Generosity

“I love you, Rarity.”

Twilight’s gaze pierced me own, her vision daggers and my brain the victim. Her lip was torn apart, surely the product of intense thought in the Canterlot library. Pardon me if I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more.

“I love you too, Twilight.” I leaned in. We kissed.

It should have been fulfilling. But there was a disconnect. Whereas the present was filled with her sweet presence, I was not in the present. My mind was flooded with fragments of the past, of the Blender’s return.

“No..” I muttered. No. There was the Blender, there was the black hole surrounding his presence. I could not see him, but if I looked closely – and perhaps it was my vision playing tricks on me – I swear I could see his green eyes poking through the darkness and staring into mine. I could feel my soul lifted out of my body, I could feel the blank expression I left – I could sense the blank expression of my lover at my side, her soul already taken from her – and I felt my hooves flying up, sucked into his vortex. I saw her body stretch and spin and crumble, approaching the vortex. I could see her soul meet mine, her hooves meet mine, and while my consciousness was fading in and out saved only by the throbbing of my heart, I could feel myself disappearing. We were Blende–

“Rarity, it’s okay. You’re okay.” She shook me, wrapping her hooves around my waist.

I returned from my fantasy land. “I’m okay?”

She kissed me again. “It can’t hurt you anymore.”

“It can’t hurt me anymore,” I repeated, dazed.

“We’re immortal together.”

I sunk into her hooves, and soon there was nothing but my warmth enveloping my body and her breath on me. Did I fall asleep?

No, Rarity, you mustn’t fall asleep.

You… can’t fall… asleep.

You… yawn… stay awa– yawn– awake, Rarity.

There was the Blender; there were our souls tap dancing near each other, sadistic caricatures of their bearers once-upon-a-time doodled on in a Discordian prank. I could not feel the pain of the process; surely, he had already stolen my body, and I was only along for the ride. Or was I imagining, filling in the gaps of the world to come? But I could never imagine something so vivid as the fusion of those two dolls, something out of witchcraft perhaps, with innocent lips but a sinister countenance. First there were our two souls, so clearly extracted from our bodies, retaining our general shape and form, and then then thumbtacks appeared out of the ether. I could have sworn I noticed the green eyes pair up with a green smile. I could have sworn I heard a green laugh.

I could have sworn I heard a green voice warn me, “Whatever you do, do not open the Door,” and in an instant, somewhere in the ether behind the thumbtack and behind our souls, was a blank white Door with a doodled on black Door handle.

It was alluring.

But then a moment later there was the thumb tack flying over to Twilight’s soul and – I looked away instinctively but found that no amount of head turns could avert my vision from the scene unfolding behind my lack of a body – watched the tack pop into the ghoulish doll, and while I must have been imagining the Blender’s scream earlier, so clearly could I hear the scream of my lover. I tried to cry, running on instincts and adrenaline, but I found no tears, no noise, no emotion. I only existed in my own personal prison of Blended torment, watching her soul shatter in a thousand technicolor pieces. I had no choice but to watch.

I had no choice but to watch as the fragments of her soul flew into the vortex, and to watch as the same thumbtack, still ruddy from her ethereal blood, zoom towards my own doll. One moment I was whole; the next I was hole. The needle – or was it a thumb tack? – pierced into me. I knew I should have screamed, but there was no wail escaping my lips, only an unescapable series of emotions crushed by the weight of the vortex, attempting to be vocalized but Blended as soon as they were born.

And then there was no me, no Twilight, no vortex. There was only a Door.

There was serenity.

I looked down, but where was I? There was no pony to greet me, no hooves to be walking; for a moment, I only seemed to exist, my body blended. I tried to conjure a thought, and while I knew 2 + 2 = 5 and could recite the square root of 42 (6.7815…), there was no emotion. No joy, no pain, no excitement, no remorse. I suppose there was fear.

I felt myself floating towards the Door, masochistic curiosity overwhelming me, and with a thought, the Door sprung open.

And all that was left was Twilight’s decapitated head, her body long Blended into my own. Her eyes were firmly closed, forming X’s, and I could not help but wonder if I should have screamed.

And then her eyes shot up, and I woke up in her arms.

“Rarity, it’s okay. You’re okay.” She shook me, wrapping her hooves around my waist.

I returned from my fantasy land. “I’m okay?”

She kissed me again. “It can’t hurt you anymore.”

“It can’t– wait, all of this already happened.”

Her lips curled into an evil grin, her eyes popping out, her body stretching down and popping off. Her hooves shriveled up into nothingness, her body Blended into herself, her head was replaced with the doll I knew her broken soul to be so many years ago. I screamed.

“That’s right, you!” She cackled, her voice no longer Twilight’s but a female version of the Blender’s. “You’re still in the past. Because–” She laughed me into oblivion, rendering me incapable of rational thought, each neuron and synapse interrupted by the beating of her lungs– “For you, there is only past! You have no present. You have no future. You have been Blended, Twilight.”

“Twilight?”

“Rarity. You have been Blended, Rarity, and there is nothing left for you now.”

“Twilight…”

“Enough! Do not say that name again,” she boomed. It boomed.

Anger boiled in me. I clawed that thing, that Twilight Sparkle impostor, and I channeled every thought, every emotion, everything left in my life into a death wish to will upon that Being that has done so much to ruin my life, my love, my sanity.

I clawed It, and to my surprise, it shattered, just as I had. I looked at my hoof and realised the heart usually coating the bottom was itself replaced with a thumb tack, the same tack once used to Blend my own soul. I looked into the darkness and realised that I had Blended the Blender.

There was only darkness.

I wanted to know where I was.

What I was.

Who I was.

The void responded, transforming into a hall of mirrors, and there I saw an infinite number of copies of Rarity, only it wasn’t Rarity. It was that same caricature of Rarity, her serene face replaced, her eyes and mouth drawn on in Blended blood. She smiled back at me, and I frowned at her. Her smile only grew.

To her side was a small head, the same head of Twilight I saw in the Door. She was asleep. Or perhaps she was dead. And my reflection in the mirror laughed, but my reflection in the real world – if there was a real world, after all – screamed.

I screamed until my lungs gave out, and I woke up in Twilight’s arm.

“Rarity, it’s okay. You’re okay.” She shook me, wrapping her hooves around my

I jumped up, murderous in my vision. “No!”

She recoiled. “Did… did you see of a vision of… Him?”

I felt my teeth as fangs. “Never! I will never trust you again, for you are the Blender!”

Twilight’s eyes grew in horror. “Rarity, what’s going on? Did something happen?”

I scanned the room for a thumb tack. I found nothing.

I did find a knife, which I embraced in my hoof.

Twilight cast a spell, enveloping herself in a purple bubble. I didn’t care that the Blender was incapable of magic beyond Blending. It was clearly just a trick of the eye, the Blender using deception to force me to let my guard down and display vulnerability in front of his Impostor. Or maybe there was no impostor, and Twilight has just been the Blender after all! The Blender must have been following me around this entire time, and I had no idea that my entire life was a build up to being Blended!

I lurched at the bubble, knife in hoof, aiming at Twilight “Blender” Sparkle’s heart.

I bounced off the bubble, and the knife flew into the air. I watched in horror as it approached my head. I felt myself morph into the bloody figure I once saw Blended, and soon enough, I was only a ghost floating off into the ceiling.

As I left, I watched Twilight dissolve the bubble crying harder than I have ever seen.

She cried, for I was dead, and there was no Blender.