never taken it for granted or treated it as mere commonplace. Ever. But it seemed that most residents of the city were more than happy to skip the night phase and slip away into sleep, like the city they lived in, and avoid the night sky all together.

She would never have been satisfied with that. After reaching the age where she could understand the beauty of the night sky, Aurea fell in love. It wasn’t all that surprising. Her parents were both esteemed Canterlot astronomers at the time. What was surprising was the same surprise her parents had when they first saw her.

Everyone expected a unicorn. There was no doubt. Her parents were unicorns, her grandparents on both sides were unicorns. There hadn’t been a pegasus in the family for as long as most of them had remembered. Even the doctors had been surprised, and her father, though he’d never admit it to the mother, was concerned and arranged for a paternity test. The results were conclusive, he was indeed the father.

Aurea took her wings in stride though. Pegasi were a rare sight in Canterlot, and as such she didn’t find much need for her wings often, and finding clothing that would comfortably accommodate them was difficult and expensive, but that wasn’t  necessarily a concern. Neither was her family. While surprised with the outcome of her birth, they never took it out on her. Her family had been just as loving and accommodating as they would have had they had any other child. And, being an only child, her parents love for her was strong.

The main frustration that Aurea had with being a pegasus was her chosen profession. Ever since she was old enough to be able to fully understand what her parents told her about the grandeur of the night sky and the infinite universe it showed, she had wanted to follow the same path they did. She wanted to become an astronomer. Unfortunately, pegasus astronomers were about as common as unicorn athletes, calibrating and angling a telescope generally required the gentle touch of a Unicorn’s magic. Hooves and wings were believed too clumsy to perform this task, and removing and changing expensive lenses with one’s teeth posed a great risk of ruining them. Despite being a stellar student with impeccable grades, Aurea was turned down. She was turned down by every school and university with any type of astronomy course. While they agreed that her knowledge of the subject was exceptional for her age, she ‘just didn’t fit the prerequisite’. Despite trying desperately to make the schools allow her to enrol, Aurea’s parents met with no success. With no chance of an actual academic pathway to her career of choice, Aurea, with the urging of her parents, pursued the profession on her own.

With time, her skills developed. Magic became a mere tool, not a requirement, the delicate operation and maintenance of an expensive telescope became as simple as extending a wing, and the deep knowledge accumulated through hours of study transformed into diligent and confounding practice. It didn’t matter anymore that her head did not protrude a rod of alicorn, it didn’t matter that the prestigious professors and teachers of astrology were all unicorns, all that mattered was the night sky, and what it could give her. And what it gave her were hours. Hours and hours of observation, hours of theorising, hours of recording, and hours of frustration. Frustration not only at the amount of work, but at the breathtaking realisation that the infinite amount of stars she saw above here were only the tip of an iceberg. The background of the white dots, hued a bright purple, was simply more and more stars, too far away for her eyes to possibly distinguish. It hurt her, knowing that she would never possibly be able to understand the nature of every celestial body in the universe, but it was a pain that she lived with, knowing that as long as she could achieve the goal of understanding all that already set before her, she could proceed forward from there. With that goal set, she received her cutie mark, the shooting star she one day hoped to emulate.

Stretching her wings out across the cloak to relieve the tension in the cramped muscles, Aurea stared skyward, watching the gentle tinkling of the thousands of boiling suns. She quickly identified the constellations she had found, and after spending many nights lying on the same cloak on the same grass under the same sky, she had found many. Giving constellations names was usually considered pointless. Yes, there were famous constellations that anyone could identify, but apart from them most astrologers simply assigned numbers and letters to the arrangements of stars respective of their location in the sky. She had decided against that however, the stars deserved more, the planet she sat on now was merely a grain of sand compared to the combined size of the stars in a single constellation, what gave her the right to treat them as mere statistics.

She quickly singled out 'Indomitable', a cluster of brighter-than-average stars that formed the frame of what she concluded could only be a mighty and stunning Equestrian airship. Discovering the constellation was only half the trouble, naming it was almost as difficult, as a constellation could be interpreted many different ways, but Aurea's conclusions were her own, so she named them on her perception, with only her own mind scrutinizing her work, at least for now.

The feeling that she would one day have to share her work with others made her stomach churn. It was in her mind comparable to a child telling his parents that he has just received a severe punishment from his teachers. She had for the longest time kept her profession strictly to herself. Her parents prodded of course, and she shared many of her findings, showing her parents the constellations and patterns she had identified.  Much of her work she kept to herself however, trusting that she would be able to critically scrutinize her own findings, but she knew that it would not be enough to simply do that. An artist can look at his work and call it magnificent all he pleases, but until others share his view then that is all it is, his view. Aurea wanted that praise, she wanted her work to be seen and reviewed by scholars and students alike if it ever became worthy of such. Her life of privacy was slowly becoming less and less satisfying, and she knew that soon she would have to share her knowledge if  she was ever going to feel content with herself.

Arching her back with a yawn as her body tried to force her to sleep, Aurea smiled, her trivial problems were irrelevant, at least for the moment. Right there, on the luscious grass in front of the stone bench in the small, secluded piece of Canterlot she called her own, the only problem was sleep, and she had had plenty of experience fighting that off. Right there, life was fine.

Cities may sleep, but as long as her sky was there, she would try her hardest to not.