"And in other news, the Manehattan Industrial Conference just released their own assessment of the links between the environment and carbon emissions. Despite claiming there is a business interest in long-term management of the environment, the Canterlot Environmental Conservatory revealed that none of their information is even remotely true. CEC director Clear Skies mentioned in a press conference later that day that 'the MIC's information was fabricated with the intent to deceive the public about the truth of climate change and environmental damage.'"
Moon Prancer grabbed the radio and flung it across the room, knocking over a picture frame of her grandmare with Princess Twilight. The glass cracked, right over her grandmare's thick glasses and turtleneck sweater.
Back when winter still came to Canterlot. Prancer grabbed her newest book, the final book of the fantasy series Blood Trial, and on her beanbag by the window of her apartment. The sky was bright; orange and red and pink painted the infinite ceiling of the world, but it was not evening. From her beanbag she saw the lords of industry hard at work.
An entire sector of the city dedicated to refining, assembling, and burning.
Pillars of black smoke, a homage to ancient pegasi architecture, held up the clouds of prosperity. Like gods perched atop a mountain, the death fog looked down at its worshipers. Day and night they burned to their god of metal and death. The earth was torn asunder, corpses of the once living, blackened by time, were thrown in pyres as sacrifice. Managers were priests and the Industrial Conference was the rock on which the temple to metal was built on.
Moon Prancer flipped to the middle of her book, finding her page at where Odepheus had hunted down his sister's murderer. She read on, until the end of the chapter; the killer was, as the book had foreshadowed, a Blood Sprite who had been ordered to kill Odepheus's sister.
"He'd have to meet the sprite's master in Tartarus if he wants justice," she realized, enticed by what the following four hundred pages could offer. But her escape was cut short by rain, heavy drops, hungrily hunting for the earth. Moon Prancer sighed and walked out to her balcony, grabbing a tarp rolled up by the door.
Concrete, stone turned to liquid and given form again, trembled at the sight of rain. Acid burns like hot oil on skin, they cried. The tarp did little to cover the edges.
Moon Prancer sighed and walked back through her kitchenette, where on the fridge was her to-do list. Reader, writer, ecology master, she had a book to finish before the year's end. But, there was still time for other things.
"Lunch with Stamper," she read to herself. "Not in this weather, even if he is adorable." She picked up her phone and dialed his number, knowing he'd be in given the rain.
"Hey, Em! Lemme guess, it's about the rain, isn't it?"
"Yeah, wish it could be any other way, but what can we do?" She levitated a pen from her drawer and crossed out the time and date on the to-do list. "But how's tomorrow at one? La Maison des Pates won't have the same specials as today, but I'm pretty sure everything they serve is good."
Stamper chuckled. "Yeah, if the pegasi would just give us a break for once. If the weather ponies keep their promise, tomorrow should be sunny. Sounds great."
"Don't blame them, it's all on the smoke," Moon Prancer replied.
"If we're blaming the smoke then why not just throw the coal under the bus too? 'Screw you, fossil fuels!'" They both laughed at that. Despite what they both knew as the sad truth and skirted around it, Stamper had a humor within him that lightened Prancer's mood, always.
With her magic, she levitated her book and quill over to the kitchenette counter, writing slowly as they talked. "So, while I've got you on the line, what're your plans today?"
"Well, I was getting ready for lunch with my favorite pony in the world," he said, "but now I get to finish up my artwork for next week's Conservation March."
"You're still working on that piece?" Prancer gasped with astonishment. "It looked nearly done when I last saw it. Is there a problem?"
She could here him grinning through the phone. "Nah, I'm just adding some extra details to the streets. That, and I took a break to start a new pet project. You might see it tomorrow, actually."
"Well don't tell me too much then, I want see it with fresh eyes."
"Okay Em. I'll hang up so we can both get back to work. Don't think I can't hear you writing in the background." The two of them laughed a little while longer, and then said their affectionate farewells. Moon Prancer hung up, grabbed her book and quill--along with a bag of dried plantains--and moved back to her bean bag.
The harder she wrote, the less focus she'd have on the dying nature outside, and quicker time passed for her. Tomorrow would come quick, and maybe she could make something happy of her weekend.
"Experts are saying the bridge collapsed due to rapid erosion of certain critical areas of support. Despite being maintained, City Development Director Platinum Bridge believes corrosion due to unexpected acidity was the cause. We'll be hearing more about it later today at the town hall press conference."
Equestria News Network, once a trove of shocking new reveals, no longer surprised Prancer. A depressing reality. She sat while he had her mane trimmed and styled, and watched the news unravel yet another story of the suffocation and murder of nature.
She walked down the street, two blocks away from her apartment, to meet with her colleague about her book. A specialist in wildlife, Ranger Greentree offered valuable input regarding the fauna talked about in Prancer's writing. Her apartment was over a small bakery, and smelled like buttermilk biscuits everyday, at least when it didn't rain. Today, the streets wafted up a different scent, one of smoke and industry.
Ranger greeted her and they sat down for some coffee and muffins, but quickly got to work when Prancer put her draft out on the table. "The Evertree frog would be better in this chapter, not timber wolves. Of course, both would be fine, but your point could be much more concise if it just stuck to the frogs."
"You think? The trees that timber wolves need can't survive when the soil pH gets too low from the rain," Prancer said. "An illness of the environment that becomes an illness on their wooden bodies seems fitting to me."
"Yes, but the other four chapters were so focused on future generations, and the future of the biosphere." Ranger grabbed an illustration she had made of an Evertree frog laying eggs in water collected by the leaves of a tree after a rainstorm. "Talking about this sticks to your theme that unchecked progress is leading to disaster."
"The next generation," Prancer considered, looking at the sketches. Her mind, for a moment, drifted to Stamper's artwork. "You know what, that's good. I actually really like that idea. I'll have to go over my observations on the niches in the Everfree Forest's canopy, but it sounds like it's worth it. I just don't know how'd I'd start writing about them though, it sounds so morbid."
"No, you should give the reader the reality," Ranger insisted, putting her hoof on the papers. "Make it jarring. Write some like, 'Picture mothers watching over dozens of still-born children, poisoned and lifeless. Twenty percent of Evertree frogs died before hatching two years ago. Now, thirty.'"
"Ranger, it's sunny out," Prancer complained, slightly disgusted and rightfully so. "Don't ruin Sunday for me."
"Alright alright. If you want," Ranger offered, "you could visit my lab at Welwerth later today. A former student's working as my intern and can probably find all the notes I have on the subspecies of the Evertree frogs."
"I might swing by tomorrow, I don't think I'll have time today." Prancer flipped through her writing, going over a few more details of small importance, and finished up their chat before the hour was up.
Something was different about her friend, Ranger noticed. Then, the worlds she said dawned on her. "You did your mane today. Really, really well in fact."
"Thanks?" Prancer raised her brow, unsure of where that topic of conversation came from.
"You're really going on a date with that artist? I thought he wasn't your type. He's what, two years younger?" Ranger grinned, because she could quickly tell Prancer was getting embarrassed, and it made being nosy even better.
Her face reddened and told the truth, but she tried to deflect the comment. "I just felt like trying something different today, no need to get all up in my private life."
"Well, I guess he is kind of cute," Ranger remarked, chuckling. "And that's saying something coming from me."
"Ugh," she exclaimed. "One moment your helpful, and now your... this. I can't stand you sometimes."
Ranger laughed, sweeping up the coffee cups with one wing, then opening her dishwasher with the other. "Fine, just go on then, do whatever's got Moon Prancer the Wise so busy today. Just, don't be too busy, if you catch my meaning."
She was shocked at her friend's crude implication. "Ranger! It's just a lunch to talk about the Conservation March, that's all."
"Sure," was all Ranger said.
"Gimme a break girl, he's fun and kind but it's not serious yet," Prancer continued.
"Oh." Ranger's ears stood up and she grinned cheekily. "Yet? So you haven't... you know..."
She gave her friend another groan, masking her feelings with another of displeasure, and left without saying any more, lest more of her personal life got revealed before it was ready.
Even though it was sunny outside, all the customers decided to enjoy the view from inside the restaurant. Moon Prancer and Stamper took a table by the window, overlooking the coast where tides washed in and battered a thousand rocks, a war of nature as old as land and sea themselves.
Their appetizers had arrived. Moon Prancer chose the popular choice, with roasted beet and quinoa, and nuts and freshly cut olives sprinkled throughout. Stamper was a bit more casual, picking a seasonal salad with onions, tomatoes, and cashews decorating the assortment of seasonal greens.
"So, students coming out to protest too?"
"My students, for sure," Prancer replied. "Most of them want to do ecology or environmental majors. Besides, they've got no homework next weekend accept study for my test."
"Study over the weekend?" Stamper raised a brow in disbelief. "What kind of kids are these?"
Prancer laughed while defending her students. "I know, it's crazy compared to our time, but schools are so competitive now, and every pony gets so worked up over colleges, and all that competition trickles down. You don't know how many students I've heard say they want to go to Manhattan U."
"Great spell engineering program, growing law program, two percent acceptance rate," Stamper listed. "Ambitious."
"Almost as ambitious as helping coordinate a march in protest of the largest manufacturing sector in the world." Moon Prancer raised her glass of water as a small toast. "Congratulations, you have been awarded the Moon Prancer Award of Respect."
They clinked glasses. "That's all I need to feel good about my work," he replied. "But, honestly, what you're doing is much more interesting. 'Industrial Ecology' is an interesting title."
"You think? It's a working title, really."
"No, I'm serious. Keep the title, maybe add a little artwork, and the audience would chew it up like termites."
Moon Prancer stared at him. "You would make cover art for my book?"
"Oh, well, I don't know," he shrugged, stretching his words out and stuffing it with false strain. "I mean, and artist's life is really busy, and I've got so many commissions I can't even count how many pieces I still have to paint. You'd really have to make it worth my while."
"Yeah? What would a 'great artist' such as yourself possibly want?" Prancer asked, leaning in a little closer.
He thought for a moment, and then gave a grin that told Prancer he thought he was being clever. "You're a smart mare. I need a simple question answered. You see, I've been wanting to get something for some pony special, some pony who's witty, strong-willed, and capable. But I don't know what she likes. What should I do?"
"The best gifts take a bit of you with them," Moon Prancer answered. "Give her something you like; it'll help her get to know you better and it'll be genuine. If she likes you, and you are kinda likable, then she'd like it if you shared something of yourself."
"Huh, never thought of presents like that," Stamper pondered. "Wow, you are amazing."
"I know." Her eyes were fired up. "Now, about that cover art."
"Alright, I give," Stamper conceded. "But first you gotta tell me more about what you're writing."
"Oh, that's easy." Prancer started explaining immediately, letting Stamper hear all her passion for her work. "After I got my degree in ecology I spent a lot of time studying how pollution has damaged the ecosystems here in Equestria. But ecology notes aren't that fun to read, just ask my students, so I decided to narrate it, follow the lives of a few animals in the ecosystem like an adventure book."
"An ecology adventure?" Stamper asked skeptically, one brow raised to his forehead.
"Oh shut up, I had fun, it's all in how you present it." Stamper just shrugged, and Prancer continued. She even continued through the rest of their lunch, explaining her narrative style.
"Straightforward with the message, but with some poetic rhetoric and plot elements," she described while they walked down the sunny street. She told him all about the Diamond Dogs and their flooded tunnels from rising rivers near their digging grounds.
They passed an ice-cream shop, she spoke of polar bears. They passed a sushi place, she spoke of fish miles from any industrial plant, dying from pollutants and garbage blown in by the winds; and the Evertree frogs, those she started to talk about with excited fervor as they passed a small movie vendor at the ground floor of her apartment.
"Few ponies can imagine how much they depend on rain!" Prancer exclaimed, walking up the steps to her apartment. "Evertree frogs only lay eggs when it rains. They need to keep their eggs moist, so they search for trees with flowers that catch the rain. Bell Blossom Trees, they're called. It's a symbiotic relationship, you see. A mother frog lays a few eggs, gets pollen stuck to her, and carries it to the next flower."
Stamper didn't need to be a genius to figure out the problem. "The rain's too acidic for the eggs," he guessed.
Moon Prancer was worked up now, bolstered by Stamper's interest. She didn't even notice they were having the conversation on her sofa. "After a few years the frog population has fallen by fifteen percent, and less frogs means less pollination, which ultimately means less flowers and less breeding grounds for the Evertree frogs. The whole thing will spiral down and could permanently damage both species."
"I never imagined," Stamper said grimly. "I mean, life's bad with the air and weather, but I never thought about anything other than ourselves."
"And that'll be the case with most of my readers, which is why I-" Moon Prancer looked down suddenly, realizing Stamper was sitting right there next to her in her apartment. She must've knew what was happening while she talked, but everything didn't click until that moment.
"Which is why you..." Stamper waited for her to continue. "Hello? Cat got your tongue, or are cats screwed by pollution too?"
She blinked. "Huh? Sorry, it's just that I realized that you and me, and here..."
"Yes?"
"Nothing, I just didn't want you to think I was the type to bring stallions back only on the second date-"
"Well, the one last week kinda counted, so that makes three," he tried to reassure her.
"Meh," Prancer was uncertain. "Not really."
"It did for me," Stamper meekly whispered, gazing downward.
"Oh, no, I still liked it but it was just so sudden that I didn't consider it..." Prancer quickly rambled, trying to cover up her tracks. Softly, Stamper chuckled.
"I don't know why, but you're kinda adorable when you freak out."
She realized he had played her to cut through the tension. "You asshole, you guilted me!"
"Guilted? What? Em, you know that's not a word."
"Well I can't think straight Stamper, I just got guilted!"
Stamper started to laugh, and quickly Prancer joined in. He had one of those infectious laughs, the one you could listen to all day, and look at too because it was accompanied with a wide smile that just looked like the meaning of happiness. It was well into two o'clock, nearing three, and the clouds of industry were starting to reclaim the sky after being washed away by rain.
Still, while the sun was covered by towers of black smoke, Moon Prancer felt like her apartment was the brightest place in the world.
"Slow building then, huh?" Stamper asked just as they quieted down. "You didn't strike me as the romantic type. A bit flirty, but romance? Color me surprised."
Prancer shifted closer to him, feeling his coat brush hers. "A good surprise?"
"You won't hear me complaining." He looked around the small living room for something to do, something perfect for the moment. He spotted Prancer's movie collection, a sad shelf of documentaries and war films.
"That's what you always watch? Hell, no wonder you're so intense." He got up and flicked on the TV screen. "I mean, I like your intensity but sometimes it's better to cool off, you know? I think this'll do the trick."
Stamper produced a copy of Spirit of the Stage, a new film that had just hit the market.
"Where'd you get that?" she asked.
Stamper stared at Prancer, a little perplexed. "I bought it at that movie store we passed. You were right there, at the counter. How... I can't even... how did you not notice?"
Prancer shrugged, a little embarrassed by how oblivious she was to everything they passed. Stamper stuck in the DVD in and soon they were having popcorn while the villain of the movie presented himself. He was an old spirit, who loved the theater when he was living, so much so that he haunted the Canterlot Noble Theatre until he could find the perfect actress to take to the afterlife.
"This is your idea of better?" Moon Prancer asked, skeptical that it was any more uplifting than her depressing -yet highly informative and accurate- documentaries on the war against the Sombra Regime.
Stamper snorted. "It's about an obsessive and malicious, yet fictional, ghost. Yeah, I think that's more fun than... actual war"
She chuckled and leaned her head on Stamper's shoulder while the opera singer in the movie came out for her debut scene. "You know what, I have a good feeling about you."
"Officials from Cloudsdale are now saying the weather is reaching a stage classified as 'uncontrollable,' even more so than any hurricane that has passed over the region in the past two hundred years. Yet protesters are out in force on the streets, blocking roads to the heart of Manehattan's industrial sector."
The reporter stood on the sidewalk as the scene she described played out, with signs and the sound of a forty thousand hooves moving for one cause. Carriages rented for the day, or owned by some protest organizers, were mounted with the artwork of dozens of volunteers. Moon Prancer and Stamper walked side by side, linking hooves so they wouldn't get separated, and to feel each other's presence.
Stamper's painting of a lone tree made of rusting steel girders warped and melted, growing on a cracked desert landscape under a storm of sickly brown clouds, was the centerpiece of the display, but others were more than comparable.
One was abstract, a scene of a dozen ponies fleeing and choking under the weight of toxic pollution.
Another, a controversy for another day. The body of a puppy, just the body, was suspended in a glass tank filled with a thick gel. Bits of lead pipes were scattered in the gel around the body. The head was trapped in a smaller glass box and fastened above it, the tongue forcibly stretched out into a rusting dog bowl. The head was positioned to look down on its body.
The artists was a strong opponent of water pollution.
Above them all a speaker stood on the top of his carriage, pulled by some friends. With a microphone and a will, he incited the crowd to chant.
"Give us facts, not your trash! Give us facts, not your trash!" Thousands shouted enthusiastically because anger was contagious.
"How many more foals will have to get sick before we act?" His screams demanded an answer from the crowd.
"No more!" was their response.
His voice rasped but the strain only proved his determination. "What pony can let themselves be blinded by their smoke and lies?"
"No pony!" came the voices.
"You claim to be a movement to propel the world to a new age," he shouted out at the barons of industry. "But your industry is obsolete. The world wants another way. It is wrong to pollute this planet! It is right to preserve the future of our children!"
He lacked eloquence, but the tremor in his voice and its loud boom of outrage told more than any painstakingly crafted, strongly worded letter. Moon Prancer listened and let her heart pump with excitement.
Up on the street, ahead of the speaker and ahead of the artwork, there was a rumbling of trouble. Police armed with magic shields and riot hoses froze the march in its tracks.
"This is an emergency announcement," spoke a pegasus flying above the crowd. "Please evacuate to higher ground. The Manehattan weather team has declared today's storm unsafe for outdoor travel."
But the Conservation March didn't care. It shouted back at the police, but spoke more with its firm position. The march did not flinch. It didn't move. Only stared up to the wind howls and bullet rain.
"Hey, Em," Stamper said, pulling Moon Prancer closer to the side walk. "I don't think it's a good idea to be out while the storm's passing over."
"Are you kidding?" she responded to him, pointing her horn up at the sky. "This is exactly what we want them to see! Climate change includes the weather, and now not even the pegasi can keep a lid on the situation."
"That's kinda what I'm worried about," Stamper continued to warn. "We don't know what the storm can do."
Moon Prancer wanted to stay, but respected Stamper's wishes. The agreed to pull off slightly and move closer the sidewalks where they could take shelter in the buildings if they needed to.
Neither the march nor the police backed down.
"Reporting live from Manehattan. There is chaos here on 291 Redwich St. Voyagers. Police armed with riot gear are now pressing the ponies at the Conservation march, trying to move them back or get them to disperse. The reason: water levels on the streets are well over hoof height."
Push and pull, yin and yang, the tide has always been about balance. But factories had pulled much out of nature, and the only thing left for the tide to do was push.
Crash after crash battered the city and water spread across the streets big and resolute like the sea rising up to reclaim the space dry land had stolen from it. Rain accompanied the sight, lending itself however it could. Winds tore down the street, and a few ponies even faced the humiliation of slipping from the combination of wet ground and howling gales.
Finally, ponies began to push and wade through the rising water. Some slipped, others stepped up onto carriages, while a few others were stepped on by hurrying protesters who realized that nature had listened to their warnings and delivered the disasters they promised would come.
With the streets filled, both with bystanders and protesters, the rain fell upon a cloud more chaotic than the storm it had come from.
Moon Prancer and Stamper looked down from the second floor of a hotel. The first floor was flooded like the streets outside. Ponies paced around the hallway, trying to dry off, or just sat as their friends and family used hairdryers on their sad soggy bodies. Carriages and the remains of an artfully crafted float swirled around the tides.
Water rose and fell in rhythms like a song that, if it hadn't rendered the Conservation March over, Prancer would have appreciated. But Stamper did not notice the push and pull of the storm. He saw something else.
"Em, is that a baby carriage?" He pointed out the window down to a small basket on wheels, teetering on the edge of what could be considered buoyant.
"Did any pony lose their child?" Moon Prancer panicked, running around the hallway, though mostly in a circle. Stamper said nothing.
She barely noticed him rushing down the emergency stairs, bolting down faster than the elevator could go. She chased after him until she reached the water. Stamper was already in it, struggling to move through the water. Deep enough to wade through, but not enough to swim through. Moon Prancer followed him, but her shorter height made it even harder to move through.
She exited the hotel and saw Stamper lifting the baby from the carriage, looking at it.
"There's a doctor in the hotel, we can take-" her eyes bulged as Stamper looked back to her with dead, horrified eyes, and she hurled breakfast into the water at her hooves. He levitated the baby, its eyes glassy dead staring back. He turned it to her, as if to say the doctor can't help anymore.
It was that shock that stunned them both. Moon Prancer didn't look, she couldn't handle it. But if she was bending to the horror Stamper had broken. He froze, even as the tide came in, even as carriage floated and shifted along with the flowing tide. He was still among them.
Only in the last instant did Moon Prancer take her fear off the foal and turn it into panic.
"Stamper move!" But it was too late, and would have been pointless. He stared with the baby there as the tide carried a carriage toward him. Protruding from the carriage, a snapped wooden frame of a painting turned into a spear. The tide flowed in as a wave, carrying the carriage and accelerating it.
He probably didn't even feel it as the frame crashed into his neck; the tide moved them all, baby and artist and carriage, into an abandoned police carrier. The glassy dead eyes of the foal joined Stamper in his death stare and in an instant his body crumpled against the heavy vehicle.
Nature claimed its victim, head on a pike, using a broken half of a picture frame.
Moon Prancer didn't answer the phone. The caller id said it was her editor. She had arranged a meeting in advance, but two days ago made it impossible to go today. She sat, fireplace crackling, at her table while coffee brewed in her kitchenette and listened to her thoughts.
"It should go at the end. Yeah, that sounds good."
Her editor wouldn't be touching her writing until after she was done with the final piece. An animal so reliant on nature even though no pony realized it. Every word she had planned out, from the first "E" to the last period. She knew.
Every pony has an obligation to this planet. The consequences are long term. The consequences are short term. You, my reader, have seen evidence that proves we are in the beginnings of our consequences. The planet ravaged, ecosystems deteriorating. But what you haven't seen is why we care. No, not why we care about some frogs in the forest, or about water pH.
You haven't seen why we should care about our place on this planet. So, I'll tell you. There's a perfect ecosystem to talk about. I call it Manehattan. And there's a story about one of the little animals in Manehattan you should know.
Moon Prancer breathed and unclenched her jaw. She dipped her quill in ink and continued writing.
Moon Prancer grabbed the radio and flung it across the room....
