Echo
I was surrounded by white masks. Clowns. Monsters. Animals. Some of them were frowning. The blank eye slits stared at me as they floated all around me in the darkness. One of them looked like my sister Celestia.
Most of the dreams I journey through don’t have such carefully detailed faces, but it’s not often I visit the dreams of artists.
Don’t get me wrong, even the most talentless ponies have spectacular dreams, but those are often gleaned from images from either the real world or books. Outside stimuli, in other words.
Vivid Color was a young pegasus artist who could paint and sculpt entire worlds in the confines of not only his isolated home, but his dreams as well. Inside stimuli, in other words.
Pushing past the cloud of faces, I flew onto a nearby sphere of swirling paint. This tiny world of shifting color was getting painted by Vivid’s white wing-tips. His white fur was stained with paint as were his green mane and tail. His cutie mark was a paint brush.
“Hello, Luna,” he said, his blue eyes studying me. “I’m glad you came.”
“Normally, I only visit the dreams of children in need. However, the letter you sent intrigued me.”
He smiled, but without mirth. “If anypony else got a letter concerning my hearing voices, I would have been tossed into the home for the terminally loopy. Yet here you are. That means you believe me.”
“Well, it means that I believe you have a genuine problem. I don’t want to pass judgment until I get the entire story from you.”
Vivid nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s go for a fly.”
As we glided effortlessly over his many worlds, I noticed that the cloud of masks were following us. This time, however, I could hear whispering.
He looked over his shoulders at the approaching intruders and groaned. “Ugh. Follow me, Luna. I can’t even think with those twits bothering me.”
“Are they not part of your dreams?”
“No. They’re something else.”
He led me towards another planetoid. We flew into a cavern of swirling blues and greens. After we turned a corner and landed, he held a hoof to his lips.
The masks were swirling around each other like a school of fish, a distant cacophony of sibilant voices chattering away. They drifted around the tiny world we hid in, but eventually broke off the chase.
When he was sure they were out of ear-shot, he dropped his hoof to the floor, sighing in relief.
“When did these masks first show up?”
“About a month ago. At first, I thought they were the result of my brain being weirder than usual.”
“What made you think otherwise?”
“Unlike most ponies, I have complete control over my dreamscape,” Vivid said with no small amount of smugness. “But when I tried to get rid of them through sheer willpower, they wouldn’t leave.”
“I heard them whispering. Can you tell what they are saying?”
He shook his head, looking away from me. “I can’t make out anything. It’s like listening to someone talk in a crowded street.”
I lit up my horn, revealing drawings of cartoon ponies on the cave walls. “I recognize these pictures. They are in the Ponyville day care center.”
Vivid smiled. “You said you were a fan of my work, but I didn’t know you knew that much about it.”
“When I was reunited with my sister, one of the first things she showed me was one of your many art portfolios.”
“Everything I ever drew, painted or sculpted is in my realm. And since I’m one of the most prolific ponies around, I need all the elbow room my mind can spare.”
I raised a brow at this bold statement. “I’ve never heard of any pony having such a flawless memory. How can you be so sure that nothing is missing?”
“Well, since we’re finally alone, maybe we should go exploring. I’ll prove that I’m not just boasting. Without reason.”
Nodding, I replied, “Very well.”
A short while later, we landed in a field of pony statues. Something about them bothered me, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.
“Every statue I ever made is here,” informed Vivid. “From my first fumbling attempts to the most recent professional commissions.”
Why did some of these ponies have such small eyes and oddly-shaped heads? Were they supposed to be unevolved ponies from the distant past? No, that wasn’t it. The strange designs were not due to scientific accuracy, I realized, but creative interpretation. Several degrees of it, actually.
“Some of these statues appear to have been made by somepony else,” I observed.
He shrugged. “I sculpt what I see in my head. Just like every other artist. I just don’t always see the same things every day.”
“When did you first sculpt these ponies?”
“About five years ago.”
Since I had no sculpting prowess of my own, I had to take his word on how his ideas came to be. I walked past a pony figure with a curiously long muzzle and saw a half finished model of a tall pony-like creature lying on the ground. Only the barest details were shown, like on a store-front mannequin. If it was supposed to be somepony, I couldn’t tell who, only that it had a long mane.
“Vivid, who is that?”
Vivid scratched his head as he squinted at his work. “I don’t know. Two months ago, I saw a few blurry seconds of her and I tried to capture that vision in the clay.”
“Her?”
“Well, I imagined it was a mare. I’m not really sure.”
I rubbed my chin, pondering. “This is the only work of art you have made that isn’t highly detailed. Why do you suppose that is?”
Rolling his eyes, he shook his head. “How do I know? You might at well ask me ‘where do you get your ideas?’. No one can ever tell you. They just come. Sometimes they only show up as half an idea.”
Studying the statue, I said, “Mares are not normally this tall. I know that’s not me or my sister. Just as well, as it looks like she’s dying. No offense.”
“Eh. None taken. It’s just that . . .” His ears flattened as he hesitated.
“What?”
“While I sculpted this figure, I felt really depressed. It’s as if I knew who she was, and that I was going to miss her.”
“That doesn’t sound like a random fantasy, Vivid.”
He began to pace impatiently behind me. “Am I going crazy, Luna?”
“I doubt it. Maybe if I knew a little more about you, I can reach some kind of conclusion about the voices. Can you tell anything about your parents? Are they artists like you?”
“My adopted parents, Bright and Lavish Color, said they found me in an orphanage in Manehatten, but I don’t really remember that city at all. My foster dad, Bright, is a plumber, but Lavish is a landscape artist, so she got me turned onto art.”
“When did that first happen?”
He stared into space, thinking. “I think . . . when I was maybe eight or so? It’s hard to remember that far back.”
“Most foals can’t remember past the age of five, so don’t feel bad. I don’t often do this, but I want to take us back to your earliest memories. Perhaps they will help me figure out your problem.”
Vivid shrugged. “Sure. All right.”
“Good. Stand next to me.”
When he did, I stamped a hoof and the world spun away in a blur until we stopped in a small but highly decorated bedroom. Every inch of the walls and ceiling were covered in draw-ings and paintings. People, cities, landscapes, birds and assorted insects. She even drew a few caves.
Lavish, a white pegasus mare with green hair, was showing Vivid a picture on her drawing table. Curiously, Vivid’s mane looked exactly like his mother’s.
She pointed at her art and said, “Do you see how the curves in the hair are arranged, Vivid? That’s something else you must keep in mind at all times.”
“Uh-huh.”
She frowned. “No. Not ‘uh-huh’. What do you call me?”
“Mom?”
“Apart from that, my only son?”
“Lavish. Dad’s name is Bright.”
She smiled, warming up to him. “Exactly right. What is your name?”
“Vivid Color.”
“Precisely. You must always be Vivid Color, no matter what.”
The pony next to me said, “I don’t remember this. What did she mean, I must always be me?”
Looking over Lavish’s shoulder, I saw that the artwork she was pointing at was a diagram of Vivid. Every angle of his head and body were laid out carefully. She was making sure that his appearance was coordinated as if he were a clay model that was getting sculpted.
Why would she be so demanding?
Unless . . .
It was for his own good.
“You were six in this memory.”
Vivid sighed. “If you say so.”
“It’s unusual for your cutie mark to have already appeared.”
“Mom always told me I was special. No wonder I grew up with a big head.”
“What were you doing to make your mark show up?”
He snorted and walked away from me. “I don’t remember! Maybe I was painting something?”
I held out a hoof to stop him. “Everypony recalls why they got their cutie mark. I find it unusual that you pride yourself on having every piece of art you ever made in your personal dreamscape, yet you cannot remember which of your creations triggered your special talent. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” Vivid said curtly.
“I think I do.”
Stamping my hoof again, the memory fell away in swirling colors. A moment later, we were surrounded by his pony statues again.
Walking among the statues, I said, “It’s because you are not who you say you are, Vivid Color.”
He jaw dropped wide. Shaking his head, he cried, “What? Well, of course I’m me! Who else could I possibly be?”
“We may be surrounded by art, but I don’t think it’s all from your head.”
“Are you turning back into Nightmare Moon? Can you hear how crazy you sound?”
Frowning, I snapped, “Don’t be snide, Vivid. I’m trying to help you realize the truth.”
Rubbing a hoof over one small-eyed pony figure, I continued. “There are at least five different art styles in this gallery alone. You boast about your prolific output, but I think that’s mostly your large ego talking.”
Groaning impatiently, he replied, “I told you, Luna. I sculpt what I see in my head. Are you suggesting I’m plagiarizing other artists?”
“Not deliberately, but I’m willing to bet my crown that you’re able to see what other artists see.”
Vivid’s voice trembled with frustration. “You aren’t not making any sense. What does any of this have to do with the voices?”
“More than you realize. I noticed that a few of your foster mother’s drawings are of insects.”
“Yeah? And?”
“One of those insects looked an awful lot like a foe my sister and her friends fought nearly twenty years ago.”
He made a pfft noise. “Mom’s drawn a lot of things.”
“Including a diagram made especially for you. Lavish knew what you were, which is why she taught you what you needed to be as early as she could. In order to protect you.”
He raised a brow, tilting his head. “Protect me from what?”
“Persecution. Your foster mother traveled to those caves she drew, didn’t she?”
“Well, yeah. She liked to get all the details laid out in front of her. That’s not so odd.”
“What she found in one of the caves was unusual, however. She found you.”
Vivid growled and slumped to his knees. “I should have asked Celestia for help instead of you.”
“Listen to me!” The urge to use my window-rattling royal voice was swelling up in me, but I was beginning to lose him as it was. Yelling at him would just end this badly. “Your foster mother discovered you, probably with no one to nurture you since your true mother had been banished from Equestria. She and her husband took you into their home and raised you as their own son.”
I walked towards him. “Lavish set up your appearance and your name. Even your cutie mark. I saw it in her diagram.”
He got up and backed slowly away from me as he realized what I was getting at. “You’ve got to be mistaken.”
“You’re a changeling, Vivid. One of the most hated species in the world, I’m afraid.”
“No!” Tears pillowed in his eyes.
“Changelings communicate through a hive-mind. A lot of your art comes from other changeling artists. Your adoptive parents raised you to believe that you were a pony to keep you safe. This happened so long ago you forgot your true nature, that’s all.”
Vivid stopped and sobbed as he hung his head.
“You’re an echo. A reflection of Lavish Color’s designs.”
“But why am I hearing voices?”
A voice behind him said, “Because you need to come home.”
Yelping in surprise, he whirled around to face a white pony mask. The mask said, “Your true mother died two months ago. That’s who that tall statue is.”
Vivid stared at me in shock. “You let the voices get this close?”
“I suspect you need to hear what they have to say. Which is why I raised their voices above mere whispers.”
“Why are they wearing masks?” he demanded.
A griffin mask drifted down. It said, “Because you forced us to.”
One mask of a dragon drifted overhead as it spoke. “You want everything done your way, so when you realized you couldn’t get rid of us, you tried to make us something we’re not. A figment of your egocentric dream world. You knew what we were trying to tell you, but you didn’t want to listen to us.”
The pony mask said, “So you brought Princess Luna into this place, hoping she would somehow chase us away before you had to face the truth. But you can’t hide behind your mask forever.”
The griffin mask shook itself and tsked. “Your foster mother tried to destroy your true face, Vivid. We have come to set you on the right path. Take off your pony mask and come back to us. It’s what your true mother would have wanted.”
Vivid pointed at the masks as he shot an imploring look at me. “They . . . they can’t make me leave my life behind. Right?”
“Why do you fear us, Vivid?” asked the dragon mask. “Once you come back to the hive, you will no longer have to live a lie.”
He looked at the masks that surrounded him. Wiping away his tears, he took a deep breath. After exhaling, he glowered at them. “Okay. Maybe some part of me knew what I really was. Some very small part, anyway. But it doesn’t matter what mask I’m wearing.”
“Why is that?” I prompted, hoping he and I were on the same line of thought.
“Because I’m happy as Vivid Color, pegasus artist. My sculptures and paintings are in every city in Equestria. Ponies love me for what I do. For who I am. I’m a lot more than just my foster mom’s desires.”
His ears flattened as he sighed. “It’s hard to admit that most of my work came from other artists. But nearly thirty percent of my art was made by me. At least I have that much to be proud of.”
“But you aren’t really a pony!” implored the pony mask.
Vivid snorted. “So what? In my experience, everyone wears a mask in their daily lives. Sometimes masks are worn to deceive, that’s true. But my mask simply protects me, which suits me just fine.”
I smiled. Vivid was even more insightful than I had hoped.
The griffin mask fretted, “So you choose to live in willful individuality, is that it?”
Vivid opened his mouth at the griffin mask. Closed it. Then he grinned. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”
The mask trembled. “W-what are you talking about?”
“That’s why you guys seeked me out. You can’t stand the idea of me being happy by myself so now you’re trying to get me to move back to the cave I was hatched in, right? This is why I cop an arrogant attitude. I need it to fend off jerks like you who try to bring me down!”
The pony mask roared, “You dare speak to us like that!”
Vivid waved off the anger with a hoof. “Save it. I’ve been an artist my whole life, so I know what envy looks like. You can’t fool me. Now that I’m not fooling myself, that is.”
The griffin mask said, “If we leave, you will never hear from us again. You will never be among your own kind. You will be alone.”
He shrugged. “No one’s really alone. Not if they don’t want to be.”
The masks drifted up and away from us without a sound. The dragon mask looked down at Vivid and frowned before fading out of sight.
“You were right about how everyone wears masks, Vivid. I once wore a mask of Nightmare Moon, since I believed that mask made me what I wanted to be. But it wasn’t who I really was. It took a thousand years to take that mask off, but it was worth it.”
Vivid nodded. “I’ve been wearing a pony mask for so long, I forgot all about it. But it’s not always about deception, you know. Sometimes the face we show the world isn’t a lie. I say I’m a pony and I’m happy with that. And that’s all anypony needs to know. Maybe those other changelings will realize that someday.”
“You don’t hear voices anymore, do you?”
He beamed happily. “Nope! Thanks for opening my eyes, Luna. I couldn’t have done it without you giving me an overdue kick in the flanks.”
I bowed to him and returned his smile. “I’m glad I could help. It was a privilege to see your private art collection. Boastful chest-thumping notwithstanding.”
Vivid chuckled. “Oh, my ego-balloon’s lost a few pounds of hot air, believe me. I’ll try to be a little less insufferable from now on.”
I smiled and flew away. This time the sky was devoid of masks.
Returning to the waking world, I opened my eyes and looked down at Vivid as he slept soundly in his bed. Even in his slumber, Vivid kept his pony disguise on. Looking around me, I recognized many of the pictures and sculptures from his dreamscape. The day-care center pictures hung in silver frames. A portrait of my sister smiled at me. The half-made statue of his true mother rested in a corner. Vivid Color lived each day surrounded by that which made him what he chose to be.
In one way, he and I were not so different. I once was wicked, but now help those in need. Vivid used to be a hated creature, but was now a slightly less arrogant yet beloved pegasus artist.
We are what we do. We are our choices.
We all wear masks, but it’s only the masks that echo what we really are that matter.
As long as we always remembered what we really were, Vivid and I would be just fine.
I left him to his slumber, quietly closing his studio door behind me.
Author's Note
The theme song for this story is "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.
Around last Halloween, I bounced around an idea on the group "Idea Bank" about a changeling that thought he was a pony. Smaug The Golden thought it was a good idea. His encouragement helped get this Princess Moonbutt story off the ground. (Thanks, buddy!
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