In fayrefayne Equestria, where the talking equines do dwell, an event of certain cosmic and heretofore spoken as academic attainment has begun. As go most events in this strange age of creation and accretion, this one started with a minor coincidence. Three ponies awoke to simultaneous revelations of minor or otherwise insignificant phrasing.
“Gotta shave,” realized Big Macintosh, sprawled out in a ditch, as was his keeping.
“Gotta wear pants,” declared Rarity, delicately wrapped in silk covers, as was her keeping.
“Eqesruta,” solemned Twilight, her face pressed into the folds of a dictionary, as was her waking.
If it were still winter, a sled would start downhill at this very moment. It was not, so the sled remained rusting at the top of the hill in despair disrepair. It was still foreshadowing, just not the kind one would want.
Big Macintosh Apple could taste a fair bit of blood on his lips. His first time shaving had, predictably, left his muzzle in a rather wretched repair. That he had shaved with a blunt rock made his injuries perhaps remarkable or perhaps predictable, depending on one’s glossary of cliches.
With greater shame and trepidation than the pony had ever felt before, he ventured into the house of his ancestors, witnessing as if with new eyes the uncivilized way in which he had lived.
The family, vile in their familiarity, were gathered around a breakfast tray. Their mouths masticated with hideous aplomb, devouring those goods which came from the earth. Apples mashed apples between enormous yellowing teeth, sucking on the teat of existence as if there were such a thing as a right to any of it. Ignorant of their shame, they horrified his wide-spreading eyes.
Strangely, his look of horror was mimicked by their own expressions as they each turned toward him.
Smith Apple Granny was the first to break the silence, “Why ain’t ye got any hair on yer face?”
Mr. Apple, because that was now his name, turned to her in quiet censure, “Civilization, Mee-Ma, Civilization.”
His younger sisters, Applejack Apple, and Apple Blooming Onion Apple, while we’re just stuffing ponies’ names with contents of our produce carts, nearly spat at the ugly slur.
In horror, the red workhorse retreated from their expressions, venturing toward the more urbanized areas of the Tribe of Horse.
Elsewhere ...
The head of this tribe, the self-described Mayor of Ponyville, was at this moment attempting to calm the self-described genius, Twilight Sparkle Not Apple.
“It’s just, I think, because I’m the mayor and all,” said Mayor Mare, tugging her fetlocks in nervous agitation, “I should probably know what you’re doing here.”
The unicorn didn’t even turn to respond, instead retaining her interest exclusively upon the construction sprawling before her. “Right, right, of course,” she muttered, setting the blades of a turbine into their proper place. A huge drum filled with little swords, just waiting the pressure of liquid air to turn them. It was a beautiful Eqesruta.
“It doesn’t feel very much like being the mayor when other ponies are doing things in town and I don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Sure, sure, Eqesruta.” Twilight had no mind for the middling executive. The sprawling pipework spread overhead as a huge iron tree. Each twisting branch wrapped back into and around itself, replicating the impossible geometry of a train crash in flight.
“So, I’m, um, I’m not trying to tell you not to do this thing. Not telling you that at all.” The supreme executive authority of Ponyville shuffled her hooves as she apologized for her office and its responsibility.
“Good, good, of course,” Twilight still had absolutely nothing to say to anyone. Stick another bit here and turn it just so. The dry steam coming out of the superheater toward the ... something?
“Eqesruta,” Twilight spat bitterly in her perplexitude.
The Mayor was quite daunted, but pressed on anyway, gritting her teeth and forcing out the words of social censure. “I’m just trying to figure out what, exactly, this thing is, and wanted to know, um, wanted to know, you see, how much longer you intended to use my office for it.”
Twilight turned suddenly, as if confused by the revelation that she occupied a specific space and time.
They were in an office, indeed. The Mayor’s desk was there, crushed under the main boiler. The detached mind through its violet eyes espied the shelves shoved against the walls until they slanted and cracked, spilling folios onto the straining floor. Spider web striations stretched through the few surviving windows, although most had been completely removed to make room for exhaust pipes which were already spewing steam.
“That’s odd,” the unicorn whispered to herself.
“Yes, it is very odd that you’re here, destroying my office with this, uh, construction-”
Completely ignoring the idiot, democratic institution, Twilight craned her head out the window, wondering at the steam outpouring from the spewing vent. It twisted lightly in the breeze as it swept over townhall into the clouds.
“I didn’t even light the Eqesruta yet, how is there steam?”
“I believe the steam is from my papers, which are currently burning." Teeth gnashing and eyes flashing emotional symptoms, the mayor of Ponyville suffered spectacularly. She was very rarely asked to do her job. Almost never. Why did today have to be such a day? If it had been yesterday, it would already be done and she'd have nothing to do but congratulate herself.
“Oh,” Twilight paused and tapped a hoof against her chin, “well, do you mind not doing that until after I’m ready?”
“I’m not doing anything!” Mayor Mare screamed, now feverishly pawing at her mane in melodramatic agony and writhing wormlike upon the floor. “I’ve never done anything, you’re making this all up.”
“Ah, that explains some Eqesrutas.” It did not.
“What?”
“Eqesruta,” Twilight said with a nod. Heedless of hazards and proper tag out procedures, the unicorn returned to her grand, purposeless labor.
The fires continued to devour all evidence of the papers and who may have put them there. It was quite a show-ah.
Author's Note
Fish-net-fish-net-fish-net-fish-net-fish!
And Elser-Elsewhere ...
Rarity stood in the center of her boutique, now donned in the garb of the civilized, working womyn: an ass-masking pantsuit, which kept ripping and revealing her ample posterior. A fresh tearing sound almost drew a curse from the fashionista, but these were the slow, meaningless steps toward civilization and she’d be damned if she allowed herself to falter.
Rather instead, Rarity's turned her seamstress' skills toward repairs which took but a few seconds. Once more, her tail and shame were hidden. She was ready, at last and again, to face the world and all its Argosian eyes.
Or, at least, she so thought. Upon opening the door, she squealed in terror and slammed it again.
They were out there! Legions of them! Walking free in their ignorant nakedness. Nausea overwhelmed her and she collapsed freely to the ground. Her legs splayed out across the earth in a feverish embrace. So many of them. So naked.
“Pants,” she gasped in horrible shame, as if she expected the world to hear her, “gotta wear pants.”
But they didn’t. They couldn’t. There simply weren’t enough pants in Equestria to cover all the bared asses. To the best of her knowledge, there were only two pairs of pants, one for her and one for her mother. The fashionista attempted to grit her teeth, but only succeeded in getting a mouthful of the ground.
She heard a sound slamming against her door and cringed in terror. That would be one of them. Out there coming in here, with all their naked shame and shameless naked. Asses! So many horse's asses!
The sound repeated and the door swung open. It would have been dramatic for the hinges to snap or the wood around the handle to shatter, but the door was not locked so these things did not happen. Still, Rarity soiled her newly forged pants in horror.
If the unicorn was pathetic, the creature that had once been Big Apple Macintosh Apple was ... another thing? Certainly. His shame glowed red, almost as red as his fur would be normally, and he delicately cradled the ground in his own hooves. Rarity scurried backward from his approach. They came in pursuit of each other, dragging their bellies across the floor.
After an absurd, absent-minded dance, the stallion remembered his words.
“Gotta shave,” Mr. Apple released in a wretched torrent against the ground, perhaps as a plea for understanding, or perhaps in plea for a quick death.
“Gotta wear pants,” the unicorn replied, recognizing the kindred spirit, but still distrusting it.
“Gotta shave.” He craned his neck, seeing the fabrics entrapping her legs. He nodded in appreciation at the lack of air circulation afforded.
“Gotta wear pants.” She leaned forward, smelling his mane and the blood around his muzzle. The naked skin of his face thrilled her with its prepubescent implications, and her own legs shuddered in anticipation of the razor’s kiss.
“Shave,” he replied, trembling at the anticipation of bunched fabrics awkwardly cradling his crotch and pinning sweat against his body. He could almost already itch the coming rash of civilization's bliss.
“Wear pants.”
“Gotta shave. Gotta wear pants,” they fell into each others forelegs effortlessly. Blood smeared across Rarity’s white coat, and her pants ripped again. An island of already stale civilization in an age of creation.
In the Original Elsewhere, But Some Minutes Later, or Perhaps Simultaneously ...
“Eqesruta,” Twilight snarled at Mayor Mare, backing her away from the boiler. The fires were now burning brilliantly, casting ridiculous shadows throughout the room. Twinkling sparks leapt free, and gallons of steam poured out, warping the roof above.
“Please, calm down, Eqesruta,” pleaded the cornered earth pony. In her desperation, she found clarity. A sense of calm as she called upon her years of training in the civil service. There was only one thing to calm the maddened spirit. “Would you like a drink of Eqesruta?”
Twilight looked at the proffered beverage. She was certainly thirsty, the heat of the boiler and the steam caused her body to dehydrate severely. Yes, she could certainly use a glass of water.
“Eqesruta,” she said, accepting the vessel into the grasp of her hooves.
After a few moments contemplation, of how it sat in her hooves and the way that the light played through the window and refracted among the liquid molecules, Twilight upended the entire container upon the floor with a deliberate calmness.
“Eqesruta,” she repeated.
“Eqesruta,” agreed the Mayor, suddenly feeling calm spill across her as well.
“Eqesruta,” they whispered so none of the people who weren’t in the room at the time could hear.
When the boiler exploded, it was impossible to tell if this had been the original intent of the engineering, or if instead it had been an accidental consequence of half-assed construction. Fortunately for the flames, they did not need to entertain such consideration and sundered the accidental, on purpose and accidental on purpose with objective ease.
Back at the Elsewherer Elsewhere, Perhaps A Longer, Unspecified Period of Time Later ...
Rarity was rapidly losing touch with her ability to remain out of touch with the passing of events. She could ignore Twilight wandering into her home and babbling like a maniac. She could ignore the Mayor tearfully begging for help in finding fuel for the immense steam boiler now occupying her office. She could even ignore the fires and explosions decimating Ponyville.
She could not ignore the nakedness, nor that damned word. That word she dared not to think, for fear of it claiming her as well.
No, she pulled herself away from the window. Away from them. Their madness could not touch her here, in the safety of the Boutique. Here she would avoid all thought of ... of ...
Well, of that word.
“Eqesruta,” Mr. Apple supplied. The stallion appearing beside his companion as if a specter or other vacuous beast.
Rarity, uncertain of whether this action deserved praise or hate, went with the more gracious gratitude for which she should be known. “Gotta shave.”
“Gotta wear pants?” The stallion cocked his head to the side in sudden confusion.
“Gotta shave, gotta wear pants?” Rarity inquired in return. If he hadn’t said the word, then she must have thought it.
“Gotta wear Eqesruta.”
“The word,” Rarity whispered, so none of the people who weren’t in the room at the time could hear. The sudden lapse of propriety horrified the fashionista more than the thought of madness.
“Eqesruta?”
That horrible, horrible word, appearing as summoned, as if summoned. It certainly had been summoned by somepony. The unicorn felt herself uttering it, staring down at the spilled glass of water. As if it were a curse or a swear or some marvelous obscenity on par with the miniature ocean spreading out before her ...
No.
No more contagion.
If she was infected, or if Mr. Apple was infected, there was only one option.
Ms. Rarity Bells and Triangles and Apples picked up the knife and pressed it inside her mouth. She coughed around the cold, sweet taste of steel. For a moment,she waited enjoying the nickel taste, as a child sucking on a coin, and then pressed the blade through the flap of muscle that comprised her tongue. Hot life filled her mouth as she sliced away at the offending organ.
In confusion, the stallion had retreated to the corner crying. He couldn’t recognize this as the way to save them both. They must be saved. Civilization, only newly discovered, must endure.
Eqesruta could be stopped. Anything could be stopped if it arrived at a sufficiently immobile object.
More madness, as she spoke in tongues of blood. The blade caught and tugged with each sawing motion, yanking at the roots of her tonsils, but the madness was purged as the red river flowed. Finally, the unicorn spat and her organ of speech lay useless upon the ground as a slug or some other creeping beast soaked in blood. Eqesruta was a disease, amputate, cauterize, disinfect.
Everything would be back to normal soon.
Well, not normal. Back to pants and shaves and civilization, back to the opposite of normal.
From somewhere down the street, glass was breaking and laughing merrily with the ricochet of hurled stones. Cries of Eqesruta spread through eager brains, liberating cause and effect. Those who hadn’t protected themselves were spreading, destroying everything, but here, in the land of fabrics, here there was safety and purity.
The unicorn, with her fur white as blood and piss-stained snow, smiled at Mr. Apple Big Apple Macintosh Apple, who lay upon the carpet unconscious or perhaps dead, but his soul saved regardless of the context of the flesh it might not still inhabit. They would always be safe from uttering that horrible word.
--Eqesruta.
But she could still think it.
And she could still write it, scrawling idly in her blood. And she could still hear it. And she could still feel it in her hide as the prickling wrongness stole across her like night air moving over her skin like chill water like Eqesruta.
Damn, the unicorn tried to think, but all that came to the surface of her mind was ...
--Eqesruta.
Author's Note
"Whoever calls for the resurrection of this guilty and shabby culture becomes its accomplice, while whoever denies culture directly promotes the barbarism which culture revealed itself to be. Not even silence gets us out of this circle, since in silence we simply use the state of objective truth to rationalise our subjective inability, thereby once again degrading truth into a lie."
- Theodore Adorno, Negative Dialektik
