Slowly Drifting, or The Lost Verses of Perique Blend

by Cynewulf

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Human, Original Character, Mystery, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 3044

A decade ago we sent an explorer to Earth, and a decade ago we lost all contact... until today, bits at a time

Of all of the ponies that could have been chosen to be a pioneer among the humans, Perique Blend was the least likely choice--amateur poet, tobacconist, former farmfilly. She didn't ask to leave. It wasn't her choice.

It's been a decade since anyone saw her, a decade without any contact between Perique and home. Until out of the blue, Princess Twilight Sparkle finds a letter addressed to her on her doorstep with part of an old manuscript inside and absolutely no explanation.

These are the Lost Verses.

Art by Huussii.
Tags added as story progresses/poems are added/interludes happen.
This is Not For You

Published 2016-07-19 05:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-07-19 05:20:01 UTC

Found Things

It was just an envelope.

If it hadn't been for Spike, she wouldn't have seen it. If she'd not seen it, Twilight would never have opened it and she would never have asked any of the questions she asked. She might not have seen the things she saw or spoke the words she spoke.

Or maybe she would have. The world and its workings are opaque and hard to make out, loathe as ponies and others are to admit.

But it was just an envelope sitting right outside the palace. Spike brought that first one to her along with all of the other letters and reports and the new books she'd acquired over the weekend. And there it had laid, deposited on her desk under a mountain of verbosity and mundanity, until Twilight stumbled upon it at last. No name, no date, no address. She asked Spike about it.

They both knew nothing. In the end, shrugging, Twilight Sparkle opened that letter, and she read.

Introduction

~~There comes a time when~~

~~Talk about how I got here?~~

~~Life must be lived forward but experienced back~~

List:

--Talk about the first morning?
--Reflection?
--The ~~cosmology?~~ find out native word
--On Writing?
--Should I start with poems?

Look.

I don't know how to start this. It's not a good beginning for a writer and I'm well aware of that. Why should you read this little book of poems when I apparently can't even put together a few sentences to describe what it is you're holding? I can hear you asking it even now.

I write you from my new home, dug by a friend into the side of cliff face. It is warm as such things can be, drafty at times but not unbearably so, and overlooks a great lake. It truly is a better home than the last few months have led me to expect. Shipwrecked as I was, I had come to see nothing in my future but a kind of awkward eternal vagrancy. But I have a bed now, and slightly primitive wood floors. I even have candles and a rough table I built myself.

All this to say, that I'm struggling to find a way to express what this volume in such a way as to impart any of what it actually means to me, and what it's already done.

I could describe how its existence bouyed my spirit in terrible times. I could mention how I risked death more than once so as not to be separated from the pack that held my bundled poems and maps. I could tell you about scrawling these words hiding under trucks and waiting in ditches. I had nightmares after the Antean that the words helped to soothe. Time has washed over me and only this final tie to my former life kept me sane, kept me who I am.

That's the best I can do. I can write when I need to, and when I want to. The story, the poem--the words on the page are a dream and once I wake from the dream I'm clueless. Right now, I'm awake, and all to self-aware, and so I stumble all over myself.

Maybe one day, all of it will be put together but I doubt it. Have you ever looked at a page and wondered how long it took to write that page? No doubt you've assumed all of this page was written at one time.

But already I've stretched it all out over a few years. I return over and over again to this pile of prose and verse and poke at it. I'll grow obsessed, working feverishly. Editing, writing new material, changing names and details... And then eventually, slowly, inevitably, I give up. I go back to my life in the river reeds and the creek beds. The book is too big. Life is fleeting before the longevity of art, even shoddy attempts like my own.

How many times can you say--this should be finished. I should write this--before you grow to hate the taste of those words in your mouth like curdled milk? How long can you hold a story or a feeling before it wilts and rots and infects you? Can you cradle words like a foal asleep at last and expect of them timidity? Could you bind the Antean? And could you with time and world enough cut language down to size?

It's thoughts like these, aimless, formless, frustrating, bleary-eyed--let's dispense with all that. The truth is that its thoughts like these, cynical at best, that keep me up at night. Thoughts, honest ones and forthright ones, concerning my absence from Equestria. Concerning my farm and my agent and the shop down the road in the village. How long did it take for the back entrance watchpony to notice I was gone?

It's sad to realize that only my regulars, old stallions with bitter tongues and sad eyes, knew I was gone. At some point only they knew and nopony else. I had no wife or husband, no darling foal. I was myself alone, a family unto myself, an island in a sea of equinity. And now, ironically, fittingly, I am this way forever.

Eight years. Wow, I really got sidetracked there, didn't I? This is more of a log than an introduction.

The snow? The snow can bite my ass. Wish I was worth a damn at weatherworking. But it makes for good writing, strange enough. The world rarely makes for bad writing. When we write foul or untrue things I find the world was working against me more than not. Perhaps that's bias. Probably is. Perception is flawed fundamentally. Sometimes I wonder how arrogant it must be to assume any of what I see is accurate.

Even on the verge of sleep I finish this, writing a decade in exile.

This was to be my introduction and after some thought, it is a good one.

I was not structured or organized. I postured as much as I wilted in apathy. I tried but did not always try. I was lonely. The world was often dark and often cold and always dangerous. My call for help never made it.

This is what I lived as I wrote. And it's all you need to know.

This wasn't for you.

I think it was for me.

~Perique Blend

Book I.1-3

Book I.1-3

On Earth Ponies (A Hymn)

The works and the days they are

Done with, the long stretch of

Agrarian years they are

Done with all, the call of the trees is

Done with, and accomplished the

Apple demands—family and the

Weight of duty.

Oh, but the Earth was ever mine—

Ever faithful ever true.

Ponies of the earth, we the movers

Of the grain, who tend the vineyards

Of the Grapes, who are the growers

Of Apples—

Who love the Good Earth.

Oh, but the Earth was ever mine—

Ever faithful ever true.

No flyer of clouds am I, nor my

Ponies those who build pillars

Of cloud—These hooves built for

Hard things are, built for the

Slow things are to guard and for

Living things are the hooves of

The Ponies I come from meant.

Oh, but the Earth was ever mine—

Ever faithful ever true.

And I have no magic because I need

None, need no wings, need no

Wine of heady sort to grace tongue

And no mysteries in runes. I have

World enough, and time,

And commands to ask not of

Tomorrow

But only to enjoy the lilies of the

Field

Which is to say

That the love of Earth is mine and

The World is enough.

On Pegasi—A Primer

When you ride the lightning, it doubles back and

Without fail, you’ll lose it. Without fail,

Promise you with all my heart, you’ll

Get that aching. The Aching, you’ll think, with a big proper

Capital A to make it all special. There’ll be

Lightning in your brain and lightning in your heart and

Lightning in your eyes. Son,

When it crashes, keep your wings steady and

Your eyes rolling all about. You’ll want to play

And revel and love in the storm, want to

Live, but it’s not time to live, it’s time to work and

All that entails and means.

It’s like preening, when a pretty mare wants you, when

You win—that’s what a storm’s like, son. It’s all sound

And fury, noise and preparation. Your throat closes up,

Your eyes don’t wanna stay still, and your hooves shake in midair

And that is okay It’s okay, though the wind tear and the rain pour and

The lightning yell its rage at you,

It’s all okay. World needs a few strong storms now and then

And I guess that means you too.

Concerning Unicorns, a Lesson

My son, my apprentice:

Listen

Closely, keep your eyes straight

And your mind clear. Open your heart

And keep your horn lit--keep those

Orbs balanced in harmony with

Themselves and the Song-spun

Universe. Now--

I'm going to tell you what it all means

Surely you've felt it

Seen it

Creeping at the corners, shy before

Your questing, searching eye.

Our tribe guided the sun

In its glory

And the moon

In its splendor

And we counted the stars and knew them

Each by name. Yet that does not

Satisfy. Does it?

Our brothers understood the earth

And our sisters understood the sky

But what did we understand?

What was there apart from

The Good Earth and the Joyful Sky?

You've seen glimpses of what we

Knew in your studies already,

Lifting training weights, lighting up

Rooms, adjusting heat and cold,

Reading in silent vaults.

You've glimpsed the recursive, spiraling

Of existence like the grooves in your horn.

Beneath the recursion

"there lies an inviolate layer"

So also beneath our feet and above our horns

There too is an inviolate Mystery.

Do not lose your focus,

For we know the Mystery now.

So eager for knowledge and so

Eager for something to show our brothers

And our sisters, we chased it and chased it--

Finally we too would return with

Something of worth and they would

Love us and we would be worthy

Of their love.

We locked ourselves in high towers

And in endless libraries,

We searched the vast darkness of space

And we delved into the darkness

In the corners of our hearts,

And with time we became cold.

Our desperate love grew cancerous

Until it became disdain for companions

And the revels of our former friends.

(We were cold just fine in our

Finery, before ever the Windigo!)

That's good for now. Put your

Tools of practice away. Come down

And eat.

The Mystery? If you insist.

In all of our grasping, we failed to see

That all alone beneath all things

In decency and order there beat Love

At the heart of all magic worth casting.

When you weave arcane energy

You weave your heart-strands,

You weave your own world-love

And make of it a light for your friends in the dark.

We thought the answer was to Know.

We never needed to know.

Our brothers and sisters loved us

All along.

A Pegasus to fight for me

And an earth pony to sing for me

And tell yourself:

I will repay their love with my own.

Power, mystery, lore, philosophy, riches

And yet.

It is the greatest of these.

Author's Note

[Twilight Sparkle]

I'm not really sure what to feel about the one to, well, Unicorns.

Who is Perique? The question is still bothering me. What, for that matter, is Perique? Some investigation reveals that perique is a term used to describe a labor intensive way for curing tobacco, which would suggest that Mr. or Ms. Blend is from the east. Griffon country. A griffon? But a griffon writing a trilogy of poems to the three main tribes of Equestria is a bit odd. Not impossible, mind you, simply odd. For that matter, griffons have different naming conventions than ponies... no.

It's too much to get bogged down in.

I sent my request for information to the constabulary of Canterlot, hoping that they might have some information on missing ponies named Perique. Dropped by the mayor's office, but she didn't have anything helpful. Still, we had tea, which was nice. She's been really accommodating about the whole "castle sprouting up out of nowhere" thing.

~~The unicorn poem caught my eye, but it didn't seem to really~~
~~It's just that no one thinks like tha~~

I thought about my own reaction to Trixie, the first time around. Unicorns with a lot of magical power and potential are often isolated socially. I'm not really alone there, but I was fortunate to at least have Spike and my family around me. Some unicorns in Canterlot who were prodigies didn't have that glowing support system and they became insular and bitter.

I'm not sure that my friends would understand why--and honestly, that's okay. We're all different. I wouldn't understand what growing up on a farm or up in the clouds was like, though I could read so as to not be totally ignorant. There are a lot of things I can't really talk about with most of my friends because they've never felt the surge of magic outside of the Elements and even then they didn't understand it. High-level unicorns find that so much of their life becomes swallowed up in this thing that your classmates can't keep up with or your parents find strange and then...

And I guess someone had told me this when I was younger. Or, well. I take it back--my father said things not unlike this. I just wish I had listened and realized there was more to life than work and study and the thrum of arcane energy along my horn.

[Perique's Notes]

Old. Garbage. Really want to try again with these before I return.

Book III.5 "A N T E A N"

A N T E A N

Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more
This giant like a tree is planted, solitary in the grass,
Does his size command--it must mean
Something, it must be some sign.
Sixteen hands high he is
His head must hold up the skies.
What could I say him that will explain him?
Shall I tell you that the earth beneath this giant quakes? Or
That he pulls a plow taller than Celestia and twice as powerful, shall I
Tell you this stallion who holds up the sky with his gentle head is beyond me in scope
Or that in his eyes the universe is tilted by perspective, that he sees from above what
Cannot be seen from below that he stands between myself on the wing and my sister
Upon the ground?
I can't tell you that.
Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more and his gaze unsettles me.
You'll think of that height and think of Celestia shining like the dawn over the mountain
And I'll think of the moonlight spilling over the tip of Ghastly Gorge outside my door on the rocky floor
But the Antean is neither of these things.
He stands colossal and singular but his singularity is
Simple and simplistic, it does not draw the eye or the mind or the heart through
Granduer or glory or song or laughter but
In that it is so utterly starkly
Blank.
Not mindless but blank, as he grazes eyes large and seeing all they see still nothing they are blank
As a parchment untouched is blank before me deep in the Colony in the Gorge in my cavern on my desk
In the darkness in the city where no wax candle lives where no day pony sees but feels and whispers--
That is what I saw in the giant's eyes. And then
I shrank, terrified. Is this what
I am, mindless and grazing, seeing all yet seeing nothing, knowing nothing, being
Nothing, am I beneath a thin veneer like this giant of Earth this Antean
So like the stories and songs of the West yet so horribly alien?
Is this the promised end is this is this
And yet.
Gently lives the Antean in the sunny vale, trotting to the crude fence of wood
And thrusting his great nose down at me in greeting wordless yet obvious
And in my horror I did not know what to do so I returned that greeting
And found
That he was kind yet blank yet kind.
And then, when he had satisfied his curiosity, he left. The Antean was the sea and the sea
Is not troubled.
But I have never been much of a sailor. I think perhaps
Sometimes, when I worry, that the worry is the difference.
Sixteen hands high he is and holding up the sky,
There are worse things beneath heaven's vault than giants.

Author's Note

[Twilight]

I thought this sounded familiar. Anteans were an ancient tribe of ponies. Well, I say tribe, but in reality they seem to have been as much myth as genetic/magic mishap. Anteans were massive. The old legends claim they were taller than houses at full height, but more scholarly works suggest that if they existed, Anteans were probably closer to twice a pony's height, if only because any higher would begin to cause problems that all large creatures deal with.

Apparently gentle creatures, Anteans often attempted to attach themselves to primitive herds or nascent villages as protectors. Slow to wrath but terrible when so motivated, Anteans roamed in solitary existence unless they could find smaller ponies to accept them. Most legendary accounts claimed they gathered and left for the west not long before Equestria was founded. Some scholars suggest that a tribe that may have inspired the "Anteans" of legend may have been living around Vanhoover as late as the coronation of Princesses Celestia and Luna.

First time I've seen "hands" used as a measurement. I'm assuming said hands are larger than Spikes, because sixteen of his little hands isn't really all that awe-inspiring.

[Perique]

I had nightmares for weak.

Daisy was nice. ~~Illegible~~ let me stay the night on the ranch ~~and I really thought~~ I was foolish.