GhostOfHeraclitus fan club archive

>> horizon>> Skywriter

Okay you two. You want meta? Here's meta!

GhostOfHeraclitus had an idea.

It was a fine idea, a magnificent one, if he could say so himself, and he certainly could and, at the least provocation, would. The sort of idea that hits you late at night, and you simply must get up and write it down, lest it disappear by morning. Like dew. Ghost liked that simile. Very poetic. Very nice. 'Like dew.' Perhaps he should have been a poet?

He heaved his spectral bulk from his bed and thought to himself, "The room was bathed in golden-white light, somewhere lighter, somewhere darker, like afternoon sunlight dappled by leaves."

And it was so.

The lovely thing about moving from dreary old reality and into a story is that you saved simply a fortune on your utility bill. Well, that, and godlike power, obviously. The worst think about moving into a story is that the others got the same deal. Not that he had anything against his neighbors, lovely peopl--ponie--entities every last one, but giving godlike power to a whole bunch of howling individualists with overactive imaginations (see also, writers) was a recipe for utter chaos. The first week they moved into the Crossroads Teahouse and Brothel for the Slaking of Intellectual Lusts was bedlam. Gravity kept changing, the skies burst with varicolored flame, and small orange miniaturized elephants kept appearing in people's clothing. It looked like Discord himself had set up shop next door, which was preposterous.

That happened the next week.

Anyway, in order for any writing to get done at all, a deal was struck with the Landlady and godlike power turned into somewhat less than godlike power. You could do a lot to your room, PrettyPartyPony made hers into an eleven-dimensional library haunted by metaphysical ghosts of unthought ideas, for instance, but the corridors and common rooms were pretty much fixed. And you couldn't create matter either, not outside of approved areas, lest we have another repeat of The Watermelon Incident.

The reader thought to himself, "Stop digressing you wordy bastard. What was all of that in aid of, I ask you?"

But Ghost wrestled away narrative control and wrote: "Keep your pants on. It's to explain the next bit. Now let me work you impatient ungrateful little...ahem."

This all explained why, when he sat at his writing desk with his official writing fez on his head and realized that he was entirely out of tea, he cursed quite so loudly. He couldn't make any. Well. He could, just not here. He sighed, put the Writing Fez on its little stand, and ambled out in search of the kitchens. You could create foodstuffs there, and the Landlady had installed a parasprite-powered disposal unit just so we don't have the Watermelon Incident again.

Walking along the corridor that, almost disappointingly, was entirely and depressingly consensus-normal with fixed gravity and muted colors and the whole dreary 'reality' mess, he heard, from afar, strands of menacing music. Ghost wasn't an expert on music, but this sounded like Verdi's Requiem as adapted for thermonuclear detonations, and the screams of the damned. With each step the sound grew louder, and, recognizing it, Ghost braced himself.

"I AM BAD HORSE! FEAR ME!" said Bad Horse, who was, indeed, Bad Horse and who wanted to be feared. His voice was thunderous and, since Bad wanted yet more terror etched into every syllable, it did that choral thing you hear demons do so often. Must be a course somewhere in Dis. Anyway, the two effects didn't really harmonize, and so he sounded like a thunderstorm arguing with itself.

"Hullo, Bad. How have you been, then?"

"I WAS SUBJUGATING THE INSOLENT KORX IN THE GALAXY OF WONDERMENT!"

"Good. Good. Keeping busy, I see."

"AND NOW I HAVE RETURNED! I REMEMBER WELL THE DEFEAT AT YOUR HANDS, AND AM HERE TO EXACT VENGEANCE!"

"...are...are you talking about Scrabble? Because, honestly, mate, if you want a rematch..."

"SILENCE! I DO NOT TAKE DEFEAT LIGHTLY! NOW PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR BONES FILLED WITH BURNING SULFUR AND YOUR VERY MIND CLOVEN ASUNDER WITH RUINO--"

"Good. Fine. Sounds lovely. Can we reschedule? I need to get some tea."

"OH. OF COURSE. NO PROBLEM. WE ALL KNOW HOW YOU GET WITHOUT YOUR TEA."

"I...I just get grouchy."

"OF COURSE."

"It's not like it is an addiction."

"NO. OF COURSE NOT."

"I can stop anytime I want!"

"YES. NATURALLY."

"Right, so, I'll be off then. Have a lovely evening."

"THANKS. YOU TOO. UM..."

"Yes?"

"WANT TO PRE-READ THIS THING I WROTE?"

"Oh, sure! Sure! Just slip it through the slot in my door, I'll get around to it when I've had my tea."

"THANKS!"

"No problem."

The Reader threw his hands up. "Goddamn it, Ghost," she said, "that had no point whatsoever? Is it just for the Bad Horse cameo? Really?"

Ghost got back control over the Narrative again, and wrote, peevishly: "I like Bad Horse. He's cool. Now shush and read the story. These interruptions are unbecoming."

Having survived his encounter with the Despoiler of the Noosphere, The Scourge of the Outer Regions, The (as of late) Subjugator of the Korx (whoever they were), the mighty and terrible Bad Horse, Ghost continued on. The path was long and winding, The Crossroads being, naturally, much bigger on the inside in order to contain all the many writers and devoted Hoardsmiths. He passed by the plush-upholstered, red-lit, handsomely decorated and (perhaps most importantly) soundproofed doors leading to the inner sanctum of SleeplessBrony who was, almost certainly, not asleep. He walked, with some caution past the vast slumbering form of Varanus, asleep on a bed of unreleased Composure chapters. Each a searing meditation of emotional turmoil but, more importantly, very, very comfortable. At last he saw the huge common room, past which, he knew, were the kitchens and blessed, blessed tea.

He entered the vast common room, made his way past the pre-reading area, taking care to avoid the splatters of blood, and was just about to make a beeline to the tiny kitchen doors when he suddenly was written by someone else. Hello there Ghost. Why are you up so late?

Ghost shook his head and with some effort he...

..managed to get back to writing himself.

"Skywriter," he said, "fancy meeting you."

Hi there! I see you have an idea, what is it about?

"I didn't tell anyone about the idea. How do you know?"

Pfft. I read the beginning of the chapter, silly.

"Oh! Oh. Well. Yes. It's a sort of an idea for a meta story, you see."

Meta? Isn't that more my thing?

"Well...yes...but I had this idea and..."

No, no, no problem. You let us play with footnotes, after all. I look forward to reading it. Then again, I already have?

"What does that mean?"

Silly Ghostie. You aren't thinking meta enough!

"You know you are right. I...I'm not nearly as good as you. I--I don't know what I was thinking. I think I'll just go, if you'll excuse me, I'll just--"

Oh no you don't! Bad Horse warned me about this. Ahem.

Ghost decided then that he ought to write the story, that it deserved to be written. And so, with forceful strides he walked past Skywriter, waved to him, and stepped into the kitchen, ready to conjure up some particularly fine tea.

Disoriented, Ghost shook his head, getting used to having control of his own narrative. He'll have to get back to Skywriter somehow for that little stunt. Maybe he'll put him in as a character when writing his idea! Yeah. That'll teach him to write someone else out of a scene like that!

Still, he was in the kitchens, and he might as well get some tea. Just as he was thinking about which sort, he heard the flap of wings behind him and the click of hooves on the marble floor. He turned, and saw the alicorn form of their collective Landlady.

"Ah. Hello madam Faust."

"Ghost. You are up late," she said. In this place, by Consensus, she wore her accustomed form of the God-Empress of Ponykind, and was rarely seen without her pet dragon. Outside the Crossroads, the dragon was vast and powerful, and she but a speck on its shoulder, but in here, by some virtue of this place, the dragon was tiny and fast asleep, occasionally snoring and letting loose a tiny gout of flame.

"Indeed. I...I had an idea for a story."

"That's nice. What about."

"Well," said Ghost with considerable enthusiasm, "I'm thinking of writing a story that's about me having an idea for a story! And I'd talk to my author friends and then sit down and write it, you see, but I wouldn't tell the reader what they idea was until the very end."

The Landlady smiled.

"Thinking of writing it? Ghost, you silly pony, you already wrote it."

And then you woke up.

-THE END-