Space, Intentionally Left Blank
The Rule Makes its Own Hearts
From the deep night sky, stories shone down upon the spires of the city, stories coded in myths and memes, each wrapped in one apt symbol, then pinned to the heavens with nails of light, constellations embodied with spiky skeletons of meaning. Some tales were uplifting, some edifying. A few were dire warnings. Many, far too many, constituted epitaphs, vine-swallowed tombstones, rough cairns full of splintered bones but overgrown with wildflowers…
The lights in the sky were scars. That was her secret.
She stood poised on the highest spire of Castle Canterlot, night colored and night-shaded, as the heavens wheeled around her in a cacophony of twinkling lights, nebulae drifting with millennial slowness across the sky like puffs of smoke frozen in time.
She was surrounded by skreeking, flappery bats. They swarmed around her, settled upon her, became the nightmare persona along with her. Now, she was the goddamn bats. Gone was the veneer of pleasantries and compromises, tea ceremonies and fiscal adjustments… She had wrapped the shadows of night about her as a mantle, and thrilling energy ran through her naked skin.
She poised for the leap under the starwheels above; the time was almost upon her. Almost as a whim, with a casual toss of her head and flash of her horn, she summoned the moon over the horizon and into the night sky, for what would possibly be the very last time…
Then she spread her wings and leaped forward into the night. She plunged down the towerside with wind-whistling speed building upon her, then caught the air fully and swooped out over the grand concourse, passing over street vendors, bored guards, couples dining upon balconies. Stinks of hearthfires and incense smoke and fried foods and unclean gutters whipped by her as she built speed, scooping air with her great wings, faster and faster, until she cleared the parapets at the edge of the city and sailed out over the land, catching the dying thermals from the cooling landscape as she built up a swirling coil of magic about her horn that formed a vortex that whirled about her like a turbine, propelling her towards the remote mountains and the faint glow beyond…
And still it was not fast enough. She cast her eyes to the skies… There they were now! The constellations Monoceros, Pegasus, and Equuleus gathered, reaching down from the heavens with friendly tendrils of power.
The stars would aid in her escapades!
The tendrils entered her horizontal whirlwind, entwined with it, and their combined magic shimmered like iridescence as the swirls grew tighter… then the critical point was reached, and the way was opened before her, and she cried out in joy as she shot forward like a shooting star, a comet tail streaking behind her.
Night-gloomed forests shot by below her, rivers wriggled in silvery gleams and turned swiftly away from her path, torchlit towns loomed over hills and faded behind her. She sped towards the horizon, which kept pace ahead of her, frisky and teasing.
But soon, there was a glimmer of brightness over the remote mountains, then a grey band in the sky, then a reddening as the lower notes of light fought through the air to her eyes… and then, a sunset in reverse, as she caught up with the blazing orb her sister had pushed on its way over an hour ago.
Still not fast enough! She spotted some conveniently dense clouds, redlined by the sun, and her eyes flared white as she chanted out a spell, and the clouds swelled and burst, scattering their water into a sparse haze and spilling a pair of sex-and-sleep-dazed pegasi into the sky. The solar rays shone through the mist, angles of reflection meshed neatly, fanning the light into radiant spectra, and shimmering rainbow light surrounded her in glory. She shrieked with laughter and rolled about like a kitten in the sky, bathing in colors, blinding away her demons, a Lady of Light.
The displaced pegasi, flapping frantically to stay in place in the airy turmoil, watched in confusion and awe as her speed spell assimilated this new power that grew around her, glowing and growing, until it shot forward like a coherent beam and carried her off at the fastest rate yet, leaving a lightboom in her wake and a faint afterimage of her winking at them.
Undaunted, undesolate, unnightly, and nigh un-nyaned, she rode the rainbow trail, leaving shimmering clouds behind her and casting flys about her, dreamhooks to the dawn-drowsy citizens, causing chaos, eliciting illusions, touching dreams in the little towns she passed. And above, the fainter stars faded, washed away by blue brilliance, and each constellation that was lost to view was like shedding an old memory… As the light surrounded and warmed her, she felt lighter inside. It was okay to let it go, okay to be free, okay to live only for what might be.
Okay to not be blue.
She flashed across the sky, taking the course of a day in but a few hours, and soon had outpaced the sun and left it far behind her, so that it seemed to set again in her wake. She’d made very good time!
She allowed herself to relax a bit as she slowed down; the loss of starpower no longer inconvenienced her. She looped about in chromatic coils, filling the sky with defiant obscenities in cursive discourse, of course. She’d no remorse, except, of course, the famous mistread, the last step of her worst downfall, but even that was being shed, as if she had bled her sins into the red light of the star in her wake… Healing by Helious weal, as she wove weftly across the sky…
And there, below her, a wandering poet pondered the dawn upon a grassy hilltop, waiting for inspiration…
And she suddenly wanted his spirit in her. He looked delicious.
She swooped down and grabbed him around his barrel, hoisted him into the sky as he squawked and scrabbled vainly at the air, wrapping him in charms and enchantments and her soothing presence, whispering into his ear to calm and encourage him, as she carried him off to a small and intimate little cloud. And there she took him on, and he took her on, and they took each other, over and over in shuddering exultant joy, until the cloud was dense with the water of their bodies and the magical glow of their lust.
And afterward, she carried him down and dropped him where she’d found him, and he fell and lay exhausted, nose pressed deep into leaves of grass and daffodils. She would never think about him again, and he’d dream of her for the rest of his life.
She flew on with a pleasant lightness in her loins and the soreness left by his teeth at the nape of her neck, the continual dawn following behind her as she charged ahead in a twilight space with the stars like ghosts, twinkles of faint points in the silvery sky–
But not for long, for she had arrived at the other side of the globe, the flipside of the coin, the reverse of the medal, the B side that complemented and redeemed the A side. You wouldn’t know it save by celestial signs, for it all looked much the same as where she’d left. Here, fields were tilled, cities were built, rivers flowed and forests grew and graveyards filled; it was a pattern that echoed through time like the voices in a fugue. You just had to live long enough to observe it in action, to have a chance of perceiving the growth of an ancient oak or the burgeoning of a stellar cloud of gas, vaster than suns…
The towns and country, the slender palace at the center, might all be called something else here, but it all worked the same… Just as with the sun and moon; it was all the same light when you came down to it.
She settled gently on the tallest parapet, her coat now a shining white. Before her stood a mare as tall as she, cloaked in scarlet and orange, the colors of a setting sun. They stood a while, taking each other’s measure; all they’d ever needed to say to each other had been said vast ages ago.
At length, the other nodded, smiling sadly, and flipped her cloak over to reveal a darker lining. She launched herself off the tower, cladding herself in shadows to escape detection, but shedding sunbeams as she herself undertook her long journey beyond the horizon, to seek out and reintroduce herself to the moon.
The newcomer sat and watched her leave. She had not much in common with her antipodal sibling nowadays, at least not at the surface, but some of their scars were the same.
But let it go, let it go!
She drew a great inspiring breath of the clean, clear air around her, and gazed out from the parapet over the city below and the populace asleep in their twilight-gray houses. Already their dreams were fading, their turmoils and distractions of the night slipping away as if they’d never been, as the instant of dawn approached. Regardless of who it was that directed the stellar wheels, the light had ever been there for them.
She was here for them, now. She took another deep breath as gentle breezes fluttered around her, and watched as the last of the ancient constellations, a particularly disastrous asterism, faded into the lightening sky. She let it go without a single tear. It was long past time to make room for new tales…
Then her spirit soared, and her body followed, wings shining white, and she flared her horn to once again greet the oncoming sun and guide it with joy into the morning sky, a daymare who’d dressed as a nightdream.
Space, Intentionally Left Blank
[This is the story as originally submitted for judging.]
From the deep night sky, stories shone down upon the spires of the city, stories coded in myths and memes, each wrapped in one apt symbol, then pinned to the heavens with nails of light, constellations embodied with spiky skeletons of meaning. Some tales were uplifting, some edifying. A few were dire warnings. Many, far too many, constituted epitaphs, vine-swallowed tombstones, rough cairns full of splintered bones but overgrown with wildflowers…
The lights in the sky were scars. That was her secret.
She stood poised on the highest spire of Castle Canterlot, night colored and night-shaded, as the heavens wheeled around her in a cacophony of twinkling lights, nebuli drifting with millennial slowness across the sky like puffs of smoke frozen in time.
She was surrounded by skreeking, flappery bats. They swarmed around her, settled upon her, became the nightmare persona along with her. Now, she was the goddamn bats. Gone was the veneer of pleasantries and compromises, tea ceremonies and fiscal adjustments… She had wrapped the shadows of night about her as a mantle, and thrilling energy ran through her naked skin.
She poised for the leap under the starwheels above; the time was almost upon her. Almost as a whim, with a casual toss of her head and flash of her horn, she summoned the moon over the horizon and into the night sky, for what would possibly be the very last time…
Then she spread her wings and leaped forward into the night. She plunged down the towerside with wind-whistling speed building upon her, then caught the air fully and swooped out over the grand concourse, passing over street vendors, bored guards, couples dining upon balconies. Stinks of hearthfires and incense smoke and fried foods and unclean gutters whipped by her as she built speed, scooping air with her great wings, faster and faster, until she cleared the parapets at the edge of the city and sailed out over the land, catching the dying thermals from the cooling landscape as she built up a swirling coil of magic about her horn that formed a vortex that whirled about her like a turbine, propelling her towards the remote mountains and the faint glow beyond…
And still it was not fast enough. She cast her eyes to the skies… There they were now! The constellations Monoceros, Pegasus, and Equuleus gathered, reaching down from the heavens with friendly tendrils of power.
The stars would aid in her escapades!
The tendrils entered her horizontal whirlwind, entwined with it, and their combined magic shimmered like iridescence as the swirls grew tighter… then the critical point was reached, and the way was opened before her, and she cried out in joy as she shot forward like a shooting star, a comet tail streaking behind her.
Night-gloomed forests shot by below her, rivers wriggled in silvery gleams and turned swiftly away from her path, torchlit towns loomed over hills and faded behind her. She sped towards the horizon, which kept pace ahead of her, frisky and teasing.
But soon, there was a glimmer of brightness over the remote mountains, then a grey band in the sky, then a reddening as the lower notes of light fought through the air to her eyes… and then, a sunset in reverse, as she caught up with the shining orb her sister had pushed on its way over an hour ago.
Still not fast enough! She spotted some conveniently dense clouds, redlined by the sun, and her eyes flared white as she chanted out a spell, and the clouds swelled and burst, scattering their water into a sparse haze and spilling a pair of sex-and-sleep-dazed pegasi into the sky. The solar rays shone through the mist, angles of reflection meshed neatly, fanning the light into radiant spectra, and shimmering rainbow light surrounded her in glory. She shrieked with laughter and rolled about like a kitten in the sky, bathing in colors, blinding away her demons, a Lady of Light.
The displaced pegasi, flapping frantically to stay in place in the airy turmoil, watched in confusion and awe as her speed spell assimilated this new power that grew around her, glowing and growing, until it shot forward like a coherent beam and carried her off at the fastest rate yet, leaving a tiny lightboom in her wake and a faint afterimage of her winking at them.
Undaunted, undesolate, unnightly, and nigh un-nyaned, she rode the rainbow trail, leaving shimmering clouds behind her and casting flys about her, dreamhooks to the dawn-drowsy citizens, causing chaos, eliciting illusions, touching dreams in the little towns she passed. And above, the fainter stars faded, washed away by blue brilliance, and each constellation that was lost to view was like shedding an old memory… As the light surrounded and warmed her, she felt lighter inside. It was okay to let it go, okay to be free, okay to live only for what might be.
Okay to not be blue.
She flashed across the sky, taking the course of a day in but a few hours, and soon had left the sun far behind her, about to set again in her wake. She’d made very good time!
She allowed herself to relax a bit as she slowed down; the loss of starpower no longer inconvenienced her. She looped about in chromatic coils, filling the sky with defiant obscenities in cursive discourse, of course. She’d no remorse, except, of course, the famous mistread, the last step of her worst downfall, but even that was being shed, as if she had bled her sins into the red light of the star in her wake… Healing by Helious weal, as she wove weftly across the sky…
And there, below her, a wandering poet pondered the dawn upon a grassy hilltop, waiting for inspiration…
And she suddenly wanted his spirit in her. He looked delicious.
She swooped down and grabbed him around his barrel, hoisted him into the sky as he squawked and scrabbled vainly at the air, wrapping him in charms and enchantments and her soothing presence, whispering into his ear to calm and encourage him, as she carried him off to a small and intimate little cloud. And there she took him on, and he took her on, and they took each other, over and over in shuddering exultant joy, until the cloud was dense with the water of their bodies and the magical glow of their lust.
And afterward, she carried him down and dropped him where she’d found him, and he fell and lay exhausted, nose pressed deep into leaves of grass and daffodils. She would never think about him again, and he’d dream of her for the rest of his life.
She flew on with a pleasant lightness in her loins and the soreness left by his teeth at the nape of her neck, the continual dawn left behind her as she charged ahead in a twilight space with twinkles of faint points in the silvery sky–
But not for long, for she had arrived at the other side of the globe, the flipside of the coin, the reverse of the medal, the B side that complemented and redeemed the A side. You wouldn’t know it save by celestial signs, for it all looked much the same as where she’d left. Farmers worked in fields below, citizens built their cities, rivers flowed and forests grew and graveyards filled, it was a pattern that echoed through time like the voices in a fugue. You just had to live long enough to observe it in action, to have a chance of perceiving the growth of an ancient oak or the burgeoning of a stellar cloud of gas, vaster than suns…
The towns and country, the slender palace at the center, might all be called something else here, but it all worked the same. Just as with the sun and moon; it was all the same light when you came down to it.
She settled gently on the tallest parapet, her coat now a shining white. Before her stood a mare as tall as she, cloaked in scarlet and orange, the colors of a setting sun. They stood a while, taking each other’s measure; all they’d ever needed to say to each other had been said vast ages ago.
At length, the other nodded, smiling sadly, and flipped her cloak over to reveal a darker lining. She launched herself off the tower, cladding herself in shadows to escape detection, but shedding sunbeams as she herself undertook her long journey beyond the horizon, to seek out and reintroduce herself to the moon.
The newcomer sat and watched her leave. She had not much in common with her antipodal sibling nowadays, at least not at the surface, but some of their scars were the same.
But let it go, let it go! She drew a great inspiring breath of the clean, clear air under the gray sky, then turned, flaring her horn to greet again the oncoming sun and lift it happily into the sky, a daymare who’d dressed as a nightdream.
