Precipice: A Sketch Story
Precipice: A Sketch Story
To My Dear Friend Fluttershy,
I am completely aware that I'm meeting you at the spa in a few hours for the usual fabulousity restoration, and that while we're there, I'll have all the opportunity in Equestria to tell you what's on my mind. However, sometimes matters come up that one cannot simply talk about in public, or else other ponies might start talking themselves if they overheard. I hope you understand and forgive me if I'm burdening you, but I feel like I can trust you with this. I'm just not sure what to think.
Now, personally, I have never cared for ponies that make a point to talk about their dreams. It may sound awfully harsh to say, but when I'm having a conversation with somepony and they cannot help but detail how they were elected to be Equestria's ambassador to a new race of balloon ponies in a dream the night before, I cannot wait for a chance to change the subject. I would normally say, then, that dreams are just nonsense. However, I'm not sure I'm so confident of that right now. I had a strange dream, and I simply cannot go back to sleep after it. Trust me, though, it's silly, and if it's too silly for you as well, feel free to burn this letter with the match provided and we shall never, ever, speak of this again.
The first thing I remember from the dream is a simple set of wind chimes dangling on a branch of a tree so large and old that it could have almost passed for Twilight's library if you put a door in front of it. At first, the sight was all I knew, and like an obedient dreamer, I didn't look away. Sound flew into the scene on a gust of wind and swept through the little metal rods, scattering them into each other, dashing the air with lonely, atonal tinkling. Ask me any day what I think when I hear chimes, and I'll tell you that they're quaint little music makers, and I'll forget what the topic is before I'm done with the sentence. Push the topic and I'll tell you that I've heard a thing or two about chimes being peaceful while I wear a polite smile. However, I did not feel at peace there in the beginning. I know it will sound positively absurd, but I started to feel tired and cold, as though I had spent an entire night chasing some elusive design idea in my shop, only to come up with a sketch for something everypony—not just Pinkie—would probably take for a clown's choice of outfit.
It was then that the dream let me look somewhere else. Past the tree, there was Ponyville in the distance, the cottages reflecting warm sunset orange light, the ponies like baby ants as far away as I was, and yet, Fluttershy, I am certain that I have never felt so lost, so much that I had no idea where to go even though home was right there! As if my hometown was a bad memory, I turned away from Ponyville and looked out to the fields beyond. In the dream, I thought I would be turning around to see the rows of Sweet Apple Acres' apple trees and that artistically questionable old barn, but none of that was there. Instead, I found myself looking out to a field of tall grass so vast that it covered all the land going into the hills far away, maybe more than that if I could have seen that far. The only sharp feature was a path cutting through the field, going straight out and away with stakes lining the sides of it.
Again, as with the wind chimes, I lingered on the view. Who knew that grass was so noisy? With every sweep of the wind, the grass let loose with a million tiny sounds that I can only describe as the sound of distant applause. And the color! Darling, if I had to use one color for the rest of my career, I would take that radiant, saffron red right off the grass and make a dress that would make somepony a celebrity in Autumn! But again, that sound! It was as though I was the sun, and the whole world was basking in my light and going massively mad. I think I'm making this sound magnificent, but in truth, it's all rose-colored glasses. At the moment, I didn't have flowery words for what I saw. All I had were the shivers racing up my spine. If I wasn't near home, after all, then goodness, where was I?
No doubt I was distracted, probably leering into the distance like some sort of idiot, such that I completely missed a certain somepony making her way through the field until she emerged and took slow steps towards me from the path. At first, I didn’t recognize her, and it was hardly because of the sunset. As much as it reflected off her mane in the same brilliant color as the fields, it couldn't hide the three apples on her flank, and it simply wouldn't be me here if I couldn't spot that old hat that can probably remember the founding of Ponyville. Right now, it's perfectly obvious, but in the dream I could not believe who I saw, because the mare we’re thinking of has never been one I could call...graceful. Yet in the dream she approached with such a slow, careful walk that she did not kick up a single mote of dust or make even the tiniest sound. I remember that I was holding my breath, that I tensed when I had to blink, almost like I had been stung by some invisible pest. I suppose there was hesitation there, but I don’t know why, but then everything, from the quiet roar of the landscape, to the chimes above my head...the sound seemed to cut out when she stopped in front of me.
Have her eyes always been so green? With all the overwhelming color out there, all it did was deepen her eyes' color from a pure, quintessential green that you'd find in a filly's painting to the color of a pair of jade rings submerged in a clear stream. Also, has she always had such a knowing quality to her smile, as though she holds some sort of precious secret? I have never felt so absolutely seen by anypony in my whole life, not even when I was dazzling in the skies above Cloudsdale with magical wings! I’m not sure I can tell you or anypony else, not even in this letter, what it felt like to be looked at by her in that way. Perhaps, since we’re a bit on the subject of that afternoon when I made such a total fool of myself, I can point you in the right direction by writing that I felt like I was a second away from falling from the sky, though in the dream I knew that my hooves were on firm ground. I hope you don't mind if I leave it at that. The next change in the dream came after that long moment in her gaze, when she jerked her head towards the path heading up through the fields and away from that picture of home.
I found a breath and trotted to her, and I cannot pretend that I cared what might have come next. It was as though I was on my way to the Grand Galloping Gala with expectations that were actually coming true, though to be perfectly clear, I didn't have any sort of expectations like when we actually went to the Gala. It's just a comparison. At any rate, she went ahead of me and led us away. Again, I had no idea where we were going, but I believe I could tell that a journey was ahead of us. Strangely, I can’t recall the details of our travels. Maybe there are none to tell. I suppose that in the economy of a dream, there is only time for a beginning and an end, which is probably for the best. I'd hate to keep you, stuck reading about my inconsequential little dream all afternoon.
I remember this much, that the warmest of setting suns never set on us while we were together, and I assume that we went very far indeed. The path took us from those stunning fields into a great mountain range with peaks fit for dragons and forests that could swallow the Everfree whole. I don't suppose the change in scenery mattered to me for some reason. It may be obvious, but I hardly recognize myself in all this. After all, I'm not exactly the type of pony who trots off into the wilderness. If I thought to check on myself after all that walking, this would be a story of a nightmare! I probably looked like some sort of matted-mane vagrant! Sorry, I think I got a teensy bit off-topic.
The path had an end after all, fading into thin patches of grass just a few steps away from the edge of a ravine. She stopped us and for a few long, slow breaths, neither of us moved a muscle. I started to feel weak again, and somehow the wind returned, carrying the faintest tinkling of chimes on it. She turned to me, again with that enigmatic smile, but as she looked beyond me, it faded. In that instant, thunder sounded as lightning raked the clouds above. I’m not sure I understand the expression she showed at that point. Her eyes had lost their gem-like shimmer, and she looked at me like I was a ghost. I want to joke about my mane, but I can't joke about that face she showed me or that, right there, as the color drained from the world around us, she said my name as if it were a question with none of the homeliness of her accent, as if she wasn't sure it was me. Her eyes looked back to the path we had traveled. I turned and looked, expecting to see something responsible for the strangeness of the scene, but I saw nothing other than a path rendered in a desolate palette. When I turned back, she was gone.
The dream took control of me again and rooted me to the spot. With nothing to look at but the ground where she had been, I couldn't find a blade of grass or grain of dirt out of place, as if she had never been in that spot at all. I waited in silence, listening to the emerging sound of the listless march of my heart while the first drops of rain fell on my back. I know that I wanted to yell out, to scream even, to do anything, but the dream wouldn't let me have my voice. The rain started to get into my eyes, so I closed them while I kicked at the walls in my dreaming mind. I got one word out before it all ended. Lost. Writing that word, even now, is absurdly uncomfortable. I hate it. It makes me stomp just saying it to my boutique around me, and I don't know why.
I woke up in bed as if I had woken up in the bathtub, shivering and panicking for a breath, probably doing nothing for Opal's nerves in the process. I threw myself out of bed and made sure that I was truly home—a sight I'm glad nopony saw and one I'll thank you for not imagining—then I tried to clear my own nerves over a cup of chamomile tea, but the more I thought about the dream, the more I worried, so in a moment of desperation I hope I don't understand, I started this letter. I know you have things to do, and I don’t want to rob you of your time any more than I have, but there’s a question I’d like to ask if you’ve read through all this.
On second, thought, I think I’ll keep that question to myself, but regardless, if you have an opinion about all this, I would be very thankful. I'm fairly confident it all has something to do with pulling too many late nights at the sewing machine, or maybe I should eat better. There's nothing here I should worry about, right?
