Oddly, "Burial" Doesn't Seem To Be An Option
The Bearers looked down at the corpse.
It was definitely a corpse. As bodies went, they didn't get much deader -- at least, not without becoming somewhat less intact, for this freshest of the deceased had been kicked into the shadowlands with all her limbs attached. But that state of death was a complete certainty. She had been sent into the last pasture. She was grazing in the final fields. She was, in all ways, an ex-pony, and she'd frankly deserved it.
It was just that... there was a body, and they'd never had one of those before. Statues, yes, and statues were placed in gardens. There was an extant historical consensus on what you were supposed to do with a statue. A corpse was unfamiliar territory. In a way, through the ending of her life, she had kicked off a new and exciting portion of theirs. The next move was entirely up to them.
"...so what do we do with it?" Fluttershy asked, and the lone visible eye slowly moved over the other five living occupants of the forest clearing.
Twilight sighed. "First, let's make sure we're finished with the checklist." It was a rather fresh checklist, composed from the torn-out pages of a hundred mystery novels, and she had already planned out a full apology to every last one for the unfortunate necessity which had brought her to such a drastic move. But only to the injured books, which would be lovingly restored with spells and cover massages and a little private reading time in her bedroom. The mare had totally deserved everything she'd had coming, and then some. "We're sure nopony shed any fur on the body?"
Rarity shook her head. "I checked, Twilight. Rather exactingly, to the point where it would have become rather embarrassing had she not been dead. You have vaporized every last drop of blood from the area?"
Another quick examination of the little Moon-lit forest clearing was made by corona shine. "Yes. I also wiped out all the magical signatures involved which weren't hers. And in case we're interrupted before we can finish, we're all agreed on what happened here? Everypony knows the story and will stick to it no matter what?"
"Um," Applejack awkwardly offered. "Kind of got a problem..."
"You have laryngitis," Twilight instantly shot back.
"No, Ah don't," the farmer protested. "Y'can't say so! Well -- you can, but as soon as anypony goes an' asks me..."
"I'm sorry," Twilight corrected herself. "You'll have laryngitis. As soon as anypony asks you about this, it'll set in and won't go away until the mandatory holding period ends. I can guarantee it. I've been working on that spell for years." Wincing, "And I had to practice on myself."
"So that's why Spike had the library all those times?" Pinkie curiously inquired. "Because you were making up a spell just in case we were ever in a position where Applejack might ruin our future alibi just by showing up? I thought you were just getting sick over and over because you'd stayed up too long doing research and weren't getting enough rest!"
"I thought," Rainbow huffed, "you were lecturing so much that even your own voice got sick of it and asked for the day off." Nopony had mentioned her contribution to the corpse's creation in the last three minutes, and the utter lack of hoof stomping against fallen leaves was starting to become irritating.
"Well," Twilight lightly blushed as she automatically ignored Rainbow, "I do try to plan ahead..." Back to staring at the body. "But it's hard, getting something like that right. Spells which would work on ponies need a pony subject. I can't ask for volunteers, not for something that takes away speech. I mean, if I got it wrong, and my volunteer didn't recover... "
She blinked.
The other five, each of whom had long, painful experience with that particular blink, took a single measured hoofstep back.
"I'm taking the body," Twilight declared as the shine returned to her eyes. "I'm taking it home!"
As declarations went, it was rather definitive. It was also happy, more than a little proud of itself, and rather prone to pregnancy. Several questions were immediately conceived and, after a silent struggle to reach the exit, the smallest was birthed into the world.
"...why?" Fluttershy carefully asked.
"Because of what I just said!" Twilight beamed. "I can't experiment on ponies unless I use myself, and that's just stupid for a lot of spells!"
"Like -- risking a lifetime of permanent silence?" Rarity carefully noted.
(Rainbow muttered "Saves on the lectures." Everypony automatically ignored her.)
"Well -- yeah," Twilight blushingly admitted -- followed by, with increasing speed, "But look what she would give me! A pony I could experiment on! Sure, there's stuff which would never work because I'd need a living subject, but for anything a little more flexible, where there's risk... think about it, everypony! Really, it's no different from the ponies who donate their bodies to medical schools so the students can practice. Except that she didn't donate. Or volunteer. Or know I was going to claim her in any way. But honestly, she could do more good in death than she ever did in life!" A little more slowly, "Plus, you know, she kind of deserves it."
Rarity took a rather slow breath.
"So you are claiming her for your own," the designer said. "With no input from the rest of us. Is that what is happening here?"
This blink was one of confusion, and thus somewhat initially less risky. "...Rarity?"
"We all killed her," Rarity crossly declared. "It is not as if her eyes were pierced by sewing needles which simply happened to be flying through the air of their own volition, now is it? And since we all killed her, I believe we should all have a say in the final fate of her body. I have been thinking about this and as it happens, Twilight, it is not as if you happen to be the only one with a need for a corpse. So as there is about to be a second idea pushed into the sorting arena, I believe I should have my chance to express it. And then we can put it to a vote, agreeing to stand by the results of our friends' opinions and never quarrel about the final judgement." Thoughtfully, "For other topics of consideration, I would normally hope that your custody would mean we had a chance to share, but as your experiments tend to be somewhat combustible..."
"You," Twilight disbelievingly stated, "need a corpse. Of your very own."
"Rather badly," Rarity admitted. "And additionally, rather often. I admit that I had never considered the possibilities until this moment, but given the opportunity... well, one should not look a gift corpse in the mouth, unless of course one needed to do something about the teeth."
"Hers are more than good," Pinkie chimed in. "She couldn't have clamped down on my tail for that long without great dental hygiene!"
They all briefly nodded to that. The mare's teeth had been admirably perfect, as was currently being displayed by the slight death's-head grin on the corpse (which lost nothing for the beetle which was currently crawling across an exposed bicuspid). It was amazing how a lifetime of evil had still left five minutes in every morning and evening for proper brushing.
"And why," Twilight insistently continued, "would you need a corpse?"
"Fittings," Rarity replied, and looked proud of herself.
Everypony thought about that for a while.
"...fittings," Fluttershy eventually said, mostly because somepony had to.
"Well, yes," Rarity sniffed, tossing her head slightly. "I do realize I have my dressmaker's forms, but do you know what they lack? Joints. I cannot bend the limbs. I cannot check to see where the exact stress lines will be along the fabric, the places which will wear out simply from the pressure which comes from repeated flexing. A model which was somewhat more mobile would serve me well when designing those pieces meant to be used for more than a single evening. She has all the relevant pony joints because until recently, she was a pony." After a little more consideration, "And when it comes to the pressure of breath on those dresses which come into play when regrettable fashion trends dictate something with the tightness of prison bonds, I believe I know where I can borrow a bellows."
Twilight just looked at her. It seemed as looking should have been all that was required, even when, in soon-to-arrive retrospect, that regard went on for much longer than it should have. But all Rarity did was stare right back.
"Dowels," Twilight said, and hoped it would be enough.
It wasn't. "Your pardon?"
"You think you should get a perfectly good corpse -- instead of me -- because you can't install dowel joints on your forms."
"I cannot," Rarity crossly replied. "My talent is not for carpentry, Twilight, and when I have mentioned my needs to the manufacturers, their first response was rather impolite and the second was decidedly expensive."
"I don't get to learn necromancy because you need to see where a dress will wear out? Do you even know what necromancy is?"
"Magic you use on dead bodies," Pinkie immediately piped up. "Other than levitating them or burning them or changing their fur color or... actually, I guess just about anything could be necromancy if you did it right --"
"I thought," Rarity cut in, "that you were going to do experiments which would be too risky for the living."
"Right!" Twilight shot back. "If you're living and part of an experiment, you probably don't want to die for it! And how is she going to help you for more than one or two dresses? She's not exactly a standard size! Plus she's going to decay, and --"
"-- I have noticed," Rarity interrupted, "that the food in your kitchen tends to keep for a surprisingly long time."
Twilight winced.
"Oh."
"One might even say a magically long time."
"...yeah."
"You have apples from three harvests back. Do you deny that?"
After a while during which two orange ears strained for the answer, "...no."
"HEY! Ah gifted you those apples! Why haven't y'jus' eaten --"
Abashedly, "...because that crop was so good that I wanted to just -- keep it around for a while. I have one to celebrate after the end of a mission or something big happening in our lives. I was going to have one tonight..."
"Oh," Applejack said. She smiled. "Well, that's all right, then, and thank y'kindly. Keep goin'. Ah'll let y'all know when it's mah turn."
With initial horror, "Your --" and with a valiant rally and wrench back to the current offense, "-- okay, so I could keep her from decaying, is that what you wanted to hear? And you'd ask me to cast that for you."
"Rather," Rarity smiled. "And as for her size, I was planning on binding her torso here and there. Plus I can adjust, Twilight: that is part of my mark. And did I mention the opportunities for seeing how fur grain would rest or be shifted with various fabrics? So. Shall we vote?"
"Now wait a minute!" Rainbow broke in, instinctively taking off in order to glare down at the herd. "Nopony's thinking this through!" The wind backblast stirred leaves, ruffled fur both living and dead, then got the former's attention.
"Don't any of you understand what we've got here?" Rainbow yelped. "We've got a body!"
They all stared at her for a few seconds.
"Yes," Rarity eventually said. "That would be the issue underhoof. We have a body. And?"
Rainbow gazed down at them with the despair of a comedian who had found herself presenting the world's greatest joke to the continent's worst audience. "A real body! Do you know how much Mr. Rich charges for fake ones before Nightmare Night? And they're just sacks of cloth with pony features painted on them, maybe a mask for the deluxe versions, you try to rig up the haunted house so they'll fall out of closets and attic trapdoors and scare everypony, but all anypony ever does is yawn! Because it's just a sack of cloth that's sort of shaped like a pony with a cheap mask on it which doubled the price! But we?" Her tone dropped, became conspiratorial. "Have a real body. All we need to do is store her somewhere for a while, and then when the holiday gets close..."
She snickered, eyes dancing with visions of screams yet to come.
"Greatest Nightmare Night ever," she declared. "So let me just take that off everypony's hooves..."
The swoop was interrupted by a flare of pinkish light.
"Not so fast!" Twilight said. "Seriously, Rainbow? Seriously? You want to use her for pranks!"
The pegasus, her temporarily-held form completely wrapped in energy, still managed a blink. "I hadn't even thought about the pranks! Did you just come up with something cool? Come on, share! There's got to be a thousand year-round uses for a dead pony, and if we can sneak even two hundred of those over on everypony in town...!"
"She's recognizable," Twilight protested. "Everypony will know it's her!"
"She only came out of her evil headquarters the one time, and that's before everypony knew she was evil! Who's gonna remember? I could always use fur dye anyway! And besides, you know that no-decay spell you and Rarity needed? I don't! It's fine by me if she's a skeleton! Seriously, has anypony been in Barnyard Bargains before the holiday? The fake skeletons all look like they were made out of chalk and with what he charges, you'd think they were platinum or something!"
For lack of anything practical to do, at least for that level of practical which would not create a second body, Twilight lowered Rainbow back to the forest floor and released the pegasus.
"Actually," Rainbow continued as if nothing had happened at all, "how does a skeleton stay together after all the flesh is off? Maybe I need some wire. A pile of bones just won't be the same..."
Twilight groaned. "I just want to review all the options out loud so everypony can hear how they all sound next to each other. Me getting to learn necromancy, one of the most exciting, and frankly hard to experiment with, subsections of magic that exists. Or -- a flexible one-size-fits-one dressmaker form. Or pranks. Dead body pranks. Does anypony see the quality dropoff after Option One? There probably are a thousand things you can do with a dead pony. But mine's the important one! The next thing you know, Fluttershy's going to be saying she needs the body, just to get some meat for the cottage's carnivores!"
The caretaker, as far as anypony could make out from what was visible of the mane-shielded features, was immediately insulted.
"...that's kind of stupid, Twilight."
It was rare to hear Fluttershy accuse somepony of being stupid, especially a friend, and the entire group froze in shock.
"It is?" Twilight eventually got out.
"...is it really in anypony's best interests for my friends to find out what pony meat tastes like? To maybe decide they like it and want to go get some more of it? Did you ever hear of Tsavo?"
"No," Twilight finally admitted.
"...he was a pony who took care of lions. One day, he had a fight with his brother. Then he didn't have a brother. Then he had to get rid of what was left. Then he had some well-fed lions who really liked their latest meal. And then there wasn't a Tsavo any more, and it took twenty ponies to make sure there was anypony around. I would never feed anyone at the cottage anything from a pony's corpse, Twilight, because I'm not stupid."
The librarian sighed.
"You're right, Fluttershy."
The caretaker nodded.
"That would be stupid, and it was stupid of me to say it. You know best. So I'm sorry."
"...that's okay, Twilight. As long as you understand I would never do that."
"I do now."
"...I was just going to drag her body around the Everfree and create a scent trail leading back to the cottage. So it would lure some new friends in. And I was going to sprinkle her with a few herbs first so she wouldn't smell quite like pony meat and it wouldn't start any problems, because I'm not stupid. And I'd need to do that every few weeks, because otherwise the trail fades. So I'd need that decay-stopping spell, but not immediately. She has to decay a little or it won't work as well. Maybe just wait a day..." A hopeful one-eyed gaze regarded the group. "That's all right, isn't it? I mean, she'd be helping, and there wouldn't be any magical accidents or ponies having heart attacks from pranks or Rarity screaming in the Boutique because binding ribs to make somepony look smaller really doesn't work. And it hurts. A lot. When you're alive -- oh. Well, anyway, that's why I need the body. And I think it's a good reason. The best reason."
They seemed to have moved to a place beyond groans, and so Twilight could only go with "Please tell me you're joking."
"...no," Fluttershy replied. Awkwardly, "And that leaves just Applejack and Pinkie to vote. With four options. That makes it really easy to get a tie. Should I fly back into Ponyville and get Spike? Just for the extra vote?"
Twilight was just starting to consider the benefits of having Fluttershy do just that because that vote would of course be for Twilight: they'd grown up together and so his priorities were generally in order, plus the trauma he might go through upon seeing the body could be talked out and since he was going to be helping her with the experiments, it was really in Twilight's best interests to get him used to being around corpses as soon as possible.
Rarity, who now looked rather thoughtful, began to raise an attention-gathering hoof before beginning her speech.
"...five options," Applejack awkwardly coughed.
Twilight facehoofed. Two leaves which had been sticking to the hoof used the opportunity and stuck to her face instead, grateful for the change of view.
"And what," Rainbow challenged, "do you have that could possibly be better than the perfect Nightmare Night haunted house and some year-round skeleton pranks? You just want to rig up the barn, don't you? It's bad enough that you've got the Haunted Hayride every year and now you're stealing my idea!"
"Naw!" Applejack protested. "That ain't it at'tall! Ah need that body for somethin' important! Or Ah wouldn't even be askin'!"
Rainbow was still visibly having some trouble working through everyone else's priorities. "What?"
"Um..." The hat's brim shifted, shaded eyes which had half-closed in embarrassment. "Ah usually wouldn't say this 'cause it's sort of a family secret an' of course nopony knows t' ask, but... Ah guess Ah gotta make mah case here. So -- y'know how magical Zap Apples are? How y'gotta do all sorts of dumb stuff with the trees an' even the jars t' make sure it all comes out right? Because y'can't make a mistake. Y'don't wanna know what happens on a mistake, everypony, so -- please don't ask? It's jus' that... they're special. Special in all sorts of ways, and fussy about every part of the process. Including..."
She swallowed.
"...the fertilizer."
Everypony else mutually and silently decided on the new target of their disbelieving stares.
"We didn't know!" Applejack protested. "Not the first time! Had a really hard rain in the first days when Ponyville was still bein' put t'gether, before the pegasi showed up t' regulate things, an' it exposed the bones tangled up in the roots! Mah Grandpa jus' figured some early explorer died right there: bite marks on the bones. An' we didn't think much of it. Took the bones away an' gave him a proper burial. But the next time the trees should have produced, we didn't get a single fruit, we thought 'bout it, an' -- don't look at me like that!" Stridently, "Ain't like we went an' killed nopony! Anypony in mah family dies, their bodies get sent t' where a livin' Apple needs 'em! We get buried around the trees: that's jus' how it is, how we all keep things goin' for the next generation. Mah trees are gonna be good for a while. But ain't been no deaths in the family for a while now, Ah've got relatives who could use a few extra bits, an'... well, it's like everypony's been sayin'! She wasn't no good in life. Didn't do anythin' for anypony, not stuff a pony would have wanted done! Let her do somethin' now!"
Rarity stomped her left forehoof, which lost something from the squelch of the mulch. The nearby corpse didn't even bother to vibrate.
"With the other four proposals," the designer said, "there existed the faintest possibility that we might be able to reach some accommodation regarding a time-sharing plan, at least should Twilight agree to keep her experiments within the realm of the potentially non-incendiary. We could have passed her around as the need required. I had been thinking about that just before you spoke, Applejack. That there was yet room for compromise. But with you -- she could not be buried and unearthed on cue, could she? She would have to stay there among the roots: your story makes that rather clear. And..." She tried to fight back the gagging, failed. "...I have eaten that jelly..."
"Rarity," Applejack huffily began, "what do y'think soil is, exactly? Ah'll tell you. It's bodies. It's tiny bits of earth mixed in with what's left from all kinds of bodies, insects an' birds an' mammals an' us. Every time y'eat anythin' that grew, a body provided. A corpse soaked the roots an' let you eat at'tall. Even with the most gourmet Canterlot fancy stuff, yer enjoyin' real death flavor. Zap Apple trees are jus' a little more fussy 'bout what kind of body --"
She stopped at that point, for when it came to debate, vomiting generally had the floor.
"...so I guess it's Pinkie's decision," Fluttershy said after the newest portion of cleanup ended. "Unless everypony wants me to get Spike. But then we could have a tie, so maybe we're better off just letting her decide."
An important part of parliamentary procedure had just occurred to Twilight. "Look, I never agreed to put anything up to a vote --"
"-- um," Pinkie said, and her right forehoof scraped a trench into the leaves. "Um. I. Yeah. Here's the thing, everypony. She was -- a bad pony. One of the worst. She was never sorry about anything she did. She was proud and she didn't understand why everypony wasn't just proud of her for doing it, but why they weren't doing it too. Only not as well as she did it because she had to be the best, which I guess is why she did a lot of it. But she was still a pony. She existed, and that means she was born. If she was born, she had parents. I want to think... that somepony loved her once. That maybe before she went so bad, there was a little good in her, something which deserved to be loved. And everything you've all been saying about what we should do with her body is kind of -- undignified. There's no respect in it. I can understand somepony donating their body for medical or magical research, or to keep Zap Apples growing, but she didn't make that decision. We're making it for her. And turning her into a prank..."
She trailed off. Her hoof shifted across the mulch again.
"Pinkie," Twilight quietly said. "Think about what she did. How many choices she took away from everypony else, because they weren't what she wanted them to be. She destroyed choice and replaced it with her view of the world. And now she's gone. We did so much to make her stop, and -- maybe this is the first time it went so far, but we always knew it was possible, that we'd be standing over a body one day. Her life was about removing choices, stripping away dignity and replacing it with her sickness. Maybe somepony loved her once. But she doesn't deserve it now."
"She still had parents," Pinkie softly replied. "At least a mommy, right? It's important, having parents who love you. We don't know if they're alive, and if they are -- they don't know she's dead. Don't they deserve something? To know she loved them and thought about them, even if she didn't? Because sometimes... you need a lie. I know that sounds wrong, Applejack, but if they're still around, they might need that..."
And slowly, they all nodded, as every expression bent under the weight of shame.
"So what do you want to do with her, Pinkie?" Twilight half-whispered. "It really is up to you now."
"I want to find her family," Pinkie told them.
They all nodded again.
"And when we do," the baker continued. "I want Twilight to make her body move, and make it look like she's still alive! Now, that means the mouth too. I know we need to give her a voice, but don't worry: I can kick mine and it'll sound just like it's coming out of her! I've been practicing that. For funny pranks! And since she had me captured for three days and ranted at me during most of it, I know just how to imitate her! For starts, she says 'Destiny'. A lot. So Twilight does the decay-stopping thing -- I want to talk to you about that later, Twilight, for the bakery -- and then moves her around, only like she did with Fluttershy that one time, so the magic isn't visible, and we make it look just like she's alive! She apologizes and tells them she loves them and she's very sorry for everything, but now she's going on a long journey to be a better pony and she'll never see them again. And she should nuzzle them." That triggered a frown. "It'll be a really cold nuzzle, won't it? We need a way to warm her up. Does anypony have an idea? I don't think we should put her too close to a fire."
It took a while before anypony could breathe again and in that fast-approaching retrospect, those were the seconds they could no longer afford to lose.
"You want," Twilight recapped in the slightly dazed tones of those who'd recently been in the presence of a Pinkie moment, "to fake her being alive. By moving her body around. With basic movement magic. While you're kicking your voice. And saying 'Destiny'. A lot."
Pinkie solemnly nodded. "Because we don't know how long it'll take to find her parents, so you might not be able to learn the necromancy stuff in time. Plus maybe we could have done it with ropes and pulleys, but they'd be really really visible and besides, Apple Bloom said that's just stupid. So do you think you can make her blink at the right pace, or does she need really thick sunglasses? Because blinking's important!"
That was when the argument truly began and it lasted until the police, who had only come to investigate the wind-carried sounds of extended shouting in the night, arrived to break it up.
At least, that was the initial reason they'd come at all. Their actions upon finding the scene were somewhat more -- comprehensive.
Twilight glanced back as the metal door slammed behind her, sighed, then took a long look at the other five ponies occupying the large cell.
Everypony waited for the last echoes of hoofsteps to fade before she risked speech.
"I kept to the story," Twilight finally said, as the check for magical eavesdropping had been made within seconds of their original entrance. "Did everypony else?"
Four ponies said yes. Applejack barely managed the pained gasp of somepony suffering from a bout of magic-simulated laryngitis.
"Sorry, AJ."
"...Ah understand..."
Twilight sighed, sat on the cold stone floor.
"So they're going to be letting us go in a few hours," she told them. "After they can't hold us any longer. They'll stretch it out as long as they can, but with the cleanup we did and everypony telling them the same thing, we're okay. Not having it as an official mission hurts, but -- we'll be okay, everypony. We're okay because we stayed together. The only hope they had was getting one of us to turn on the others, and..." It triggered a small smile.
Rainbow snorted. "Like that was ever gonna happen!"
Everypony nodded. It was never going to happen.
"But since we have some time..." It was her turn to awkwardly scrape a hoof, albeit across a much less yielding surface, and her gaze sought the floor. "I'm sorry, everypony. That was a stupid fight. I think it might be the dumbest one we've ever had. We all had reasons, and maybe some of them were good --" more quickly, because the inhales around the cell had just signaled the lingering potential for Round Two "-- okay, each of them was good, for the pony who said it. But we fought, and we wouldn't be spending the night in here if we hadn't fought, and..." She forced her head up. "I'm sorry. I just hope everypony believes me and accepts it."
"It's quite all right, Twilight," Rarity smiled. "The error was a group one, and so I offer my apologies as well. My words were -- something less than noble."
"We were all kind of being jerks," Rainbow reluctantly admitted. "I didn't even have any real year-round pranks in mind and I was still fighting for them."
"...I could have just found an animal body in the Everfree," Fluttershy confessed. "...I don't even know what I was fighting about."
"...mah Uncle Delicious is gettin' up there," Applejack rasped. "Ah know he'll be proud t' do his part."
Pinkie sighed. "While you were gone, I... had an idea for a movie. And then I realized it was stupid. But then I realized ponies pay to see stupid movies. And then I thought Apple Bloom might sue me. For doing it second. But I guess the police will find and tell any living parents, right? So once we're out of here... it's over."
They all settled onto cold stone and tried to rest, as best they could. It wasn't easy.
"I realize," Rarity eventually said, after carefully listening for eavesdroppers again, "that to relate any part of this to the highest of authorities -- which we will eventually have to do regardless, and I am hardly looking forward to it -- would make for a rather awkward letter to the Princess. But still... Twilight, I couldn't help but wonder. For what led us here and here alone, focusing on the final act which placed us all in this dismal cell -- do you perceive any lesson in our regrettable actions?"
"Yeah," the librarian immediately said. "A big one. It might even be one of the most fundamental things anypony could ever learn about friendship."
Curiously, "Which is?"
Twilight smiled.
"It's got to be the very first rule of sharing. The next time? We make enough for everypony."
