Equestrian Time-Slip

by ponichaeism

Rating: teen
Tags: Flash Sentry, Random, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Rarity
Length: 10223

Twilight decides to put on a surreal piece of dramatic theater. And then things get weird....

When the irresistible urge to write and perform a piece of surreal performance art/kitchen sink drama strikes Twilight Sparkle, her friends and the town of Ponyville are more than happy to play along. Who can resist the alluring power of the theater, and its ability to take the observer on a flight of fancy to another time and place, to step inside the imagination of another, to travel to a world where artisans craft with the stuff dreams are made on?

But for one night only, the audience will find out just how literal that experience can be....

Published 2014-12-20 18:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2014-12-20 18:20:01 UTC

Equestrian Time-Slip

“I've got nothing to say I ain't said before
I've bled all I can, I won't bleed no more
I don't need no one to understand
Why the blood runs cold in the hired hand
Our hearts, hand of God
Floodland and driven apart”
-The Sisters of Mercy, “This Corrosion”

"A Chinese writer of prose has observed that the unicorn, for the very reason that it is so anomalous, will pass unnoticed. One's eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing."
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Modesty of History

Through the thick walls of rust-colored brick, Twilight heard ponies hustling, bustling, and rustling, all of it at her beck and call. She had set this evening in motion. Soon, though, after all this setup she would have to keep it in motion all by herself. She gave the mare in the mirror ringed by lightbulbs a long, weary look. This was her night, but deep down inside all she wanted to do now was curl up in a ball and drift off to sleep. She steadied herself and concentrated on her facial features in the mirror, until she made herself look like the most effortless pony in the world. She was in charge of this ship, and she had to act like she knew what she was doing at all times.

Does Celestia feel this way, underneath her serene exterior? Or is she really that wise and calm? She looked down at the script sitting on the table below the mirror. Its brass bindings and white cover gleamed in the hazy lamp light. How do we avoid judging a book by its cover if we can never truly know what's inside?

Luckily, when you're storytelling, it's better to ask a question than answer one.

A stagehoof popped his head into the dressing room. “Five minutes to curtain, Twilight.”

She stared at her fretful, worried face in the mirror, overcome with a sudden urge to cancel the whole thing and flee across the sea, because the script was obviously riddled with errors and structural problems and nopony would ever like it and they would all mock her.

Why had she chosen to write a kitchen sink drama, anyway? Ponyville wouldn't understand it. Heck, she herself only knew about the genre by reading books from the great cities of Equestria and beyond, sad and bitter books about how lonely and uncaring the big city could seem sometimes. A far cry from the closeness of the rural town she called home. And if she, the most well-read pony in town, only knew about the genre from books, how could the other, more....parochial -- to put it delicately -- townfolk ever relate to it? She had absorbed the conventions of a genre without ever living the life, and she was now presenting it to a place that had no need for such a genre in the first place.

She wished now she had written the story in a different style, any other style.

“Too late,” she said to her reflection. “Everypony is waiting for us.” She focused again and transformed her face into the epitome of serenity. She recited a half-remember aphorism from Cath-Hay. The mirrored mare knew it as well, and joined her voice to Twilight's. “It's time to leap into the boundless and make it our home. In other words....showtime.”

Twilight ran her hoof across the script, feeling the power of those pages and pages of words, a whole world of them, crammed into such a small package. Where had the words come from? she wondered. The astral plane, the realm of the mind? She had never considered herself much of a playwright, yet the words had come to her and demanded she speak them. They had refused to be quiet and leave her alone until she had given them their due. And soon now, she and a herd of other ponies would bring it to life, and she would unfurl her sails and drift away to its distant shores.

She remembered another aphorism from the ancient Cath-Hayan sage: 'Was I a pony dreaming I was a breezie, or am I now a breezie dreaming I am a pony?' Was Twilight drifting off, or was she waking up? It was so hard to tell sometimes.

She looked at herself in the mirror a final time, and found her distress masked by an expression of perfect confidence. She grinned, then strode to the door and left the dressing room. The hallway was packed with stagehoofs shuttling props and tools back and forth past chatting ponies in costume. She made her way through the bustle, towards the end of the hall, and emerged into the crowded backstage area of Ponyville's local amateur dramatics theater. She parted the curtains and peeked out at the sea of faces in the dimness of the theater, then let the curtain fall back into place with a velvet swish.

“Oh, Twilight!” a voice called across the murmuring backstage din. “Can I speak with you?”

Twilight headed into the thick press of crew running through their final checks. She edged past a hoofful of gaffers replacing a bad cable, and came to the crafts table, where Rarity was nibbling on little cubes of sugar.

“Yes?” Twilight asked.

Rarity's eyes lit up. “Ah, Twilight, there you are. It's about this line on page 17.”

Oh no, not this again.

“I've tried it again and again, and I haven't been able to make it work,” Rarity said, waving her annotated script around in the air. “'Nopony is who they say they are'? I'm terribly sorry, but it just doesn't sound natural to my ears.”

“The show is a heady blend of kitchen sink drama and abstract performance art,” Twilight said, reciting the log line she'd written to send to the newspapers. “That is the opposite of natural.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “So you've said. But must we play these games on the audience? Can't we all just....play our parts for real? Lose ourselves in the story? What about the audience? Haven't you heard of the willing suspension of disbelief?”

Why can't you just do the line how I wrote it?! Twilight thought. Out loud, she maintained her calm facade and said, “Of course. I'm breaking it on purpose. That's the point.”

“Excuse me,” Lyra Heartstrings, covered from ear to hoof in reflective paint, said as she edged between them to get at the crafts table. “'Think but this and all is tended', she mumbled to herself, like a mantra. “Wait. No.” She popped a sugar cube into her mouth and magically lifted the script up to her eyes. “Mended. Alright.” She turned around, swallowed, and struck a pose, one foreleg outstretched to the concealed sky. “'If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended'.”

“No, no, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “Lose the pose.”

“You think so?” the mare asked.

“I know so.”

“If you insist.” The mare shrugged and walked away.

“I'm sorry, Twilight,” Rarity said, “but if there's all this illusion and deception in the play, how am I supposed to act? I don't want to feel like I'm playing a part. My actorly instinct is to become the part. If it doesn't feel natural, then it's a dreadful cheat. It isn't real, and there's no reason to treat it seriously.”

Twilight felt like she was being herded towards a cliff. It had all seemed so clear and simple while she was writing it out, but now that Rarity was poking holes in what she had created, that clarity had deserted Twilight. What was I thinking when I wrote this? In her confusion, she couldn't even tell if the thought had been sarcasm or a genuine desire to recall the specific moment she had put quill to parchment.

If you act like you know what you're talking about, Twilight, they will believe you. And even if you do know what you're talking about, they won't believe you if you don't act the part.

“The truth is in the performances, not the world,” she said with full confidence. “The truth of the pony heart, the equine condition, shines through the fake sets and props and even the lines you're reciting. As long as you find the truth, you can lie as much as you want.” Twilight didn't know if that was even something approaching truth, or merely a pack of convenient lies she had grasped in desperation, but it sounded enough like the truth, or at least a truth, that she felt better after saying it.

“I still don't know,” Rarity said, though she sounded more uncertain than before. “Oh, well, this show is one night only. Best leave the recriminations for the newspapers.”

When she turned back to the crafts table, Twilight left her and walked towards the curtains, skirting past the different layers of the stage, divided from one another by the heavy curtains. At the foremost one, right behind the curtain that concealed the audience, Twilight found Applejack standing at center stage.

“Hey,” Twilight called gently. “What are you doing?”

“Actin' like Ah ain't so terrified,” AJ said with a chuckle.

Twilight chuckled. “I know the feeling.”

“Ah ain't cut out fer this, Twi. Ah know the earth and things that grow from it. Ah don't know a single thing about fancy theater acting, a'sides the occasional Hearth's Warming Eve pagent.”

“You'll be fine. You're basically playing yourself, and you're the most honest pony I've ever know. If anypony can give an honest performance, it's you.”

“Thanks, Twi. But Ah wish Ah didn't have ta do it in this here wig. It's mighty itchy.” She scratched around the edges of the shock of close-cropped blonde hair between her ears. Her tail had similarly been wrapped up and replaced with a short fake.

“Yeah, I hear you there,” Twilight said, wriggling the wings strapped to her sides around to try and make them more comfortable under the fake coat that concealed them from view. “But for tonight's performance I'll be playing the part of a unicorn, and I need to look the part.” Feeling around for something more poignant to say, she added, “Acting isn't for our own benefit, AJ. Without eyes and ears watching and listening to the performance, it's irrelevant. Theater lives only in the hearts and minds of the audience. It's not supposed to be real, it's only seemed to seem that way.”

“Ah guess so.”

“On the other hoof, if it bothers you so much you could always become a method actress and shave your head.”

“Ha, never in a million years will Ah be doin' any such thing!”

“One minute to curtain!” the stage manager cried out. “Places, ponies.”

“Well, this is it,” Twilight said.

As Applejack walked off the stage, she said, “Break a leg, Twi.”

Twilight flashed her a smile and took her place among the props on the stage. In front of her there stood a desk, and on it reams of paper and a typewriter. She felt like she had gone full circle, from writing desk to writing desk. While the lights dimmed in anticipation of the soon-to-be-parted curtains, she focused on getting into character. Frustration, loneliness, and isolation. All of it self-imposed, masking a deep-seated uneasiness and apprehension. The tortured passion of hearing a higher calling, and yet being unable to answer it.

The critics from the Ponyville Express said it was a vanity project. She told them she much preferred the term 'semi-autobiographical'.

Is it still a vanity project if I come out of it looking not particularly nice?

The lights finally went out entirely and plunged the set into darkness. All was still and all was silent, lost in the infinite black. Then with a swish the curtains opened. The audience hushed. Slowly, the stage lights came up. She saw empty paper set out in front of her. The vast expanse of white, desperate to be concealed. To be covered with beautiful words. But what should she craft? What did the din of voices in her head, clamoring for attention, command of her?

After a few seconds of pure performance art, standing on stage and staring at a typewriter in absolute silence, Rarity and Applejack emerged from the wings and began layering the play's fake world over the real one. Luckily, the audience's imagination did half of the work.

“How long has she been like this?” Applejack asked in a stage whisper.

“All morning,” Rarity said.

“Ah wonder what she's thinkin'....”

I want to create something, Twilight thought, willing the emotions to flow freely across her face. I need to make my soul sing.

“She used to write so quickly,” Rarity said, “but recently, nothing. As a dressmaker, I recognize a total creative block when I see it. It must be frustrating for her.”

“Ya think we should be doin' sumthin'?”

“What can we do? She's the playwright, not us. If she needs our help, then she'll ask us.”

With that, Rarity and Applejack walked off the stage, leaving Twilight alone with her empty pages. The hushed audience squirmed and coughed, waiting for something to happen. When nothing occurs on a stage, the static situation forces the pony brain to stop receiving and start engaging with whatever it sees. To look at, as opposed to just looking. Twilight had counted on that.

With heavy and ponderous step, she crossed the stage to a cabinet, opened the drawer, and took out a small pouch. Holding the drawstring in her teeth, she carried it back to the table and set it down next to the typewriter. She nosed it open with her muzzle. Tiny pills filled with a vividly cyan gel spilled out. It was just food dye inside, but the perception of the audience was what mattered, not her own. She picked up a pill, walked to the front edge of the stage, and held it up to the stage lights. For five seconds she didn't move. She just stared at the pill in the heavy lights. Stretching the nerves of the audience to the breaking point.

Then, slowly, she lowered the pill into her mouth and swallowed. The lights went down and shadowed the stage again.

The audience waited with bated breath.

An explosion of light ripped through the darkness. Blacklights and blue beams and swirling whorls of gold danced everywhere as the stagehoofs at the spotlights in the flies went wild. A loud, melodic drone came from the speakers. It sounded like the veil of time and space being ripped in half. Twilight doubled over, wracked her body with spasms, and then threw her head back in ecstasy. She cast a spell that lit up her eyes with an eerie blue glow.

“I am an invariant prognosticator of the highest degree,” she ranted over the drone to a surprised and confused audience, “whose octarine dreams have been gilded over by the pale fire reflecting off the surface of the ocean of time and space, whose subtle graces have been torn asunder by the cold light of a thousand rational arguments. I pierce the veil and stare into the stark void of the boundless. I see the breadth of infinity in the curve of light bending through a droplet of water. I think thoughts that span eons, yet move so swiftly they would fit into a single grain of sand as it plunges over the hourglass's precipice.”

In her mind's eye, she saw air itself melting. As it sloughed off of the underlying structure of the universe, it distorted her vision until she fancied she could see infinity itself peeking through the seams. Taking great care to make her movements as unbalanced as possible, she stalked back across the stage, through air that she imagined was distorted like a rushing river, to the desk, where she stood poised behind her typewriter.

She imagined that now, and only now, were the preformed shapes superimposed over the empty paper, where they ought to be. Seized with inspiration, she jammed her hooves into the keys, repeatedly, as time rushed around her in a blazing whirlwind. Thoughts formed, exploding in her head, and flowed out of her and onto the page, stamped there in the fiery blow of the hammers as they struck the paper like hot brands. Shapes and colors danced in her mind, spilling out of its confines until she could sense a much large expanse existing just out of view of her mind's eye.

There was a shape to the words she wrote, but in the heat of crafting the trees, she did not step back to take in the forest.

Her heart pounded in her chest and sweat dripped down her coat from the exertion and the heavy eyes of the audience, but she sensed them only distantly. She ceased to be a creature of flesh and blood, for she had become one of pure thought. She swayed from side to side as she wrote, as if she were gliding straight through the liquid fabric of reality.

As her mind continued to spill over the top of her skull and expand to cover an area so much wider than her own body, she became aware of a familiar presence at the edge of her consciousness. A gentle glow, warm and comforting to the senses. She stopped painting and looked over her shoulder. Dry ice poured from the trap door that had opened in the center of the stage. A spotlight angled itself right down at it. Before Twilight's eyes, Lyra Heartstrings rose from the mist. The highly reflective blue-white paint on her body gleamed and crackled in the spotlight like shimmering electricity, so much so that her identity could not be determined in the infinite splendor that shone from her.

“Do I know you?” Twilight asked, awed at this intrusion. “You don't usually appear when I do this.”

“Behold, the Princess Twilight cometh," the electric mare declared. "Princess of the cosmos, slayer of demons, and Lordess of Light! Behold!” The unearthly figure held her forehooves out to Twilight.

Twilight affected a dim sense of having heard those words before. "Who are you?” she asked.

“I am the axle that the cosmos revolves around, and the lynchpin of the loving-kindness that keeps it turning. I am the eternal mountain, and the pony who climbs it eternally. I am your sister in life and your companion in mercy, Twilight Sparkle.” She shone so bright it hurt the eye, and yet Twilight couldn't look away. The electric mare's open embrace looked so inviting and comforting....

But a distant voice broke in, calling, “Twilight!” from beyond the bounds of the infinite. The mists pouring from the gateway cleared and the electric mare receded from whence she came. Twilight could not stay in this place any longer. She had to go back and pretend she was alright. She had to wake up now.

But am I really waking up? Or just going back to sleep?

The flashing colors and swirling lights swirled away into the void and the overhead lights faded back into existence, so pale and meager after the blazing magnificence of the electric mare.

Rarity loomed over her prone body, face creased with worry. “Twilight! Are you alright?”

Twilight peeled herself off the floor and the pages scattered over it. The air still crackled with the otherworldly energy, and with the sheen of swirling liquid impermanence, but Rarity was smothering it with her worldly presence, dragging Twilight kicking and screaming back to this cold and gray reality. Making the world around her that much more solid, as solid as an iron cage.

Twilight slammed a forehoof onto the table and used it to help her climb to her hooves. “I'm fine,” Twilight lied, as her hoof slipped and she stumbled slightly.

“Your face is filthy. How long have you been lying on the floor?”

I am an invariant prognosticator of the highest degree, Twilight thought disjointedly. What do I care about a little dirt? It is of this world. I am not. I exist so far beyond this. I am controlling my body from the distant reaches of the celestial spheres, inhabiting it only briefly and at great pain to myself. But how could she ever explain that? So she affected a casual snort and said, “It's only a little dirt from the floor. Don't get your hemline in a twist.”

“Are you alright?” Rarity asked.

And although the only thing Twilight craved was one more second of that beautiful light, she lied and said, “I'm fine.”

The ponies in this chthonic realm looked to her, and to her shining words. She was captain of this ship, and it was her job to keep it afloat. She couldn't let the crew know about this terrible ache in her chest. She had to act natural, but it was terribly hard at the moment, with the full weight of this weary world hanging around her. She tried to walk away from the pages scattered all over the floor, for a moment of blessed solitude wherein she could take off this chafing mask of normalcy, but Rarity moved into her path and blocked her way.

“You are not fine,” Rarity said. “Were you taking it again?”

“None of your business,” Twilight said, although the pouch on the table was noticeable enough.

She shouldered her way past the other mare, feeling an ache deep in her bones and helpless to massage it.

“I'm worried about you, Twilight,” Rarity said as they emerged into the narrow hallway. She hurried to keep ahead of Twilight. “Is it about your creative block? Because I know how frustrating it is, but this is not the answer.”

The words won't come. This thick and opaque world is blocking the transmission. “I'm thinking over my next story,” she said out loud. “These things take time.”

“You don't write anything anymore unless you're taking those dreadful pills. You don't even know what's in them, and you put those things into your body?”

“I don't know what's in most things I eat,” Twilight said, “but I eat them anyway.”

“Artificial fat, most like,” said Applejack, leaning on the wall with an empty expression on her long face. “Ain't a lot of actual food ta go 'round anymore. It's all chemicals and additives these days.”

“You see?” Twilight gestured to Applejack, then gave Rarity a reassuring smile, despite how unassured Twilight felt these days. “Chemicals.”

She shoved open the door to the bathroom and breezed in, leaving Rarity and Applejack behind. She took a good long look at her face in the mirror. Her hollow, sapped eyes made it seem like looking at a stranger. She couldn't bare the thought of maintaining eye contact with the haggard, withered pony staring back at her. Sighing, she twisted the knob on the sink and bent down to wash her face. Cool water flowed through the fine coat on her cheeks, diluting and washing away the dirt she had picked up from the floor.

When she raised her head again, she found herself staring at a stranger.

“Hello,” the stallion said.

Twilight reeled back in shock, feeling the liquid instabilty of reality bubble to the surface once again. Dumbfounded, she couldn't think of anything to say. She knew he was an illusion, but he seemed so real. Such fine detail. Like she could reach out and touch him. She tried it, but as expected her hoof hit the mirror's glass. It rippled slightly, but then again the whole room was doing that.

The stallion scribbled on a clipboard, and then looked at her with cool, discerning eyes. “And how do you feel today?”

Twilight looked over her shoulder, as if somepony else in the bathroom would step forward. But she was alone, and so she faced the stallion in the mirror again. After a moment of deep soul-searching, she said, “Confused.”

His brow creased. “Why are you confused?”

“You're talking to me from a mirror. That's confusing.”

“A mirror?” He made another note on his clipboard. “Fair enough. But how are you really feeling today?”

I get enough of this from my friends, I don't need the universe doing it, too! With derision, she asked, “What is this, psychoanalysis?”

“I prefer to think of it as two ponies having a conversation. I know you've been under a great deal of stress lately. Care to talk about it?”

“I'm fine!” Twilight roared at the mirror.

The stallion just gave her a piercing look with an arched eyebrow, saying, “If you say so,” without actually saying it.

“I'm not just playacting!” she screamed.

Again, the stallion made a note. “'Playacting'. An interesting choice of words there.”

Sweat dripped down Twilight's forehead. This wasn't normal. This wasn't right. The liquid shimmer of the unsolid world ebbed and flowed around her. She had to get out of the ocean. She had to find some solid ground. She turned tail and left the bathroom in a hurry. Rarity and Applejack were both gone. Twilight stalked down the hallway, making her way back to the little storage room that was her writing space. She found them inside, arranging her scattered papers into a nice, neat pile next to her typewriter.

“You alright, Twi?” Applejack asked. “Ya look like ya jes' been spooked by a big ol' snake.”

I took some pills, ripped the veil of time and space apart, and met a stallion through a mirror. Even I think it sounds insane, and it happened to me. But the fog that had shrouded her senses was lifting, little by little, and the ability to lie took less effort with every passing second.

“No, I'm fine,” she announced, feeling her heart rate slow and her shaking cease. “Just needed a break from writing.”

“I skimmed through your newest script,” Rarity said, conciliatory. “It's fantastic, as always. And poignant, too.”

“Thanks,” Twilight said, plastering a fake smile onto her lips. “But it's the audience who has to like it, not us.”

“Ah reckon they wouldn't be comin' back every week,” Applejack said, “an' wit' all their friends in tow, if'n they didn't.”

“If I had known being an actress would spread this much happiness,” Rarity said, “I would have taken the craft up ages ago, darling. I am quite a natural, am I not?”

“A natural drama queen,” Applejack said with a screwball smile.

“Oh, hush. But seriously, Twilight, I was skeptical at first, but you're right: I do truly think we could change the world with these scripts.”

Twilight knew Rarity was trying to make peace and played along, because it would make things simpler. “Changing the world starts with changing the hearts and minds of the ponies living in it,” she said. It was a line she had used many times in convincing others her scripts were worth performing. She wasn't sure if she believed it, or if it were at all possible to change the hearts and minds of enough ponies to change the world, but it appealed to the inner optimist of the ponies she wanted to convince. “Besides, it's better than doing nothing.”

And all I need to do is pump out a new script every single week, Twilight thought darkly. And not see strange stallions in any more mirrors.

“You girls got your lines down for tonight?” Twilight asked as she went to the typewriter and started fiddling with it.

“Mhmmm,” Rarity cooed, while Applejack said, “Yes, ma'am.”

“Good.”

“Not to be a sneak, dear, but I'm glad you cut Cloudchaser from tonight's performance. She's a nice pony, don't get me wrong, but I don't think she's working out. She's not a very skilled actress, and she's just too nice for such a brash and egotistical character.”

“I know, but I make do with the cast I have. Unless either of you two have any ponies you'd like to recommend for the part?”

“Ah got an idea or two,” Applejack muttered ominously.

Twilight looked over her shoulder. “Is she familiar with our little underground theater?”

“Nah,” Applejack said nervously. “Nuh-uh. Not as far as Ah'm aware of.”

Twilight turned back to the script sitting on her desk and flipped through it, checking over what she had written. “Then we're stuck with Cloudchaser. Are the props finished?”

“Ah worked mah hooves ta the bone 'til they were jes' the way ya wanted 'em,” Applejack said.

“And the costumes?”

“Well, there was only the one, but it's spectacular! It's the most frou-frou, glittery, lacy thing I could make.”

“Fantastic. Better go tell Fancy Pants we're all set.”

“A'course,” Applejack said.

Twilight heard Applejack's and Rarity's hooves as they headed for the door, but only one pair of hooves heading out. After a few seconds of silence, she looked to the door and saw Rarity lingering there, heavy and unspoken words trembling on her lips. Twilight dove back into the script while she spoke.

“I'm still fine, Rarity. It's just the stress of having to put out one of these every week.”

“Maybe we should cut back, then....”

“No.” The stories demand to be told. “The longer we put each one off, the more the audience starts to lose attention. And besides, it was part of the deal we struck with Fancy Pants to use his studio. Mass-produced art, and all that. An assembly line. Don't you worry about me. I'll be fine.”

Rarity lingered for a second more, and then Twilight heard her hooves head out into the hallway and the door swing shut. Now, finally in blessed silence once more, she let out a loud sigh and relaxed. She had finished the story in one marathon session, barring any radical revisions, and what she had was surely so subversive it would shock the city to its foundations. Now, all it needed was a name.

She threaded a blank piece of paper into the typewriter and scrolled it down until the hammers were set to strike dead center. What should she call it? A pun, preferably. Everypony loved puns for titles. And then she thought of Rarity, and the kinds of social circles she ran in. The kinds of social circles Twilight wanted to spite by writing these plays. Those gossipy social circles....

Twilight pounded the keys. As soon as she saw the name in print, she thought, Perfect.

Rarity considered herself an artist, and one quirk of her kind was the desire to make a space their own. Faced with the glittery masquerade masks hanging from the kitchen walls, she supposed there was no reason the cook should be exempt. After all, making a delicious meal was an artform all its own.

“Wha's wrong, chere?” the cook asked in her dusky tones as she set a bowl of gumbo down in front of Rarity. “Why ya's got that big ole, heh, long face?”

Marmalade was tall and reedy, with very striking and angular features, like no mare Rarity had ever seen. She would have stood out like a sore hoof if she hadn't had the grayest coat any pony had ever been born with. She was one of Fancy Pants's finds; he loved collecting interesting ponies from around the city and giving them all a place in the Stable, and a master chef from the swampy bijou had been irresistible.

Rarity took a sip of gumbo while she collected her thoughts. “What do you when you're worried about your friend, but she won't listen to you?”

“I wouldn't know.” Maramlade went to the pot over the fire and stirred it with a ladle. “Ain't had much in the way of friends for a long ole time. I had to, heh, move house real sudden. Never did get 'round to makin' more.”

She bent her head and mumbled a few words to the gumbo, which Rarity thought was strange, passing strange, but she didn't want to be rude. Marmalade put the ladle down and turned back to Rarity.

“One thing I can tell ya, chere, is 'bout ponies. They all start pure as water from the well, but as they go on through all they life, more and more is thrown on in. Spice, pepper, okra, red beans. There ain't no pony who makes gumbo the same as the other. They get flavored different, depending on where they at. Everywhere we go, a little bit rubs off on us. We all just walking, talking collections of bits and pieces of where we been.”

“Right....”

“What I'm sayin' is you's can't just take a gumbo and change it however you like. It's got to be at the proper time. If and when your friend wants your help, then you can give it. But too early or too late, and you ruin everything.”

As confused as ever, Rarity asked, “Too many cooks spoil the broth, you mean?”

“I surely do. These things take time and a whole lot of care, chere. Ya'll need a good eye.”

“I suppose so,” Rarity said noncommitally. “Um, thank you, Marmalade.”

“No problem. Don't be a stranger now. My door is always open. For gumbo, and for advice.”

Rarity's eyes darted around to the leering masks hanging from the walls, made elongated on the walls by the sinister shadows from the fire blazing under the pot. Marmalade followed Rarity's eyes, and smiled at the glitter-covered faces.

“Aw, they's just some ole friend from the bijou. Lookee here, that one says 'Hello', and that one over there says, 'Welcome!'”

Rarity felt like her mind was a phonograph that had skipped its groove. Hasn't this happened before? she thought. No, no, surely not. Just deja vu, that's all.

Trying to sound friendly, she stated, “It's not welcoming at all, if you ask me. And that chanting over the pot....”

“Some folks are welcomed by all sorts of things. And all that whispering, why that ain't nothing but some ancient words for good luck my maw-maw sang whenever she wanted something to turn out right. She sang it over the gumbo and while I was a little foal in my crib. I guess you could call it, heh, a nursery rhyme.”

Rarity turned sharply to face Marmalade. “What did you say?”

“Hoo, boy, somepony been spooked.”

“I, uh....excuse me.”

Before Marmalade had a chance to reply, Rarity hurried out of the kitchen. She swept past a pony mimicking obscene acts for a photographer, ducked under a found sculpture of bent streetlamp, and rushed down a hallway. She threw the door to Twilight's writing room open. The lights were off, so Rarity turned them on. And there on the table lay the script, next to Twilight's typewriter. Kept here, in the Stable, safe from prying eyes. Suddenly Rarity was apprehensive about peeking into the script, but the urge to know was stronger. She focused wholly on putting one hoof in front of the other until she had crossed the room and come to the script. 'Bridle Gossip', it was now called. With a trembling hoof, she reached out and flipped it open until she reached a point near the end. And there it was, on the page, in black and white:

CLOUDCHASER: OK, fine. But what about the cauldron?

FLUTTERSHY: And the chanting?

RARITY: And the creepy décor?

SEBRA: Treasures of the native land where I am from.

This one speaks 'Hello', and this one 'Welcome'.

RARITY: Not very welcoming at all, if you ask me.

SEBRA: The words I chanted were from olden times.

Something you call a nursery rhyme.

It....it can't be, Rarity thought. It's not possible. No, it was just a coincidence, surely. Quietly, she replaced the stack of papers and backed out of the room, pausing only to turn the light off when she left. She walked down the hallway, her thoughts in a whirl, when she stumbled upon Applejack chatting with a mailstallion in a shadowy corner.

“....seems like we're jes' players on the director's stage--”

She broke off her conversation when she noticed Rarity walking over. She and the yellow stallion took the tiniest of steps away from each other, both of them flustered and nervous. But Rarity wasn't the type to judge, and even if she was, she was in too much of a daze to care. The stallion excused himself and walked briskly away.

“Ya'll right there, Rare?” Applejack asked.

What can I say? That I just had a conversation in a play that was only written a short while ago? She would think I'm mad. Play it cool, Rarity. Don't let all those years of practiced poise go to waste.

“I'm fine,” Rarity said with a smile. “Just dandy. And you?”

“Oh, me too. Dandy, I mean. Just dandy.”

They both lapsed into silence, which stretched out into an all-consuming gulf that threatened to devour them. Rarity's smile started to feel like it was stapled to her face, and it was painfully stretching her skin out.

Applejack pointed over Rarity's shoulder. “Well, Ah bettuh--”

“Yes, yes, don't let me keep you,” Rarity said, the words rushing out.

But as Applejack skirted past her, Rarity asked, “Tell me, what do you know about Marmalade?”

“The cook? Not much. Seems nice enough, though. Why?”

How to put this delicately? Rarity thought. “There's something about her, and I can't quite put my hoof on what it is. Something strange. Something she isn't telling us.” That I only saw once I read about it in one of Twilight's scripts, of course.

“Ya think she's playin' us fer fools?” Applejack said, a tad too defensively. “Ya think she ain't who she says she is?”

You wouldn't be the only pony who's ever been fooled by liars and sneaks, darling, Rarity thought as she turned away from her friend. “I'm starting to think that nopony is....quite who they say they are.”

The earth pony had nothing to say to that, not until she mumbled another excuse and took her leave of Rarity.

I'm not really here right now, Twilight thought, still feeling a tinge of glorious afterglow. This body is a machine that I'm inhabiting. I gesture with its forelegs and speak through its vocal chords, but I am elsewhere. I exist on a higher plane.

“Take two steps to your left,” Rarity said. “Uh, er, my left.”

“Which is it?” Applejack asked as she lost her balance.

Rarity grimaced as a blindfolded Applejack careened wildly out of control and then took a dive into a pile of pillows. The audience packed into the Stable guffawed. Artisans, bohemians, underground socialites, all of them gathered in a circle in the art gallery, bonding over the simple slapstick. Their masks and affectations had been dropped for the time being, and on their naked faces was rapt delight. Twilight watched from a distance as her two actresses played their parts on the stage. She was preoccupied with playing hers, although sometimes it felt more like going through the motions.

And then her cue came. “Dear Princess Solara,” she recited to the shining light coming from the catwalk, “it's hard to believe two ponies who have so little in common could ever get along.” Pausing for dramatic effect, she envisioned the most pointed look her face was capable of portraying and directed it at the audience. The machinery did as she bade it. “But I found out that if you embrace each other's differences, you just might be surprised to discover a way to be friends after all.”

Those might just be the two most dangerous sentences uttered in the whole city of Canterlot this evening.

Then she turned to her actresses and beamed at them. It felt no different than the look she had given the audience; smiling was just another function of the machine, as easy as flipping a switch. “So who's up for another slumber party tomorrow night?”

They shared identical grins, and then tossed a pillow at her face. Always end with a bit of slapstick, Twilight had soon discovered. It helps make the message more palatable.

“How about a week from Thursday?”

Another pillow flew at her face. It stung, but it was only the body, chthonic and profane. Irrelevant. Only the words were important, and the words were important as a path to the meaning behind them. The meaning was much bigger than she was, and it came from someplace far more ancient and sacred.

“Two weeks from Saturday? A month from now?”

Rarity and Applejack collapsed against each other in laughter as the lights dimmed and the audience erupted into applause and stomped their hooves against the ground.

Go through the motions, Twilight, she commanded herself. Smile at the crowd, put a gracious and faintly unbelievable smile on your lips, take a bow. The works.

When the pageantry was done and the farewells were given until next week's performance, the three of them left the impromptu stage erected in the corner of the gallery.

"Ah think we knocked 'em dead this week," Applejack said. "But Ah do admit, Ah am lookin' forward ta next week's a whole bunch, too."

"Yes, yes," Rarity said distantly.

She was taking furtive looks across the gallery floor. Twilight followed her eyes and saw her staring at the cook, Marmalade. It might have been the gentle thrum that still vibrated inside her head, the thrum that pierced the veil of the universe and made it flow like water, but she thought Marmalade would look good with some stripes. Maybe she would ask her to play the part of Sebra, in the absence of any zebra actresses. Was that racist? she wondered, although since there were no zebra in a position to complain, the question was fairly academic.

Twilight wandered away from her friends, and moved through the universe in a magnificent daze.

“Good show,” the stallion said.

She turned and saw him standing next to a twisted piece of junk put on a pedestal and labeled art. His mailpony uniform hung off his saffron frame with a casual artfulness that spoke volumes about his contempt for it. It wasn't the first time she had seen him skulk in the back and take in the show, and, though it made her feel chthonic to admit it, she hoped it wouldn't be the last time.

“Glad you think so,” Twilight said.

Through no conscious decision of her own, the machinery that pumped blood through her body increased its pace, while a blissful tingle spread through the ethereal sprawl of her mind. Mustn't let myself be dragged back down to this subsolar pit, she thought savagely, but the prospect of making the descent whipped her baser impulses into a frenzy. They clawed for control of her reins.

He bowed his head and thought in silence, before saying, “It's a bright light in a very dark world. You've got guts, putting on a subversive spectacle like that.”

“You can't change the world without changing the hearts and minds of the ponies living in it.” I sound like a billboard, she thought.

“Too right. But someponies aren't going to let you change their minds without a fight.”

We'll burn that bridge when we get to it, she thought. “I can't just do nothing with all this cruelty in the world.”

“I know the feeling very well,” he said with a half-hearted smile, his voice streaked with pain. "But then again, we do seem to be drawn to one another. It's only natural we would be kindred spirits, don't you think?" There was an urgent prodding in his voice, goading her into recognizing some hidden meaning she didn't get. Like he was trying to communicate honestly, but was being watched by some unseen entity. Or, possibly, she was too untethered from this world to understand these equine emotions anymore. “It was a pretty big coincidence, the way we met. The second time, I mean.”

“I don't believe in coincidences,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“So it's destiny, then?” he asked with a cocksure smile, the first light she had seen break through the gloom shrouding him. “You and me meeting like this?”

It's not just destiny, she thought with feverish ecstasy. She opened her eyes a little wider, to better see through the watery shimmer of the world that surrounded her. The magic of friendship that guides us is woven so strongly into the fabric of creation that we cannot perceive it as separate. It is written in the pillars of the universe. In a flash of insight, the separate streams of thought flowed together and ran as one, and all at once she perceived the greater pattern. And because it surrounds us so completely, we cannot distinguish it, and blind ourselves to it as surely as a veil drawn over our eyes blinds us in this subsolar realm. The magic is boundless and eternal. We are droplets in its vast ocean, and if it commands us to flow in the same current, than we shall, for no droplet can fight the ocean.

Whoa, she thought, rocking back on her hooves slightly. Where did all that come from? The gem of knowledge was far too perfect and refined to have come entirely from within herself. She had glimpsed another piece of the eternal mystery, surely, as she moved further out into the universe and took her place among the stars.

But how could she explain that to him? It was far too immense to drop on a pony whose eyes were still closed. Understanding could only come in time. If at all.

“I don't know if it's destiny,” she said, returning that cocksure smile with a coy one of her own. Maybe a bit of a descent into the world of the mundane would be beneficial for her, after so much time with her head in the clouds. Would reacquaint her with the equinity that was slipping away from her. “But I'm not going to fight it if it is.”

“Hey now,” he chided softly, his head bowed and his face in shadow.

“What, did I offend you or something?” she asked with a light-hearted chuckle.

He raised his head, his eyes intense and boring into her. They pierced the watery shimmer of the world around her, realer and truer than anything else. Her heart skipped a beat in fright.

“Hey now now,” he sang. She took a step back, but he was more intense and loomed large in this claustrophobic world. “Sing this corrosion to me!” he growled, his voice alive with a deep melody, and the universe started to sing along with him.

Sweat started to drip down Twilight's coat. A chthonic urge to run away seized her, and the pleasant afterglow started to sour. This was all getting far too intense for her. The swirling reality was pressing in around her and smothering her.

He twirled, obscenely light on his hooves, and then struck a heroic pose. “Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me!” he sang.

“How do you know those words?!” She shook and shivered, not sure why it bothered her so much. “Nopony should ever know those words!”

“I don't know, babe,” he said as he danced forward effortlessly. “I'm just reading from the script you wrote.”

Those words were from another place and another time, a time and place that should not mix with her own. But she had made them mix. She had weakened the walls, made them flow like an ocean current. It was all her fault. She was flowing through time and space, and she didn't know how to make it stop. How could a single droplet turn back the ocean?

Rarity and Applejack twirled in behind him and fell into lockstep with his forward stride, twisting their hips and sweeping their forelegs in time to the music of the spheres. In perfect harmony, the three of them swayed from side to side and sang, “Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me!”

Her eyes burned and stung as sweat dripped into them. Or maybe the strain was from the immensity of her sight ripping right through the veil of time and space. She turned to flee, but rather than just turn in space, she began to turn in time and well, slipping through the ebb and flow of the waves of reality. She spiraled away, and the world slipped and slid around her.

“Hey now, hey now now,” they sang as she twisted and turned, looking for purchase in the cosmic ocean. “Sing this corrosion to me!”

From the watery murk, something solid emerged and took shape around her. She dove into it eagerly. But the moment she stepped hoof on the solid shore she knew it was a terrible mistake. This rusty iron world had trapped her like a cage and superimposed itself over the art gallery. She ran back and forth as it coalesced, looking for a way back to the Stable, but every avenue was blocked by jags of rusted metal and piles of crumbling concrete. The whole city had been transformed into a distorted, broken nightmare, smashed to shards and left to lie on the ground like broken glass. As she ran, looking for a safe place, this city's denizens popped out of the metalwork and leered at her. They wore patchwork clothes, cobbled together from the scraps of this rusted world, and all together they sang:

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me!”

She turned to face the saffron stallion in the ruins of this blasted, corroded city that raked at her fraying mind and clawed its way into her eyes, her ears, her nose, her skin. It pressed all around her, like polluted water thick with noxious chemicals. He swayed back and forth, lost in ecstasy, his eyes now concealed by a pair of mirrored shades, his mailpony uniform replaced by a faded Equestrian Army jacket that hung open at his chest. The ponies of this nightmare city flanked him. Some of them wore deep purple robes embroidered with a symbol she knew, the mark her other self had had on her flank: the six-sided star. Acolytes of Twilight Sparkle, then. They all sang in chorus, "Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me," like a mantra, while he took the lead.

“I've got nothing to say I ain't said before,” he bellowed, one foreleg reaching for the sky. “I've bled all I can, I won't bleed no more.” The jagged scars where his wings used to be started to seep with blood. Red tears dripped down his cheeks as he stepped through a pile of dead ponies. “Don't feel the need to offer proof, why the blood runs cold in the hired hoof.” He reached out to her with his bloody hooves, so she could see what she had wrought. “Our hearts, hoof of Twi, floodland and driven apart. Run cold, rustproof....”

“Like a healing hoof!” Rarity and Applejack wailed in harmony with him as they stepped forward, swinging from side to side like ponies possessed. “Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me.”

“This isn't what was supposed to happen!” Twilight screamed. “We were supposed to change the world!”

“You did,” the saffron stallion whispered.

He aimed a hoof behind her and far above, and with a deepening dread Twilight turned to look. Her eyes swept up the Canterlot mountainside, up to the reaches of the High Castle, where an enormous purple banner with her stern, regal face on it swung in a breeze scented with rust, decay, and death.

'ALL PONIES BECOME SISTERS,' it read.

“No,” she whispered.

She turned back to him. He was no longer dancing or singing. He simply stared at her with infinite sorrow, his eyes just barely visible over the top of his shades, while the ponies of this wasted land spun and twirled in perfect lockstep behind him.

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me!” they chanted.

With a roar, she lunged at one of them, trying to make them stop singing, stop dancing on her grave, stop making her feel so awful, stop ruining her beautiful afterglow. She grappled with the nearest one and tried to wrap her fetlocks around its throat, but when she put her forehoof on his face, to her revulsion the coat and skin started to slip. She ripped it off. It was only a mask. What was underneath had been a pony, once. She could tell from the bones. But they were now studded through with gears and cables and wires, so it could mimic being alive. The machinery whirred and spun and spooled as the machine skull laboriously ratcheted around to cast its glowing autocarriage headlight eyes on her. It was cold and impassive, precise and lifeless. With a hydraulic whine, its jaw lowered until the gaping abyss of its mouth hung open. After a pause, prerecorded words came streaming out of the perfect rectangular slot:

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me.”

It was an industrial being for an industrial age. This was the future of ponykind, and these new ponyforms, these hippoids in the likeness of real ponies, would replace all the actual living ponies, who were no longer needed. These machines would populate the eternal night, fit only to be given instructions, never to think or feel for themselves.

She backed away in horror, suppressing the urge to scream, or vomit, or maybe both at the same time. The machine-ponies all turned to follow her, necks moving with smooth, precise, exacting precision. Their burning headlight eyes cut right through her. Their mouths opened in unison, and they all started to rust as entropy set in.

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me,” they sang in voices tortured by a metallic distortion.

“No, you hear me?!” She turned to the saffron stallion, the only pony who still seemed alive in this age of machines. “I won't let it happen this way!”

“You didn't,” he said, his voice choked with grief. “Not while you were alive. But the ones who followed in your name....how could you explain it all to them? It's a real headtrip. Far too immense to drop on a pony whose eyes were still closed. Understanding can only come in time. If at all. And it collapsed after you went.”

He gestured off to the side, where her acolytes were dragging a terrified pony onto a slab of cracked stone that seemed to serve as a stage, judging by the crowd gathered at its base. “She has perverted the sacred word!” an acolyte declared. “She played at being a friend to the prophetess when the weather was merry, but once our beloved Twilight left, this degenerate has perverted the teachings in a most wicked way! She must be burned! Burn the merryweather friend!”

“Burn the Merryweather!” the crowd chanted furiously. “Burn her!”

“Hey now, hey now now,” the saffron stallion sang softly. “Sing this corrosion to me.”

And despite her dearest wishes that this had all started long before her, that this world was too far gone to save, a chill went down her spine when she thought, Is this my doing? Is this what I've become? A machine pony, with a machine mind and a machine heart? Is this a life full of lies and artifice collapsing around me? Is this my fault for not passing down what really mattered?

She plead with her psychopomp, “Make it stop."

“Only you can make it stop,” he said.

“I don't know the way out of this,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I don't know the way back.”

The vast cosmic ocean rippled around him as he and this whole corroded and rusted world mercifully receded into it. “Forget the way back," he said. "If there is a way to go back, you can only find it by going forward. Forward....and up.”

And then he was gone, and Twilight was left in the infinite void by herself. She broke down sobbing, her head swirling around with the energy of the cosmos, yet unable to differentiate anything in the foul darkness.

“I don't know which way is up anymore,” she sobbed.

“I do,” an ethereal voice sang from the voice.

Twilight raised her head and saw the electric mare shining right through the shimmering liquid darkness. She was resplendent in her infinite beauty and she radiated an immense profundity of compassion and warmth. She glided through the void, shining beyond compare.

“But....who are you?” Twilight whispered, her voice hoarse.

Her words lit Twilight up like a live wire: “I am your sister in life, and your companion in mercy.”

“Sister Mercy,” Twilight said, blinking away the tears.

“If you like.” She approached Twilight, then glided behind her. The mare placed her forehooves on Twilight's shoulders. A gentle electric tingle spread through Twilight as the weight of the world lifted slightly. “A single word could never contain all that I am, but if it must be, then let it be thus. Know that I am your friend always, and I shall walk with you forever, if you should walk the path of Mercy.”

Mercyism, Twilight thought, her head bent in thought. An upward ascent, towards the point where all things converge. “Are you real? Is any of this real?” Twilight asked, raising her face to the light. “Or is this just a beautiful dream?”

“If it stirs the emotions in your heart, then it is real, even in the deepest dream.”

“But dreams end....”

“And yet always a new dream takes its place. And now, Twilight, I'm afraid it is time to end this.” In the darkness, the light of the electric mare started to fade.

“But am I waking up now?” Twilight asked. “Or am I starting to dream again?”

There was no answer from Sister Mercy, and soon her light was gone from the darkness, and so too was Twilight gone from the void. All was still and silent.

Fade to black.

And then, from the heaven of the flies, the lights started to come back up and revealed Lyra Heartstrings, painted over with highly reflective body paint. Now, in the low lighting, it shone only dimly, allowing the mare behind the light to be seen. She faced the audience directly and with a mischievous grin declared:

“If we shadows have offended,

think but this and all is mended -

that you have but slumbered here,

while these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

no more yielding than a dream,

ponies, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest mare,

if we have not earned the care,

to escape the serpent's tongue,

we'll make amends before long.

Else Mercy a liar call.

So good night unto you all.

Give me your hoof if we be friends,

and Mercy shall restore amends!”

And then she turned and walked off the stage, leaving a very confused audience to ponder just what it was they had seen and whether it was any good or not. Half of them made a half-hearted attempt at applause, which sporadically echoed to the ceiling, but it was a mechanical motion instilled in them by years of theatergoing. The other half of the audience just shrugged at one another, dumbfounded by the whole experience. One stallion in the front row declared that at least the effects were decent. They got up, stretched, and started heading for the exits, talking to each other all the while.

The dream was over now, and it was time to wake up.

Twilight, peeking out through the velvet curtains, let her eyes fall on the audience. She breathed a deep sigh of contentment. Now, at last, the words that had seized hold of her and demanded they be spoken were quiet. The fear and trepidation she had felt before the show was gone, replaced by a sense of accomplishment. Serenity, even. She joined her friends at the crafts table. Applejack clapped her on the back and Rarity raised a glass of cider into the air, to which Twilight and Applejack added their own.

Once the toast was made and they had downed the cider, Rarity said, “I don't think the audience liked it, darling. Or even understood it."

“Ah was in it, and Ah didn't understand a lick of it,” Applejack said.

"But when I was in the moment, Twilight," Rarity said, "I thought I began to realize what you were getting at. I think....?”

AJ nudged Twilight in the flank. “Well, one thing I sure do understand is ya usin' it ta lure good old Flash Sentry down from the Crystal Empire.”

Twilight felt her cheeks blush, but she insisted, “He was the best pony for the part.”

Rarity gave a girlish giggle at that.

“So c'mon, Twi, tell us,” Applejack said. “What in the hay was it all about?”

“Truly,” Rarity said. “Tell us. What's going on in that funny little mind of yours?”

But Twilight only grinned at her friends, and then turned and walked away across the set, the very world of the play itself, as it was being struck and packed away by the stagehoofs.

She had nothing to say she hadn't said before.