From Dust to Light
Chapter 2: Stories
Previous Chapter“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid...”
“When you can live forever what do you live for?”
I sit upon the precipice of the Apocalypse, as I have for many hundreds of years. I remember the days that I had a duty; I was the one who brought the Sun. The gears of the cosmos, though, found a new guide; but all I can remember is lavender and blue.
The crumbling ruins of a great city guard my decrepit halls; its name faded from my mind long ago. Nature has taken its toll, the towers no longer stand straight and tall. Brief flashes of memory let me recall that the city fell, and I was dead; but my name is faded and my eyes grey.
Everything grows dull with time, and I am no exception. Without love and warmth, I am growing more like a moving statue and less like a living pony.
“It is strange to see you here, Celestia.” The voice was empty, cutting with a blade as sharp a bad memory.
Celestia... that is what I was. The voice that had spoken was familiar, yet the name was beyond my grasp. “Who... are you?” I croaked, my voice almost forgotten from disuse.
“I am Death,” the voice replied, its owner stepping into view. He, for I think it was a he, was wrapped in a ragged black cloak, one that had seen an eon too many pass by.
I felt like I should have been afraid, but I was not. Death, at least, was a word I remembered. “Why have you come?”
“It is time...” He looked up at the red sun, leaning on a scythe that used to be black, “It is time for you to leave, Celestia. The world is dying.”
“It’s time for me to die?” I guessed, hesitantly.
Death sighed. “Yes, it is. You are one of the last to go, really... only one or two others still live.”
A flash of lavender, the warmth of memory. I knew not what it meant, but I felt like I knew one of the ‘others’. I took a deep breath. “Very well.”
“Wait!” shouted a pony’s voice, evoking lavender in my mind.
Death looked up. “Ah, Twilight. Why have you come?”
Twilight. Lavender. I knew this pony- the lavender alicorn who had landed between us. “Twilight... I know that name...”
The pony cried, and I felt the irresistible urge to lay a wing over her, to comfort her.
“Perhaps there is time for stories, before the end?” Death asked, sitting down on a ruined stone.
“I hope so,” replied Twilight, looking wearily up at the sun. It seemed to grow dimmer by the second.
“Maybe I’ll remember something, finally,” I added.
Death nodded. “At the least, the Gatekeeper is able to come...” he trailed off for a moment wistfully. “She wouldn’t miss this for anything, I think.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” The voice was female, and its owner seated herself next to Death. They looked as if they were exact opposites; Death in his ragged, torn cloak of shadow, his body a living skeleton of a forgotten creature, and the Gatekeeper, in her robe of light, with piercing eyes of green and hair of black.
“Ah, it has been too long... we last saw each other at the very beginning,” explained Death.
Twilight looked ecstatic. “Oh, so much to ask, so little time!” she exclaimed, “But the stories should come first. Who wants to tell theirs?”
The Gatekeeper nodded. “I’ll go first. Now, where to begin...?”