I, Fluttershy: At Forever’s End
Could this night be any more perfect? I think to myself, trying unsuccessfully to suppress my broad smile, the feeling that I could burst with delight any moment now. Glancing to my right, I see Rarity sitting beside me, close enough that if I were to fully turn my head, my snout would probably just about graze her cheek. I drink her in, breathe her in, burn her into my mind, hoping I’m not being too conspicuous about it. She is insanely beautiful, as always. I know that that’s quite a generic observation in this day and age, but with her flawless natural mane of flowing, tumbling violet, her silky coat of warm snow, and those unreal azure eyes, impenetrable wells into something unable to be touched, unable to be articulated, but forever bleeding through, there is not a more appropriate word.
The two of us are sitting by the Canterlot falls. The roaring, foaming water cascades down, down into the black oblivion below, and the golden spires of the great city tower up, up into the star-studded midnight void above, but Rarity and I have eyes for neither. What we gaze upon is something far less spectacular, far less impressive, far less grand, but infinitely more wonderful. Ponyville. Little more than an insignificant collection of thatched, sandy roofs amid gentle hills and cheerful-looking trees, but it’s home, and right now, all lit up, it is the most heartwarming sight imaginable, a valley of little candles cauterising the night. How can such a perfect place exist? I think. And how did I find myself part of it?
“Well, that was quite the friendship problem, wasn’t it, darling?” Rarity asks, chortling, finally breaking the silence. Her hoof is suddenly on mine, and my heart skips a beat, possibly two as Rarity’s warmth becomes my own, our bodies joined, a solitary design.
“Oh, I know,” I reply, laughing shakily and trying not to look down at our touching hooves. In any case, the silence was nice, but Rarity’s voice is just so much better. “For a moment there, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out of that café alive!”
Rarity giggles, and I blush, hide behind my mane. She lifts her hoof and bumps my foreleg affectionately with it. “I could not have put it better myself, dear!” Casting her eyes back in the direction of Ponyville, she sighs contentedly. “You know, I honestly cannot recall the last time I felt so simultaneously exhausted and elated. I feel like… like, oh, I don’t know!” She turns to look at me again, sparkling eyes, an easy smile. “Today was so difficult, but… so worth it in the end! You know what I mean, Fluttershy?”
“Of course,” I say. “But that’s what life is all about, right? Helping yourself by helping others. Somepony else’s happiness translating into your own.”
Suddenly, Rarity leans over and gives me a quick peck on the cheek, so brief that for a moment I am convinced I imagined it. When at last I come to my senses, I look over at my friend with an expression I can only visualise as being one of palpable disbelief. Rarity is sitting back a bit, framed by an infinite canvass of deepest blue and pastel radiance, vaguely mischievous, watching me expectantly.
“W-what was that for?” I ask her uncertainly, chest tight, heart thudding.
Rarity opens her mouth, closes it again. “Sorry, darling,” she eventually chuckles, looking slightly embarrassed now. The moment has gone on too long. “Not sure why I did that. I just… felt like it, I suppose. You are my friend, and–”
I lean over and kiss her on the mouth. Just like that. Pressing into Rarity, into her fluffy heat with my eyes closed, I feel her surprise, I taste it, but it’s gone within seconds, and then it’s just her and me. The waterfalls surge backwards and up into perpetuity, the grass and the earth separate and disappear, the wheeling stars overhead roll further and further away, light and dark amalgamate and cancel one another, and the sky shrinks and inverts until it is nothing but crumpled paper, and still Rarity and I kiss. I run my tongue across her teeth, and she responds by meeting it with her own. Eventually, we pull away.
“Rarity,” I say, struggling in vain to regulate my breathing. Words, Fluttershy, get them in the right order now. “Rarity, I... I want to– that is, I think w-we should– only if you want to, of course, but I–”
“Darling,” Rarity interrupts. Startled, I hazard a glance, and to my surprise, I see that her eyes are glistening, a peculiar look on her face. “Darling, stop.” She looks down, then immediately back up. She seems overwhelmed, helpless, and for a second, I am afraid, but then: “you don’t know how long I have waited for this moment,” she tells me, a little choked-up. “I’d... I’d love to.”
“R-really?” I stammer, not quite sure what has just happened. Did she correctly interpret what I was about to say?
“Yes, really,” Rarity replies, some of her usual fire creeping back in as she swipes at her eyes. “Now, come here,” she commands, a tender smile.
I don’t need any further convincing, and shuffling in closer, I snuggle up to Rarity, laying my head on her shoulder. This is perfect. This is everything I have ever wanted. There is no way this is real. All that was gone has now returned, and as these thoughts and similar ones whirl through my dazed, uncomprehending mind, I hear Rarity speak anew, her voice vibrating through my being, a hint of regret.
“Fluttershy, darling,” she says sadly, “I have just realised that the next train to Ponyville will be arriving soon.”
I close my eyes, beam, gently nuzzle Rarity’s neck. “Let’s just stay a little longer, Rarity,” I tell her softly. “Just a little longer. There’s... there's something I have to do tomorrow.”
I open my eyes to a sweeping, polychrome emptiness. Glittering, blobby stars and ghostly clouds of pure cosmic brilliance traverse the eternal dark, forsaken wanderers in search of… what? A purpose? Meaning? An end? I inhale cautiously, then exhale, and my breath freezes as it touches the air, the taste of something vaguely citric. Funny, I’m not at all cold. Slowly sitting up, I feel grass beneath my hooves, spongy and slightly damp, and looking down, I find myself on the threshold of a fathomless descent, space and the stars themselves dripping, bleeding, coalescing into the swirling, spectral abyss below. For some reason, I am not in the slightest bit frightened, and turning my head to the left, I see the Gatekeeper, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, staring out into infinity. His hair is noticeably shorter, his beard is gone, and he now wears a black leather jacket and matching gloves, a red scarf as well.
“Oh, you’re awake,” my soulless friend remarks when he sees me watching him, offering me a small smile. “Welcome back, I guess.”
“W-what am I… still doing here?” I ask, feeling more than a little dazed. I look around again, and the stars seem to flare, pulse, growing brighter and brighter. My vision tunnels, and I begin to panic, a black tide, surging. I try pushing it back, pushing it down, but there are just too many questions. “Where’s Twilight?” I hyperventilate. “What happened to Twilight? D-did I kill her? Is Twilight dead?”
“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” says the Gatekeeper, placing his hands on my hooves. “Calm down, I can explain.”
I take a few deep breaths, blinking away my lack of peripheral vision. Trying to avoid looking at my surroundings, I instead lower my gaze, focus on the Gatekeeper’s leather-clad hands. There is something strangely comforting about the way his fingers envelop my hooves, like they’re keeping them safe, protected. Why don’t ponies have these? I wonder. I feel like they would be immensely useful in everyday life. Or… would have been.
“Are you calm now?” the Gatekeeper asks me, searching my face with those scarily ineffable eyes of his.
I swallow, nod.
The Gatekeeper sighs. “Okay, I lied. I can’t actually explain.” I give him daggers, and he holds both hands up, hastily continues. “But from personal experience – and, trust me, there’s been an awful lot of that – the fact that you’re still here, right here and right now, can only mean one thing: that the universe isn’t done with you. I’m afraid that there’s something left for you to do, Fluttershy. But insofar as what that something is…” he bobbles his head from side to side, “…very ambiguous.”
“Did I… kill Twilight?” I ask him, barely a whisper, feeling every word in my throat, each sound physical.
“Um… yeah, pretty much,” the Gatekeeper replies awkwardly. “She was the… the purple one, right?” He makes a few indistinct hand gestures. “That threw lights at me? Yeah. And, uh…” he looks embarrassed, “not sure if you noticed, but the fact that you and I are still here means that…?”
“You and your friends managed to stop the Mutual Affliction?” I finish, a yawning chasm where once my heart resided.
“Yup. What do you know, right?” the Gatekeeper says, vaguely sarcastic. “So, basically, you ended your friend and your world for, well… nothing.” He is silent for a moment, then hurriedly resumes. “Which, of course, is completely my fault. Unquestionably. Without question. I overreacted. My bad. Please don’t blame yourself. Oh, and sorry, by the way. Forgot to, um… yeah, say that.” He scratches the back of his head uncomfortably.
Closing my eyes, I am at once overcome by a great weariness, the likes of which I have never known, and this is an achievement in itself. I remember it all now. The details, the little things like razor blades sticking into the jumbled bedlam of my mind. Jagged images, memories you could cut yourself on. Or over, depending on how you felt at the time. “It doesn’t matter,” I at last tell the Gatekeeper tiredly. “I stand by my decision. Things wouldn’t have gotten better, anyway. You weren’t the one living there for five hundred years. Equestria.” I shake my head, sigh, push my mane out of my eyes, rub at them. “I… I just wish I could have died with it. With Twilight. With all of them. I… I just… I thought I deserved that, at least.”
The Gatekeeper places his hand on my shoulder, squeezes gently. He cranes his neck, looking up at the stars wistfully, the light show of existence playing over his features, entering the depths of his depthless eyes as it did all those years ago in the void. He looks at me once more. “I know. But don’t worry. Regardless of what the universe intends, you’re still going to die. Of that I am certain. Your life force was linked to your world’s, after all. And there’s nothing left for you here anymore, nothing left to... to bind you to this life. You will get what you want.” The Gatekeeper smiles. “What you’ve always wanted.”
“Rest,” I murmur. “Dreamless and forever.”
“You know,” says the Gatekeeper after a while, sounding thoughtful, “I’ve never really understood the fear of death. I mean, sure, I guess if you’re an idiot or you’re delusional, and you thoroughly enjoy being alive, good for you. But death is easy. It’s life that is difficult, therefore, life that ought to be feared. Am I wrong?”
“Is there anything after?” I ask him. “After death?”
The Gatekeeper snorts, a little condescending. “Come on, Fluttershy, you’ve lived long enough to know that there isn’t.”
Princess Twilight Sparkle looks over at me, face flushed and eyes a little unfocused. “Well,” she says, sighing deeply, not quite unhappy, but about as far from content as a pony can get, “that was… a thing.”
“A thing,” I agree, massaging my warm, liquid head. “Oh my, I think I drank a bit too much.”
“Hah,” Twilight snorts gently, rolls her eyes. “You’re intelligible, so clearly not, Fluttershy.”
Today is Twilight’s birthday. New Canterlot in its entirety is the venue. It is near midnight, and the guests – that is, every pony in existence – have all begun to depart, varyingly drunk, staggering home to fall into bed and prolong their ecstatic forgetfulness. The night is dark, but it’s almost impossible to tell, even with the windows open. The multicoloured lanterns scattered about the place in meticulously calculated positions have their gaudy radiance captured and distributed by the large disco balls hanging from the ceiling, and my alcohol-clouded mind is finding the contrast almost impossible to come to terms with. It has been exactly five years since I brought Twilight back from self-imposed exile.
“Shall we go outside?” I ask her, watching the last of the guests trickling out.
Twilight nods sleepily, so the two of us carefully get to our hooves, supporting one another and knocking into half of everything in the room as we make our lurching way over to the front door. We are, at present, inside a massive studio at the very heart of New Canterlot, which has served as the main hub for Twilight’s birthday celebrations over the course of the last six or so hours. To our left is a line of, I believe, five buffet tables, even now loaded with snacks and punch and alcohol and whatever else Twilight’s appointed party-planners deemed necessary to keep the festivities going. Along the back wall is where the resident DJ had all his things set up, speakers and turntables and microphones and whatnot. I don’t know the precise terminology. The floor is by this point a literal ocean of party-related debris: scrunched-up plastic cups, battered paper plates, empty beer bottles, grotesquely intermingled food scraps, big, dirty balloons in varying states of deflation.
As the two of us cross the barren, planet-sized dance floor, I find myself thinking of our friends, partying with them, experiencing community life with them, just experiencing life in general with them. Rainbow Dash would be blind drunk, showing off. Pinkie Pie would be literally bouncing off the walls. Applejack would be in a corner somewhere, drinking cider, soaking it all in. Twilight would be hyperactive, stressing about time management and scheduling. Rarity would be looking typically fabulous, begging me to dance with her. And I would be making excuses not to, usually utilising Applejack’s solitariness to get my way. Tonight, there was exactly none of that. From what little I do remember, Twilight and I had spent the entire festivity drinking alone, the odd smile, the occasional strained pleasantry.
Having reached the door, Twilight and I exit the premises and take a seat atop a low stone wall nearby. There is a pleasantly warm breeze blowing from the south, which lightly ruffles my mane, the night’s caress, and I can hear live music being played from somewhere, dreamy and psychedelic. I inhale slowly. I will never get used to the smell of this city. It’s floral, almost living.
“You know,” Twilight suddenly says, and I look at her, “I think everypony has finally moved on. Forgiven me. Or maybe they just don’t hate me anymore. Either way, I think I’ve finally been… accepted, I guess.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I reply, smile encouragingly. “How does it feel?”
Twilight blinks, thoughtfully moves her jaw around a bit. “I honestly don’t feel any different,” she says eventually. “I don’t feel any different to when I was hated. When I was the most hated pony in all Equestria. Like nothing’s changed. Like... like I haven’t… fixed anything.”
“But you have, Twilight,” I say with a frown. “You have. Your efforts as the new ruler of Equestria have bettered the lives of your subjects, of your friends. Without a doubt. Look at how hard you’ve worked, Twilight, how quickly and efficiently you rebuilt everything, improved everything. Tell me you can see how much it’s all paid off?”
Twilight looks me directly in the eyes. “Then why are they still gone?”
It takes me a little longer than I anticipated to realise what – or rather, who – she is referring to, but as soon as I have, I drop my gaze. “Twilight.”
“I honestly thought it would bring them back,” Twilight tells me, and the absolute despondency of her voice causes me to look back up at her. Her eyes are dry, and she speaks without emotion, but it’s somehow so much worse. “I righted all my wrongs for them. Everything I... everything I did, it was all for them. They were the reason I made the effort in the first place. And they’re still gone.”
I shuffle in closer, lay my head on my friend’s shoulder, listen to her breathe. “I know, Twilight. I know.”
“Fluttershy. Hey.”
I open my eyes blearily and not a little reluctantly. The Gatekeeper is gently shaking me, the pleasant baritone of his voice cutting through my state (or lack thereof) of blissful oblivion.
“Ugh,” I groan.
“Still with us?” the Gatekeeper asks, looking me over, searching me with his otherworldly eyes.
I squint up at him. “Who’s ‘us?’”
The Gatekeeper blinks, frowns. “Us. Me and you. You and I. Us.”
I somehow manage to laugh, sitting up.
“Where were you just now?” the Gatekeeper inquires curiously.
I shake my head, sigh. “Just dreaming,” I tell him, looking around for want of something to do, something to see, but nothing’s really changed. It is all still just a limitless expanse of desolate stars and incandescent space, all-encompassing cloud and tangential permanency. It’s all just membrane, I suddenly realise. Cities flowing beneath oceans, and oceans towering beneath cities. Worlds flickering behind eyelids, and eyelids dwelling behind worlds. Everything I ever saw, everything I ever knew, everything I ever lived. But now, I can taste it, smell it, hear it, feel it. All around me, metallic and damp, so many different textures. Somewhere, steel rain is falling upon a patchwork plain below a liquid sky. Elsewhere, it is snowing souls, flakes of memory spiraling onto mountains of song. It’s all just membrane, I realise, merely waiting to be pulled back, pulled away like dead skin, the breathing pages of a book made of blood and bone and the light of stars.
“So, is this it?” I ask my friend after a while, more than a little overwhelmed by these invasive, unfamiliar thoughts. “We just sit here on this rock until I’m dead?”
The Gatekeeper shrugs as though to say either “I guess so” or “it could be worse” – I am not sure which – but then he seems to remember something, and what appears to be excitement manifests on his face. “Oh!” he says, waving his hands around. “Oh! Oh yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” He stabs a finger in my direction, wide-eyed. “Guess what?”
I raise a single eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“No, come on, you’re supposed to guess,” the Gatekeeper persists hopefully.
I give him my most withering look. “Do I care?”
The Gatekeeper grins meaningfully, bobbles his head, looks away. “Nah, suppose not. It’s just that I was told one of your friends is still alive, and I figured–”
“What?!” I exclaim, jumping to my hooves. My dying body protests, and I immediately regret it. “What did you just say?”
The Gatekeeper looks very pleased with himself. “One of your friends is still alive?”
I swallow, my heart racing, eyes unable to focus on one thing. “But– what– how is– w-who? Who is it?”
“No idea,” the Gatekeeper replies cheerfully. “All I know is that it’s a friend of yours. And where they are. So, I guess this explains why you’re still here, eh?”
This is all happening too fast, and for a moment, I don’t know what to say, what to think, what to do. Eventually, I remember to breathe. Slowly inhaling and exhaling a few times, I compose myself as best I can. “Well, where are they?” I ask, still rather breathless.
“Right here,” the Gatekeeper answers, and I am suddenly aware that we are no longer in the same place.
The sky is a glowing diffused pink, grey clouds swirling, the occasional twinkling star, and the hills and valleys which reside below alternate between rosy luminescence and shadows of darkest blue. The flowing, twisting trees slow dance in the barely perceptible draught, vine-clad, reaching up into eternity. To our right is a sheer drop into a painted gorge, swathed in a fiery mist and through which flows a snaking, swollen river of shimmering violet. To our left is a much gentler descent into a collection of craggy hills of varying shape and size, a sunset sea of grass and rock. And directly before the Gatekeeper and myself is a tall, mountainous ridge, verdant and with gnarled roots protruding out from beneath the bare, melancholic trees, out of the fertile soil. There is a crude, seemingly natural path winding along this ridge, a gradual ascent, rotting planks of wood nailed together to form a makeshift fence along the periphery. At the base of this path is where the Gatekeeper and I presently stand, tiny and alone.
“What is this place?” I whisper, completely in awe of the unadulterated beauty of this ethereal landscape.
“This,” says the Gatekeeper, an amused half-smile, “is the Last Memory.” He quickly looks at me pointedly. “And don’t ask me why it’s called ‘the Last Memory.’ I didn’t name it.” He pauses, narrows his eyes. His face lights up. “Actually, no, sorry, I do know why it’s called ‘the Last Memory!’” The Gatekeeper shakes his head in amazement. “God, I must be getting old.” My friend eagerly casts his eyes in my direction once more. “Ask me why it’s called ‘the Last Memory.’”
I oblige, still gaping at my surroundings. “Why is it called ‘the Last Memory?’”
“Because individuals who find themselves here can never leave, thus, it is the last thing they ever remember. The Last Memory,” the Gatekeeper answers proudly. He frowns rather comically. “I do believe I said ‘the Last Memory’ one, two, or three too many times there, Fluttershy.”
I am about to say something around the lines of “huh” or “oh”, but then my legs suddenly give way, and I find myself lying on the soft grass, body trembling, the inside of my head reduced to mush. Whimpering, I try to stand, but my legs refuse to obey me, and I blink furiously, attempting to rid myself of my dappled vision, my humming ears, the pounding in my skull. I am pervaded by what can only be described as a pulsating, blue-tinged white light, which draws me inside, through it, and I sense that there is something on the other end, waiting, reaching out to me. The single circular wall which surrounds me begins to roll away, contracting like an immense iris, and I am now suspended in starless dark, a bitter luminescence washing over the nameless rocks that lie beneath, forsaken, blasphemous, diseased.
“Shit,” I hear the Gatekeeper say from a direction that I, in my current state of being, cannot determine. Then I feel his hands on my back, tender, soothing. “Let me help you,” he says, a clear note in the maelstrom of pain, and suddenly, my head is clear, my vision and hearing are restored, and I find myself floating in mid-air, the things I saw nothing more than a bad dream, already receding.
“What did you do?” I ask, a tad astonished at the sensation of being airborne without the use of my wings.
The Gatekeeper shrugs modestly. “Helped you. But,” he adds regretfully, “in any case, I can’t get rid of the weakness you are at this moment feeling. I’m afraid that that’s unavoidable under the circumstances.”
I nod to signify my understanding, then look up. “Are we… are we going up there?”
“We are, indeed,” the Gatekeeper replies, apparently excited by the prospect of ascending a hill. “So, we’d best make a start!”
I raise an eyebrow yet again. There is still so much about my friend that I do not understand, even after all this time. “Why don’t you just use your magic to take us up?” I ask him, perplexed. “Wouldn’t that be quicker and easier?”
The Gatekeeper gives me a look. “Have you not heard of delayed gratification?”
“Um… no?”
“Never mind,” the Gatekeeper sighs. “And it isn’t magic, Fluttershy. It’s more like, uh… an intrinsic metaphysical toolbox. Or… something to that effect.” He glances at me. “Never mind times two.”
And so, the two of us begin to climb, the Gatekeeper making his way by foot, and me floating lazily after him, lying on my stomach in the air as if on an invisible bed. Gazing upward, I cannot help but continue to marvel at our surroundings. The sky looks like a river of rose-coloured flame, and at this altitude, I can now hear the gentle wind blowing. It sounds like a choir of murmurs, lonely and melodious, and I am reminded of the whispering of the void, even though the Gatekeeper once told me that this was nothing more than my brain attempting to compensate for the total lack of sound present. I wish Rarity could have been here to enjoy this place with me. I have no doubt it would have astounded and inspired her in equal measure, and I can just about imagine her taking my hoof in hers as the two of us race home so she can write down all her new ideas for dresses. It is at this point that I realise Rarity’s face is no longer clear in my mind, overexposed, blurry, indistinct, and I quickly cease thinking about her.
“So,” I say to the Gatekeeper, trying to get my mind off Rarity and all the other things which break my delicate little heart.
He glances at me, the celestial fire reflecting in his glasses, blinding and yet somehow pleasant. “Hmm?”
“What’s it like not to have a soul?” I ask him. “I’m not sure I ever asked you that.”
The Gatekeeper exhales, makes a face. “See, the thing is, Fluttershy, I don’t actually remember what it was like to have a soul, so I don’t really have anything with which to compare not having one to, you know?”
I blink. “Oh. But how did this happen? How did you become the way you are?” I hesitate, not wanting the Gatekeeper to have to repeat himself. “Or... do you not remember that either?”
“Essentially,” the Gatekeeper says somewhat helplessly. “I mean, it’s all part of being an individual such as myself. Not knowing how it happened.” He frowns. “I mean, it’s not like I remember nothing. Just nothing specific. It’s… hazy. Really hazy.” He looks at me contemplatively. “All that I can really recall is that I was trapped somewhere. Forever and with no hope of escape. And then I guess I made an arrangement. With the universe. To become who I am now and, technically, have always been.” He shrugs indifferently, then grins. “It was the lesser of two oppressions, you might say.”
I am all of a sudden permeated by a distinct tinge of guilt. “But if you’re so important, do you really have time to be doing this?” I ask my soulless companion. “Shouldn’t you be back in the void, protecting it?”
The Gatekeeper gives me a knowing look. “Clearly not,” he says good-naturedly. “And anyway, I never said I was important. Nobody is. It’s what I do that is important. We are all books, Fluttershy, and it isn’t the pages that matter, but rather what they are filled with. And we would be fools to believe that we are the authors.” Then he looks up. “Well, would you look at that!” he exclaims jovially. “We made it!”
So we have. At the summit of the windswept ridge is a large, ghostly tree, knotted and ancient-looking, a single exquisitely-crafted lantern of metal and glass hanging from one of its more prominent branches, swaying lightly in the breeze and facing in the direction the two of us approached from. The lantern emits a warm, elegiac glow, which, although probably unnecessary, is, nonetheless, so pretty that its practicality is essentially irrelevant. The ridge itself ends in a solitary triangular point, jutting out into the perpetual sunset like an incomplete bridge to the heavens, an appropriately splintered path to both nothing and everything. The view from up here is truly spectacular, the kind one can neither become accustomed to nor stop finding new things to be dazzled by in. But in this particular moment, I notice none of these, or if I do, it is only a vague awareness, because sitting right on the edge, bathed in the undying cosmic gloaming is a pony, and that pony is Starlight Glimmer.
And then it all comes back to me, wrenched free of the mists and the stains of time. The very final words Rarity ever spoke: “she is not gone, darling; merely lost. And all you have to do is find her and let go.” She wasn’t talking about Twilight all those long years ago; she was talking about Starlight. Somehow, Rarity had known. Somehow, she had seen. As she departed this world, our world, and into whatever came next, be that blackness eternal or paradise everlasting, the universe permitted my love a glimpse, just a glimpse, of what was yet to come, but a glimpse which transcended space, time, matter, and whatever other big, useless words and concepts I couldn’t care less about right now.
I utter a short cry of joy and disbelief. The Gatekeeper, no doubt looking rather bemused, releases me from my suspension, and I stumble over to my long-lost friend as quickly as I possibly can, ignoring the outraged protests of my diminished body. Starlight turns around just as I reach her, and with one perfectly-timed, perfectly-coordinated flap of my wings, I am upon her, embracing her, sobbing into her, never wanting to let go of her.
Holding on to Starlight as though my life depends upon it, my face buried in her disheveled purple mane, I feel, for the first time in so long, such happiness that I don’t know what to do with it, how to deal with it. It is utterly alien. And just like the first time Rarity and I kissed – just like every time we kissed, in fact – the entire universe ceases to exist, becoming distant as the stars in the sky, and yet further away still, insignificant in all its microscopic vastness and senseless complexity, and I lose myself. I lose myself in this beautiful, incomprehensible whirlwind of beautiful, incomprehensible things which make both perfect sense and none at all, and I love it. I love it so much. I love it more than anything. I don’t have to think, I don’t have to remember; all I have to do is feel. And it feels wonderful.
Eventually, however, I do pull away from Starlight, albeit very reluctantly, and, instead, simply gaze at her, refusing to so much as blink for fear that she may disappear the moment I do. She looks very different to how I remember her, of course, and I barely suppress my gasp of horror when I see what has become of the right side of her face. It looks like melted candle wax, trickling, oozing, little more than a mutilated purple mess, her right eye white as milk and partially obscured beneath its immovably corroded eyelid. The left side of her face is, on the other hoof, untouched, thank Celestia, the gorgeous pallid lavender of her left eye as lovely as ever, and yet it’s as if there is something missing, something taken away, and with a start, I identify this intuition as the same one I had when I first met the Gatekeeper. Surely Starlight still has her soul? I dread to imagine what she has been through, what she is still going through.
Suddenly, Starlight speaks. “I know your face,” she informs me, sounding uncertain. “I…” She narrows her good eye, tilts her head slightly, breathing somewhat irregularly. “Fluttershy? Is that… is that you?”
“Yes!” I say. “Yes! It’s me. Oh, how I’ve missed you, Starlight Glimmer! We all thought you were dead! And you’ve been gone so long!” I take her face in my hooves. “But what happened to you? How did you find yourself in this place? Even Twilight h-had no idea!”
Starlight now looks down. “Even if I remembered,” she eventually says, heartbreaking in her lassitude, “would it really matter?” And this is when I realise that this is not the Starlight Glimmer I once knew. This is her ghost.
“How is she?” I ask, casting an involuntary glance at the wooden door to my left.
“Ah wouldn’t know,” Applejack sighs, rubbing her eyes tiredly. “She hasn’t said a word to any of us. ’Course, right now, she’s asleep, so who’s to say she won’t speak with you when she wakes up?”
“I… I’m not sure, Applejack,” I say, eyeing the door once more, despite my best efforts. “I just… I don’t know what to say to her, what I can say to her.”
Applejack gives me the weariest smile imaginable. “Yah don’t have to say anything, sugarcube. As old Granny used to say to me: ‘make sure she knows yah have an ear to spare, and just take it from there.’”
Now, it’s my turn to sigh. “Oh, you’re right. Yes, of course you are. I feel just terrible for not coming to visit sooner. What kind of friend have I been?”
Applejack pulls me into a delicate embrace. “Ah, come now, Fluttershy, yer bein’ awful hard on yerself. It’s a perfectly natural reaction, not wantin’ to see the damage.”
“Okay,” I say, shaking my head, inhale, exhale. “All right, I’m going in.”
Opening the door, I find myself inside a small, sunny room, effortlessly cheerful. The walls are a soothing pastel aquamarine, the beige carpet is clean and soft, and golden late afternoon sunshine streams in through the open window, an infinite torrent of dust eddying languidly through the air. Pleasant, I decide, but bland.
Eventually, I force myself to look at the small bed near the window. Upon this bed lies a solitary figure, facing away from the door, the slight bodily movements caused by the intake and release of breath barely noticeable to the point where I almost believe her to be dead. My throat constricting painfully, I quietly approach, pulling up a chair, self-consciously taking a seat. On the bedside drawer is a photograph in a battered but lovely wooden frame, and I peer at it for a second, then hastily look away.
Suddenly, my friend stirs, and my heart skips at least one, if not two beats. She turns to lie on her other side, squinting at me sleepily. “Fluttershy?” Pinkie Pie murmurs, smiling, surprised. Her typically uncontrollable raspberry curls, despite being slumber-ruffled, look droopy, lifeless, and her permanently delighted cerulean eyes are bloodshot, drained. She looks gaunt. Pinkie extracts her foreleg from underneath the blankets to brush the sleep out of her eyes, and that is when we both see the bandages. I freeze. Pinkie’s eyes widen, she swallows, her face falls. She stops looking at me.
What little resolve I had promptly leaves via the window, and the two of us are thrust into a silence so absolute that my senses are heightened, my awareness elevated. I feel cold, ice, and not blood, flowing through my veins, every beat of my heart, every thought in my head, every fibre of my being a needle spearing into my soul. I feel the turning of the world and the sweeping of the stars, the pulse of existence, and this room is suddenly the most sinister place I have ever known. It is so empty, as absent of life as Pinkie Pie’s eyes, and the colours are so faded that they are grotesque, a monstrous parody. The sunlight chokes me, burning away my sight, and I want nothing more than to leave, to just run away.
“I can… I can go,” I whisper uncertainly after Celestia knows how long, more to myself than to Pinkie Pie. “I can leave you alone.”
Pinkie does not answer, her vacant, unseeing eyes fixed on the bedding. I wait for a further minute or so, and then I get up.
“I don’t want to be here.”
I stop, turn. “W-what?”
“I don’t want to be here,” Pinkie repeats. She still isn’t looking at me, but something has changed in her voice. Her bottom lip quivers, and she is trying to suppress it, or failing that, conceal it. She closes her teeth around the edge of the blanket, chews on it tentatively.
I slowly sit back down. “What will you do?” I ask her. I know it’s a stupid, stupid question, but what else is there that I can say?
“I don’t know,” Pinkie responds, sounding somewhat dazed. A tear leaks out of her right eye, makes its way down her face. She doesn’t appear to notice. “I guess I didn’t really… expect this,” she says. “That I’d still be here, you know? I didn’t realise that could happen.”
I open my mouth, close it. I don’t know what I will do, and it’s killing me. I place my hoof on Pinkie’s head, stroke her mane, shaking.
Pinkie finally looks at me, in my eyes. “When did Equestria stop being Equestria, Fluttershy?” she asks me with an exhausted sigh.
I stifle a sob, cover my mouth, take her hoof in mine. “When we realised that there was no such thing.”
“Fluttershy. Fluttershy, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
I open my eyes to the Gatekeeper and Starlight Glimmer. The Gatekeeper is crouching right beside me, looking more sad than anxious, one hand on my side, the other cradling my head. Starlight is a little further back. She is watching me with what appears to be a detached expression on her disfigured face.
“Yeah,” I reply. “I’m all right.”
“Dreaming again?” the Gatekeeper asks.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, what were you dreaming about?”
“Well, it wasn’t… really a dream. It was… a memory.”
The Gatekeeper sighs, sits himself down on the grass. “Dreams, memories,” he shakes his head, “they’re essentially the same thing. Dreams are just memories you can’t prove happened, and memories are just dreams you had when you were awake.” The Gatekeeper looks over at me, pulls off his gloves, combs his hair with his fingers. “You know, all answers to all questions come to us in sleep, in dreams. What do yours tell you?”
I am silent for a moment, gazing out into the sunless sunset. “That I should be with my friends.” I look at the Gatekeeper, marveling at how he doesn’t seem to have changed a single bit in half a millennium. Then again, maybe none of us have. “I think I’m going to die now,” I tell him. “I… I think it’s finally time.” Saying this aloud, I feel a twinge of fear, of panic, but I know it isn’t real. Just pure instinct.
The Gatekeeper looks back at Starlight, still standing in the background, impassive, unreadable. “Hold her,” he says, moving over slightly, voice betraying nothing.
Starlight wordlessly obliges, sits down on my left, between myself and the Gatekeeper. She gently shifts my head onto her lap, puts her forelegs around me, rests her chin on the side of my forehead.
I keep my eyes fixed on the horizon. “The universe kept me alive to find you,” I say to the pony holding me, “to find Starlight Glimmer. And you’re not even... not even her.”
“No,” I hear the Gatekeeper say, and I turn to look at him, quite an effort at this stage. “The universe didn’t keep you alive to find Starlight. It kept you alive so you wouldn’t have to die alone.”
“Oh,” I murmur, nod to myself. “Well, that was… nice of it.”
The Gatekeeper smiles. “And that is your friend. That’s just what the Last Memory does to you. You fade and fade and fade until there’s nothing left. Naturally, the body is the last to go. And she’s been here a while.”
“What will happen to her?” I ask. I feel I should be concerned by this, but it just isn’t there anymore. I don’t think anything is. My ability to feel has departed, and it’s not unpleasant. “Will you be able to save her?”
“No,” the Gatekeeper answers bluntly, shakes his head decidedly. “I'm sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
“I don’t think we need this place to become ghosts,” I mumble drowsily. “We’re all ghosts at some point. It’s memory that makes it that way, and every memory is the Last Memory. Recollection is pain, but what are we without it? Maybe I was right to end Equestria when I did. My final act, my last kindness. I don’t want Twilight or any of them to be remembered as ghosts. I don’t want to remember them that way.”
And then it’s time to say goodbye.
“Starlight,” I whisper, looking upward, and to my relief, she meets my gaze, “I’m sorry we couldn’t save you, that we left you behind. I’d do anything to go back and… fix it, bring you home.”
“I know,” Starlight tells me, and her eyes are glistening, looking like she’s not sure why. “It’s okay.”
I turn to the Gatekeeper. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for staying with me. I’m proud to call you my friend, and I don’t think I could have done it without you. No, I... I know I couldn’t have.” A pause. “And… and I hope that someplace, sometime, I don’t know where or… when, but I hope you’re happy. And maybe I’m there, too. I don’t know. But I hope so.”
The Gatekeeper reaches over, takes my hoof in his hand. “I like to think we are.”
And at last, I feel myself slipping. Out of body, out of mind, out of being. A sort of sinking sensation, very remote. The light rushes up to greet me once more, the painterly blue-white, and I again sense that there is something on the other end, waiting, reaching out to me. This time, however, there is no contraction, no starless dark, no nameless rocks. I take hold of a hand that is not a hand, and it lovingly pulls me inside. I become the light, and the light becomes me, and I know that I have been released.
And that is when I see them.
They are all here.
We are finally together again.
I do not know if this is real.
I do not know how long this will last or if it will last at all.
But I am not alone.
And that is all that really matters.
I am not alone.
I am not alone.
