Blade bounces off blade as the two swords clash. My enemy pulls back, ducking low to avoid the flurry of pointed throwing things that I send flying in his direction. He dodges all twenty, but it’s okay – I have more. I always have more.
The agent of the Furious Hoof clan jumps in reverse, spinning in the air like a top. It’s a move to distract, and he performs it well.
But he’s not as good as me!
He lets loose his own attack, sharp metal sticks that I don’t know the name of; they’re like thick, pokey needles and they hurt real bad. They appear from within the blur of his spinning body, and they fly everywhere, like a cactus shedding its spines like a porcupine.
They stick into trees, the ground, everything!
I sense the attack coming with my third eye, and I duck instantly, flipping backwards and away. Three needles hit the ground where I would have been if it weren’t for my mystical powers.
And now, it’s time for my counter-attack!
I rush forward, darting behind trees, jumping over rocks like how they taught at school with that padded box tower thing. That padded box tower is a true friend!
But the enemy is crafty, and he pulls out a small round pellet.
I know what that is!
I throw my leg over my mouth as a cloud of smelly pink smoke fills the area. It smells like medicine and tastes like asparagus and sprouts on my tongue. It makes my eyes water and my nose fill up with horribleness.
I cough terribly. I can’t see. But I have to move, because standing still is the worst thing you could do.
I don’t see the log until it’s too late.
~
Hi! My name’s Bright Start.
I’m just a kid. Some say too much of a kid, but I don’t really know what that means. I just remember it because maybe one day someone can tell me.
I’m trying to smile, but it’s kinda hard at the moment. But it’s not because I’m sad. It’s not because I lost the battle.
No, I’ll get him back next time. He’ll always be there waiting for me whenever I want.
It’s because I tripped over a log.
I open the door to my mom’s room, and she’s there, as always, watching her television. My mom’s cool. She likes all sorts of TV, especially the medical dramas and the ones where weird things happen with the aliens.
I kinda like them too, although I don’t watch the TV much.
As soon as she sees me trying to grin she shuts off the TV and rushes over.
She’s got that look again!
“Oh my dear,” she says, in that voice of hers that’s trying not to be angry. “What happened to you?”
I tell her I tripped over my bolster.
“Why were you running about on your bed?” she asks.
I don’t know what to say, so I shrug. I don’t tell her about the fierce battle I just had. There are times when you need to tell the truth and there are times when you just say something else to make people not worry so much. Sometimes I don’t know which is which, but I’m learning!
I try to smile again, but the cut on my knee stings too much.
My mom clicks her tongue. Yeah, she’s kinda used to this. She rushes to the bathroom to get whatever.
I adjust the bow in my hair while I’m waiting. It’s a pretty bow. Mom bought it for me, and I like it a lot. It’s prettier now, now that I’ve swapped the pattern from circles to stars. And I know! It’s a gift! And you don’t change gifts. Mom taught me that. But this one I decided that it’d be better with stars because of Daddy. And Mom doesn’t mind. I don’t let her notice.
She returns a while later with a whole bunch of bottles and thingies and stuff. I look curiously at the complex names on the labels. It’s sorta like stuff at school in the chemistry lab for the older students. Lots of bottles and weird smells. Luckily, none of them taste like asparagus and sprouts because you’re not supposed to put it in your mouth.
See? The label says. It has that small picture of the very sick pony on it. That means that if you’re sick and you drink it, you become more sick.
Medicine is funny that way.
She dabs at the edge of my cut with a cotton swab stained brown with ick. It hurts a bit. Mom doesn’t tell me that it’s gonna hurt. She just does it with that stern face. I’m kinda used to it already, anyway. This isn’t the first time I’ve been cut by a member of the Furious Hoof clan.
My cut will heal soon, and I will be back to defending the Golden Temple.
But I have to go to school now.
Mom gives me that kind of happy happy smile. She’s excited.
I ask her why she’s so happy.
She asks me to remember what day it is.
So I take out my super-duper rocket planner from my school bag. It’s a real rocket, you know, and can go to the moon. But right now it has numbers and dates and pages with lines on it because I need that more. The moon’s pretty boring. I’ve been there twice.
I check the page with today’s date on it, and all I wrote down was ‘Daddy Discovery’ on it, and put the glitter on.
The glitter tells me that it was very important and that I have to remember it! So it’s lucky that I wrote it down, because I forgot.
The words don’t remind me, but I show Mommy my rocket planner. Whenever I show Mommy things, she tells me what it is. She reminds me, because Mommy is nice and kind and I love her.
“That’s right,” she says. “Tonight’s the big night for Daddy! The comet’s finally here!”
That’s right!
The comet’s finally here!
I remember now. Daddy found the comet up there in the night. That’s his job. He finds things, but not on Equestria. He finds things up there in the sky, and gets very excited about it.
When I find a new pencil I get excited too, especially when it drops from the body of a hurted monster! I also sometimes find gold coins, and they’re great because they’re chocolate.
Daddy finds things that are in space, and I think that’s a very cool job because no one lost them.
See, it’s like, if someone lost something, then they can go to the police or the monster hunters and get it back. The people who lost the thing and the monster police hunters all know that the thing is there.
But Daddy and his friends Aunt Aquariras and Uncle Zeniff and Uncle Sputtink all find things no one knows are there, so I think that’s extra amazing and extra cool.
Daddy found a comet a long time ago, but it was a comet that only he could see. Tonight, he said, would be the time that everyone could see it. He made a big announcement over the news radio, and the news television, and the newspaper. Everyone was going to see it, he said.
And that was tonight!
The glitter, you see.
I will tell all my friends at school today.
To look for the comet.
~
The waters are rough, and they splash up against the side of the boat. They beat so hard that they froth like an angry dog that I saw one day at a junkyard and I had to run away because that was really dangerous.
Today I am fighting the Furious Hoof Clan fighter again, but he has brought a friend, a crew member of Captain Facebeard’s crew! He is not Captain Facebeard himself, but he is just as good because all members of his crew are on legendary level!
He has even brought his super ship, the HMS Pintotaco, and they sailed it right up to my front door and parked in the garage.
Now we fight on the seas, balancing on broken boards from my destroyed ship.
See, our garage door is real quiet, so I didn’t hear them come in, and then they cannoned me from behind the treasure cove and got me by surprise. My ship, the USS Guntherprize XXVXI, was totally smashed up to bits and all that is left is a bunch of stuff.
I jump from mast to mast. Since it’s a pirate battle I should use pirate weapons. But there is a ninja there, which beats my pirate weapons. So you have to be smart.
See, ninjas beat pirates, and pirates beat cowboys, but cowboys beat ninjas.
There is a ninja and a pirate here. So they will beat pirates and cowboys.
So you can’t use a pirate or cowboy weapon or else you will be beat!
You have to use Ninja weapons!
Miss Daisy Braid taught me this in school.
School is a great place to learn stuff like this, so I never play pretend in school. I like to learn. I don’t get why others don’t as much.
So I take out my Ninja sticks that are tied together that I don’t know the name of, and I twirl it around like a Ninja Master that I see on the weird Haysian channel on the TV that Mom watches sometimes because she says Haysians have tight bodies whatever that means.
I hit the pirate with the sticks and he falls into the water! It’s funny because now he’s wet and his dirty hair is now cleaner.
But his friend the ninja takes out a ninja cannon and shoots me again!
Boom!
The rocks explode on the cliff and they all crumble into the water.
A giant wave comes!
Now I have to surf!
The Ninja realises his mistake, and he’s trying to paddle away. He’s allergic to water, you see. His friend the Pirate has already fallen asleep in the water but he will be okay.
I get up on a board and crouch down and look at the wave.
It is as tall as fifteen buildings!
And then the door opens.
~
Mom is mad.
I look down at the dinner table after I get off it.
I should not be jumping on the dinner table, she says.
I nod. She’s right.
But it wasn’t a dinner table. It was a piece of my ship. She just didn’t see. It’s not my fault.
I was just waiting for Daddy, so I decided to have a fight with Mr. Pirate and friends.
But I ended up on the table anyway, so I guess I’m still wrong.
“And why is the floor so wet?” she screams.
Well, she’s not really screaming, I guess. It just sounds like that sometimes.
It hurts to be yelled at.
But it’s my fault too. I didn’t clean up all the water. Sometimes I forget the small things. And Mom doesn’t understand.
I still look down.
I mutter a ‘sorry’.
I don’t know why, but I don’t say things loud when I feel like this. I think I’m just scared to talk sometimes.
Mom gives her sigh.
“Come help me clean this up, okay?”
I nod. I step away from the table, plopping through puddles to grab the mop.
“How did you get water all the way over here?” Mom asks.
It’s that kind of question where you’re not supposed to answer. Sometimes, I answer. And then Mom gets more mad because she doesn’t like what I say.
“You have to control your imagination,” she tells me. “It’s fine to play, but you must know when it starts to get dangerous.”
But it never gets dangerous. I tell her this. But she doesn’t understand.
She doesn’t understand that things always go right. I’m just having fun. Mr. Ninja and Mr. Pirate know this too. We all have fun together.
She doesn’t understand so I stopped telling her. I just listen. Sometimes it’s easier to listen. But other times, it’s easier to not listen. It’s funny that way.
In this case, I listen. Because I was wrong anyway and I didn’t clean the water and now it’s too late, and I have to use the mop.
We clean in silence, and I also help to set the table. After a while I am happy again, because even though I get sad, I don’t stay sad for long. I remember happy things and get happy again.
Tonight Daddy is coming home!
He’ll come home real late because he has to look at the comet at work, and he’ll be back after I go to bed because it will come after my bedtime, so I have to go to sleep, but I will see him in the morning!
He usually stays at work for really long times, like, many days. He says it’s because of stuff. But then he gets to come home later and things will be great!
Mom is excited too, and we’re both waiting.
We’re going to have dinner now, but Mom made extra to keep for Daddy.
Daddy loves Mom’s macaroni, so she’s making a bunch of macaroni.
Mom lets me help.
We have fun.
And then I sleep.
~
I didn’t enter the kitchen in the morning.
Because Mom and Dad were talking.
They were talking adult stuff in adult words in adult ways.
And I got scared.
I thought that they were talking about me messing up the kitchen yesterday, and then Dad would have another talk with me. I hate those talks.
But they were actually talking about other stuff.
I tried to listen, but I didn’t hear a lot of it because I was trying to listen for my name, and words like ‘water’ or ‘flood’ or ‘trouble’.
The word ‘trouble’ came up, actually, but it was Daddy saying it about himself.
“I’m in trouble,” he said.
But I wonder what he did.
I enter the kitchen, finally, because I’m hungry.
My daddy’s face brightens up as it always does.
“Hey, honey!” he says with his big daddy smile. He has a big daddy face. With big daddy glasses and big daddy hair.
He holds his legs out for a hug, and I run to meet him.
The hug feels cold today.
“How you doin’?” he asks, rubbing me on the head.
I try to smile.
I tell him I’m good.
I ask him how he is.
“Oh, good. Good,” he says, looking out the window.
He’s not good. But he will only tell me he’s good.
He did this before, and doesn’t like it when I ask, so I don’t ask.
He’s good, then.
But he’s sad.
He’s sad because we eat breakfast in silence.
He’s sad because he doesn’t want to read the newspaper, and he threw it away, so I didn’t get to see the pretty pictures.
He’s sad because Mommy’s quiet too.
He’s sad because he isn’t talking about the comet.
He isn’t talking about the comet and that makes me wonder why.
I ask him how last night was.
“It went fine,” he says. “Just… fine.”
And he doesn’t want to say more.
So I try to ask more.
I ask him if everypony saw it. I asked him if it made everypony happy.
And suddenly he looks strange, like he’s sick. He looks like he wants to go toilet.
He sits there for a while and he doesn’t answer my question.
“You know,” he says, “everyone makes mistakes, right, darling?”
I nod. I’m confused, but I nod.
“Sometimes even Daddy makes mistakes.”
I nod again.
“Look… why don’t we go out today?” Daddy suddenly asks with a cheerful smile.
I’m kinda surprised by that. It came out from nowhere.
“Yeah!” he says again, as if his batteries were charged. “Let’s all go out! Come on. You, me, Mommy. We’ll all go out. Let’s go eat breakfast outside and do something!”
So we do. Daddy doesn’t change to go out. He goes out in his old clothes that are a bit wrinkly. Normally Mom gets mad if he does but today she doesn’t get mad.
We go out and have a good time, and after a while, we all forget.
We all forget because we are laughing and having fun and things are good.
That night, Daddy cried outside on the back porch, while looking up at the stars.
~
Have I ever told you about my rainbow dreams?
They are funny dreams I have.
I don’t really remember them, because they’re dreams, and Miss Daisy Braid told me that we don’t remember dreams well.
But I remember some parts of my rainbow dreams.
In those dreams, the rainbows come down and talk to me.
The colours tell me things.
But I don’t really know what they are.
But they talk to me like they’re talking to a me that isn’t me.
It’s confusing.
They talk to me as if it was me that they were talking to but that wasn’t who they were talking to.
Let me try again.
They talk to me like they were talking to a wall. But that wall was me. So it doesn’t feel like me when they talk to me, but it is still me.
I don’t know how to say it!
They leave a colour in my head. A bright blue. When I wake up, I only remember the colour. I checked with my crayon set. You know, the one with 108 colours in. The colour they leave behind is Azure. It is a nice colour.
But the dreams are not so nice.
Sometimes, I get rainbow dreams when I am sad, or angry, or very bored.
I get them at night after I have a big day of playing.
When I play too much, I get the dreams.
Mom says that it’s because I tire myself out too much, that I am exhausting. Or Exhausted. One of them.
The last time I got the rainbow dream was when I flew around the world and brought all the animals with me and we had a big party.
One time I got a rainbow dream when I was very young and I didn’t like colours and I thought that everything would look better with different colours so I imagined all the red as green and things like that.
One time I got a rainbow dream when I played The World Is Lava.
I got a rainbow dream the first time I ever played pretend.
The funny thing is that no one remembers the games I play with them the next day, after the rainbow comes.
I remember the rainbow dreams because of how I feel.
I feel scared in them. I feel that someone is trying to take me away.
And I feel that I’m in part of the rainbow. I feel that it has wrapped me up and all I can see in my mind is the rainbow.
And they speak.
The rainbow tells me things that I forget, but I can feel them.
I can feel their words.
I can feel worry when they speak. And I get scared.
I can feel guilt, like someone is telling me that I did something bad.
I can feel pain, as if someone is hurting my feelings.
And I feel confused, like I don’t understand.
I feel special. But in a bad way. I feel like I am the only girl in Equestria, and it’s lonely.
And when I think of playing with everyone else, the loneliness grows.
And sometimes I feel that the loneliness will last forever.
And then I wake up.
And all I see is Azure.
~
Sometimes I feel like I want to make my dad and mom happy, but I don’t know how.
Today, Daddy didn’t go to work. He said he was on holiday while his boss thought about things.
He said that he was going to get a special reward for his work on the comet, but he didn’t sound happy about it.
He didn’t shave today either, and I don’t like that because when he tries to kiss me, his whiskers hurt, like when you have to get a needle.
But I take it anyway, because needle pain and whisker pain is the same. You have to take a bit of pain to get something good at the end!
I love Daddy.
It’s things like this that makes me want to play.
When I get bored, or sad, or angry.
But I don’t want to play by myself. I want to do something big. I want to play out there, in the world. I want to play with everyone so that I’m not so angry and sad anymore.
But then the rainbow feelings come.
And I stop.
If I play, the rainbow will visit me again.
And I don’t like it.
And I wish I could help Daddy be happy.
~
Daddy didn’t go to work again today either.
He keeps going over his notes from work.
He has big machines and calculator things and he keeps yelling ‘where is it?’ over and over in a real angry kind of way.
All Mom can do is watch him. She also looks sad. She doesn’t want to talk to him and tells me not to talk to him either. At least, not for a while.
I don’t feel like playing today.
I think I’ll go out to the back porch and look at the stars.
You see, the stars are special. They’re pretty and they sparkle way up there in the night sky. Daddy says that stars are really old magic that gathered and became pretty just for us.
I know he’s lying. Miss Daisy Braid told us that they are just suns that are very very very very far very far away. I wonder if each sun has a Princess Celestia of its own to make them move.
I wonder why they aren’t like Daddy said. Maybe they made Daddy sad because Daddy was wrong. Maybe Daddy thinks they’re old magic for real and he never had a Miss Daisy Braid to tell him that they were just far away suns.
Nah.
Daddy’s smart.
He knows what they are.
But Daddies make mistakes.
~
I showed Mommy the newspaper.
A friend brought it to school.
I asked her why everyone was that disappointed. I asked her why everyone was upset.
I told her the comet was there. Wasn’t it?
It’s just that it didn’t come close enough that we could see, and you needed a telescope to see.
So why was everyone upset?
Mommy said it was because they made a big deal out of it.
Mommy said it was because they spent a lot of money on it. Radio and television and things costs a lot of money, she told me. And everyone was very excited to see it, and everyone wasted their time.
Because Daddy said it would come and it didn’t.
Mommy said that the comet disappeared. They don’t know where it went and they can’t explain it and now Daddy has to give answers and Daddy can’t give answers.
This is why promises are important, she said. She told me that when you make a promise, and if you break it, people get mad, especially when money is involved.
That’s sad.
Daddy and Mommy are sad.
But it seems very small.
There are so many other things to see.
All you need to do is close your eyes and think about things, and they all come true around you.
Like fights with pirates and ninjas, or pretending your favourite cartoon shows are real. They come and go when you need, and they make you happy.
I don’t know why anyone needs anything else if you can just dream and things become real.
I guess adults can’t dream.
Then I will have to dream for them.
~
It has been a long time since I shared my imagination with others.
But today I don’t want to play for myself.
I want to play for everyone.
The feeling of the rainbow still comes. But I don’t care.
It is like a needle pain. You have to take a bit of pain to make things good. But this time, the good stuff isn’t for me. But that’s okay, right?
I find daddy in his studying place. His head is in his hooves. He is sleeping.
He fell asleep like that tonight.
I think he’s gonna have a painful back.
I wake him up and give him a glass of milk.
He thanks me for it, and gives me his biggest Daddy smile. It’s the greatest smile.
I smile back.
“It’ll be okay, honey,” he tells me, even though I didn’t say anything.
But I tell him that he’ll be okay too.
I tell him that I found his missing comet.
He looks at me with surprise.
I think he’s surprised that I know about it. I think he’s surprised that Mommy told me.
His face goes all weird, like he doesn't know how to be. But finally he becomes sad again, and he just nods a little.
“Thanks, honey,” he says. “But that’s okay. You don’t have to help me. We’ll be okay.”
No, I tell him. I found it. I really found it.
I jump around and pull on his leg. He gets up clumsily and comes with me because I won’t keep quiet until he does.
His hair looks funny!
I tell him to get his glasses.
Come on! Come on! Come on! I tell him. Come on!
And I drag him outside where we both stand in the night.
The crickets are chirping and the air is cool.
The porch is lit by a single lamp, but I blow it out because Daddy said the best time to look at the stars is when it’s super dark.
And I point up at the night sky.
~
I dream.
~
I dream of crystal lakes and rocky mountains.
I dream of battles in castles and princesses and princes.
I dream of racing machines and flying machines and machines that swim.
I dream of talking toys and walking dolls.
I dream of magic forests and hidden animals.
I dream of love and hate far away.
I dream of sadness and happiness at home.
I dream of the great and small.
I dream of the left and right.
I dream of all the colours and all the sounds at once.
I am grinning, and I know I am. My eyes are tightly shut, and I dream the strongest that I can. I imagine the world happy, and I imagine my Daddy happy.
I throw my hoof to the skies.
Look.
There they are.
I don’t want to watch because I’m looking at my daddy.
As the hundreds of streaks of light fly out of the skies and play with the clouds, they light up Daddy’s face, and he doesn’t make a sound.
They are burning fireflies, a thousand of them, as they fall like rain being pushed by the wind.
They light up the night like a festival.
They are fireworks in reverse.
Each of them falls and burns and disappears, one after another, they come over and over for minutes and minutes. It is long enough for everyone to see. It is long enough for those who needed to find it to find it.
And it keeps going, as reds and oranges paint the universe.
My dad watches.
He’s staring.
And his mouth turns up. It’s kept open. He kinda looks dorky.
But he’s smiling, I think.
He’s happy again.
I told you I found them!
He nods a reply.
And after the minutes pass, the final streak of light finishes its course, and disappears forever.
They disappear because I don’t need them anymore. Everyone is happy now.
Daddy makes a funny little breathing noise.
He keeps on watching the sky even though it’s completely dark now.
I want to go back in.
It’s getting cold.
And tonight, the rainbows don’t come.
And the next day, everyone remembers the game.
~
The dragon lurches over me and stares right into my eyes.
It breathes fire, and smoke curls from its nostrils. It smells bad, like dirty rocks.
I tell him he needs a shower.
He tells me it’s hard to get showers in his size.
He pours the tea.
Dad enters so quickly that Mr. Bigglestoots has no time to hide. The cave has no time to go away, and the chocolate coins have no time to turn back into bits.
He rushes in, not noticing the dust.
“Hey, honey!” he yells out. “Good morning!”
Why is he yelling? I’m not sure. But he’s really happy. I didn’t know that stars could make others that happy. It’s too happy.
He wishes me a great day and tells me he loves me very much.
I know, Daddy.
I overheard him last night. He was talking to mom frantically. He said he thinks he knew what happened to the comet now. And that the meteor shower could explain why it didn’t come, and why it disappeared. He said that he wasn’t wrong, and that now he was saved. He mentioned how the comet probably went too close to the sun and broke or something.
It doesn’t really matter to me, really, what it was all about. And anyway, Princess Celestia would never break a comet, I don’t think.
I’m just glad things are okay now.
Daddy gives me a pain-free kiss today and leaves.
He trips over a rock that forgot to go away.
“What is this rock doing here?” he asks, giving me a weird look.
I tell him I’m sorry.
There are times when you need to tell the truth and there are times when you just say something else to make people not worry so much.
I guess this is just one of those times.
To Be Continued, Sometime, Somewhere
Author's Note
This story takes place within the Prism, a collection of loose stories about a very particular Equestria.
There are other stories in this collection which delve more into the lore and world of the Prism:
(In order of publication)
Table for Two
A Child of Imagination
Thank you for reading.
Lovingly looked at by HerpyDerpy
