Strands of lush green grass caught in a cool morning breeze wafted against Twilight’s legs. Her hair wisped around her face and her coat rippled in a gentle wind. With a sigh, she glanced back at her house.
Smoke rose from the chimney of the cozy cottage, indicating its other inhabitant was still home. Twilight shifted beneath the packs strapped to her sides containing fresh cut grass, greens from the garden, and extra water. With a steadfast stride, she started forward, heading for rolling hills in the distance covered in oranges and reds by the forest of broad leaved trees growing on them.
A few steps more, and she paused again, glancing back. With the gentle rise and fall of the earth, she could only see the roof of the cottage now. She bit the inside of her cheek. You’re being silly, she thought. You’ll be able to see it again when you reach the top of the next hill.
She pressed on, the swish of grass and chirps of birdsong full in her ears. Chroma had told her not to do this, but here she was anyway. Hesitating was pointless when she knew she wasn’t going back.
Determination renewed, she crested the next rise, the light of the sun hovering just above the horizon warm on her back. The hills weren’t far now. She smiled. This time, she was actually going to do it.
Lunch came on a blanket in the grass as time crawled by; the calm, if not strictly necessary, ritual give her a sense of normalcy. Even if she wasn’t at the cottage, she could still enjoy the taste of lettuce and carrots. She finished off her carrot, taking the leafy-green top held in her hoof with in the last bite.
Carefully, with her mouth and hooves, she gathered up her blanket and paper-wrapped food. She took a sip of clear spring water from a woven bag before stowing it as well. Deftly, she tied the bag shut, and turned to face the hill.
She’d stopped for lunch at the base of the slope. After her break, new energy filled her as she briskly trotted upward. The trunks cast long shadows up the slope, the sun still behind her.
A pony stepped from behind one of the trees and into her path. Twilight came to a sudden stop, her foreleg cocked, surprised she hadn’t glimpsed the pony’s pure white coat before she was almost on top of her. “What did I tell you about running off, Twilight?” the pony said, disapproval heavy in the glare of her sage green eyes and the tone of her voice.
Twilight glanced over her shoulder at the cottage. Smoke still rose from the chimney, a line of drifting grey beneath a deep blue sky illuminated by an everlasting sunrise. She turned back to look at the pony. “What’re you doing here, Chroma?”
“Don’t be so surprised,” Chroma said, pushing a strand of her jet black mane back behind her ear. “I know the look you were getting on your face during breakfast. I knew you’d start walking.”
Twilight planted her hoof. “But... the fire,” Twilight said. “Shouldn’t you have put it out?”
Chroma tilted her head. “Why would I do that? Did you not like it?”
Twilight sighed and trotted over to the tree next to Chroma. Why would she do that? Twilight thought. The fire always blazed warm in the cottage’s fireplace. The very idea of it going out was absurd. She dropped onto her haunches, sitting on one of the roots.
Chroma sat beside her and draped a foreleg comfortingly over her shoulders. “I wish I could help you, Twilight.”
“I’m not going back this time,” Twilight said firmly.
“Then where are you going to go?” Chroma said.
Twilight turned her head, looking up the hill. “I’m going to see what’s out there.”
Chroma shook her head. “Oh Twilight... there’s nothing good out there. Why can’t you be satisfied with what you have?”
Twilight bit her lip. “It’s not that.”
“What do you want, then?” Chroma asked.
What do I want? Twilight wondered, the question echoing in her mind.
“Are you lonely? I could give you some more ponies,” Croma said.
Twilight shook her head forcefully. “No! That’s okay.” She shuddered, remembering the other ponies that came to visit their cottage. Every time she met one of them, they seemed familiar, but not quite right. They bothered her so much she’d asked Chroma to send them away.
“I could change the sky again. Is it bothering you?” Chroma said.
“No, it’s okay. Blue is right,” Twilight said.
“Just tell me, Twilight, what’s not perfect?”
“I don’t know!” Twilight said. She pulled away from Chroma and stood. “I need to see what’s out there!”
Chroma’s ears drooped. She gazed at Twilight, hurt in her eyes. “I made this place for you.”
Twilight felt a stab of guilt. Why can’t I be satisfied? Twilight thought. I don’t want anything. I don’t need anything. I don’t have to worry about anything. Everything is calm and beautiful and quiet. Isn’t that what I want? Still, she grit her teeth and set off up the hill.
Hooffalls crunched in leaf litter behind her. Twilight ignored them. She knew Chroma would follow her. I’m not going back, she promised herself. No matter what she says.
“There’s nothing over that horizon,” Chroma said. “There’s nothing to find.”
Twilight kept walking.
“Why don’t you believe me, Twilight? Aren’t I your friend.”
Friend. Twilight’s hoof caught on a root. She stumbled, nearly falling. “Of course you’re my friend, Chroma.” She stopped and turned. “Don’t you think there’s something more out there? More than this perfect little valley and cozy little cottage? There has to be!”
Chroma slowly loped up the hill toward her. “Why does there have to be anything more than this? Why would you want to see what’s over the next hill when you have everything you need?” She placed her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Why would you want to leave when I can give you anything you want?”
“Anything I want?” Twilight asked.
“Anything.”
“Then I want you to tell me what’s out there. I want the truth.”
Chroma dropped her hoof and looked down at the leaf strewn ground. “You wouldn’t understand,” Chroma said. “It wouldn’t make sense to you.” She met Twilight’s eyes. “I just want you to be happy, Twilight. We can be happy here, together. Friends forever.”
Twilight turned away. “A real friend wouldn’t try to hide things from me.” She walked up the hill.
“I’m not hiding things from you!” Chroma protested, rushing after her and keeping pace at her side. “From your perspective, you wouldn’t understand if I told you. You can’t understand!”
“How do I know I won’t understand if you won’t explain it to me?” Twilight asked.
“Why can’t you believe me, Twilight?” Chroma said. “I created the world. Everything I do is to make the world better. I’ve sacrificed for you.”
Even as the hill grew steeper, Twilight climbed faster. “I want to know Chroma. I want to discover. I want to see what’s beyond the horizon. There can’t be nothing, and you can’t have all the answers.”
“Why not?” Chroma said. “Isn’t it better if you have all the answers? Isn’t it better to know that the sky is blue because I made it blue? Isn’t it better to know that there is someone who will always love you? Isn’t it better to never have to fear the unknown? You know the pony that created everything, and she’s right here next to you. Isn’t it comforting to know that every mystery has a good reason to be a mystery?”
Twilight slowed. She’d nearly reached the top of the hill. She came to a stop. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “You said you made me to be your friend, right?”
Chroma nodded eagerly. “Yes! Let’s forget these questions. Let’s go back to the cottage.”
Twilight almost took a step back down the hill. She hesitated. “Then what would you have done, if I chose not to be your friend?”
Chroma shrugged. “I would have made you see how bad things could be without me on your side.”
This isn’t friendship, Twilight realized. “You don’t punish ponies for not wanting to be your friend,” she said. “You don’t create something and hurt it if it doesn’t love you.”
Chroma blinked. “Why not?”
Twilight stamped her hoof on the leaf litter. “Because it’s wrong!”
Chroma frowned. “No, it’s not. I gave them a chance. I tried. They chose to turn away from me. It’s their fault.”
“They?!” Twilight cried. “There were others?”
“Of course,” Chroma said. “When you asked for more ponies, I based the ones I created on them.”
One of the ponies Chroma had created had a pink mane like cotton candy. Another wore a tan stetson. The third had eyes that sparkled like diamonds. The fourth had a brash rainbow tail. And the fifth hid behind a curtain of pink hair. Twilight gasped. How could I forget? Those were her real friends.
She took off up the slope at a gallop. “Twilight, don’t!” Chroma shouted. “You’ll make me ruin it!”
Twilight crested the top of the hill, ignoring Chroma. She could see the edge of the world. It was a curtain of void. Nothing lay beyond. She rushed towards it. She had to leave.
The ground beneath her suddenly smeared. Her hooves caught on it like it was mud. She pitched forward, tumbling. She tried to climb back to her feet, but her body wouldn’t respond to her. She glanced at her hooves and gasped. Her legs had melted away, leaving a lavender streak across the blurred brownish-green smear behind her.
Chroma walked toward her, avoiding the distorted part of the world, with a purposeful gait. “I tried to warn you, Twilight,” she said. “You’re better off with me.” She came to a stop beside Twilight and sat down. “I can fix it, though. Just say you’re sorry.”
Twilight glanced at the curtain of void. If she had only made it another step or two. She still had her body left, and it was downhill. All she had to do was roll.
Chroma followed her gaze. “You don’t want to go out there. Anything is possible out there. Keep your perspective narrow. Stay inside the frame. Things make sense inside the frame. If you start to think, if you start to question, you won’t ever be able to be happy here.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I just wanted to help the ponies that didn’t want to be your friend.”
Chroma’s gaze softened. “That’s okay, Twilight. You didn’t mean to mess this up. Don’t worry about what’s right and wrong. I can tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. The other ponies deserved what happened to them. They didn’t love me like you do. They didn’t trust me. All you have to do is believe me and you can be happy forever.”
Twilight twisted her body. The last thing she saw as she crashed through the curtain was Chroma’s shocked expression.
Twilight spilled onto a worn hardwood floor. A rotted board gave way beneath her feet. She flapped her wings, catching the air and stabilizing herself. That’s right, she thought. I’m an Alicorn.
She lifted her head and looked around the room. A familiar fireplace greeted her beneath a caved-in corner of the roof. It was the same cottage as she’d lived in in the painting, only this one was dilapidated instead of picturesque.
Hunger gnawed at her belly. Her hoof hurt where it had caught a rough chunk of the broken board. She realized she’d never felt the slightest discomfort in Chroma’s. She’d never gotten tired, or hungry, or hurt.
She turned around. Her wing clipped a tray balanced on the edge of a folding stand, sending paintbrushes crashing to the floor. Dry, powdery paint dusted across the floorboards boards in a riot of pigments.
Rectangular canvas portraits covered the wall. Six in total. Five were nothing but brightly colored smears of dissolved oil-paint. One was a cozy little cottage that cast a long shadow on a field of green grass. Grey smoke drifted out of the chimney beneath a deep blue sky. Behind the cottage, fall colors covered rolling hills. In one distant corner, the paint had been smudged, as if turpentine had been carefully dripped onto it.
She lifted a paintbrush in her magic, and with the metal on the back end, scraped the paint of the sky. Blue flaked away, revealing violet beneath. The sky had been purple, before she asked Chroma to change it.
Twilight gasped and took a step back in shock. Something in the painting had moved. She focused on it. There she was. Chroma, a white fleck next to the cottage, moving across the green field. She looked at the other five paintings. Each had a distinctive smudge that matched the colors of her friend’s coats.
Twilight turned, digging through the mess of painting supplies she’d spilled with her magic. She had escaped the painting by reaching the frame. She could drive Chroma out the same way. She picked up a bottle of turpentine.
Carefully, Twilight spread the fluid over the top edge of the picture. She snatched up a rag, and started to work. Sometimes, the paint would re-define itself, even as she smeared it with the rag, but it took much longer to paint something than it took to destroy a painting. She drove the white spec toward the foreground.
Chroma gained more definition as she moved closer and closer to the bottom edge of the painting. Inevitably, she reached the very bottom of the frame. The back of her head was defined clearly enough that Twilight could see her ears. The paint that made Chroma’s body moved with her, sliding across the coats beneath. Twilight poured more turpentine onto the canvas, forcing Chroma another step back.
And a pony spilled out of the painting on top of her. She fell beneath Chroma, her wing cracking painfully against the floor. Gently, Twilight lifted Chroma in her magic and set her on her feet. Chroma staggered a step sideways as Twilight picked herself up.
“Why?” Chroma said, pain and horror in her eyes. “Why’d you make me leave? I could have been happy there alone, even if you weren’t happy there at all!”
Twilight frowned. She remembered the white earth pony with the jet black mane and the paintbrush Cutie Mark. Swatch Chroma, artist of the original Wonder Ponies comics. She’d approached Twilight, promising to show her how she’d made a world inside one specific copy of the comic book. Of course, her friends had come along for the trip. She’d taken them to this old, run-down cottage; her childhood home.
“Because you hurt ponies. Maybe I could have let you stay in there, but I need you to fix my friends so that they can leave too,” Twilight said.
“Why should I!” Chroma shouted. “I tried to make them happy! I was a good friend! I worked hard for them, and they spat in my face! They got what they deserved!”
“Not everypony wants to live in your world, Chroma,” Twilight said. “They deserve that choice. They have the right to decide that ignorance is not bliss, that they’d rather strive and suffer and grow then remain static oil on a canvas.”
Chroma hung her head. “Why do ponies always need some conflict, some goal? Why can’t they be satisfied with what they have, without demanding that there be always be something more?”
Twilight reached out and touched Chroma’s shoulder. “Because life is about the journey, not the destination. I still have a lot to learn about friendship, but I know I’m always making new friends, and learning something knew about the ones I have. There’s always a new challenge, a new mystery, a new opportunity. We like conflicts because they define our lives.”
“I was a god,” Chroma said, slowly raising her head. “In the worlds I make, I can create and destroy. I thought if I brought another pony into them, it would make it all have meaning. Who better than the Princess of Friendship? I’m sorry, I never deserved to be your friend.”
Twilight smiled. “Well then,” she said, lifting a container of solvent and some powdered paint in her levitation, “Your first lesson about friendship is you should respect the wishes of others, even if they don’t seem right to you.”
