It was a box.
A plain cardboard box, it was indistinguishable from any of its thousands of siblings. Simple, brown, and cuboid, it looked perfectly suited to fulfill its life’s purpose: storage. It held all the best characteristics one looked for in a shipping receptacle. No ink marred its paper flesh and no stains soiled its outer shell. It was as nondescript as its countless clones, with nary a mark against it. Indeed, Luna was certain that the box, with its durable construction and firm lines, was well prepared for a lifetime of selfless storage duty.
Or more accurately, it would have been destined for a life of anonymous toil, but no longer. It had become something more. It had evolved. The long length of tape across the top effectively locked its contents – if any – behind walls of featureless but sturdy paper-product. What normally would have been a simple storage container was transformed into an unspoken question that hung in the air; an itch that could not be scratched; a thirst that could not be quenched.
Curiosity was a natural reaction. Everypony wants to know what is behind a closed door, locked away in a drawer, or hidden beneath a curtain. They were questions that demanded to be answered by right of their mere existence. While an open box was a functional tool, the paper cube before her had transcended its original purpose. It was no longer a box; it was a mystery.
On the other hoof, there were plenty of other sealed cardboard boxes in Equestria. This one, even with its secrets and tape, was nothing special in and of itself. Luna had seen millions of them in her long life, and one more would normally not warrant but the most fleeting moment of distracted attention. Not every question provoked a desire to seek out an answer because not every question was equal. Like the ponies that ponder them, some mysteries are just more attractive than others. One does not wonder how each and every grain of sand has found its way onto the beach. A mystery needs something more, some brilliant spark, to fill the breast of an observer with wonder.
In the box’s particular case, that essential spark came from its location, for it was sitting before Luna’s bed.
Luna slowly circled the cardboard box again. There was nothing to hint at its contents. No handles to peek through, no tag to catch the eye, not even a maker’s logo. No pony had written on its sides in marker or placed a note upon it to educate the curious. The box was a granite mountain in the distant mist, inscrutable and silent.
The only sound was the steady clip-clop of her hooves on the stone floor as she circled her nemesis. Luna had lost track of how many times she had passed around the object, her great mind obsessed with the mystery before her. The box told her nothing, yet promised so much. Like a carnival barker, it enticed and intrigued with tales of what could be found within its striped tent. Freaks, phantasms, and foreign treasures could all be found, it promised, if she would but step inside.
Yet the promises were hollow. The box made no guarantees that it would astound or amaze, yet that possibility couldn’t be denied either. With his gaudy suits, slick mane, and cheap smiles, the barker knew as well as any psychologist the power of imagination. His words were designed to feed curiosity, to let one’s own mind do the heavy lifting. He was the appetizer, the window display, meant to whet the appetite and leave the onlookers hungry for the main course. There was only one way to know, it said with a knowing smirk. Truth, lies, or something in between – whatever the fact of his claims were, the only way to know was to put down some bits and step inside.
The answers could be hers so easily, yet still she hesitated.
After all, obtaining the answer would kill the enigma – and with it, the very thing that made the box unique in a world filled with identical facsimiles. The box had become more than a container; the question was a part of its very being now. To destroy that was to destroy an essential part of the box. It had transcended its purpose as a mere receptacle and become a powerful question in its own right. The box and the mystery had become intertwined, symbiotic ideas that thrived beneath Luna’s curious gaze. And a question only lived as long as it remained unanswered.
If she were to open the box, she would end the mystery.
She would murder the question.
The fact that Luna herself was an existential threat to the box and its unanswered riddle was both frightening and intoxicating. After all, the question only existed in her own mind, and thus was hers and hers alone. Others might share curiosity about the unknown contents, but theirs would be a different question, a product of a different being with a different life and different experiences. She was truly master and creator of this mystery. It existed to either be answered or be forgotten, as her will dictated.
It was a disturbing concept, having so much power over another thing, even one that was merely a thought. Part of her rebelled against the notion of killing the question just to slake her own curiosity. Why not let it exist as it was, an unanswered question?
Her tail twitched in irritation as she circled the box once more. No, she could not leave the box to sit unmolested, never revealing what the truth of its contents were. That was only a different form of death sentence. As much as it pained her, the mystery of the box was, like all life, destined to one day perish. Its existence was not eternal, for it relied upon her curiosity like a flower required sunlight. She could stash the box somewhere else, somewhere far from her gaze, it was true. Inevitably though, the box and its contents would slip from her mind and the mystery would die. Even if she were to keep it close enough to keep the idea refreshed, familiarity would rob the question of its impact. In time, boredom and complacency would do what her hooves had not, sapping her interest until there was nothing left to feed the mystery.
The moment Luna had laid her eyes upon the cardboard box, its fate had been sealed.
The mystery at the core of its identity would perish at Luna’s hooves one way or another. Certainly, then, the manner of how she ended its existence was irrelevant if the outcome was inescapable. Or did it possess the–
Her thoughts were interrupted by a muffled shriek of frustration from outside her room. Luna spun around and spread her wings in alarm as the heavy oak doors were thrown open with a powerful burst of magic, splinters of ancient wood tearing free around the broken hinges.
The towering figure of her sister stood framed in the doorway, burning brightly like a phoenix reborn. She glared at Luna through narrowed eyes as she ground her teeth together, the veins on her forehead visible as she flared her nostrils. “It’s a cake! I put a cake in the box! It was an early birthday surprise!” She jabbed an accusing hoof at her sister. “And I’ve been watching you just walk around the damnable thing for the past two hours! Two hours, Luna! Two hours! You don’t need to treat everything like some great philosophical quandary! Sometimes a box is just a box!”
With an exasperated groan Celestia turned and stormed back out, muttering something about ‘moon-addled foals’ under her breath. The sound of her furious hoof-steps only ended with the distant bang of her own bedroom doors being slammed shut. Silence reigned, broken only by the occasional soft cry from her wooden doors as they struggling to remain upright.
“Oh,” said Luna eventually. She turned back to glance at the box, frowning.
“Well, way to ruin the surprise, sister.”
Author's Note
Edited by Death the Kid.
Cover picture by bloodgoldwings.
