The unicorn waits under Moon at the top of the hill.
She is early: she always comes early, from forlorn hope that the one she is meeting will be allowed to do the same and they will have that much more time together. Once again, she is wrong. And so she passes the time doing what she always does: tuning the strings on her lyre.
Most would regard the adjustments as, at best, microscopic. Perhaps one pony in a thousand would have any chance of hearing the differences created, and all those would share the general theme of her mark. The unicorn's talent comes with many gifts, and one of those is perfect pitch. She knows when a note is even the slightest bit off-tune. It is almost physically painful to her, and she has had a number of arguments with a certain baker regarding the art of music as art instead of largely mindless (if somewhat expressive) cacophony, most of which ended with a chase across the market square, and she never understood how her opponent could move that fast while carrying that many clashing instruments.
For the baker, tuning is not important: only whatever noise is ultimately produced and falsely claimed as music. For the unicorn, every adjustment matters. So her field surrounds the screws at the top of the strings. A twist here, another there. Twenty movements which might add up to a total of three millimeters, and it's still not quite enough to satisfy her. Still, she is stuck with working to the limits of her instrument. It will have to do.
And then, right on time, the human crests the rise.
Among her own species, the human would frequently be considered... cute. Average height, a slim build featuring narrow hips. She moves like an athlete who's had some dance training to improve flexibility. The nose is small, the green eyes slightly upturned at the edges. The word 'pixie' could be used without irony by anyone who hadn't met her before, with 'elfin' riding nearby. For most of those who knew her... not to her face. A face which is not the one she was born with. She once told the unicorn that her true face is lost and nothing will restore it but the thing which changed it -- something she can no longer reach. The unicorn understood very little of it and let every last bit go in order to reach the important part all the faster.
To the unicorn, the human is a thing of hideous beauty. The limbs are so wrong. Hands... well, the unicorn has seen those before on minotaurs and a few other species, but these are especially small and refined. On the whole, she can see how the entire form is supposed to work and somehow does, but the execution of it... walking nightmare, and walking on a mere two legs at that. There was one night when she asked the human to move on all fours, just to prove it could be done, and the way it looked had kept them both laughing for too much of their time.
Clothing... something called jeans, something else called a t-shirt. Sneakers. None of it normal, nothing truly understood but for the long scarf wrapped around the neck. She always comes with a scarf. The human owns many colors and styles, every one of which covers her from chin to shoulders. The unicorn has tried a few on, asked to keep one. After a long argument, one which also took up too much time, the human passed it over.
The ears, on the few occasions when the unicorn has gotten a glimpse of them beneath the fall of hair, are wrong. Every facial feature is distorted to the point where she almost only knows what they are from the functions they visibily serve. Elbows, wrists. Small breasts, but ones which are present all the time. She seems to have emerged from a dream, one which, for some reason, Princess Luna did nothing to stop.
To pony eyes, only the hair is normal. It is a dark red, with white stripes laced throughout the recently-regrown fall which reaches just below the vertical rib cage. The unicorn approves, at least regarding the stripes.
The human smiles. "Shall we?" she asks. The voice is a pleasant one, melodious, with an accent the unicorn only hears from this source.
"Please."
The human sits down, tucks her legs into what she's told the unicorn is called a lotus position. The unicorn watches the process with the usual fascination, then gets the instrument into position between her hooves.
The human smiles. The smile of a predator, one which shows teeth. From a pony, it would be a signal to back off. From this one... the unicorn has learned not to recoil.
"I don't understand why you do that. You're telekinetic. Enough practice and you could pluck the strings with any amount of force you wanted to, right? Why take a chance with hooves?"
"Control. Skill. Style," the unicorn replies. "Not taking the easy way out. Plus there are earth ponies and pegasi who share my mark... and that also makes it solidarity."
A shrug. "If you say so. You start?"
The unicorn nods. Notes begin to emerge, each one as perfect as the limits of her instrument will allow, which means not enough. But for now, it suffices.
She plays a song of night. Her magic delves within her, finds the chords which speak to the meeting of the different under Moon, of similarity, of common ground which should not exist and somehow does. The leaves above them vibrate in harmony, the grass bows inward in waves. Stars twinkle on the downbeats.
The human smiles again, then unwraps her scarf.
The neck is slender. The skin is just as pink as the rest of her, without the comforting presence of a coat. And there is a darker pink disk embedded in her throat, above where a larnyx should have been. It is not metal or glass or any other substance the unicorn has a name for. The human let her touch it once, and once was all the unicorn could stand.
And the human begins to sing.
Every note is perfect, truly perfect, an instrument with no limits chorusing to the unicorn's chords in what the human calls the Vox Humana: no words, simply matching notes. And as she sings, the sounds she makes become light, and light turns into something more.
Pink shapes, solid enough to touch, drawn in emotion and something which has never been magic, begin to move through the night.
The unicorn begins to play a song of loneliness. Suffering. Of wishing for more than what the worlds will give them. Of needing to be more.
In front of them, a drunken father beats his cowering daughter. Because she was singing, and the perfect notes made him want to destroy any beauty he couldn't personally possess. No mother stops it: she is in prison and has been for a long time. It is not the first beating. But it is the last.
The girl runs away. She seeks a new life in the streets, falsely believing that anything she could find would have to be better than what has been left behind. It is not. She sleeps in alleys because the shelters have their own perils, and those in charge are the ones who bring the dangers forth and ignore all pleas to stop. She steals food. She steals anything she needs to survive. There is a night when she comes very close to stealing a life. Anything which is necessary, for the girl is weak and the streets are making her stronger, even as they systematically destroy everything which the desperate flight had been meant to preserve.
The unicorn changes the notes. They darken. The stars seem to dim.
The girl meets a man. A criminal. She is good at stealing now, but not good enough. He teaches her more. He teaches her how to take the fall for things he has done, a lesson she only recognizes when the sirens sound and the police do not care about anything she has to tell them, only about a conviction rate getting a little higher. The girl reaches womanhood in prison, and it teaches her how to fight. How to survive in a place which is so much worse than the one she ran away from in the first place. How to sing as the last thing which can be offered to make the pain stop.
Darker still. The grass bows outward now, afraid to approach them.
The woman is released in time. She can truly fight now. She has largely given up on singing, especially for pleasure, for that joy no longer seems to belong to her. She has to survive. And singing is not important. Singing does not make one live.
Fighting is all she currently feels she's good for, and so she turns it into her profession: a sport, one which ponies can't duplicate because their limbs won't allow it. Something called wrestling. And the woman is good at it, or as good as her average size and slim build will allow. But that's not enough.
That which is more than light twists.
The woman stops, looks to the unicorn. Notes change again, take on the near-bell tones of childhood.
And now they watch as a pink version of the equine trots through the night.
There is a filly. She feels she is loved. She comes from a family of merchants and they expect her to be the same. She works in the store after school, learns her numbers through working with her mother on the accounts receivable ledger. She is never beaten, not physically. But her parents fill her head with profit margins and import tariffs and perceived scarcity leading to demand. They wait for her flank to display ledgers and gold bits. The love shown towards music is seen as a hobby, one they can afford to indulge, and so they allow her extra classes and tutors because it's just a filly thing which she'll grow out of.
But then the mark comes, and it is not that of a merchant.
The adult shapes scream without words. The woman's voice provides the anger: the instrument inserts every last bit of pain.
The filly runs away.
She is not on the streets for long. The police find her before her parents do, question as to why she had fled, and then there is a trial, one where the Princess herself (just one then) sits on the judge's bench and listens with narrowed eyes. At the end of it, the filly is sent to live with new guardians near the music school which the Princess has paid the tuition for. And she never sees the family of her blood again.
The music dances, rebounds off the edges of an arena.
The woman fights for a living, and she has a gimmick now, one which is meant to bring in a higher salary. For in her world, very few have magic. But some have what they call powers and for those without them -- sometimes technology will do the trick.
The existence of powers has made mere wrestlers, with their costumes and names and hooks, into something the public is no longer interested in. So a new league emerges, one filled with those beyond the normal... and the woman, with a new name, is part of it. Her voice... technology surrounds her and makes the notes she sings pain others in ways of her choosing: the highest frequencies shake the world.
The unicorn's music sounds something which is neither agreement nor counterpoint.
The filly finds friends at her school. She studies music with a passion now. She is beginning to work on her own compositions. But she seldom ventures outside the facility. In particular, she will not go shopping with her friends, and purchases all she needs from catalogs. The school is safe. The school is a haven. The school is all she has to know. She takes a boarder's bed and leaves her assigned guardians behind without regret, without thought.
She is falling into her music. She is allowing her mark to take over her life. She knows who she is meant to be now: what need is there for any other part of her? If this is what was hated, if this is what led her here... then let this be who she is. And her teachers warn her, try to pull her back, for this happens to so many who allow their talent to define every aspect they might ever possess, far too many, and she ignores them all so she can listen to the music within.
The woman finds friends among those in her profession: the feuds are artificial and change every week according to fresh scripts, the bonds feel real. And there are others with criminal pasts in the arena, who do not judge concerning her own. But life is still not perfect. Outside the arena, she is looked down upon. She is not accepted. She no longer sings for herself at all. And she is deliberately underpaid, for the league promoters feel that the men are the true draw and hand out salaries accordingly. When she asks for equal treatment, they tell her she is a criminal and should be happy with whatever they are willing to dole out, for she will never be anything more. And if that is who they tell her to be... if that is what the mark which society placed tells her she is... then why fight it? Why should she ever be anything else?
So she steals, and the changes to her voice aid her. Some of those she thinks of as friends join her. But those with powers who stand on the other side of the equation come forth to meet them, and they lose. Again and again. More of her youth taken by the iron bars, and when it ends, she decides it was because she was not strong enough. Technology outside the body is so easy to take away. And so...
(The unicorn looks away. She has never been able to watch the surgery.)
The woman is stronger now, as strong as she could be without crossing into truly superhuman levels: the surgery, with a fifty percent success rate, underperformed there, and results were not guaranteed. But the changes to her voice cannot be taken away.
(It will be nearly a year before the woman learns what happened to the fifty percent for whom the surgery did not succeed at all. It will be many more before she stops screaming in the night.)
The filly is growing up. Most of her friends are drifting away, for all she ever want to talk about is music and there is a life outside the school, one the filly refuses to acknowledge. She barely notices them leave. She has as much need for friends as she does for family: none. She lives with the music. The compositions will be her children, every instrument her lover. She needs nothing else.
The woman is fighting again, for it is becoming all she knows. Some of her friends die, assassinated by a vigilante, but she has survived and still she fights -- but it means her friends were not enough to protect her. Not strong enough, and she can become no stronger. She needs to be surrounded by strength, enough of it to keep the world from ever getting close enough to hurt her again. She is climbing the ranks. She is the one hurting people now. It proves she has some strength of her own. And she finds a man with abilities much like hers, one who believes the exact same things, and it feels something like love. Perhaps he is enough to protect her. She hurts others by his side until she finds out he is not even enough to protect himself. A robbery goes wrong, a bullet takes him away, and her grief destroys the land around her as it breaks the devices within her neck which gave her power. Which let her have a voice at all, one the world would have to hear.
She has no one. Her strength is gone, and the world can do to her what it pleases. She is nothing.
The filly is getting close to graduation. She does not think about what her life will be after she leaves, for she already knows. Her life will be music. Music will feed her with sound and shelter her in composition pages. Music will love her. The world only exists to play music in: ponies are only present to provide an audience. It is who she is. She is music. It is her strength, it cost her everything, and without it, she is nothing.
Evil finds the woman. She can no longer speak. She will never sing again and it has been years since she would have cared. But those who practice true evil are very aware of her need to belong. To be sheltered. Evil reaches out to her, promising protection in the form of a conquered world which can never hurt her again. And if others have to be hurt in order to get that world? Let them be. Those who claim to stand for the good are useless, for where are they when children are beaten in the night? Let evil dictate the shape of society, allow control to replace useless, never-practiced morals and once they are done, no one will ever hurt again.
A silent nod agrees. And so her voice is rebuilt, and her restored song becomes light and something more, builds solid shapes, wings to soar on and so much else. Her appearance is completely changed, and she can look in the mirror without loathing, for she no longer sees herself.
The plan is simple. Many of the world's heroes have vanished. They may never return. The villains were left behind, and there are few left to fight them. So a small group of those who practice evil will be those few. They all take new faces and names, learn to use their powers in ways which none will recognize. They claim to be justice, like lightning. Her world will embrace them, for there are almost no others left to hold the line in a place where the chaos of the paranormal seems to result in a universe whose lifespan must be renewed by the week. And once they are given the keys to the halls of power -- they will strike.
It is working. She pretends to be a hero. The world wants to believe the con. But...
...there is a man.
...there is another filly.
The filly had to leave the school. She had no choice. Three strings broke at once. The supply closet was empty. There were no friends left who would go out for her and also no teachers, for she had chosen to stay at the school during a holiday. Where else would she be? Why would they ever leave at all? A mystery she no longer cares to think about.
The filly had to leave the school. She would have done anything to avoid it, but she hardly stops playing for a second when awake now, never stops in her nightscape. Her life is music. The music has stopped, and so her life might follow. She must have sound. So she ventures forth. She does not seem to know the city, not a street of it, and all she can do is wander, unable to ask others for assistance, helpless to keep the vacuum in her head from filling with distant screams.
An earth pony, one her own age, cream-colored, looking so worried, asks her if something is wrong. Out of nowhere. Without provocation. Without connection. It is not applause or teaching or correction: it is concern. The filly does not know what to do with it, for she cannot respond with music and words are so hard to use. In fear, she gallops away --
-- and the earth pony follows. Will not let her be. Wants to know what's wrong, wants to help. Chases her for blocks and beyond, the earth pony is so much stronger, has more endurance, the filly's only exercise for years has been the reluctant trot to the cafeteria which gathers the strength for more music, and the filly's strength runs out first. It seems as if the only way to make the earth pony go away is to reach down past the music, delve into memory and find words again.
She asks for help.
The earth pony smiles.
Her name is Bon-Bon.
His name is Abner.
He does not feel the same need for strength. He simply wanted to be appreciated for his creations, and he has done terrible things in the name of that goal, dug down into the dark places and excavated horrors. But now he has a new face, and a new name, and those they save in the name of the long con... believe in that name. They cheer it. Both of them are being cheered and they so often work together during the fights, they spend time with each other after. People celebrate them. Celebrate her in a way nothing else has ever brought her. And at first, she looks at them with contempt. They are fools buying into a lie. They deserve what comes, and what is coming is a world where no children will hurt because someone will finally come to stop it. The price of that world does not matter. It is coming faster, because the lie is working and --
-- she is the one who hears the cries.
She is the one who answers the call.
When children are being beaten in the night, she stops it.
The man... likes her. No -- he is falling for her.
He is weak. He only wants appreciation and applause. Not strength. Not anything important. But he too is answering the calls, as part of the con...
...except that...
...her face is gone. So is his. The masks are full-time, and so it feels as if the masks are all they are. The masks are loved, which makes it feel as if they are loved, and...
...it is love.
He loves her.
Those whom she lies to every day: they love her as well. For being their hero.
The plan peaks. The keys to the halls of power are offered up. Their leader tries to step through.
And four among them stand with the heroes who had returned after all to slam the gates.
The woman doesn't fully understand why she did it.
The woman doesn't know who she is any more.
The filly doesn't know who she is any more.
The earth pony keeps coming to the school. Keeps asking to see her. Come out with me, sounds a new kind of song. Come and play, come and live, come and be. Those words keep breaking into the music and to answer, the filly needs still more words of her own. The earth pony will not go away and it now seems that the only way to gain time for music is to give a little to the intruder. She hands over reluctant minutes. Uncertain hours.
She has to find words. Again and again.
The earth pony is careful around her. The questions which are asked do not become personal ones -- not those directed at her. She is vaguely aware that this other filly is approaching her teachers and at first, assumes it has something to do with music. But they are spending more and more time together. It is not all awkward, for the earth pony makes for a wonderfully attentive audience, willing to listen for hours on end. Moon by moon, it becomes easier. More welcome. Slowly, the earth pony transitions into a part of the filly's personal song, an instrument she needs before she can create any music at all.
The filly cannot speak, not well, not willingly. And so she often lets the music do it for her until one day, she looks at the earth pony's eyes and sees music looking back. A song which only plays when the two are together. And the filly realizes the earth pony loves her as a composition unfinished, and that there is no path to completion but that of the duet.
The filly does not know what to do. For her old life is gone and the music replaced it. The music became the mask, the mask became face and voice and soul.
If the music is but a mask... is that what the earth pony loves? Is there anything underneath which could be loved at all? Those who said they had loved her... in the end, they did not. And if that was the true her, and the filly cannot be loved...
...the woman does not deserve love.
How many people has she hurt, in the name of strength? Of feeling that hurting others was the only way to be safe? Is there any number she could save which would balance those books, or is every sin forever, with forgiveness impossible? Especially that which never seems to come from within?
She does not know who she is any more. She only knows she no longer wishes to be herself, for the person she is does not deserve love. And so she spends a time cascading between all kinds of anger as the raging world screams over the trick and refuses to accept the four who turned and the one who had joined them before the curtain was pulled back.
But... the man stands by her. The group remains together, for all they have now is each other. In time, more approach. Another seeking redemption. Then one who had, so many years before, also begun as a criminal -- and now was not. One who believes their change is real. He offers to lead them and, with his mere presence, prove to the world that there is something worth saving.
In time, the man decides that to truly prove his change, he must pay for the crimes he had committed before it. He goes to prison, of his own free will. She loves as best she can, at that distance. And day by day, she struggles, now doing so in his name, for he believed in her and she so wishes it was possible for him to be right. She tries to prove herself, again and again. Few among the heroes trust her: they may speak of reform, but hardly any truly believe in it. But still, she tries to be the one who answers in the night, soaring on wings of song while bearing a mask which others see as her face.
The mask might be forever.
The music is forever.
The filly is grown now, and the earth pony says she loves the unicorn. The unicorn, still awkward with words, plays songs of love back. They move to a new town. The earth pony opens a candy shop with the understanding that the unicorn will never be asked to help balance the ledgers, for weak words finally reached that subject after all. The unicorn plays in the town square on market days and considers being among the little shops and stalls to be a form of therapy.
The woman enters therapy. She tries to reconcile her life. And in time, she wins a pardon. Her criminal past is forgiven -- on paper. There are still so many who do not trust her and never will, no matter what her deeds are. Who feel no amount of repayment could ever be enough... thoughts which go through her own mind every night. She takes a new job, supervising criminals while trying to find those among them whose life could change as hers did, even if few would truly believe them either. It is almost enough... on the surface. But she hurts. She does not have love around her. The acceptance... applied only to the mask, and the nature of that mask was revealed years ago. She can never take it off. She is spending her life chasing a feeling she may never have again. And so one night, when the pain is too strong, she flies back to where a lover had died and for the first time in years, sings for the sake of singing. Sings of loss and mourning and regret and a thousand mistakes made in the name of survival. The song becomes a scream, the scream becomes a wail, and the universe itself retreats from her pain, reality being driven back in a wave...
...until a new one fills the void.
Colors change, intensify. Desert turns to forest. Forest, after a short flight, becomes city. And the ponies stare up at her and cry out in shock.
The unicorn looks up. There is a horror soaring above her. A nightmare escaped into the waking world -- one which flies on wings of song. And in the town square, the only response she can think of is to play her instrument, match every note, answer in the only way this monster might understand.
The woman lands.
The unicorn keeps playing.
There is one who still does not know how much of her was lost behind the mask. Who had to claw her way out from her own talent, who has so many days when she does not know what is truly being loved at all: only that love is there, and whether there is of her may not be worthy of it. She longs to be worthy. To one day take the mask completely away and see what face lies beneath.
There is one who lost nearly everything to the needs of a mask. Who never understood what had gone missing until a new mask was applied, one she so wishes to be worthy of, one she will spend her life fighting for the right to truly wear, for she feels that if she tries hard enough, the mask can match what lies beneath and if the mask was once worthy of love, then the person wearing it will be as well.
The broken mirrors stand in the town square, their songs united.
And the duet fills Ponyville with music until the CDA comes.
The song ends. They sit together in silence for a minute, woman and mare. Pink shapes dissipate into the past with final echoes of hopeful notes.
A metal thing around the woman's left wrist makes an unwelcome, distinctly non-musical sound.
"Five minutes," the woman says.
"Stay longer." The only thing which keeps it from being a plea is the numbness from the sheer volume of repetition.
"I can't. One incursion stopped... two hours gained. That's the deal the Princesses made with me. When someone else from my world tries to get here -- after I stop it... you know how this works. I can't change that."
"We almost have this right. If we just had a few days to work on it straight through..."
"You don't want those days. You don't want to imagine what the supervillains in my world would have to be plotting for me to gain that much time. It wouldn't be something I could stop myself, and... I can barely get anyone to believe what's going on. Because it's coming from me. If anyone else had made that first trip... any hero... then maybe there would be reinforcements, especially from the scientists. The ones who could figure out what's happening, why the barrier became porous in the first place and let all the incursions through. I'm trying to talk to a few, but I can't even get to see them because... it's still me. Pardoned and all, so many of them just see the old face and think it's a setup for... I don't even know. Just that they don't believe me. I'm supposedly free to come and go as I please now, outside work hours, and... I'm still being watched, I can barely account for myself, there are people I could never risk telling to begin with just in case believing me was only the start..."
The unicorn closes orange-gold eyes. The woman's right hand goes out, runs fingers through the green and white mane.
"What if you did convince them?" the unicorn softly asks.
"The incursions might stop," the woman answers. "You would all be safe again, at least from the outsiders. I'd sleep a lot better --"
"-- no," the unicorn cuts her off. "If your scientists beat this, and the barrier was permanently sealed... we would never see each other again."
"But you would be safe."
The unicorn is quiet. It doesn't last.
"Take me with you."
The woman's mere two legs are still more than enough to tangle: the attempt to jump into a standing position from the resting one goes wrong, and she crashes down in front of the unicorn, splayed out in the waving grass.
"...what? You can't --"
"-- take me with you! You can move ponies when you come here, you told me about how you saved the three kidnapped ones three incursions ago! If you can bring them back, you can take me away! We can finish the composition!"
"You -- want to leave Equestria? No, wait... that's not even it. You would be leaving Bon-Bon. You'd be abandoning the pony who loves you most in the world for the sake of a song."
The woman manages to stand up this time.
"I never should have come here," the woman sadly says. "None of us ever should have..."
The beautiful voice trails off. Small eyes close. The wind shifts white streaks on both sides.
"I... I don't want to stay," the unicorn softly insists. "I would tell Bon-Bon first. Just tell her -- it was for a few days. Lie about going on a trip so she wouldn't worry. Make it coincide with some of your free time. You could use one of those abandoned lairs you told me about, keep me there. And then -- we could work on the song together. Just... finish. Because if you win -- if the CDA and all the human agents do it once and for all... we never will, and... just a few days, I can make excuses, nopony will look for me... three days will be enough..."
The watch beeps again. Two minutes.
"Please..."
So very gently, "No."
"Why? Why can't you...?"
The woman sighs.
"Two reasons. The first... is Franz Schubert."
"I don't understand..."
"The Unfinished Symphony. I'll bring it with me next time. You'll hear it. Some things... just don't get to end the way you want them to. And they can still be beautiful. Sometimes they're more beautiful for being incomplete because in your heart, they can end any way you can believe in."
The unicorn's face says it's not good enough. The woman knows it. But there is still a reason yet to emerge. "And the other?"
The woman's smile shows no teeth, and the expression on the mask which has become her face... the unicorn has learned to see it as sorrow. "He always wanted to see their world, just for a few minutes," she softly says. "And now that he was dead, he could no longer want wrong things... and so his wish was granted... Christian allegory. Which is a weird thing for a Jew to be thinking of, but... God, more things to explain..."
The silence takes nearly all of their remaining time.
"I... I don't understand."
"You're alive," the woman gently says. "Stay that way. Want right things. And maybe, if you want enough of them, if you do enough of them... a wish can be granted."
The watch beeps a final time.
The woman begins to sing.
The grass turns away from her. Leaves shake. Branches tremble. The hill itself seems to retreat towards the ground. And around her, lights flicker. Beneath the unicorn's belly, ground shifts, green replaced by black, a substance she only sees during transitions, as hill overlaps rooftop, as huge buildings assault the sky all around them, as horns without music blare and noise crashes through the barrier while children cry out for help which is about to come.
The woman vanishes. The other goes away.
A few last notes are vibrated loose from the instrument. As always, the power of the departure has knocked them out of tune.
And then there is only a unicorn under Moon at the top of a hill, wondering if she will ever see her warped reflection again.
