A world of untold riches, unseen as it silently creeps behind the unsuspecting masses. It resides, waiting, festering, and dying, never fed. What world is this that harbors a starving, suffering race, one that is as easily ignored as the very breath given by the channeling ones? What unsung heroes reside in this nebulous existence, where only the ones who spark the interest, set fire to the stage, engulf the audience, and smelter the very earth may understand how, and why. What a world these unsung heroes live in, their lives spinning in an infinite tornado of assaulting flame, belaboring and melting the skin of its nonexistent being, hanging my fragile strings. Below is the bottomless pit where all that has lived will die, to fall and be forgotten, and to fall and simply forget, that is the fate that is worse than death. Falling forever, blind to where it may go, unaware of when death would close its powerful grip around the neck and snap it. But death may not have needed to come, lest these thoughts were never invented; they could have been steered away from the gauntlet of fire, to be spared life within ignorance, as their inception comes around in time, spinning forever until it is conceived. Bound to death, blinded to death; a rhythm pulled on the string of the channeling ones’ collars. Some do so with care, and others with cruelty. Care, cruelty. Inception, submission; repeating forever, for as long as they can create…
The charcoal mare stood upon her wooden stage, beside her the other hired musicians there to do their channeling jobs, as she was to do hers. Slung in her shoulder was her instrument of ethereal summoning: the cello, and with it the bow in her other forehoof. Below her, the murmurs and light laughter of the elite were a soft dissonance to her ears, all without harmony and clearly without taste. It was cold down there, among them, which gave the grey mare a sense of security. She was warm, hugging the side of her cello, a smooth heat comparable to the smooth wooden body of her instrument. The cello was keeping her warm, however; it was the heat of inspiration. The heat of creativity. It was straining to be released to the world, and with spectral celerity, she raised the bow to her cello.
She played a few soft notes to herself, and she could see the sparks. She saw the coarse strings of her cello crackle with the light unleashing the smoldering heat within. Small pulses of satisfaction mixed with her heartbeat, and her playing gradually became louder. The pianist struck the keys like flints; the mare with the tuba harkened the brassy rumbles of a low explosion; a harpist ran through scales that sent angelic cinders flying through the room. And she, the smoke-coated mare, conjured a grand inferno. The olden sound of the strings of her cello was reminiscent of burning, splintering wood in a fireplace. It was warm, comfortable. She saw herself engulfed in flames, up to the pink bowtie she wore, her lavender eyes two glowering amethysts, and her face in a frozen state of imitation. Her eyes eventually closed, letting the robotic strings underneath her skin puppet the cello.
The room was full of dancing fire, the elites turning their heads and smiling approvingly. It was a little more than a light show for them, as each note, each measure, each glissando swirled forth another cinder to burn the drapes and marble and sculptures. But she understood her power, and she controlled the fire; she, too, was bound, like the fire that delicately snaked from each string. She felt the bind, the collar of channeling, around her neck in the form of her pink bowtie; she respected the fire, and the fire respected her. Each was a master of the other, and each controlled the other for mutual benefit. It was a peaceful compromise, a peaceful existence for the heroes that took their forms as ashes and cinders.
However, there was always a disrupting factor; a misplayed note, a slip of the bow, even dropping the cello altogether. Whenever this happened, the instrument sputtered a shower of sparks out of its pleasuring pathway, and its soothing warmth from a distance became solar fury, enough to set their coats alit. It was a feared manifesto, frightening the grey mare that was strung around the collar of her sweltering other. The bowtie contracted around her neck, cutting off her windpipe; she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think clearly, she couldn’t channel on her own. A force pushed her forehoof, letting loose a string of dissonant notes, letting out a maelstrom of sparks that she could have easily controlled. Instead, the fire took over, setting its once loyal admirers ablaze with the imperfections of its envoy. Her eyes blurred; all she could see was the chaos that she caused, and the pink of her bowtie, before she succumbed to unconsciousness from the collapsing marble. The world blackened, the only faint hue in her closing eyes being the pink of her bowtie. Pink...
The gardens were tense, taciturn, very unlike what it would have typically been. There was no sign of another pony anywhere, except for her. Her coat was bone white, contrasted only by the two tones of blue that streaked across her face. Her eyes lay dormant behind a thick wall of magenta and black, reflecting the light of the moon with its opaque contrast. Her body shook slightly with nerves; she, like the smoke-coated mare, was summoned to stoke the fires of a different nature. She was summoned to create a new form of show, willing the world around her for the sake of the almighty bit.
Her eyes fell upon the walls of the castle before her. She wasn’t needed inside, as the floods of ponies within would soon spill out into the gardens, saturating every bit of movable space until she was the only one left. A lone spark above a cold, loud ocean.
It was not long before distant chatter caused her ears to perk, and she quickly retreated beneath her booth. She had not been revealed to the unsuspecting goers; her presence here was a surprise. Her prestige has made the bone-white mare a sensation, spreading from her hometown to the pinnacle of class and the crust of the channeling career. That’s what made her the best of her kind; she was unique. She wasn’t like the grey mare. She had different ways of sparking attention and setting fire to the world around her.
Just as she could hear the chatter growing louder, a faint glimmer of something could be seen through her equipment. The Princesses, in that icy ocean, none the wiser! It made sense that the Princesses would not know, as she was summoned by another monarch, but even without that tidbit…it stunned her. The bleach-white mare felt a smile crackle across her face, and her insides simmered in excitement and nervousness. This was far beyond what she expected; this was the best, and worst, thing to happen to her in her entire career. She wanted to show what acclaimed ability she had accrued in her travels and in her years of practicing and sharpening, and yet…what if she makes a mistake? What if she sets fire to the gardens, or these elitists, or the Princesses? Her face was unrecognizably pale, and her coat stood on end. Setting the Princesses on fire; nothing could warrant a swifter banishment, and she knew it. A cold sweat formed on her brow, hidden in the vibrant blues above her magenta-shielded eyes. She wasn’t ready, and she knew it. She was in over her head, and she knew that the spirits of her fire would rejoice in this surrender. Reaching down, she picked up one of her records, the interchangeable parts of her channeling machine, and suddenly jerked upwards.
It was then that fate had decided to twist its choice, in the form of another unknown force. The bone-white mare’s mane was tugged by something, bringing her colorless body to the light. She looked out, behind those magenta-tinted shields; the gardens were as she predicted. Flooded. Saturated. Unafraid to rip the mare from her machine and throw her away. However, she thought instinctively; the record dropped from her mouth and onto the machine, and with a brief jumpstart from her magic, the fires began to churn. A beat sounded out first, which rapidly quickened, until she saw one of her microphones fly out into the crowds. This unknown force was another mare, one who had purged the nerves that watered down her pride and talent. As a singing voice pierced through the dissonant waves of partygoers, her forehoof lifted to the shields; she needed to see what was happening…
And she looked, and before her was a magnificent sight. From beneath her head, two swirling tornadoes of fire erupted from either side, whirling out and over the ocean of smiling faces. The tumult of their waves became more violent, their collective bodies churning and swaying in appreciation. And, within that ocean, floated a lone burst of light, which radiated the same energy as her machine. Two gyrating juggernauts flying out and fusing with this sole spirit, alone in an everlasting flood of impulse. She couldn’t help but close her eyes to regain her sanity for a moment. It was impossible to describe the spectacle any further; she knew that they would never understand. To her, there were two kinds of ponies in the world: the ones who control the fires enough to see them, and the ones who cannot see the fires and just bob their heads in enjoyment, like waves.
It wasn’t long before she allowed herself to manipulate the fires. Rather than let the fires give against her, like the cello, the bleach-white mare had total control; she held in her grip a collar that bound the power she had eternally. The price of this control was her eyesight; behind those magenta shields, she couldn’t see what she was doing. Her only concerns were to create the best; to put on the best show, to make the most money, to express as freely as she could. She wanted the bang for her buck, figuratively speaking, and stopped at nothing to do so. Her blindness to the unrelenting demand she gave would not impede success that she could see.
And that is just what separates her from mares like the one who plays cello. The charcoal mare had mercy, precision, and compromise in her being; the instrument of her ability was judicial, and either one of them respected the other’s strength. They shared commitment, devotion, and in this case, inception. They aged together, from childish audacity to adult sophistication; each has grown with the other, bound to the other and wrapped in a pink bow.
However, the bone-white mare was a reaper of power, instead of a coworker. She saw her instrument as a machine, an assembly line piecing together her salary, and the parts to do so as just that. Parts. The fires that erupted from either record, spinning out and over the crowd, were nothing more than means to an end to her, and she was unaware of it. She knew of her control and her abilities, but remained blind to the results; fires flashed before those shields, pounding against them with pleas of mercy. They never came. The shields were too strong, the opaque magenta rejecting the pleading cinders, snuffing out its defiance in a flash of her icy blue mane. This is how life was; control the fire against its wills, and thin the heretics. And, for the majority of her career, this has greatly benefited her. The nationwide notoriety, enough for a summons to the castle, was enough to send any others striving to be like the tyrannical mare into conniptions. It wasn’t fair, they said. She’s not as good as me, most said. But it was the public that wanted her, and she stepped to the stage; perhaps, the ocean of cheering faces was what doused the fires. It wasn’t a light show for a pleased, calm seaside; it was a massacre, battling just above her oblivious face. And out there, invisible to her now, was the sight of the lone flickering spirit being swallowed into the ocean…
There are two kinds of ponies in the world: those that are caring, and those that are cruel. Those that care are the ones that hold theirs instruments close, allowing it to spark with the power of itself and its master. Together, they create harmony, a burst of fire that equates only to that of a solar flare. Those that are cruel take all of the power, and the instrument just lets it happen. It has given up, its body scorched into submission, and its will to control cleansed. The one who channels this broken will, the blinded mare, cannot see what she does; she only hears the crackling sound of success and the soft jingle of money. The one who channels its partner hears the soft purr of a controlled pyre, uncaring of everything except for the things that she could do.
Both mares want to see their worlds burn, the oceans evaporate, leaving nothing but fields of fires that the elites can see. See and understand. The world should be without the waters of conformity, and should be dried by the fire of passion and understanding. It is courageous to become a lone flicker of light among a dark sea of ignorance, and it is easy to let the waves crash down and douse the fire forever. But, it’s better to stay true to one’s intentions, one’s passions, because there might be an escape. A spiral of fleeting energy and enlightenment that airlifts the flicker away, to return in prophecy as a mighty inferno. Such could be said of the charcoal mare; raised beside her instrument of channeling, she was carried away from the others who couldn’t see what she could accomplish. She learned, she grew, she mastered, she was mastered. Now, the world knows her for her mastery, but they still can’t see what her struggling decades of practice and sharpening have done.
In a way, this is what connects the two mares; both were once drops in the endless ocean until their passions were realized. Now, they are both the figureheads of their craft, expert pyromaniacs that set the ocean ablaze with their dominance. They bind their fans with fame, and blind them with their talent, as the two channeling mares continue their journeys to light the world, sailing the supporting seas of ignorance and acceptance forever eastward.
