The elderly stallion’s last breath billowed out like a puff of fog. Only then did he blink and look up.
“You must choose,” my old friend said to him, her black cloak shimmering in the shadowed room. He didn’t flinch from her, didn’t raise an eyebrow, only sat up from his place on the bed.
These ponies never failed to surprise me. A mysterious figure looming over him, when he would have no idea what was happening? Based on all my experiences with them, I would expect ponies to quake, stutter, run away. But they just calmly watched, every time.
I never stood on tradition much. My friend always said the cloaks, muted coloration of our fur, and frightful implements we carried served as a badge of office, but I’d never seen the purpose. The scythes, yes, I suppose—nothing else would quite do the job, but the cloaks? They only provided concealment and needless intimidation, and yet the point was moot, since ponies never seemed intimidated. I’d think it unnerving, but then I never fully understood ponies. I rather liked them.
The stallion squinted one eye at her. “Choose?”
“Her or me,” she replied. If I found ponies fascinating, she saw them only as commodities, a job that needed doing. Always so laconic and to the point, she rarely spoke a single word more than absolutely necessary, except to me.
The stallion’s gaze swept the air to either side of her, never finding purchase on my form. Certainly not an unusual result, but a definitive one nonetheless. If he saw only her, that made the verdict clear. Most ponies chose her—chose her because they could not even perceive me there.
The decision made, Lethe swung her blade at him, an edge made only of scintillating starlight, fastened to a rough-hewn haft of ironwood. It trailed crackling streaks of electricity as it soared at him, but he made not a single move to evade it. It struck him full in the chest, but he spared it no more than the most ordinary of glances.
Again, these ponies surprise me. They instinctively knew that we meant only to help them; they must find us comforting in some way. It helps. It really does. It would be far more taxing to usher ponies to their afterlives if they constantly regarded us as wraiths and monsters, but they find only peace with us. I will never understand, but I am grateful.
His soul now separated from his earthly form, the stallion blinked once more and looked over his body, his home, his property… even the photographs of his family on the wall and his aged wife sleeping beside him. Not one of them warranted a glimmer of recognition. He simply floated away with a dull smile, as most do.
Lethe caught me staring after him, and not for the first time. She was always too inquisitive for her own good—but wasn’t that my failing as well? My eternal curiosity over these wards of ours, her dedication to our mission and need to question any deviation on my part from that mindset.
“Why do you let them fill your thoughts?” she asked, direct as usual.
“I wish I could explain it,” I replied, my gaze lingering over those family photographs again. “You see the beauty of it, don’t you?”
She quickly nodded, her jaw firm and her chest swelling. And she did, too—beauty in the law, beauty in order. But there was more. I laid a hoof on her shoulder. “I know,” I said with a smile. “Form and function in perfect harmony. But the way they take solace in us? When pain ends, when suffering abates? Do you notice how their eyes light up in that last instant they fade away? Don’t you wish to see what they see, to know what we have done for them?”
Few things could make Lethe chuckle. “Ever the dreamer,” she said through her laughter, curling a foreleg over my withers and giving me a squeeze. I hugged her back, took in that warmth against me that few other members of the Pantheon would ever suspect was there. I even closed my eyes, felt her heartbeat thrum beside my own. And then I glanced at the photographs again.
Family. I understood romantic love, but I had no need for it. Family, though. Like Lethe—a sister to me in every way that mattered. I loved her fiercely. But that stallion had children as well. I would never know the feeling. Gods didn’t have children, not in that way. Born fully formed, no dependency on parents. Because they wanted it so, I assumed, but that did not necessarily make it the only way. Still, it was no more than a curiosity—I had no time for such things.
“Come. We have work to do,” Lethe said.
When did we not have work to do? Every few minutes, another wavering soul beckoned to us, our only respite coming when we suspended time to take our rest. Lethe chose to far less often than I would, but we were a team, and we needed to function together, so I deferred to her.
I nodded and teleported with her to the next ethereal traveler needing our guidance.
Many days and many souls later, we slipped through a house’s open window, in the hours just before dawn. We could have merely spirited through the wall, of course, but a little variety keeps things interesting.
A child this time. I rarely lingered enough to see the parents’ reaction—only if they happened to be there already. But lately, the thought of children had consumed my mind. Someone a pony loved, not only as a companion, but being a part of them, utterly depending on them. I loved Lethe, a sister by choice, not by birth, but she could very well take care of herself.
The baby looked up from her crib and cooed at us—she actually saw me! Many ponies go through their entire lives never achieving that. Others have it inherently, as this one did, but they may lose it as the burdens of the world eventually wear them down. In her case, it did not matter which one she chose; she had very little life to take with her anyway.
“What is her name?” I asked, not that it mattered.
Lethe flicked a hoof, and a scroll appeared in it, which she unfurled, then scanned down the schedule. “Cinnamon Swirl.”
I smiled and tapped a hoof to the baby’s nose, eliciting a squeal from her. She clapped her hooves and reached for me. “I suppose she has made her choice,” Lethe said. With a slight grin, which no other being in existence but I could have detected. It was only for my sake anyway; she seldom smiled, except when I did.
So I picked Cinnamon up and rocked her in my forehoof. But she creased her brow and stretched a leg back toward her crib. Heedless of her body lying there, she jabbed a hoof at some manner of toy. “Shh, little one. You will not need it.” As I held up my scythe, her eyes glimmered. We prefer the dramatic slash, just for the look of it, but in truth, anything more than a brief touch will do. “Go on. It will not hurt you. I promise.”
At first, she barely ran the edge of a hoof against the blade, which lit up fully at the contact. Then Cinnamon Swirl babbled something indecipherable and wrapped her forelegs around it. And she faded away. One of the precious few.
So many go with Lethe, who sends them to the afterlife with no memory. They still enjoy the fruits they had earned in life, but without a full understanding, without the possibility of rekindling old friendships. Everything, wiped clean.
Or they may choose me, Mnemosyne. I send them through enlightened, with full knowledge of all things and memory of their lives. But it takes a degree of enlightenment already to have the choice in the first place—more yet to understand it. Thus, Lethe ushers most on, I take a few slightly aware ponies who pick me by chance, and I get to facilitate the rare soul who knows what I represent.
Cinnamon Swirl did not understand, but she could see me, and good fortune smiled on her. No. No, I could not view it that way. That would diminish what Lethe does, and I could never condone that attitude. She treats them with just as much respect as I, and she is far more vital. No, good fortune smiled on me. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked as Cinnamon’s final giggle echoed.
Lethe nodded. But where she saw beauty in order and function and law, I saw it in life and nature and ponies. And in our task, our views intersected. If only she could see the wonder of it all sometimes. Her rigorous mindset blinded her to so many things. She probably thought the same about me.
With Cinnamon’s warmth ebbing from my skin, I hugged my empty foreleg to my chest.
Normally, we would suspend time for a few hours at most. We do not require sleep, though a rest does help us to clear our minds. We are strictly forbidden from taking a respite for any other purpose. Life goes on, after all, and thus so does death.
We also spent most of our breaks together. Sometimes, we’d visit somewhere scenic, or we might just take a nap, up against each other. Ponies rarely touched us, and most had no idea I was even there, so we enjoyed that feeling once in a while.
“I simply feel more tired than usual, nothing more,” I said. Lethe raised an eyebrow and stared back as if waiting for me to burst out laughing. When I didn’t, she sat on her haunches.
“Is this about Cinnamon Swirl?”
It took every ounce of effort I could muster to give no more than a lazy shake of my head. “She is gone, and there will be no shortage of others.” A day, maybe two. That would give me a chance to roll it all around in my head. If I could only get closer to understanding—
Lethe opened her mouth to reply, so I forced a yawn. Still, she frowned at my response, but I couldn’t fathom what about it had displeased her.
A lie. To myself, to her. She hadn’t meant it in that way, but she didn’t press me on it. Was this about Cinnamon Swirl? No, not her specifically. I hadn’t answered Lethe’s question.
Her eyes trailed me as I flopped onto our bed and stretched my legs out. “You are welcome to join me, of course.”
“Three days?” At least her stiff posture melted. I surely couldn’t have intended to deceive her if I invited her to stay.
“Mmhmm,” I said, nestling into the pillow and closing my eyes. On the rare occasion I wanted a longer break, she would do one of two things: nap with me for a few hours, then get restless and strike out to do something on her own; or go find something to amuse herself immediately, get bored with it, and fall asleep somewhere else. Either way, she would leave without my having to ask her.
Such a question would invite suspicion, but I need not even pose it if she stayed true to form. And she would. My sister, the one I knew better than any in the cosmos.
Lethe leaned over the bed and gave me a hug. If she lay down, she would feel—
I gulped and stirred, anything to keep her from noticing my racing heart, jolting my chest over and over. “I will see you in three days, then,” she said.
With a halfhearted nod, I lay still and listened to her hoofsteps recede. “I hope you find what you need,” she said. Ice and fire fought each other in the pit of my stomach. She wouldn’t understand, she’d tell me to stop, but I couldn’t simply cut it off like that, and…
In millennia past, she would have told me to stop and left it at that, even without knowing what had stolen my thoughts. But not today. I should have hugged her back. She deserved it, she deserved so much, but now she was gone.
I took a deep breath. A few hours should suffice. Then I could get up, roam about, start a small pocket of time again without Lethe knowing—
No. No, I meant only to have an opportunity to think, not to form plans, especially not to act on them. Besides, even if I tried, it would likely take longer than three days. Find a suitable candidate, somepony with bright eyes, who could see me and would willingly accompany me. In that isolated time bubble, a pony would perceive it as more of a dream…
No. No plans. I had only to work through this… this detestable melancholy, so I could return to normal and do my job. With my sister. My beloved sister.
I gathered up my tail in my forehooves and drew out a sigh.
Never before had we taken that long to rest—nearly a week.
I’d had five days all to myself. A lot of time alone. A lot of time to think. By the time I actually fell asleep, I did need three days, and Lethe decided not to wake me. When I finally opened my eyes to the soft light of the between-time and we started the clocks forward again, a… a missing piece of me came back. Two parts of a whole, perfect memory and forgetfulness, neither one particularly advantageous on its own, but when applied in moderation, in balance…
We made a great team.
That was why I needed to tell her. But I could not. I had tried, I really had, but she could never know.
Days and weeks and months passed, and I had almost said something half a dozen times, the words bubbling up from my chest, only to be choked off. Lethe loved me. She loved me for who I was, but she also loved the law, and I could not make her choose. I’d never demand that she choose, but she would demand it of herself. She could rejoice with me, or she could hate me. Too much at stake, but I could not keep my secret forever.
I watched the last misty remnants of a soul departing to its rest, still staring long after it had lost any recognizable shape, and as Lethe shouldered her scythe, she asked me the same question she did periodically: “Why do you let them fill your thoughts?”
Sometimes I would answer, and sometimes I would not; either way, she would take whatever response I gave as the last word on the matter, for a few months at least. I merely shrugged, but she failed to turn away and beckon me on to our next task. It had always sufficed before.
Did she know? Under my cloak, my wings clamped against me, and an icy shock dug its talons into my back. Like a flash of lightning, her hoof jabbed forward, searched out my ribs, and pressed lower before I could step to deflect it. Her jaw set and a fire blazing in her eyes, she tore off my cloak in a swift motion.
I couldn’t do this to her, couldn’t make her choose! I loved her, I really did, as much as anything in all creation, but she would never understand, and maybe even I didn’t. Maybe I deserved this.
I… I huddled on the ground in front of her, let my scythe fall, and reached a hoof up. I should accept her judgment. It wasn’t my place to—to…
It wasn’t my place.
Lethe swung her weapon back, poised to strike my swollen abdomen, but… tears. Tears, behind the flame of her gaze! She shook and staggered as if under a monumental weight, and if the seething of her eyes were real, those tears would have boiled away before reaching the ground. But, one by one, they dotted the bare wooden floor.
In all the millennia we had existed, I had never seen Lethe cry. Never.
Still, she held her scythe cocked, but sagging now, a terrible burden. I hid my eyes and waited. What was I thinking? I could never have gotten what I wanted, not without making her complicit, and I had presumed to decide that for her! My only friend, and I… I’d failed her.
Her blade scraped against the floor. “You… joined with one of them?”
I nodded. She would not understand, but she would not care, either. That was not the problem.
“But… you are pregnant. We do not get pregnant.” The inferno froze, its flames consumed by ice. “Unless—”
Lurching forward, she lifted her scythe again, its pole braced on the floor. “Better to remove it now before anyone else discovers!” she shouted, the faint whistle of her blade slashing the air.
And a fire started in my own heart. I was a protector now, defender of a life incapable of defending itself. A life precious to me, even if I did not understand it yet.
I snatched up my scythe and blocked her attack, my haft crossed against hers, and shoved her back to the wall. There had to be another way! I wouldn’t let her kill my child! Lethe snarled at me as I bared my teeth. “I love her!” I yelled as loud as I could.
“You cannot. It is mortal!” Her legs trembled under the strain as I pressed her into the stone wall, harder.
“She is mortal. And I do not care!”
Lethe grunted and summoned up a burst of strength, pushing me back toward the room’s center, but with my cloak removed and my wings free, I gave a mighty flap to counter. “The Pantheon will never allow it!” she cried.
How many children had we ushered away since Cinnamon Swirl? Many, but none stuck in my mind as firmly, and Lethe had sensed it, I knew for certain! She had seen the way I held that baby…
She knew this was coming. Maybe not when—perhaps she had lived in dread of this day. In truth, I had as well.
There was nothing I could do. Escape, abandon my function and my friend? Or draw her into my crime? My strength left me, and I sank to my knees in front of her, my dear sister and my judge. All that remained to me was the truth.
“Then strike me with your blade, too, and remove all memory of these feelings!” I pleaded. With a clatter, my scythe fell, and I bowed my head. “I love her. Almost as much as I love you,” I said in a harsh whisper. And when I looked up again, my own fierce tears joined hers on the floor. Her always-unflinching gaze had broken, and she pressed a hoof to her eyes, a tremor shooting through her body.
“Who knows what effect it would have on an immortal?” she whimpered. A statement of fact, but one that for the first time lacked the full force of her conviction.
“I know,” I said as I reached out and hugged her to me. Drawing her close, pulling the Blade of Lethe between us, into my chest. There was no other way out. “You’re my best friend.” I needed her to know that. I needed her to know before I forgot and could never say it again.
“One eye on the living, one on the dead,” I’ve always thought since I was a filly, but I never understood why. Something that just sticks in my mind.
Maybe because I sometimes see things that aren’t there. For as long as I can remember, I’ve talked to ghosts that everypony insists I’ve made up. Most of the spirits barely look at me, and they don’t stay long or talk back, just wave good-bye.
I guess ponies think I’m funny or klutzy or something, but it’s hard to keep focused with all of those souls flitting about. Some of them are different, though. I used to have dreams about being one of the different ones, as a filly, but not anymore. At that age, though… It sounds strange, but I knew—
It gets hard to think sometimes.
I also knew as a filly that I’d make a wonderful mother, like… like I existed just for that purpose. Strange thing for a filly to know—but then I grew up, and it happened! My precious Dinky—I’d cheat death itself for her, if I had to.
Yeah. One eye on the living, one on the dead. But when I can get both eyes to work together… then those different spirits appear. Dinky sees them, too. And she isn’t afraid.
Like that mare with a strange glowing pole and a black cloak. She’ll show up in a crowd or by herself in a shadowed alcove. But when I blink, she’s gone. She always looks so sad, but I can never ask her why. Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe she forgot. It wasn’t always this way, but now the dead can only forget.
Now, why would I think that? It feels right, but I have no idea why it’s lodged in my mind like the surest fact. If that mare isn’t dead, though…
“Hello, Derpy!” Miss Cheerilee says as Dinky rushes out of the schoolhouse past her. I wave back, and I hug my daughter to me. I love her so much! She never fails to surprise me. None of these ponies do, and it’s wonderful living here!
Dinky trots ahead of me a few steps, but then she slows, and—
“She visited again today,” Dinky says. “She talked this time.”
Funny, I’d see her mouth move, but I could never hear that mare say anything. Good thing, too, because if she did, we could have a whole conversation, and I get enough strange looks for talking to the ones who can’t answer.
With a little skip in her step, Dinky bounces around me as I walk. “She said her name was Lethe—weird, huh?—and she said she wanted you to know she loved you, though you prob’ly wouldn’t know what it meant.”
Love? Wow, I… My cheeks feel warm, but what would I even do about that?
But Dinky just keeps skipping as if nothing’s out of the ordinary. “I told her she seemed like she was looking for something, and she said her sister went away a long time ago. But I said not to worry, that her sister wouldn’t ever forget her, not really.” Then Dinky stops and peers up at me. “She started crying.”
“Why?” I ask. I’ve never seen the mare do that before, and even though she looks sad to me, Dinky never describes her like that. Dinky always sees her smiling.
Dinky just shrugs. “I dunno. Something about perfect knowledge clashing with perfect forgetfulness. I asked her if that was like the ‘unstoppable force meets an immovable object’ thing I’ve heard before, and she said yes, and it could have unpredictable results, and she said—” puffing her chest out, Dinky closes her eyes and raises her chin “—I was the most enlightened pony she’d ever met.”
Where do these kinds of things get into Dinky’s head? Most times, she babbles on like any other foal, but once in a while, she comes up with these flashes of insight out of nowhere. Maybe that mare was right.
“Anyway,” Dinky says, resuming her trot down the road, “she told me her sister had a daughter! And she tried to do… something with her sister’s scythe to make sure the little filly could take her mom’s place someday. If she wanted to. But it might have to pass down through the family now if somepony couldn’t do it forever, and…” With another shrug, she kicks at a twig. “I dunno. Something about laws and special perm… permissions. I got kinda lost then.”
Dinky’s hopped onto a row of stones lining the roadside, and she peers down the bank at the stream. And I catch a glimpse of her birthmark. Funny we share that—I always thought birthmarks were pretty random, but I’ve got one on my chest: a blotch of beige that my roommate Carrot Top likens to a scar of a stab wound. Kind of morbid of her, but I guess I can see it. Then a smaller one, pretty similar, but on my stomach. That’s the one Dinky has, too.
“So I told her anypony would be crazy not to go with her,” Dinky says while balancing on one hoof, “but if she had to wait until the filly grew up, she was welcome to come see us whenever she got lonely.”
“Did that make her feel good?”
For a moment, Dinky scrunches up her nose. “I think so. She keeps an eye on her niece, so maybe that’ll make her too busy, but I hope she’ll visit.”
“I do, too.” Not the strangest conversation we’ve ever had, though I didn’t get half of what she was saying, but I bet I come across that way at times, too. I just like seeing where her mind takes her.
“Ooh, I wonder if the new Power Ponies comic went on sale today!” she says with a spark tiptoeing across her eyes. I have to chuckle at her—for as oddly mature as she can get, I’m glad she can still enjoy being a kid.
“We’ll check on the way to get groceries tomorrow,” I answer, and she adds an extra bounce. She gets a few paces ahead, and I glance around, but my eyes won’t cooperate, so I couldn’t see that mare even if she stood right beside me.
Lethe. Dinky may think it’s a weird name, but I kind of like it. “And please join us for muffins, if you would,” I say to the air, quiet enough that Dinky doesn’t hear.
Then, with a huge grin on my face, I follow my daughter home.
Author's Note
A quick word about where Lethe and Mnemosyne come from: It's probably not a stretch to say that people know about Charon from Greek mythology, who would ferry souls across the river Styx. There were actually five rivers in the underworld, and while passing through, souls would stop to drink from the river Lethe, which caused them to forget their earthly lives. Lethe was also the goddess of forgetfulness. Mnemosyne was the personification of memory, and there was another body of water, the pool of Mnemosyne. If souls drank from that instead, they would pass through enlightened, though very few did, and most of those who did weren't making a conscious choice—they drank from the pool by chance. Some Greeks, as they approached death, tried to think as hard as they could about the pool so that they might remember to drink from it instead of the river Lethe.
