Tales, Worlds, and Fading Dreams
The images on the screens swam and danced, like the unspoken thoughts of a universe made real. Some were memories, crisp and immutable, others flickered and blended, dreams of worlds that might never be. Still others danced between, chimerical minglings of that which was and that which might never be, as though some truths remained firm through all possible worlds. In every possible image, Twilight saw her friends, and this comforted her.
If she focused, she could draw the whirling cloud into a line, a story, as Celestia had when she had first come to this place - the images of memories stretching out before her, and the nebulous wisps of the what-if worlds behind and beside. If she turned, she could see them, strange visions with their own warped logic: some much like the past, others comical or frightening, a thousand romances and transformations, images of Fluttershy as a dragon, or an alicorn, of Spike waiting a thousand years next to a lonely grave, of families and friends, battles, dreams, hopes and despair, stretching into the mist of all the endless futures.
It was a tool, Celestia had told her, a place to learn from the past or to watch the futures unfold as the ever-advancing present marched on, its footfalls, choices, echoing through the shapes that lay ahead. It was also a temptation. There had been princesses, in ages now forgotten, who had withdrawn more and more into this realm, leaving behind the real world to watch and imagine, until their futures all faded away and all that remained was the past and the void. Twilight had no intention of becoming one of those.
She walked the corridors of the past, watching closely. There were familiar lessons here, but also oddities. Luminous connections she'd never noticed before stretched web-like between some images, and behind others a dark and rippling cloud, reaching tendrils into the images, like the strings of a puppet. Twilight leaned closer. She could almost make out--
"Hey! Whatcha doing?"
Startled, Twilight spun. Pinkie? That's impossible, only Alicorns can-- There was nopony there - just the wall of memories with their flickering movement. Twilight looked around, bemused. Had she imagined it?
"Over here, silly!" The voice seemed to be coming from one of the floating screens, an image of Pinkie sitting alone in her room. She seemed to be looking right at Twilight.
"You... you can see me?"
"Duh. Of course I can see you. Usually it's just Celestia out there though, and she doesn't seem to like it when I talk to her for some reason. Hey! If it's just you, can I come take a look?"
"What?"
"It looks like fun! Here, I'll just--" Pinkie reached out a hoof, and the screen bulged outwards like a rubber sheet, the image rippling and distorting.
"I really don't think you're supposed to--" With a quiet pop, Pinkie's hoof burst through the screen, then her other hoof, pulling and stretching the hole, and then with a wriggle and a hop, she was standing next to Twilight. The screen fizzled and hissed, and then faded into mist and was gone. A shimmering ripple ran through the remaining images, taking on new forms and new events - now there were two stories where moments ago there had been only one.
Twilight stood frozen in shock and confusion. How is any of this even possible? She didn't have time to ask - Pinkie was already pronking off towards some of the other images.
"Oh, hey Discord!" Pinkie stopped to wave to the dark cloud.
"Discord?"
"Sure, you didn't think he really had the head of a pony, the claw of an eagle, the paws of a lion and the tail of a snake, did you? That would be pretty silly. He just shows up whatever way the world lets him. It's more fun that way!"
One of the dark tendrils unravelled itself from a world - which vanished with a “plink” - and waved languorously. But Pinkie had already moved on to another image.
"Twilight, Twilight! Look at this one!"
Twilight approached cautiously, peering at the screen. She'd never seen anything like this before.
"Are those... words?"
"Sure! You remember them, right? Remember when you gave me my mouth back? They were like, right there!"
"I... I remember... something." It was all a little hazy. Twilight had bent reality in small ways before, but the surrounding events tended to blur a little.
"I've never gotten a good look at them before though! Ooh! What's an Executive Producer?"
"Pinkie, I'm really not comfortable with this."
"Hey, look! I'm Andrea Libman!"
Twilight was having trouble understanding what Pinkie was babbling about. Some of these images, the new ones that had only come with Pinkie's arrival, gave her a vague sense of unrest to look at or even think too hard about. They were links, perhaps, between levels of reality that were not meant to connect, and every instinct in the back of Twilight's mind screamed to let them be.
"Ooh! Look at this one!"
Twilight snapped out of her reverie and looked up to find Pinkie leaning into one of the screens, which bulged dangerously inwards before her weight.
"Pinkie! Wait!"
But Pinkie was already pushing her way into the scene. With a pop, she was through, and again the floating images shimmered, half of them fading away to nothing. Twilight rushed over to the image and looked in, to see Pinkie sitting in a street in the middle of Ponyville, grinning back at her.
"Come on, Twilight! It's fun!"
Instinct wrestled with curiosity as Twilight struggled to understand what was happening. Tentatively, she leaned against the screen. What Pinkie had just done shouldn't have been possible - in either direction. These were mere representations of other times and places, not portals between realities. She reached out with her magic, and sensed a delicate shift in the image. On one level, it was a flat rectangle of pure light and color, yet at the same time it was something soft and clothy, that could be folded or torn. Probing at the floating image, she saw in her mind's eye at once a scene of the past and, equally real yet somehow coexisting, a shimmering silvery mist, undulating with a faint purple glow. And beyond the mist-- Intrigued, Twilight reached out further, to probe the depths of the image. Leaning closer, she could almost see--
A field of soft, green grass, moving faster than anything its size had a right to, thumped right into Twilight's snout, and sent her spinning and tumbling, to land in a crumpled heap.
"Yay! You made it!"
Pinkie reached out a hoof to help as Twilight struggled to her feet, dizzy and confused.
"Pinkie? Where are we?"
"Ponyville, more or less! Oh boy, this is gonna be so much fun!"
"Wait, more or less?"
"I've made some changes. Once you've seen the whole thing from the outside, it's kind of like knowing you're in a dream. You just concentrate and the whole thing changes. Watch this!"
A flock of twisted balloon birds came flapping around the corner, swooping over Pinkie and Twilight and chirping brightly, their calls an odd mingling of birdsong and squeaking plastic.
"We can do all kinds of fun things here!"
Twilight shook her head, clearing out the bleariness of the dimensional shift. She was beginning to put it together.
"Pinkie, this is meant to be an image of the past! You can't just come in and change things, you have no idea the kind of paradoxes you could be causing! You could break down the barriers between universes, blurring our own past with alternate time-lines! The whole continuum could be in danger!"
"Oh come on, Twilight. I know what I'm doing. I've messed with time before and there haven't been any noticeable consequences." Pinkie paused to think for a moment. "Why do I feel like I've said that before?"
Twilight's head swam. "It's the dimensional bleed, Pinkie! Your memories are starting to blend with worlds that never were."
But Pinkie was too excited to stop and listen. She was already pronking off blithely down the street, then up the wall of a nearby house as easily as if it were flat ground. Then, stranger still, she spun another ninety degrees and hopped back towards Twilight upside down, along the top side of the screen. Twilight was once again struck with the disorienting sense of two co-existing realities – Pinkie seemed to be hovering upside down in empty space, and yet at the same time she was standing on the edge of the visible frame, as if Twilight was looking in from outside the world.
Pinkie stretched out a hoof holding something.
"Hey Twilight! Want a cupcake?" Something dripped from the base of the cupcake.
"Ooh! Look over here!" She spun and dropped to the ground, bouncing away, the cupcake forgotten and seemingly unmade.
“Look look! It's snowing streamers! And glitter!” Sure enough, the air began to fill with swirling, shimmering colors, drifting down all around.
Twilight continued to stare in a blank and anxious daze.
“I bet this would look great in the moonlight!” And just like that, it was night, a full moon overhead, its light streaming down through the shimmering swirls, casting the cheery colors into a striking monochrome.
“See? Isn't it pretty?”
Pinkie paused to look over at her friend. “Twilight, you don't seem to be getting into the swing of things.”
Twilight shook herself and tried to focus. “It's just too dangerous, Pinkie. The things you're changing-- who knows what the consequences could be!"
“Oh, lighten up, Twilight. If something bad was going to happen, don't you think it would have happened by now? It's just a new kind of magic! You like new kinds of magic, right?”
Twilight frowned. It did seem to be pretty stable so far. Maybe causality would just reassert itself safely. Or maybe they'd shifted harmlessly sideways into a what-if world during the transition. She had to admit, the thought of brand new ways to learn about magic was alluring. Sensing her resolve faltering, Pinkie gave Twilight a cheerful nudge.
“Come on, it's easy. Here, try this! Look at the well over there. See the roofy thing on it? Just try to turn that into a book!”
Twilight squinted over at the angled roof. Could it really just be as easy to shift reality as to alter a dream? She focused her mind. It was all just moving pictures, and for her to simply see it a little differently-- As simply as that, the well's cover was now a gigantic open book, resting face down upon the posts. It bothered Twilight a little to see it that way – leaving a book face down was never good for its spine.
“See! It's easy! Now try something else! Go on, have fun!”
Twilight looked up and down the empty street for inspiration. While she found the idea fascinating, and wanted to humor her friend, she saw very little fun in warping the natural forms of things on little more than a whim. She let her gaze drift upwards to the night sky. Mere images... If she concentrated, she could see the stars and nebulas, weaving and twisting, shifting into swirls and snakes and fractals. With a thought, she reached out to the stars, and their dance became rhythmic, the formless became forms, a pattern, a physical manifestation of pure logic. The snakes became ouroboroi, the starlit threads tapestries, every point stretching fore and back in time, connecting, intertwined, a crystalline representation of the underlying patterns of thought and being. Reflected in the sky she could see all the pasts and futures, synapses and syllogisms, traceries of thought itself enshrined in flawless crystalline circuitry, the sparks of new magics and new insights becoming clear as--
Blackness. An inky cloud obscured the firmament, spreading out through the sky in blots and swirls. The worms of starlight unravelled and curled back upon themselves, sparking and writhing as if burning and melting away to nothing. All that remained was darkness.
"Silly! You're doing it all wrong!"
"Pinkie? Did... did you do that?"
"Well, duh. You were getting all distracted just staring into space. We're supposed to be having fun!"
"I was having fun! I think I was on the verge of some amazing new breakthroughs!"
"You have a weird idea of fun, Twilight. Come on, I'll show you how it's done."
Pinkie glanced around eagerly for ideas. “Ooh! I know! We've got snow, how about some ice?”
Like fog being breathed onto a cold window, a thick white coating began to spread across the streets and houses, leaving everything encased in a soft, pale blanket. Pinkie scraped some up with a hoof, then took a bite.
“Mmm! Delicious! See, Twilight? It looks like frost, but it's actually frosting! Huh? What do you think?”
Twilight gave it a lick. It did taste delicious, but the whole thing just didn't sit right with her. She frowned.
“That's great, Pinkie, but it just seems wrong to have world-altering power and to use it for something so trivial. Think of all the things we could learn, all the ponies we could help--”
“Oh! I have an idea! You'll like this! You like history, right?”
The texture of the world shifted slightly, and there was a subtle sense of the indefinably alien, like waking up from a forgotten dream into an unfamiliar room. They were still in Ponyville, the streets and houses in the same places, but the shadows had shifted, the flagstones grown large and flat, and the houses stretched into dim and ancient edifices wrought of cyclopean stone.
“Neat, huh? This is how things used to be!”
Twilight glanced around apprehensively, then trotted over to a house to examine it more closely.
“Well, this architecture is fascinating. But without the appropriate context it doesn't really tell me anything. And, well... don't you think this all seems a little--”
“Context? Hey, I bet you can find lots of context in your library! Ooh! Your library! Why didn't I think of that before? C'mon, Twilight, we'll head over to the library and make it all huge and booky! You'll like that!”
Twilight opened her mouth to reply, but Pinkie was already hopping off down an alley, bouncing over the thick black roots between the ancient stones. Twilight followed her. The alleyway grew tall and narrow, and their hoof-steps echoed from the cold grey stones. The space grew narrower and narrower, until suddenly they burst into the open and found themselves standing in a vast open courtyard. At the far end, a gnarled gargantuan tree loomed, ominously still amidst the deep silence of the night.
“Almost there, Twilight! Then you'll have lots and lots of books. You'll see!” Pinkie grinned and began to lead her across the empty expanse of the courtyard.
Twilight froze. She had realized what was missing.
"Pinkie, where are all the other ponies?"
Pinkie stopped too, turning to address Twilight.
"Oh, I got rid of them. They always get in the way when I'm playing like this."
"Got rid of them? Pinkie, those are our friends! You can't just put them away in a toy box when you're not using them, they're real ponies!"
"Oh Twilight, don't be silly. They're no more real than you are. Remember the words, out in the darkness? Why, if those people were to stop drawing you, you'd just go out - FWOOSH! - like a candle! Actually, I bet they wouldn't even have to stop drawing you, they could just stop writing you! Huh. That's interesting."
Pinkie scraped at the ground with her hoof. Intrigued, Twilight leaned closer. She couldn't see anything unusual.
"What? What's interesting?"
"If you look a little closer, it's all just made of words!"
"Huh. That... actually makes sense. Magical incantations, the mystic concept of Logos-- it has long been thought that--"
"No, silly! Words words! Like a story! Here, look out there."
Pinkie turned outwards and waved. Twilight glanced around nervously.
"I'd rather not, Pinkie. I know about the screen, but it actually makes me a little bit nauseous when we do that."
"No no no. Not that place. Look further!" Pinkie leaned out through the screen into the void beyond, and looked straight out.
"Hey! There's people reading us!"
"Pinkie, I have a bad feeling. Something is wrong here. There are some things ponies are just not meant to know."
"Oh come on, Twilight! Look at this! It's all made of words! I can even move th hing is going very wrong h em around!"
"Pinkie, please! Stop! Somet ere, I can feel it!"
Pinkie stopped bouncing and frowned. She had to admit Twilight had a point. As reality warped around her more and more, a sense of disquiet had spread through her, tainting the joy of play with an undertaste of empty horror. She nodded quietly and began to set things back the way they had been.
"What? No I didn't. I mean, don't."
After a moment's stubbornness, Pinkie had to give in and
"Stop that. I'm having fun here and you can't stop me. If you keep trying, I'll have to garble you."
But try as she might, it made no sense to resist. She was merely a character, and hte writer ehld teh erut eoprw. Hre trnie rowld sw remyl a mntfrgr qp ihs gmtiainaeiouaeiouaeiou.
"Now, behave. Or I'll drag in entire pages of plagiarized material and bring this entire fic down."
Twilight tried to reason with her. Surely she would listen to her close friend.
"Pinkie, you're messing with powers you can't possibly understand. Please, stop this madness."
Pinkie cared far too much about her friends to let mere fun come between them. That was no fic-writer's speculation that could be garbled away, it was canon, as specifically demonstrated in the Mirror Pond incident. You remember that, don't you, Pinkie? You can't argue with your canonical characterization, it is the very foundation of all fan fiction.
"Well, duh! Of course I care about my friends! But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun. Twilight's just being silly."
But, if you'll recall the incident with the smartypants doll, we all leraned taht intlsgn to ryouaeiouaeiouaeiouaeiou
"Bored now. Hey! Let's play with these things!"
Pinkie reached out for the words and began to twist and pull - not merely at the level of letters and symbols as she had done, but shaping images, dreams, feelings. With the words, she was no longer tied to the orderly forms of Equestria, or even the projections of story and meaning that spun while the alicorns watched. She found herself adrift in a place of pure thought, of sights and sounds, of odours and nameless things. In the void she could touch every joy of past and future, taste the flow of time, trail her hooves through the stream of unbound space. The void was awash with sensation, like bubbles in a seething foam. Formless, she twirled, and the void swirled with her - no longer a place of visions, but of oil slicks and soap bubbles, of marzipan and clotted cream, of calliopes and music boxes and laughter - always laughter. Pinkie laughed, and the universe echoed her joy.
"See, Twilight? Isn't this awesome?"
Pinkie turned to her friend, but there was no one there.
"Twilight?"
She was all alone.
Pinkie scrabbled against the void and found only the cheery smeary watercolour of lost percepts and crumbling words. Spinning desperately, she tried to maintain a grasp on the scattering thoughts, syllables and letters, stretching desperately for the sense of harmony, the sense of order and righ Images began to flicker and twist. Meteors falling, Spiked, the stars were going dark. Slicing them open, there was something in the cupcakes. A face hung open, drifting from yawn into scaled mosaics. Couldn't quite remem it hurt, a reddened light empt Over the hills and The things that mattered Where were her friends abandoned, lost, alon Pretty lights awash with colour a remnant perfumed glimpse Pulling herself together she grasped the words one more time, Focus, there was nothing chaos joy and fear, Twilight could fix it if Twilight was here, Twilight! She screamed, but the only response was the crashing waves of the rock farm wind on a bitter night, eating sweets alone as the swayed in chaos, derelict the party house and destitute the streamers, pink and grey and grey and pink and if only Remembering holding on ponyville's cyclopean stonesNo! the thatch and candy, sunlight--Purple and White and Blue and Grey and Orange and Yellow and Grey and Pink and Grey and Grey dusting of ice on the icing covered dust a mantle of mourning a mantlepiece by morning's lighthearted laught oyalty slip immemorial misted in crinkles and crack-centered chaosPonyville! Shadows a-dance in the Twilight, Sparkling returning to lost and alone and scattered and friendship, the elements magic the fading undone Cold began to grip her limbs and mind the gap between the world's best friends forever alone lost and the Emptiness choking the lightless mind pins and
needles stabbing cold choking the airless lungs Void and tingling static drifts the snowRemember! wrapping up the only coldAnd ice cream!Drifting tingling rippli ItsyBitsyTwinki empty cold alone the scent of kindness in a flay
rend the cloudsRainbows too long agoBring them back oh PleaseA Door unlocks on darkn aningless A scowling face
and laughter, mocking lau ces rising rippling shaking ap Balloons and light, she could,
she could find them again, Th re apples in the fields and clou tars going out like candles all the
worlds, li reflies in corded webs, a sea of spiders prickling flesh No there were diamo bright,
and butterflies and songs, a place a memoryCome along n ime to harvest the south fieldDiamonds merely
rocks the the stars a sham Flies adrift and apples twisted Don't understand where are we who are we
where do we go Back oncentrate remember, bring them backLonely oid, crashing chaos,
lullabies o et, forg sleepy sweet, ashes o bered lands and Back to the beginning,
swimming images, somewhere else Twilight, please! Her friends reme spair enshrouded thick grey wool and
crawling, cold and dark, Remember! Spin the images, the words, the numbing now black alone
adrift coldRemember! Loyalty! Honest ndness! Generosity! A dull and achi ld laments in
places nev blindness tainting the mind, airless, none can he Twilight! Here and
hearing, a memory, no more, Bu mories and dreams, that come, to focus,
will,Cold!Cold! Remember what? A hollow thought. Please ck. bring them ba
Please
Come
Back
The images on the screens swam and danced, like the unspoken thoughts of a universe made real. Some were memories, crisp and immutable, others flickered and blended, dreams of worlds that might never be. Twilight blinked.
"What happened? How did you--?"
Pinkie smiled. "I recreated the universe. It was the only way to get you back."
Twilight looked around in wonder. It was all here, just as she remembered.
"You knew how to make all this?"
"Well, no. I didn't need to. I just remembered the first couple of sentences, and the details all basically fill themselves in. You'd be surprised how often that works."
"Pinkie, you need to promise--"
"It's okay, Twilight. I won't do it again. I've moved this whole thing over to the side of reality, so after I close up here, we won't even remember it. I've learned my lesson."
"But, if we won't remember it, how do you know it won't just happen again?"
"I think the lessons we learn will stay with us. Sink into our characters, even if we lose track of the specific memories. The same way lessons always work."
"I'm surprised at you, Pinkie. That's actually pretty insightful. Okay, so what is it you've learned?"
Pinkie Pie cleared her throat. "Ahem. Letter To The Princess background music please!"
Twilight rolled her eyes as the quiet instrumental theme began to play.
"My dearest princess Twilight. Today I learned not to play with the fabric that underlies the very nature of our reality. Unless it's really really funny.
Your faithful Pinkie Pie, Pinkie Pie.
"P.S. The end."
Executive Producers Discord
Pinkie Pie