What are you still doing here?
In the sky and out of windows the sun has still been going. Cycles onward and seasons that wax or wane when someone pays attention.
The evening sun shines down on Equestria, but mostly in memories.
As Fluttershy trots she tries not to think of these things, and not to live in a September which is mostly over. She gives attention to the crunch of gravel underhoof and shies away from ponies milling and ambling. Fortunately none come too close, none share her singed spirit. One relief precludes another is what Fluttershy thinks.
Echoing moments pull forth the other matter, to the violet tree-spire that looms over Ponyville. Why still the castle? She sees the castle and every step she’s ever taken. It never gets better and Fluttershy has never felt she belongs near crystal.
She’s coming for answers she’d be better without, but Fluttershy doesn’t think this. She knows she’d rather talk to Rarity but the unicorn has never understood these kinds of things. For her all turmoil is cast in romanticism. So, late in the day Fluttershy comes to Twilight’s door and with the door knocker announces her presence in some magical way.
Twilight appears readily, cast in the dimness of castle interior. The contrast makes glare from above yet worse.
“Twilight,” she smiles while squinting. She hopes she doesn’t appear rude. “A long way you’ve come from first arrival at Ponyville.” She gestures with a hoof.
Twilight nods. Her mouth pulls, but the tired circles around eyes don’t allow it. “Four years later, you’re still here.”
“Subsisting mostly on the smell of cut grass...” Fluttershy can’t say much more in the way of acquiescences. Her mother’s peak was childbirth at twenty, and hers seems to have been those days as an element of harmony. She finds out now years later.
“I was hoping you could spare a moment?” she says and it sounds like a stubborn cart wheel squeaking. “It was nice today,” she adds, because Twilight hasn’t said anything.
Dinner sits like a stone in stomach and her frame is beginning to show the effects of such being commonplace. Fluttershy feels a vague shame at peripheral of mind that Twilight likely noticed.
The alicorn in front of her sighs. “Come on. I get the feeling I’m going to need a cigarette.”
Fluttershy watches Twilight so quickly turn from her and moves herself forward into the castle. Always a bit jealous of Twilight’s provisions yet wondering how she bears such an unhomely place. They walk through the cool grandeur of the foyer and passed a row of resplendent doors. Halfway down the hall Twilight picks one of the identical doors that Fluttershy never gets straight.
Twilight leads into a stately sitting room where the arch windows don’t restrain the slanted rays. Velvet crystalline couches around a coffee table. Nevermind, she’d have preferred the foyer. Gloomed and sparse halls to aureate purple surfaces that reflect everything the outside gives.
Fluttershy takes the smaller loveseat, leaving couch for its owner. Small proprieties at least let her feel normal.
“Hope you don’t mind an outside view.” Twilight strides over, levitating the cigarettes mentioned.
“Not at all,” she says.
Twilight lights up and corrosive ennui fills Fluttershy’s nostrils. She can not help from envisioning humid fields and generations of ponies cultivating crops and dust alike.
Another small pause between them. Potential responses drift in the air with the dust motes. She’s written words she’ll never remember. She tries to pull some of them together now.
“Nice castle that you keep. So, how have you kept lately?”
“Occupied with the usual, split between administration and magical research. Great duties to fill.” Twilight replies with a languor that seems to extend past the present.
Because her mouth is a little faster than her thoughts she says, “Does it ever get boring?”
“Has it been much different since you met me? It’s what I’ve always done.” Twilight breathes as though carefully balancing gratification against jeopardy. It looks familiar.
“Maybe... All I ever noticed was you involved in bookwork, I never knew what it comprised.”
“Just as you, Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie are doing what you’ve always done. I suppose, the only one really doing anything different is Rainbow Dash quitting her job as weatherpony, for the Wonderbolts. And that is only half different since she’s always engaged in the same routine anyway.”
“But you are into more advanced research now? It could be said that in this time you’ve progressed?”
“I’m a princess now, which means my time is split.” Twilight exhales smoke at her.
“You know, Pinkie really doesn’t approve of you smoking,” she says, wondering why she didn’t mention her own immediate pollution. Why didn’t she minutes ago? Now would be strange.
“Why are you here, Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy opens mouth to give another non-sequitur, but rethinks as Twilight looks as though she’s had her fill of humoring beggars. Again an image of her mother when young flashes to mind, and she doesn’t know why that should be happening so much lately.
“We’ve... done a lot, haven’t we, Twilight? More than enough to have a spot in history, even if it’ll be mostly about you...”
“Certainly. That’s an understatement.”
“And that success was the work of our own effort. And it follows that we’ll go on yet to do more because that’s who we are?”
“...I suppose that is a matter of how much you account to us and how much to the princess and her world around us.”
Fluttershy chews her cheek at Twilight’s non-binary answer. If she could just get the words she came for and go home. “Still a pony could, you could say, that despite those heights we are still in the spring of our lives?” Fluttershy cautiously leads.
“Spring is thawing stagnation and blooming life. Not how I would describe our situation. For each step forward, two are spent holding in place. Greatness has diminishing returns.”
“Diminishing... But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?”
Twilight idly fixates on her cigarette. “Fire doesn’t have to produce smoke, it only does because that’s the nature of the reaction.”
The stuffy air presses on her lungs. How hot it must get in here in the prime of day. Fluttershy sighs. “Twilight, I want to picture something better. That the old canon’s been wrong. Could it be that destiny is only an illusory fixture and up to our own making?”
“Destiny and unwrought dreams both. Do you remember when we gave up the elements, to the tree of harmony that we thought had kidnapped the princesses?”
“The vines, yes...”
“That was as good as destiny if anything. We’d attributed to the tree what turned out to be a misfiring of one of Discord’s tricks, but it no less fit our role. I received this castle because of events accumulating from over a thousand years past.
“To distinguish from destiny from happenstance requires knowing something outside... To have some vantage by which circumstance could be steered.”
“And the castle came to pass because of our accomplishment obtaining keys. That part depended on us.”
Twilight’s head turns to her a bit too slow. “A point which is redundant. Whatever happened is what could happen. How would you measure ontological responsibility?”
“Reference points aren’t my strong suit.”
“Well, I’ve made them mine.”
“Evidence in my point.” Her eyes remain on Twilight, tracing such an elegant figure in the setting light, lean legs curled in and nimbly inhaling her nicotine. Years casually singed.
“I can give countless reasons why not. That’s your lot for talking to a philosopher-princess.”
Should have known it’s too much to ask for an easy affirmation, and she isn’t sure if Twilight is being honest or bitter. “But we still have years to come and as long as that, the future doesn’t have to be a decline. Can’t you just say the future doesn’t have to be a decline?”
“All periods can be said to be periods of decline. It’s merely a matter of picking a positive axis.”
“That’s disingenuous…” She tries again, something more syllogistic. “Say then I’ve lost the time behind me, spent on long hours. Still, those past inclinations don’t have to irrevocably set the pattern of what I have to come.”
It doesn’t get passed Twilight, whose violet gaze strips back layers of intention. “I think you know. The following response is, that would violate causality…sweep away all historical and circumstantial influences pressing on you.
“Not to disparage the sentiment - it’s a natural thing for a pony to want to think. It’s what I’ve thought to myself many times. In January, I looked at my lists and thought, This is a new year to achieve much. Now I live in September.”
Fluttershy leans back in the couch, feeling a throbbing behind her eyes. She probably should have drank more water today. “Every summer seems shorter. I meant to do something different this summer, now it’s months later and I’m going to be busy preparing the animals for winter. Why does that have to be my pattern?”
“That’s what you’d expect gentility and inertia to produce.”
Fluttershy grunts, not able to humor that.
Twilight flashes teeth remorsefully and apologetically. “I shouldn’t be so disparaging. After particularly long work sessions I start to forget myself.”
Looking out a window to thatched roofs framed in orange glare, Twilight continues, “You know, the Running of the Leaves was a few days ago. As princess it’s near mandatory I’m involved in these sorts of things now. Running of the Leaves, Hearth’s Warming, the Gala, Hearts and Hooves, Winter Wrap-up, some other window dressing, and then we’re back at the Summer Sun celebration. Do you think when I came here I foresaw that half a decade later I’d be doing the same shit? That I was digging the rut I would never climb out of?”
“I thought you always enjoyed coordinating ‘those sorts of things’.” Fluttershy wonders why she never noticed that about Twilight before. Or how she stares so intently when mentioning her princesshood.
“Joy comes a lot easier when it’s not mandated.”
Fluttershy stares at her hooves in her lap. If only it didn’t feel so much like growing up meant growing regret. All those years of childhood, unaware and without the conceptions to recognize the world she lived in. Every chance she’d never noticed. Studies completed to the bare minimum, knowledge she just dumped out her ears. These things that were lifetimes away and somehow that was part of her.
She presses her lips together. “A 25-year-old doesn’t have the right to be so wistful.”
“According to some groups, a young mare doesn’t have the right to kill her organs with cigarettes and absinthe, but here I am.” Twilight chuckles. Magically opening a finely-etched cabinet, a bottle floats out. “Care for some?”
The rays of light spilling in continue to diminish. Fluttershy doesn’t mention Twilight’s own invincibility and nods her head, grabbing the glass she’s poured.
She lightly sways her hoof, watching cloudy green waves ripple. Of course Twilight would drink something like absinthe.
As she drinks Twilight speaks on. “Brooding on futile subjects is bad for your disposition. Fluttershy, a pony can give all their effort searching for meaning and transcendent promises but too deep looking only drives suicidal conclusions.”
A passing beam hits her and she has to blink. “But is it the promise that drives me or do I only have one because I drive on?”
“I’ve completed much study and can advise you to pick an order and move on. These are intangible uncertainties.”
“So then our destinies and what history may imply are not entirely definite either?” She still feels obliged to pursue conspicuous openings.
“I‘m not going to say that,” Twilight tells her. “At night I smoke and go to sleep in crystal quarters, remembering those I defeated to get it. Regardless of what caused what, I wake up with an agenda I had little direction over.”
“Well, that’s dour. Maybe you ought to spend less time on these subjects.”
“I have nothing to inhibit - I can’t kill myself. I am an alicorn now, I have centuries ahead of me. Until the stars burn out and I live to experience my namesake,” Twilight says between sips of her own glass.
She thinks Twilight could at least try to be more grateful. “But you have Celestia and Luna and Cadence.”
“We won’t talk about Celestia.”
“The other princesses, then. They have names.”
“It’s too voyeuristic.”
“That doesn’t address anything,” Fluttershy reiterates. “You don’t have to brood. Even if you missed moments that can never be redeemed, you have incorruptible opportunity and the best mentors a pony could reasonably desire.”
Twilight takes a drag of cigarette. In a voice that’s gazed down eventualities, she replies, “Have you ever ruminated on how long a thousand years is? Luna knows. To have and have it taken from you, and forced to watch expend away? There’s an uncountable amount of things Luna could have achieved and become. Now she’s a recluse and resented footnote.
“She’s able to maintain a thin veneer of personality, but have you ever spent time alone with her? She’s disparate in a way that’s unmendable. It’s doubtful if she’ll ever be able to recapture the kind of functioning we take for granted as ponyhood.”
She’s thought of it before and had tried not to imagine what such a thing must be like. Fluttershy shrugs noncommittally. “That is awful, but after all she’ll still have centuries to reacclimate.”
“Perhaps you should be grateful you don’t have that coming up.”
She’d always meant to reach out to Princess Luna after that Nightmare Night, but let the regality get the best of her. Another opportunity unclaimed. What would Fluttershy even have to offer her, essentially holding the same problems in miniature? “And here I am talking about a mere fraction... You know, it wasn’t so bad last year. Or the one before, when still inkling. It always seemed I had a long time.
“Today I looked outside and it wasn’t summer setting, it was my life. I have no more time for the things I enjoyed. Those things left me with no more time for the things I wanted. I’m impassed with paradoxes and all I feel is if I’m going to move on it has to be now.”
The room seems to reflect all this back on her. Not an element of some great ability or strength but chosen for her pure tameness. Universe itself proclaimed her refinement of graciousness and docility. And it pains Fluttershy to think of it that way.
“Just what do you want, Fluttershy? You have your animals and a tranquil home. As far as I’ve ever heard, you didn’t crave much more than that.”
“And I don’t, or maybe not. I never could think of any grand aim beyond nurturing smaller life. But then shouldn’t I feel more? I never really did anything and it seems as though I am already at end. If I’m at my destination, shouldn’t I at least feel I’ve arrived?” She can barely taste the absinthe for all the other things on her tongue.
“Fluttershy, ponies all ask for things that don’t really make sense. Ponies think in terms of honor, hope, and other clumsy conceptualizations. When one starts to wear holes, you trade out that naivety for another.”
She takes another drink, letting it spread across her tongue. “But what happened to my optimism? It wasn’t something I thought to have or obtain, it was a state of being I embodied.”
Twilight’s cigarette finally burns out. It is cast in her ashtray. “Not something you’ll find under any rock or even in a spellbook. Optimism isn’t a magical element.”
“It didn’t exist abstractly in the universe, I was it. I was optimism, and kindness.”
“Functionally I see little difference. I’ve always found little substance in those holdings and weird mixes of magic and generalities.” At Fluttershy’s confusion, Twilight opens her mouth. “I was element of magic. Now I’m princess of it and in the time intervening the only thing that’s changed is amount of paperwork.”
“Well it feels like the only things that’ve changed have been the wrong things.”
Though her cigarette is gone Twilight exhales. “It doesn’t sound like it needs to change, at least what you’re talking about. The elements are all actionable. What’s considered an act of optimism? ”
“If you go to my cottage, you’ll notice I have many creatures that depend on me. I used to care without foreboding, I used to take fulfillment in them,” she says but her focus is on shadows. It passes her that she didn’t have as many animals total as once did. Lives so short or leaving otherwise. It seems she’d known these things but never realized the magnitude.
“If I go to your cottage I’m sure I’ll see animals better nourished than anypony else is capable of.”
“Thanks,” Fluttershy replies with no force of heart.
Leaning back, Twilight yawns lightly. “I can assure you, life at the top is lived moment by moment like for everyone else. Moods and appetites don’t change.”
“There were a few things I never could believe,” Fluttershy says. “That this is as big as the world gets, it seems contemptible. That the highest I did was only tagging along for something not even related to my purpose. That that was my purpose.
“I don’t know why it should be that I got everything I want so young, and then I don’t know if it’s even what I want. I never sat down and planned that the entirety of my life would be sitting in a house on the edge of Ponyville.”
“How much influence do you think you had over your cutie mark? Over your upbringing and interests? All curved along things outside us, and at some point a pony realizes and takes what they have. Our parents did it, and theirs’ before them. Take joy in what you take joy in and leave it at that.” The alicorn’s purple hoof carefully reaches again for the absinthe. “Anything else is just the tinnitus,” she softly says.
Her fate to wilt and move in diminishing circles, she thinks, as Twilight’s world remains unmoved. “Well I like my despair how I like my demise - inevitable and in vain,” she frowns.
“You’re talking about my alicorn status? As I said, longevity is not going to be such a great gift. I don’t deny there’ll be my share of good moments, but the essential condition isn’t changed.”
Leaning forward, Fluttershy sets down her half-empty glass. “Like I said, you have near infinite time to become anything. Your future doesn’t close.”
Twilight raises up, stretching her wings, and the sky seems to tumble from her form.
“You overestimate the difference. So I’ll have lifetime upon lifetime - it still sums to the same ponyhood. I only get to extrapolate longer from this point.
“Look back on your past five years and multiply that by ten, and picture your remaining life in full. You confront the same position every sentient pony has lived. A bright open world, in hindsight bounded by your own animal nature and the decisions of those who came before, and there are no climaxes. No secret truths or success. Only passing seasons.”
In Twilight’s eyes she sees what life had been like to ponies sitting twenty years ago in an evening just like this, and what the next twenty will be like.
Her gaze moves to the side but what she sees is a world that she’s given the only thing she could contribute. In turn her presence in its span becomes clear. Every hour passing all the same moment, revolving and twining along the precedent of obscure forebears. Wave upon wave of adrift intentions breaking against the edge of circumstance as measure grows into infinity.
Fluttershy closes her eyes and leans head back. The smell of alcohol underlying tobacco touches everything in the room, and the next time Twilight enters this room she will remember.
When she opens her eyes the dimness is not greatly impacted. Twilight will have to light her candles.
She looks across to the couch but Twilight is slumped over, given in to sleep.
The last of the light fades and Fluttershy sits alone in the dark.
