From Beginning to New Beginning
It didn't hurt, you know, when I died. I don't remember much, something like a speeding object, maybe a needle, a weapon of some sort, an adult stallion, I don't remember. I don't know where I was when it happened, or who I was with. All I know is that it should have hurt, but it didn't.
I don't remember what I was before I died, I wasn't what I am now, although I do know I was young when I died, five or six years old. I know that my parents loved me; I didn't have any siblings, or friends. My parents loved me but they didn't love each other, they would always fight. Sometimes it was about me, sometimes other things that I didn't understand and can't remember. Sometimes I wish I didn't have my parents, I didn't love them back, they were a weight on me, more than I was on them I think. Because I didn't have anyone to play with I started reading from a young age; that was another reason I didn't like my parents, they didn't get me any toys. I liked lots of books, especially the fantasy ones, they always were so magical and colourful and happy. I wasn't reading anything amazing but definitely books that were too big for some.
I didn't know where I was after I had died, it was white, but nothing. It's almost funny, white is every colour together but I still seen it as nothing. There was a place to stand, it was everywhere, like the white, I could feel it. The... the plane... was the only touchable thing, nothing else. I don't know if I was wearing clothes or not, much like when before I died, I just can't remember myself. I wandered, first off, hoping to find an edge, or a corner with my name in it, or something, anything. I didn't find anything. I don't think I could blink, I wouldn't have opened my eyes if I could, I didn't have to attend to my body either, but I do remember being hungry. I was hungry for so long, I was hungry while I walked, while I waited, while I did nothing. I was hungry for hours? Weeks? I might have been years... I don't remember...
I remember when everything changed, change wasn't good, change is never good. The body and mind prefer the known and I had settled into a very solid schedule and had a lot of time to practice it. I wasn't able to remember anything at that stage either, food was a mystery, faces and people were void, hobbies and reading and everything in world had turned to white. I was trying to taste something, or hear something, it hadn't dawned on me to hit against the white under my hooves... it wasn't hooves, it was something else at that time... I was trying to sense something, and in a moment of drift-away I thought of something, something that wasn't white, it made up white. I call it blue now, I don't know what it was called before I died, but it was blue, only a dot, the tiniest dot imaginable, and it was wonderful. I made this blue dot in my head bigger and smaller, I didn't think to make more, I didn't know how to make other things, other things didn't exist at the time.
It was wonderful, this blue dot, moving around in my mind, getting bigger and smaller. I was jumping, and frolicking and this blue was just amazing. I opened my eyes to see the huge white around me, something had changed, it was hard to tell, my eyes weren't used to looking at anything, I saw the blue dot, not in my mind, in front of me. I walked towards it but it stayed where it was, I tried to move it in my mind and it moved out of my mind also, but still stayed where it was. The dot was like this for a while, I liked it, it gave me something to look at when I was walking, it also gave me something to not look at, which was nice also.
I was thinking about my memories, how I couldn't remember them, one thing I could pick out was that things got bigger and smaller when you moved around them. I tried making the blue bigger and smaller but when I looked at it was just pulsing, not being, it hurt my eyes, I didn't try this again for a while. I tried putting the blue on the standing on, it acted weird, it was always where it was, but it was under me. It wasn't a circle any more, it was a circle that was longer one way than the other, I was able to move it around on the under-me too, and even off of the under-me and into the white.
I was able to move the blue without closing my eyes or thinking hard about it, it gave me a feeling of power, a feeling. It was the first thing I had felt since the joy and the hunger, I was still hungry... very, very hungry... I thought that maybe I would die again, maybe it would be painful...
Being able to see the blue let me examine it, it moved exactly how I saw it, I could pop in-and-out of the white, or drag myself smoothly through it, it was tranquil, calming. Eventually I thought I could try to make it not move again, I thought all my practice would pay off. I watched it, and I put it on the under-me, because that would make more sense, and I made it bigger when I walked towards it and smaller when I walked away. After... I don't know how long... the blue had stopped moving, just like I wanted it to. When I turned around and looked back it was still there, when I ran as far as I could so I couldn't see it, even when I saw it, and ran back, it was there. I shoved my face into it, what was it though? What is this blue that lay flat against the white? I wanted to try and taste it, but I forgot how to taste, and to smell, it was part of the white so I couldn't feel it, I wanted so badly to feel it.
I played with the dot, moving it around, running around it, doing things but it still wasn't there, I couldn't do something to it and vice versa, it wasn't like hunger or accomplishment. I put the dot back onto the white, I tried doing what I did before, it started pulsing again, I closed my eyes and thought hard about it, knowing that I could do more with my eyes closed and thinking about it hard. The blue stopped pulsating, when I opened my eyes it didn't move, kind of... it wanted to stay where it was but jaggedly moved from where it would be in front of my eyes to back where I wanted it to be. It was painful to watch the blue, but I had to make it not move so I kept trying to get it to not move. It hurt behind where I see, behind and a bit above, pain wasn't nice.
The blue dot stopped moving, it was there, right there, where ever there was at the time. I touched it, it made what I used to touch feel heavy, it was such a weird sensation. I couldn't feel it but it made my... mine heavier. I ran through it, I put different parts of me in the blue, it was feeling, it was glorious, it was the happiest I had ever been in my death. I made the blue bigger to weight myself down and smaller to put in and around me but it was still wrong. It was flat. I didn't know how to make a circle into a ball so I made more and just moved them so that they made it into something... like a ball with a load of bits taken out. This was the first time I had more than one blue and saw how they moved when I walk around them, it was all so interesting and wonderful, I wanted to sit there and stare at the blue dots. But it could be even more awe-inspiring, I knew that, I had a plan.
I made more and more dots, moved them and eventually I had a wrinkly ball, I closed my eyes for concentration and replicated the ball but fuller, more like a ball than the one I made with circles. The ball was no more interesting than the dot but it made more of me heavy, and that was wondrous. I made more balls, I could make them with my eyes open, I frolicked through them, all this- that feeling, those shapes and weight; shapes! is that what I called them? Not soon after my memory exploded. The ball was only one of many, many different things, shapes, that is what I called them? I made boxes and pointy things and stars and weird bendy things and sharp, but friendly, thingies. All the shapes and bits melded together into a haze and myself was twitching with the pleasure and ecstasy.
As I summoned up more than five... I can't remember what comes after five... objects and the haze came all around me and something strange, scary, happened. The white wasn't white any more. The white was before, hated, and I didn't like it, but seeing it showed me where I was, and I always knew where I was with the white but now the white wasn't white any more. It was blue, but not blue, and not white, it was like blue with blue taken out of it to leave . I ran out of the little place I had created for myself, created for my feeling, something that took me away from the hunger, but it gave me pain, like the striking of the blue moving back and forth when it was in the white and not moving.
The white returned, I turned from the blue to just see white, it was beautiful, the pure white. I looked at the blue, it wasn't a haze, it was just the shapes all bunched together, I didn't imagine the haze. It scared me but I wanted to see the white-blue, I only tried to see it because I knew that I could control the blue if there was only a small amount. It was a lot easier to make, even though I had my eyes closed, maybe I was just getting better at making blue? It was only a dot, I didn't want to make a ball, I was scared, I put another dot on the weird blue and it made regular blue. It was so wow, how these two... two... white-blues... made blue, when you put them on each other. I had to question what blue was again, what is blue? I wanted the white-blue back but I was still afraid of the haze, can I take away blue? I tried to take one of the white-blues away, I couldn't, I closed my eyes and wished, wished because I was afraid that I had marred my beautiful white permanently. Even with my eyes closed it was very hard, it took twice as long to get rid of the white-blue, I was just so glad I hadn't destroyed my white. I put mine into the white-blue, it weighed Me down too, but less, it was nicer than the blue; sometimes the blue was a little too heavy.
I played with the white-blue, as I had done with the blue, the haze still scared me, I wanted it gone. I found a shape that was outside of the haze, it was a box, all the shapes that I had made were flat apart from the balls. I thought as hard as I could, the box was much bigger than the dots. It worked in my mind, I seen it had turned into a white-blue box. I didn't know what I was seeing, is blue just two white-blues ontop of each other? Are white-blues lots of white-white-white-white-white-blues on top of each other? How can I make white-white-white-white-white-blue? Can I really ever get rid of a blue? I concentrated on the box as hard as I could, it did go away, where it was didn't make me heavy, it didn't make the white not white, it was pure. I worked on the haze, making each shape white again, the balls were no harder to make vanish than the others. The last two pointy blues I made white in one go, without going white-blue fist.
I was left with my white-blue dot, my white blue dot, came to mind. I made lots of different blues, I named them too, not-so-blue, really-blue, oh-so-blue, nothing-blue. I remembered there were other... colours... as I came to name them, they were hard to make, instead of seeing the colour, like I did with blue, I had to suggest them. I tried with not-blue, the most not-blue thing I could think of. White had been the not-blue for a long time, but I could remember not-blues before I died, only vaguely. Orange was weirder than blue, it looked wild, unstable, I didn't want to touch it but I saw no other option other than. It wasn't so much not-blue but everything-but-blue, putting my thing in it made it feel lighter, the really-really-really-orange almost made me float. It was scary but I knew that orange was important, it had a meaning.
Other colours came as I suggested white around, messed with it, and turned it in on itself. White must have been scared like I was, I wish I could say sorry. Yellow and purple were different and the same, purple made me feel, a good feeling, happy? Was it called? Yellow made me the opposite, not good, I don't really like yellow. Red and green were the same, red gave me a thing with taste, not good. Green gave a really good taste, something I can really enjoy.
There were lots of other colours, brown, and lavender. Black was really hard to make, I don't know why, it didn't feel like anything, it was like white but opposite. But of all the colours I found, pink was my favourite. Pink did something to me, something different to the others, it made me... what did I call it?... oh dear... I remember! It made me laugh! Laughing was the most amazing thing, better than the feeling of the first blue dot and more amazing than all the colours thrown together in a show feeling. It was amazing because it was both in my mind happiness and outside my mind, all the other colours had done something which made the one or the other feel, but never both together. I loved pink, that was something else, love, I didn't know what it was but it was there so I named it.
I liked my colours, I made shapes with them, new shapes. Lots of boxes stacked together, dots stacked together but getting smaller at the top, new shapes. I made objects, things I can pick up, they didn't make me feel like the shapes, they were the first things I had touched other than the white under-me for a long time. Doing new things was becoming easier, I only had to close my eyes for black and not-flat shapes. I was still hungry, the first foods I made were hard, edgy and tasteless, even when I put red and green over them. I wasn't hungry any more, I felt empty as ever, even more empty, at least I wasn't hungry, it didn't hurt to move. I was ashamed of myself, I think, I don't really remember, I don't want to remember that part. I still do remember though, it was because I couldn't make good food, with all my power, I couldn't make good food, like my mother had done before... before something...
I had power, why didn't I know that before? What is power? Should I have it? But most of all, why? Why was I given this power? And by whom? I wish I knew, even now I don't know, I don't like thinking about it. My power gave me a reason though. I made brown tubes with little green almost-flat-kind-of-circles, I made the white that wasn't the white under me not white but blue and even then not blue but white-blue, I cleaned up the odd shapes and colours floating around. The white around me started to look familiar, it took shape, a shape I would never have been able to think of on its own. It wasn't everything I remember, which said something because I don't even remember what I was trying to remember, but it was familiar. I just had these images that I replicate and sometimes know the purpose of.
I had made myself somewhere, my own... my own little world if you will. It had one tree, two flowers, a little box with an opening for me to get in and out of, some food... and a few bits and pieces that I had to mess with in my spare time... My world was dead, more or less, I gave it colour and it wasn't happy. Shapes didn't cheer it up, objects could not stir its glee. It was my world though, my world, and I had control over it. My power had given me reason but I only knew what that reason was shortly after I knew I had power, it was scary, could I make my own world? I wish I knew I could, but I can't do it alone, I need some other being to help me, so I don't get yellow for some reason.
I willed something into being, I didn't know what another would look like, and if I did I would get the shapes and not the other. I closed my eyes, it was hard, much harder than anything ever before. It took so long, it hurt, and it hurt a lot, more than the hunger at its worst, more than watching the pulsing and jumping blue. I failed the first time, I rested in my box, trying to regain my energy. When I tried the second time I could see the being fading in and back out in my mind, I did get it into my world but I stopped, I don't remember what happened. I heard a noise, first noise I had heard in too long, I don't even remember hearing myself for that matter. But there was a noise, everything was black, my eyes were still closed, I had that pain behind my seeing. I opened my eyes to see a scratched-blue eye... the sound was a voice, I couldn't see what was making it, everything was blurry. The being wasn't what I thought it would be... before that... it stood on four legs, it was all smooth, misshapen, you could say. My vision had cleared, it was nice and friendly. It was a girl, I knew that, I don't know why, I even got the feeling I knew her. She looked not-happy, but... not not-happy in the bad way, not-happy about me. She wanted me to be safe, it made me feel safe... I could see her body, as I called it, more clearly, it was cartoonish, I didn't want to change it, it appealed to me even though I knew it wasn't right. The best thing about her was that she was pink, pink! The best colour of all, so happy and stimulating. She asked me if I was okay, I said yes, then she said she was hungry... hunger... She was me, because I'm the only thing I know that is like me, she said. I gave her food, we talked about what I had made, I was nice. I asked her if she could do what I could and she said she can't. She said that this is my world and that beings only have power if I give it to them, she also said that she looked exactly like me. I don't know when I had changed, or if I had always been like it...
She helped me make so much, and she told me the names of everything I didn't name already. We made hills, the sky and clouds, grass and flowers, houses and doors and windows, colouring books and crayons, and real food. She taught me writing and numbers and other things I would need to know. She told me to make a book and pen, and to make sure it was a blank book. She told me to write down everything I make, the shape of the land, how big it is, everybody and where they live, how many pieces of grass there are in every field, everything. You're making your own world, she said, you have to know everything about it. The last thing she helped me with was making other ponies, as she said they were called, she said that making them is hard but I only have to make a few. Making other ponies requires me to know them, to make them real, or else they will slowly fade from my world because of how I had designed it. She gave me two warnings before she asked me to wish her away, she said that if I want a perfect world that I have to plan, and things have to make sense. She also said that in a perfect world there will be evil wanting to corrupt it, and that I should prepare adequately. I wished her away.
My world was still small, only a town, and not a big town either. I could still see into the white, I like sitting in one place atop a small hill and just watching the white sometimes, it's calming. The first pony I made was white and white eyes, she was the first living thing I had seen apart from myself. She talked really high pitched, the first thing she asked was what my name was. I couldn't answer, I couldn't remember my own name. She said that she liked my colour and that I smelled nice, she started calling me something I can't remember. It was nice and happy, it's still what I have ponies call me today. The pony had no personality, she faded away not soon after.
I made a few other ponies after that, it was hard giving them a personality, even when they had one they still faded away. I tried wishing myself back but I just wouldn't come, maybe I was only there to help myself for a while. After hundreds of failed ponies and different recipes I got one right. He had what all the others were missing, a purpose. His purpose was to water the flowers. I asked him his name, he said he didn't have one. I wasn't very good with names, I couldn't remember my own or the names of the only other two ponies I knew... I just did what I did to myself and just called him what he was, Life Water. Life Water did his job, he was very good at it, I wrote him down in a new book I had made for ponies only. Life Water asked me a few times what I was doing and how I done it, I told him it was magic. I don't know why I lied to him, it didn't feel nice, but I felt like I had to hide my power, it was dangerous.
The first ponies came to life easier after that. They were all quite happy, they all made friends with each other. I couldn't make friends, I could tell the other ponies were afraid of me... They started to live in the houses, I always made sure they had food. I started naming them less specific to what they do, the names just sounded better anyway, Mittens, Hoof Brush, Sweetnote Songnote, Gli... Glimm... Glimmer... I wrote everyponies' name down, their colour, heights, favourite time of the day. It had become very difficult to remember everyponies' name, I didn't have a good memory, even if I had all of them in my notebook. I needed to know all their names so I needed something to tell all the ponies apart, I gave everypony a little picture of what they do.
The town's ponies called them cutie marks. I taught these ponies about the land around them, because I thought they should know. I didn't know about growing food, I had heard about it. The ponies I had made used what I told them about the land to grow food. One pony, Script, found she was better at making food than she was at writing. Books were, and still are, a huge part of me. They had even more significance than they did then at one time in the past. A new and strange feeling came over me, disappointment. Disappointment in Script for giving up on the most important thing to me and disappointment in myself for getting something I thought I could do wrong.
I didn't want Script to change what she did, she convinced me otherwise by saying that it was her special talent, that her cutie mark was wrong. I was happy to know that no other pony felt the same way, I was afraid to fail the ponies. They didn't like me I don't think, but they were my friends, they were the only ponies that I knew existed.
I planned, I wrote down everything I knew about a world, I knew they had to be big, so big that if they were a ball it would feel flat if you stood on it. I had many ideas sown from the worlds I had once read about in my books, worlds that made no sense and were wild and unpredictable. I took my advice and avoided those kinds of worlds. I planned the hills and rivers and where ponies would live, the weather; I even remembered the sun and the moon and how they moved across the white-blue. I spent years planning and writing and making sure everything worked, all the animals and plants and bugs and trees were all designed to make sense, down to every vain. My world would be a very precious balance that would tip if even the slightest thing was too blue or orange, I prepared.
I flew away from my small world, so far away that I couldn't see it any more, I saw how small it actually was. I closed my eyes, I imagined my town lifting slowly off of the white, that my world was on a ball so big that it felt flat if you were standing on it. The few hills and trees lifted from the white, everypony was asleep, I made sure of that; I wish I could have been able to sleep... A large white ball rose away from the standing-on, a blank canvas to paint on with only the tiniest dot of green on top of it. Once the ball was high up above the white, high enough so that you could never touch the white below, I tried to make it so that ponies always stood straight no matter where they were on the ball, I failed. It would be a while until I figured out how to do this, and only until somepony points out that when they let go of something it always drops to the ground, it felt strangely cliché... But I did figure out that if I put a pure-blue ball in the centre of the white ball it makes things heavy towards it, I was proud of myself for figuring it out. Next I made the sky and the sun and the moon, the sky wrapped all around my world, it was like a new white except it had bits of blue in it, the sun and the moon hung in the sky like eyes watching the few ponies that existed. I had to move the sun and the moon by myself, I couldn't make any reason to how they would do it alone, I made them move in a circle around my world like they did when I knew them. I made it dark when the moon was above me and bright when the sun was above me. I had to practice but eventually I could do it without thinking about it, I was more tired for those few... months... I think it was... I can't remember.
I could feel myself getting weaker every month, then every week, then every few days. I suggested a way to check why, a small metal binding found itself around my hoof, it had a sharp needle and a couple of dots on it. I didn't know what it was. During the night I made stars in the sky, many ponies loved the stars, they said they looked magical and majestic. One pony approached me and asked me how I moved the stars, I told her that I just thought about it any they moved, she said that she couldn't move them. She confused me a little, she said she wished she could keep the night forever, I asked her why and she said she thought it was more beautiful than the day, the pony was a strange one. She said that she wished that she could make shapes like I could and that she would use it to make the lives... lives... of her friends easier. A wave of emotion came over me, a wave I had not felt for a long time, I started jumping and skipping around, the pony got scared. I remembered that I told myself that I could give other ponies powers, and I would.
It wasn't hard making the right pony, making things had become who I was. I knew that the ponies could simply think about it like I did, but they needed help, they needed something that they could focus their thoughts into. The first was pony short and lean, she told me that she had a head ache, then the entire world went red, everything tasted a stinging bitter. When I wished the red away, the pony was gone, you don't always get things right. The second pony had major limits, he could only use his power when he thought about it really hard and he could only pick stuff up, he was regular sized. A few times he was able to pick rocks up, a few times he failed, just as I wanted. I always remembered myself talking about evil, so I was careful about how I gave out power, ponies would have to practice magic to be use it, and only for good. And so I started making unicorns. That stallion was a little more powerful than the other first unicorns, he taught the others how I had taught him. He had grown middle aged by the time I had finished experimenting and procrastinating, he was always so devoted, I was always so proud of him.
My world didn't grow much, but I made rolling landscapes, and mountains and seas and oceans and forests and deserts and islands. I loved that making process, I bred life into my world, if even as little life as I had done. I made towns and cities for my little ponies, I made pegasi for controlling the weather because it was a difficult task for just one, they could fly high into the sky and walk on the beautiful white clouds. I made them their own cities in the sky so that they could better observe the weather. I taught them to make wind and rain and snow, there was this one pegasus that stood out from the rest.
Rapid Wind could fly faster than any other pegasus I had made, I think I had made three pegasi cities by then, she was a crisp white, a beautiful white. I saw her once after I had made her, she was trying to fly faster than she ever had before, she did something that even I never thought to do, something that was not planned or pondered on: she flew faster than she had done before, faster than anything, she made a rainbow. I had grown an infinite affinity with the white that I knew was just beyond the sky but this colour, much like the first... blue dot... was truly different, and it fix-framed in my mind that my little ponies could create, they could live. I saw Rapid for only a split second before she hit the ground about a mile away from me at full speed, the thud and crack sounded hazily familiar, were they not muffled by distance. I grew fearful and simply rid of Rapid, everypony who had watched Rapid make the rainbow forgot about her and thought I had made it.
Something in my world had changed, once Rapid hit the ground; once she had dissipated, something had been created. After the incident I followed this new force, something was drawing me to it, and found myself in a small village I had made at the foot of Mount Jagged, a volcano. In the smallest house in the village there were two ponies, a mare and a stallion. I recall the purple mare laying on a very comfy looking bed, her face had gone white and her cheeks had gained a tint of green, she was panting heavily. The stallion looked over at me with a large goofy smile, he was holding a small, pudgy pony with oversized eyes and no hair, a truly horrifying sight, it made me want to vomit. But they were happy, these two ponies, this little ball of red, yellow and clear fluid, that was crying painfully loud, was loved by these two ponies; I could feel their pink radiating from them. The stallion hoofed the mother the small thing and the mother guided it down to her belly, the thing started sucking on something I had not remembered giving ponies before. I asked her what she was doing and she said, still breathing heavily, with a smile, ''I'm feeding her, she's only a foal!''. I was jealous, but I wasn't angry, how could I be? That foal, as she was called, seemed vaguely familiar, and her per- p- parents were just so nice and friendly. Though there was one thing I was confused about, she had no cuite mark, her parents said they didn't know either. I didn't feel a need to make any more ponies; I put trust in that stallion and that mare.
So I started making other civilizations: zebras, dragons, goliaths, dolphins; my world began to fill. I began dreaming up landscapes nothing like those before... before. I remembered the books I had read and I made them even more fantastical, with rolling fields of giant bioluminescent mushrooms and giant caves home to the cities of thousands of mice and oceans of millions of flying fish that soared through the waves and swam the sky. I quickly found ways to make weather move on its own; I gave other species little power, I wouldn't say I didn't trust them... I guess my little ponies held a small place in my belly, I am one myself.
Is it right to love some things over others? I like pink more than I like blue. Pink isn't alive though...
The farther away from the first ponies I painted, the more the needle on my little device crept away from the right of the binding, to the left. I got really worried, I started working really fast and the small blank section of my world I had left became sloppy and disorganised; the needle just went down faster. I grew tired, hungry. Hungry for energy, food didn't help. The needle was about a quarter away from the left edge by the time I had finished my world; the land was slightly greyer in colour and not fully corporeal. The animals and civilizations weren't quite what I had made them to be, they were rowdy and brutal, the weather, the least tamed I had seen and even more brutal and indecisive. Earthquakes happened without reason, winds blew the trees from their roots and rivers flowed red or didn't flow at all. I do not like that place, I do not think the people who lived there were ever happy. It feels evil.
Although I didn't want to, I left the place be, I simply sealed it off, I only hoped that I wouldn't have to see the place again. I wondered my world for a while, trying to think; think of ways to make it more real, thinking of what the needle was actually going down for. I found that little foal again, apparently she had earned her cuite mark, like all foals would have to, apparently she had become a lover; a pony who made those around her happy. Apparently she had died many years before, like all foals eventually would.
I noticed that all the civilizations had become self-sufficient, they had leaders, all apart from my little ponies. Some asked me to rule: some had been more observant than others. I could never think of anything to say, I just couldn't take on that kind of responsibility. The needle started going down on its own, it didn't need me to be doing anything. I imagined that it was simply my time on this world, I make my world for everypony to live on it. But why should they get to enjoy it when I don't? I've had a hard life, and then I have to rule my land? It's not fair, I want to be happy but I'm going to die when I finish this damned place. I thought to myself; I guess that was the real reason I never wanted to rule over my little ponies.
I stopped any contact with the habitants of my world, they didn't appreciate me, they saw me as apathetic. I wasn't mad at them, they had a right to be mad, they couldn't explain why I was different, neither could I, I had just moved on by that point. Fables about me stared to arise, the ponies said it was a very tall mix of all pony races that first pulled the ground itself from nothing. The griffons told stories of a scholar who crafted the world with precision and regalia. The buffalo told of a spirit who stampeded a large mountain into the rock under them. I found the final puzzle piece, my world needed history.
I summoned up a new book, my two other books had more become a library, I loved that library. The library was situated on the white; I couldn't store it on my world, and it was filled with the most wonderful stories of lives and places and relationships. It was a fantasy book come to life. I started again, I made new living things with new places to live in, I made war and peace and bloodlines. I loved making the families, I always made happy families, bar the minority that feuded for the purpose of history. I made myths of a powerful wizard who pioneered magic, of a pegasus who could fly so fast she made a rainbow, of a pony who wished night would never end. I filled a new library, a library so big it housed the first one, the needle didn't go down as much as I thought it would, I guess it was because I was only changing memories.
I had started to wither while I was writing the history, my skin lost its plump and its glorious pink tone. Flying became harder, summoning things other than books became impossible. My joints broke very often, unbraking them became a suffering in itself.
I didn't want to die, not again, not in pain.
In my last month I struggled with installing the last few features of the history, some peoples were resistant to the changes, they didn't always believe me, I wish some had just listened. The last week I said goodbye to everything and everyone I had created, every mountain and blade of grass; I was the only one who cried. On my last day I double checked my work and tried to keep still for the pain. In my last hour I prepared for what was to come. It was strange, living for so few years and dying without pain, then facing the discomfort and torture I did after a multitude of life times, funny even.
I sat on the white, facing away from my world. I inhaled deeply and tried to close my eyes, the needle had reached the left side of the watch. I made myself a mirror, the first time I would look at myself, my eyelids didn't bubble with colour like they had before. My muscles couldn't push the lids against my eyes hard enough to cause the illusions. I counted backwards from ten, like I had thought myself to do so many years before... before......
***
Rocks.
All I could see was rocks, how could I have been so careless? A rock farm...... everypony makes mistakes. ''Darling, are you okay? Are you hurt?'' Said my father....my father...
I was a lot younger than I had planned to be, I must have been five or six years old, what should have been my history was my present. Life is a cycle. I imagined that, if done right, I could repeat it. The life I gave myself was planned to start in my teens, I wanted to be reborn into leaving my parents to explore the world I made through the eyes of a normal pony, a free spirit.
Rock farming was fun to design, it needs soil fertile in both nutrients and gem content. Different rocks—spherical in shape—slowly absorb the different gems, they must be rotated—or harvested—every four months to best harvest the verity of gem types from every field. After sixteen months, the rocks must be gathered and carved by a master gem farmer to extract the stones within, while not damaging the stone itself. We didn't have a prodder to move and harvest the rocks, the work had to be done by hoof.
I had two sisters, they made life less hard, they were somepony to comfort me on that nasty gash I got earlier that day, somepony to gossip with about nothing. I loved them so much; I never apologised to them for making them my sisters, forcing them to work as hard a life as they did. My dad was hard working, my mother was hard working; they bought us toys, they didn't buy us any books; I didn't like my parents, they never bought us books.
In hindsight I'm glad I messed up, I've always thought that you can't know happiness unless you know true sadness. Although my first life was hard it was different, it wasn't normal, by any stretch of the imagination. The rock farm was pleasant to an extent, I always had one particular rock I would mark, it was my rock and only I moved it. I would make sure that this rock got the best soil, one thing I didn't know even when I designed rock farming is that if you smoothed the face of the rock by hoof the gems were a lot harder; my cradled rocks always produced the best stones.
I never knew what my cutie mark was going to be, I wanted it to be a surprise, though I knew when I would get it. Unfortunately that was a long time away from when I was born, so I waited. As the day approached I anticipated something. I started watching my window, even though I knew the day had not come, my sisters always asked me what I was looking out for and I reassured them not to worry, that they would understand when they seen it. They started teasing me about it—not in a bitter way, of course—and I laughed and joined in, asking them to guess what I was waiting for, ''You'll never guess! I bet you two hours on the north field you won't!'' The day rapidly approached; all those fillies I had seen bounding in joy when they got their cutie marks, their cheeks were always pulled right up to their ears! and I knew when I'm getting mine.
My dad even gave me the day off so I could wait for it, 'it'... as he knew it, he never would have expected. I waited, like I had done before, my mother bringing me lunch at noon, I refused and told her to give it to my sisters as they were working. The hours rolled on, where was it? Perhaps I had misspelt dawn for dusk? My father came up to me at six, after his twelve and a half hour work day. We sat together for about an hour and we talked, not about rocks, strangely. We talked about patience... and anticipation; that was the first time we had had a chat about anything not over the table, and especially on a topic other than the farm, and I was sad? He tried to cheer me up, he joked, he even told me the story of his cutie mark, it didn't help, he never helped...
My sisters fell asleep but I continued to watch, the moon rose slowly, I hoped that I would get my cutie mark in time. Eventually my sister asked me to go to bed and shut the hangings, she had a long week of polishing ahead of her—which had to be finished, along with carving, before we planted the newest stones in the south field. I slipped up to my pillow and wondered if I would get it in the night, I apologised to her.
I awoke with the sun and with haste and threw off my covers; the ultimate antcipointment, I almost cried. But there was work to be done; I didn't even eat breakfast; I felt a little sick. My mother, younger sister and I began preparations on the south field, it would take four days to plough, the newest rocks would arrive on the fifth and we would select the best to buy—marble, quartzite, metamorphic stones—smoothing would take place on the sixth and the rocks would be planted on the seventh day; we had a tough schedule to keep and we planned to keep it. My elder and father went to the sheds for carving, schooling in, and polishing. At roughly ten O' clock my father rushed out to us, screaming, ''It's a- amazing! It's a miracle!'' He held up the tiniest fragment of ruby, so small he had to lay it in his hoof, and even though it was as puny as it could've been it glistened with more colour than any kaleidoscope or rainbow. My father explained that my older sister was bleaching the gems sterile, she wondered why she was to leave them in for no longer than ten seconds, so she took a chip from the ground and left it in the bleach basin for ten minutes without telling him. When she strained out the bleach the chip he held up to us was the results, ''and something else happened!'' The thundering of hooves approached from behind my father and stopped with the arrival of my sister baring and brand spanking new, proud-to-have cutie mark—a large white diamond, as sparkling as the ruby. We ate royally the next evening.
The week finished up, still no cutie mark, a month, zilch. As per family tradition, my older sister had dyed her cutie mark until she was of age, I don't want to say I was glad. I tried to control my mood but couldn't, everything spiralled; I was trapped on that farm because I couldn't leave without my cutie mark, I've been trapped my whole life—if not: chained to something—and I was so close to freedom, an ultimate freedom, and it just taunted me. My family tried to help me but I just pulled the colour from them too, whatever colour that was left in the first place.
Four months passed, my sister dyed her brilliant cutie mark the same grey-... purple-ish colour as her coat. Every hour of those two thousand and twenty eight I slipped a little further into depression, no matter how much I wanted to refute it, I couldn't, I knew where I was. We were gathering the rocks from the south field, my stone: safely ready, to be moved from the south field to the east. I was just finishing up, I was last to finish (which was odd as I always finished first;) I slotted the last stone into its respective pile and I took a deep breath; that sort that stretches your sternum ever so slightly and makes you feel simply... alive; you may know it. Just as I did there was a large explosion behind me, obviously I turned to see it and before me was a sky of colour, filled from horizon to horizon, more beautiful than even my sister's cutie mark. The rainbow couldn't have been coincidence, that was my sign, but for some reason I didn't pursue that sign; the warmth that that rainbow made me think of how yellow and red I had been, particularly to my family. It wasn't right of me to leave without apologising to my family. I thought for a moment of Rapid Wind, how she died to teach me of rainbows, how I just blocked her out; I didn't see the pegasus who made it but I would find her.
I would search, but that search would have to wait, I had other plans. I returned to my family and ate dinner with them; I was glad we ate in silence, or else I might have made hints. I finished my dinner and went upstairs—I was tired, said I—made my bed in my shape, grabbed the few bits I had hidden, scribed down what I would need and escaped through the window with my plain brown satchel, slowly letting myself down the house bound water pipe. I travelled into the nearby town, it was more of a small village. The streets were lined with cobble stone and flower beds—which bore flowers of every colour and scent, bushes of every berry, and fruit and vegetables of every flavour—; most everypony was smiling and some leaned on their door frames, sipping away at cups of coffee or tea or chocolate, just to greet passers-by.
I asked the first pony to my right, as I was stood there in awe, if there were any 'do-all shops around'; is what I think I said. And I remember her voice so clearly, it was a slice of haven, ''Oh! Little filly... you must be new to Variegate, Apop's is only twenty paces up the road, look! You can see the sign from here,'' and she knelt down beside me—her shoulder in line with my eyes; her shoulder, softer than silk, and smelling of roses—and pointed to a sign labelled 'Papa's' and depicting an incredibly satisfied, and friendly, pony sporting a sack over their shoulder. The pony then fumbled in her saddle bags, whispered something to herself and said, ''Little filly, it's a little late in the evening to be out in the streets, might I ask what you are going to buy?'' Her voice so soft, alluring, but to no bad intentions. I replied, though shuddering, without fear;
''S- supplies.''
''Hold out your hoof,'' The mare removed her hoof from her saddle bags and dropped a pile of coins into mine, ''Here's five bits, I'm giving them to you because I feel you may need them. But you have to promise me to use your 'supplies' for a good cause and... get home as soon as you can.'' I took the bits.
''Are the- the streets dangerous?''
''Not in this place, but your journey will be.'' The pony straightened her neck and legs, ''Now! Quickly! You don't have much time, not forgetting your promise of course!'' She swept her head around the street and trotted over to a group of mares who were conversing around the door to somepony's house. I never understood how she knew I had to travel the road but I was bent on keeping a promise I didn't even make.
Apop's or... Papa's... was quite a large shop for the one-of-a-kind town, it had a few free standing shelves and not one but two clinky-bit-counters; I never did learn their name. Despite its size it was incredibly well lit, and lighting was a big problem around that time; I never could get the candle formula right... The shelves were home to, as one would expect, a myriad of items. The shop was the only shop that appeared to be without a bell; all other shops' bells being in open sight, outside their doors. I approached the counter, tended by a very spry looking, prime I could even say, old stallion; he fiddled with his beard and waved his hoof over a selection of spooled coloured thread before singling in on a shiny grey colour, picking it up and noticing me in his eureka. ''Oh! I deeply apologise young lady! What can I do you for you this evening?...'' His voice trailed slightly, it was slightly squishy without all the nasty squish and wet. I handed him the list and he scanned through it, his beard blending in with the paper and making the illusion that it had disappeared. ''This is a very interesting selection considering you're-'' I felt a twitch at the base of my spine and a large clash and clang came from behind the stallion; from an open door to the left of him I seen, rolling, a wooden wheel, ''-'s daughter...'' He finished, with a sigh. ''I'll be back momentarily.''
I was left alone, and in silence—without hearing even the slightest exchange between the stallion and whoever might have caused the mishap. I quickly dismissed any paranoia, even when I wondered how he knew who I was—and I thought just that second that the light had gotten less bright but, thinking back on it, they probably didn't. I rudely peered over the counter lip—with the help of a bit of climbing—to see what the pony had been working on; a doll, kind of in my image, but with very gay, and strangely sparking, poofy hair. I gently lowered myself back onto the floor boards and they, in response to being very rudely stepped on—to which they had not minded before, as I recall—squeaked loud enough to be heard from the street; which, upon my research, had gained a slightly orange taint from the falling sun. The stallion called from the room he had went into, ''Oh! My apologies!''
He came rushing back out with a colourful paper bag and a large tweed blanket, he handed me the bag and asked if it was to my liking, I looked inside and nodded happily. When I had examined my purchase I heard him rustle the blanket, I looked back and he said ''And you're very lucky! you had just the right about of bits! That's a nice bit of coincidence, isn't it?'' The blanket was draped over the counter; the doll was gone. It came to my attention that he was looking at me, examining, you could say; unlike before when he only looked at the doll, also came to my attention.
I asked the stallion if he was a doll maker, he rolled his eyes with a smile and replied ''I don't think it's right to call them dolls; I would more call myself a... hmm... a planner. You look like a planner yourself,'' he winked at me. I caught sight of his cutie mark—when he turned around with a hoofull of spool, to be returned to the shelf behind him—a blue print, which has never made any sense to me. He was, admittedly, a very strange character.
I wanted to ask him who the doll was for but I never got the chance as he leaned in on the counter and whispered, ''I'm going to have to ask you to head home, I've got other customers to tend to.'' I glanced around the shop and was going to tell him that only he had joined me in my solitary, just before the shop bell rang a twinkly tone and another stallion—perhaps a friend of my attendant—entered and greeted us both, greeting the shop keeper more tenderly.
It was darker when I returned to the common air, and I returned home as fast as I could—; I didn't want to, that town, Veri- Veri-something, seemed to gave a feeling of ultimate peace, an enlightenment. I guess—in fear that I might break my promise.
The silo was empty, as usual, apart from the few tables I had helped make that we had set up for the rare family get together. Over the night I set up my tools, and weapons; the contents of the bag were only the icing on the cake and a few other important details. My family were gonna die when they see it.
I couldn't sleep, I was too excited; morning finally came and I clicked on the small family radio, inserting a... d... d- dies- or was it a tap?... hmmm... It was something that hadn't been around until I was a filly, I put it in the radio and a very quiet alarum began its call; I love radios. It only took until the second track to start up until I heard my mother calling me from outside, I ran to the door and beckoned her and the rest of my family to silo. They entered and I called from beside the cake ''Do you like? It's called...'' I didn't know what it was called, though I was used to just naming things at that stage, ''Aaaa Party!''
They, my family, stood there, with their mouths wide open, and looked around at what they must have thought as a monstrosity. I too looked at the tables and coloured cloths, the treats and drinks, the cake; the contents of the bag too: the balloons, streamers, the icing on the cake; everything that couldn't be found or fabricated on-farm. They hated it, though that's not what I said—what I said being something in hopes of brushing their pity; hoping, also, that their pity would keep me from being excommunicated from the family—in my fear.
I waited for their reply, I waited a painfully long time, a very long time. Very slowly, though, their gapes turned upwards at the edges, starting with my father, and all of a sudden they burst into smiles of wonder; the music hit it's very cockamamie climax and the eldest sister bound through the gap between my parents—away from the grey dirt—and began throwing her body around. She moved her hips and forelegs in time with the music and hopped from hind-to-hind, I was astonished! My mother jumped forward and began... waltzing around the silo! waving her forelegs in wide sweeping motions! The other two joined, as did I; dancing was wonderful, it was like laughing you could do seriously with others; I danced with my mother, she had the most beautiful eyes, even through her huge glasses, and she danced the best.
Dancing made me feel like... like a free spirit. No... it wasn't the dancing, it was just that moment... every moment from then on; it felt like my purpose, my true purpose. The party I had thrown seemed to spark into life a long awaited bulb, a very long awaited bulb.
She, my mother, told me, when we sat down to eat, that dancing was natural to our family—''your blood''—and I should be proud off the happiness that its always brought. She also liked my hair, saying it was very pink; she said she liked how I styled it—not questioning how I had styled it—, how the curls knot through my ears but still flowed down my neck and legs. Only now I question how I styled it too, later that night I brushed it in the mirror but it was too resilient, it sprung back; it was so springy no matter what I did to it it bounced back to its new shape. I spent hours playing with it, and it is giggled with every one of my laughs, gay and bouncy. She complimented me on my cutie mark, I don't feel a need to go into details about my response. Said cutie mark was three balloons, two blue... one yellow; it was a party on my flank, it made me so happy, but I wanted others happy too, and what better way can I make people happy other than a party? With my cutie mark I could move from the...slightly... barren—in one way—land of which was my family's farm... I was finally free, a free spirit; oh how even saying that now gives me shivers.
Oh dear... I've gone impressively off track... well... to say the least: I- uh... adapted... to my new look. I moved out and to a new town, threw parties, learned to bake for some money, made new friends, made my farewells for others, generally unimportant ponies. And I moved from town to town until I found that pegasus, found my planned house hold and waited. Waited is probably a little inaccurate of a word... it wasn't really the bad kind of waiting... The two ponies I lived with were married and they loved each other so very much, they were bakers and gave me a bed to sleep in if I worked for them, I loved them so very much too. They were the parents that were never really my parents, I loved them so. And I waited once more.
When I became an adult I discovered that I could still tap into my older self, I could bend the world around me, slip in and out of it, behind it; I once slipped back into the white, though not a part of it that I knew. I had to concentrate incredibly hard but it made travel and hiding much easier, luckily every pony just thought of it as 'me being me.' I guess it also explains how I can predict the future, it is my world and all, though the signs are sudden, my hoof might start tapping the ground, that means I have company. It's all a lot of twitching and tapping, I took them down in a book to remember though I never used it, I just memorised them.
I waited for the day until I could test my safety measures I had told myself to put into place, unlike my cutie mark I knew that this day would come when it had to because, if it didn't, there was a completely real threat; one that I wrote as fairy tale to become real. The day came when five ponies would come together, and I would lose myself in fear that they weren't the right ponies; I had already met with the first four, they, along with myself, were to represent everything I wasn't: kind, loyal, honest, generous, happy... along with a few other traits that were of my desire but given to others. My first encounter with the sixth was short lived and impromptu, I had to prepare and I left her without a word; that was one thing that I... uh... didn't really plan. She was to represent what I wanted to be but never got the chance to be rapt with; she lived in a library, and oh how I love books, the magic they brought. There's not a word I know to describe it, perhaps dream? or desire? but I called her magic, and so she surrounded herself in it, though not in the way she thinks; and how even today I envy her, how she lives underneath that library's roof.
I made that pony the magnet for the limelight for a few reasons, it was to take attention from me; all ponies, even today, 'feel they know me,' and I would explain to them that they should, but obviously that would have some... consequences. She also represents the strongest personality in me, and the one I can't—because I never have—fulfil. I do have to apologise to her occasionally, though she never knew why, for the pressure that something like that puts on her... but she seems to be happy, at least I try to make her so...
We defeated the threat, only by the skin of our teeth, using what the ponies called em... emla... I can't remember. The tale goes that these six ponies were able to summon up the remnants of an ancient power, my power, in order to defeat our foe, much like how I can still tap into it very slightly: a very suggestive action but I was very practised by the time I was writing it all down. It was a fun story to write, I loved the jewellery that I made to go along with the act, but they were only pieces of jewellery—vain, a little, on my half—; the ponies never realised their power came from their souls; I still giggle when they make reference to the elemnnn- whatever they're called. It's a beautiful story too, two sisters reunited after a thousand years; which really isn't that much when you think about it... Oh the two sisters...but that's a story for another time.
And it was at that moment I realised my history stopped in writing and began in action, for that is all I had planned for. My laziness, for once, in my favour. I never meant for my five companions to become my friends but I think they were bound to be, we just fit so well together... it was weird, not being in control of things, but it worked out very well. We... my f- fr-... my friends... continued on our adventures, we didn't always need that power, we worked together without them. I always cried a little on our nights in, when we would sit around and drink hot chocolate, that ever permeating happiness in the room... at those times... though I never showed it, I always disguised it with laughter, to make them happy as I was. We did need the power a few times, somewhere between ten and twelve times... I think, don't quote me on that.
I knew where all the evils came from, every time, that one rushed place. I cursed myself every time one came, the seal I put in place obviously wasn't good enough, and that was my fault.
Life continued too, though my friends and I never moved away from each other, they married, all of them, apart from me, I didn't understand it, being a parent also gave me bitter thoughts, I guess it just didn't appeal to me either. We had our ups and our downs. The magic friend tried to figure me out, she always had a suspicion that I was different, oh how she was right, but she just never understood how I was different. I told her once, in one of her flusters, sometimes you just have to believe in things, even when you can't figure them out. I was going to add ''that's how the sun and moon move,'' but I think that would have been a little too obvious, which would have been bad.
I feared that I would drive my friends away, every day; they had become the quarry and warehouse for my happiness. One time they were driven away, something changed in me; how can they just push me away? don't they know who I am, they're just like the first ponies. It was my birthday, and they threw me the most wonderful party in the end; I had forgotten it was birthday, that's understandable though, right? No one ever celebrated it before, I was never really... born... so to say... The thoughts I had, so bitter, so evil, I thought I would become an evil I had worked so hard to prevent and destroy. But that was one day of many...
Eventually, my friends began to age; I did too, but at a much slower rate, but not as slow as before. The first, the loyal, didn't die in pain, she had an accident. The rest though, I'm sure, died after very long lives, happy lives, I hope. The magic one was the last to go, she had a little help from her magic, and a little more fight in her, I assume. I stayed a day in the rain for each friend, and adding one for every friend before. Symbolic, I guess, but also because I found myself able to cry for five days once the last of my friends had past, the rain able to join me. She's buried under her beautiful library now, and of course! even I, now, am giving her the most attention! It's funny, almost, though laughing hurts at my age.
I guess that brings us to the present day, I lie here, in this bed, the room is very white, almost everything is white, it's comforting. I had thoughts a few years ago, when I really began to deteriorate, of trying to slip back into the white once more and looking for my library; I decided against it, it would be selfish, it's nice in this room, I have... health care? is it called? here.
I've wondered what's going to happen to me when I die, yes, I've accepted that I will die and it only took three lives and several hundred life times. I wonder if I will come back again, as a pony, in this world. I wonder if I will return to the white, but a different white, to start again; I wonder if it will be white, or something different... I wonder if I will go all the way back, to the world I didn't know... is it a cycle? That's the first time I've had that notion...
There is one precaution I've not told you about, I bet you're wondering what this red box is I've kept clutched so tightly to my side all these years in this white room; it looks kind of like a present, doesn't it? Well, it's a present to me. I used to keep it under my bed as a filly, I kept it in the back of the pantry when I lived in the bakery, I kept it as a centre piece when I bought my own bakery. I kept it hidden inside a very large cake on that day I believed my friends wanted to forget me. I've always wondered what will happen to this world when I die; if I do die will I just be transported to a copy? I don't know to be honest, no one knows, no one can know. I've always imagined that once I die, no matter what happens to me, this world will cease to exist, because it's my world, so how can it exist without me? If the worst were to happen and myself, and my five friends, were to fail to protect the world I figured that the best option is to rid of the suffering of everypony, and I only know one way to do that, in theory.
In this box are a pill and a knife, the pill to numb the pain, a knife... well... I need not say it. It is gruesome, yes... but it's for the best... I wouldn't want anypony being yell-... sad... because I messed up...
But luckily I don't think it will come to that, with my time being short anyway. So I lie here, in this... white... it's so white... and I'm always a little hungry, not so hungry that it hurts... but still hungry. I can't remember the last time I haven't seen white... they said I have this condition, begins with an 'A', that makes it hard to remember things, but I don't think it's that... I know I'm going to die... I know and don't say that I'm not because I will... but I don't want to die... Now that my friends are gone... I feel a little alone.
Both times I died I seen these lights, these very white lights. I never thought much of it... I thought once that it was like... like I was holding my breath, just until I wake up again... I seen them more than once before this life began, but that was because of how old my body was. It started happening again though... about a week ago, and it's kind of wonderful this time round. All I see is white, for hours, and once an entire day, but then I will see this blue dot pop in front of my eyes; it's very reminiscent of something... Oh, I remember! Of the blue dot... I remember it well... long before my friends were born... But they're all dead now... I guess I should follow suit; perhaps my friends are off building wonderful worlds of their own... huh, now that I think of it that way: I might get a chance to make a new world, one better than this one. Maybe my friends and I will cross paths once more.
I don't think I mind dying now; I guess it's only fair that I die anyway... I only hope it doesn't hurt.
