Reveille

by AShadowOfCygnus

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Drama
Length: 5744

Travellers meet in an antique land.

Time passes quickly in a beautiful world, and Twilight Sparkle knows it all too well: the sun is warm, the skies are bright, and Ponyville a richness of wonder and opportunity. The friends, the roads, the food and drink are all in their place, little dramas come and go, and her reports to Celestia proceed apace.

It’s imperfect perfection, and all things proceed exactly as usual until exactly the moment they don’t anymore.

With special thanks to my pre-readers: Luna Farrowe, Thornquill, and Sunicathorsis.

Featured, to my surprise.

Published 2021-03-15 05:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-03-15 05:00:00 UTC

Reveille

Morning again.

She felt the familiar beam of sunlight well before she woke—ruddy orange spilling across her scrunched-up muzzle, streaming through that little gap where the curtains just wouldn’t quite fit together. It was warm, though, and spared her the clangour of the alarm, so she didn’t mind.

Twilight’s eyes flickered open, and a gentle sigh of contentment escaped her as she arched and wormed beneath the sheets, the first-light dance of the well-rested mare. She lay there a moment, as was her wont, letting the familiar half-smile build on her lips, getting used to the idea of wakefulness again. Then she flung back the covers, and rose to greet the day.

Her mane was a shambles, per the usual, and—per the usual—a quick go with the brush was all it took to smooth it back to her satisfaction. She hummed a childhood tune as she worked, feeling the soothing familiarity of the soft bristles against her scalp. She peered in the dusty mirror, turning her head back and forth, checking her face from all angles, and the smile grew a little wider.

She spared only the briefest of glances towards the basket in the corner by the door as she trotted past. Spike was more than capable of letting himself in, she knew, but he would’ve been sure to wake her before bedding down himself. That had always been their system, even as far back as the dormitories. Besides, Canterlot was quite a ways up that mountain, and she couldn’t fault him for taking his time; the Orrery had been their home for years, and there were memories attached to that. He’d never been particularly good at goodbyes.

She thought briefly of sending him a letter—reassurance, perhaps; a reminder that even despite the distance, the scant months they’d had to adjust after the Nightmare Moon fiasco, it wasn’t so bad down in this quaint little township on the river Steed. But—no, better to leave him to his thoughts. He’d come to her in his own time, and it’d probably be better for him in the long run if he thought it was purely his idea. He was a tough little guy, for all the show he’d made of not wanting to leave; he’d be okay.

The ground floor was warm, if not a tad stuffy—warmth suffusing hardwood walls and floors, as much scent as sensation; the gentle radiation that keeps a girl’s hooves warm after a long night under thick covers. And, being rather a fan of warm hoofsies, she felt that same carefree morning smile grow wider still as she walked into the kitchen to fix herself breakfast.

Let the sun shine on, she thought, brightly, marvelling at the motes dancing in the light of the kitchen window. Celestia knows we’re due a little extra after that long winter.

It was a nice thought. Even in the comfort of her own hearty little hearth, the distant clouds shone gentle amber against the mid-morning sky. Canterlot was up there, somewhere, and surely Celestia was smiling down.

The toaster dinged, and the kettle followed soon after—charmingly rustic, bell-and-whistle contrivances where magic would’ve sufficed. She poured herself a measure and settled in at the table. They were out of jam (again; Spike must have finished off the last jar before he left), but she’d been meaning to head to the provisioner’s today anyway. There was a stack of reports to be handled, sure—some white papers from the throne secretariat to skim, a couple of recent spell research abstracts from the good folks over at Natural Philosophy she’d been meaning to go over—but all that could wait.

She finished up in short order, washed and stacked the plates, and went out to start her day.

The highways and byways of Ponyville were quiet this time of morning, and the little rows of houses were dark. She ambled comfortably through the streets, kicking her hooves playfully at the low-hanging fog, trying to find the patterns in the weave of the leafless, sun-white branches overhead. Cottage-rows slipped past in a white-picket blur, and there she was on the south end of town again, on the road to the farmsteads, slipping through the unlocked door to her green-grocer’s of choice.

Whatever clever mare had set this place up, however many generations ago, had picked her plot well: it spanned the road like a Canterlot toll-booth, and faded signs in the windows pronounced with great glee the abundance of fresh produce and sugary sweets to be found within.

Winter had put the lie to that, unfortunately; as she wound her way through the narrow, deserted aisles, she found a number of them to be quite bare: the apples had gone completely (but wasn’t that always the way in this neck of the woods?), and even the citrus stocks had run dry. The preserves persevered, however, and she contented herself with a generous basketful of jams and dried apricots to tide her over until they could get some more in. Ah well. She’d been meaning to broaden her diet anyway, and there were those artisan grasses that Rarity had been talking about getting imported from out West . . .

She paid for the preserves and a wrapped loaf of bread at the counter, detecting perhaps a hint of apology in the cashier’s painted-on smile. She returned it, genuinely, and wandered out of the store with full saddlebags and a spring in her step. Still early yet, and plenty of time for things to go right, right?

She’d brought a book with her, more by accident than anything (she’d only discovered it in the bag when she’d gone to pack her purchases, and even then it was some pulpy Daring Do knockoff she remembered idly browsing through on a train ride once), but—what the hay. She knew the market square would be deserted for a few hours yet, and she had all the fixings for a nice breakfast out-of-doors.

She ambled through the still-quiet streets, waving once or twice to a face she thought she spied in a frosty cottage window, and made herself comfortable on a bench by the fountain. She broke out the jars and spreading-knife, and fed herself fresh, hoof-wrapped jam bites as she flipped lazily through page after page of unhurried nonsense.

When the sun had risen high enough, and the reflected glare off the page became too much to handle, she packed herself back up and made once again for Golden Oaks. After all, there was plenty to do, and she’d promised herself as much of the day as she could spare to catch up.

Morning again.

The dawn was as it always was—perfect, warm, and cosy. She could rest here quite comfortably, watching the little motes of dust play on her perfect curtain-cut sunbeam, gently calculating their wheeling orbits, pondering the imponderables of entropy. It was like watching the universe, she was sure: keystones and stardust playing out their lives against the firmament. A collision here, a tender kiss; a brief circular pattern, lunch with friends—but always spheres in passing, and perfectly elastic.

The fleeting pre-coffee fuzz was (secretly) one of her favourite times of day—a chance to philosophise before the wet blanket of reality set in again, and life resumed its usual frantic pace. Already the list was beginning to creep in: the letters needing answer, the reports to be filed, the accustomed patrol about town. Oh, patrol—she giggled. Oh, it was like being one of her fantasy heroines—a Warden of the Fae Wild, dancing in the green; the Small-Town Sheriff with the big iron crossbow at her hip.

It was definitionally fleeting, though, and the alarm was sure to go off any minute. She tapped the clock with a hoof, sighed one last time, and heaved herself out of bed.

It took until she was downstairs to realise that Spike still wasn’t back yet, which struck her as . . . well, not a surprise, maybe, but certainly a shame. She missed having someone to share those little one-off jokes with, and he would’ve appreciated the humour—tried to get her to magick on one of those horrible spaghetti-western moustaches he was so fond of, no doubt.

She thought faintly of visiting one of her other friends, but—no, surely they’d all be busy with their own to-do’s. Rarity and Pinkie both had mentioned being absolutely swamped with customers lately, Rainbow would be practising for that Wonderbolts try-out, and Applejack’s was just a tad too far for a friendly visit, especially during planting season. Besides, they’d let her know if anything big was happening; they always did.

She smiled a bit, scraping out the last of the peach preserves onto her toast, thinking about the various hijinks they were no doubt getting up to: Pinkie, cackling, covered in flour; Rainbow Dash pirouetting through—and occasionally into—those hoops she’d set up for training; Fluttershy, capering with the woodland critters.

And she herself, of course—after all those long years of study and experimentation, she might finally be getting close to a breakthrough on matter-displacement theory! Strange how you could look at the same books, the same equations, for years and years, and still not quite understand what it was they were trying to convey. But ah, now, today! If she could just get her head on straight, sit herself down, and work through the last of Fortin’s Intransigent Matter Corollary . . .

Stupid that she hadn’t, really. Stupid that, with all the extra time she really seemed to have these days, that she hadn’t been able to get much of anything done. She would find herself engrossed in some . . . book or other, idly paging through, idly scanning, and suddenly the light would dim and the sun would have passed behind the mountains again. Stupid that she couldn’t ever remember any of what she read those days, stupid that—

. . . a walk would do her some good.

She rose, stretching her back, admiring the mathematically perfect arch, packed a few necessaries, and went out into the road, making sure to lock the door behind her.

It was early yet, the hazy-brown sky still streaked with runny lines of red and gold. Not . . . not a pretty day, maybe, but charming in its own way, and still rife with opportunity. The day was what you made of it, after all, and sure as Celestia was smiling down, she had things she wanted to do.

It was a perfect, restful sort of walk, and not without its own brand of self-made adventure: stepping out into the least-trafficked side-streets, sneaking glimpses of those little golden moments of wakefulness as her neighbours roused themselves to life, and—yes, guilty impulse though it was—doing all the necessary calculus to avoid a meaningful interaction with anyone she might chance to meet along the way.

For as much as she was coming to know and love the ponies in this quaint little town, she knew that such encounters would end in one of two ways: either a long and drawn-out conversation, followed by some invitation or other she couldn’t refuse without giving offence; or a desperate plea for assistance with some intractable magical or interpersonal problem that she’d have to drop everything to help with. And—dammit, today was such a . . . a promising day, that she couldn’t countenance interrupting it, much as she was sure somepony, somewhere would be disappointed as a result.

And it was not as though she could blame them for it. After all, how had she swept into town that first night, a half-dozen moons or so ago? Riding in like a princess, prophesying doom and just as quickly smiting it? The last of the great Equestrian boogeymares, vanquished in one night? Small wonder they’d turn to her for every little thing. Moreso that it didn’t seem to . . . well . . .

Take?

But! That kind of self-recrimination had no more place on a morning like this than did the thing itself, and she resolved to put it from her mind.

She made a circuit of the edge of town, enjoying the way the ruddy light caught the edges of the plate-glass windows as she passed, and cast perfect squares of red warmth on the dirt roads. A knock-up cobbling job, she chuckled, or else a scattered deck of cards. Her hooves wended their way along familiar byways, through dry parks and quiet lanes, to the south end of town again, and there her steps slowed.

It was strange to see the farms so barren. This winter had been . . . hard, she knew—she’d heard enough people talk, enough stage whispers—but it was quite something else to see it laid so bare. The leafless trees down Apple way, the empty beds at the Carrots’; dew-slick barn doors and wilted weeds besides. The little light in her heart, dancing in the reflected light of the sun, guttered a moment, but remained: the little welling comfort that those four poor Apples would finally have the chance to sleep in, if nothing else. She still hadn’t forgotten that spat with Jackie about overexertion, right around the time of the bunny census; heck, it almost felt like yesterday.

Something about that tugged at her, sharply. Was it just that she was feeling so more (self-)conscious than usual today? Why the guilt? She hadn’t known these ponies that long and even if . . . well, even if she was being a little selfish and taking some time to focus on her own affairs—what was wrong with that?

Her friends at the grocers made for perfect co-conspirators, and they didn’t even blink as she came in through the side door, took one look around, and made a beeline for the safety of the shelves. It took some scrounging, but there was still some good bread near the back—her preferred brand, even! a comfortably-unknown artisanal baker’s in Vanhoover—a case of some trendy fruit-juice Fluttershy had shared the last time she was over at the cottage, and a few jars of pickled vegetables. She didn’t bother looking in the fresh produce aisle.

It was only meant as a quick trip, and she felt a soaring relief as her bits hit the counter. Was it just the sense of . . . of obligation that was doing this to her this morning? Just the tensions of possibly being asked for something more than she was willing to give at four past the dawn? She couldn’t understand it, nor the vague undercurrent of unease as she walked back through the quiet streets in the direction of her impromptu breakfast nook in the town square.

But as she drew close, making her way between two narrow rows of shops off the high street, she felt herself come falteringly to a stop. The mouth of the alley yawned wide and bright and yellow ahead of her, promising warmth and company and some nice light reading; welcoming, by most objective metrics. And yet, something—some unknowable, desperate little voice—told her that if she went out into that courtyard . . .

She felt suddenly very small, then: a little girl very badly out of her depth, with only blanket-forts and weak torches warding off a dark and creaking house. Her parents were asleep, and so was everyone in town, and there was nothing standing between her and whatever . . . whatever was out there, figmentary as it might be.

She was very aware of her breathing—hard and fast and shallow—even as the more rational parts of her mind scrambled to try and regain control. She hated it. She hated how utterly aware she was of it, as much as the thing itself. In the grand and daily assay of one’s iniquities, ignorance had to be closer to bliss than not.

But no amount of recrimination would salve that baser impulse. As if of its own accord, her body acted, spidering away off to one side and ducking between a tailor’s and saddle-seller out of the alley and into a winding cul-de-sac that would carry her away from the courtyard—away from the whitewashed fountain, away from the cracking cobbles and silent stalls. Faster and more quietly than she had ever thought possible, she bolted for home.

She met no-one in the street, but her legs didn’t stop trembling until well after she had slammed, bolted, and locked the door to Golden Oaks library behind her.

Morning again.

She lay there for quite some time, as the sun danced and the little stars of her dusty orrery slowly whirled. A smaller universe, surely, but as close as the little nebulae drifted to her tight, stiff muzzle, they seemed an eternity away; for all she could reach out and touch them, her hooves were so many millions of miles down her body. If she could but bestir herself, she could be the master of this domain—control beyond observation, substance to entropic drift. She knew it.

And yet there she lay: sluggish, torpid, creased, and yielding.

Insanity.

She closed her eyes for a long, long moment—long enough to feel the passing of the sun across her lashes, burning through the ash-grey pallor of the curtain-beam, across her face. And it was the same spot, the very same, calculated as it must have been, etched with geologic precision over her shivering cheek.

She waited there, in her perfect, unpeaceful sleep, until every follicle itched with the rankness of it; until she could feel the mattress mouldering beneath her, feel the claggy topsheet adhering, clutching, and at last she kicked it clumsily off. She lay there, beached fish, almost still, until her shaking legs forced her to rise.

The room sweltered, breathless as she. She swayed. The room ran like watercolour; the bed was empty, the room, the house . . . just her. Clarity righted her, and she put out a steadying hoof.

The bed had been stripped, and it disturbed her, faintly, that she wasn’t particularly concerned as to how. Small matter, though; there were other sheets in the linen closet, and these, of course, would have to be burned.

Not now, though.

The stairs seemed to take an eternity, and she paused on the landing, halfway, and basked in the distilled warmth of cut-glass sun: the one good-morning kiss that would never falter, the loving gaze from on high. She leaned heavily against the terrarium window, feeling the cracks in the glass, not caring she might open her cheek.

It was almost—almost—enough.

Her hoofsteps echoed dismally in the kitchen. The pantry door was open, as she had left it; the shelves, bare; the toaster, where the arc of her foreleg had carried it. And yet, she felt now just as she had then, wishing there’d been some passion in the act, some greater sense of betrayal. (Hers? The machine’s?) For awhile, all she could do was stand there, waiting for some . . . external stimulus, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did.

She cleaned up what was left of the toaster, dully cursing her sluggish horn. The broom and pan were slower—agonising—but she couldn’t get it to do more than let off its simple, damnable little lavender light. And when she was done, had stuffed the overtopped bag back into the musty recess under the dry sink, and it finally occurred to her that it would have to go out to the bins . . .

She distracted herself by sifting through the empty refrigerator, the empty store room, the empty basement. They were as empty as the last time she’d checked, and she felt the vague, nagging sensation that there should be a reason why she was searching them so desperately, even if it never quite came to mind . . .

She paced in circles around the circulation stacks, trying to settle on a book, but everything on the shelves she could reach she’d either read, knew by reputation, or just plain didn’t care to try, just like she didn’t care to try dragging over the ladder with the promise of yet more of the same on the upper shelves. And in the end, as she rounded the neatly-curated centre table for the fiftieth or sixtieth time that hour, she realised that perhaps all she needed was to sit for a bit, and let her spinning thoughts subside.

She did.

They didn't.

It took a very long time, but slowly, haltingly, she dragged herself from the kitchen table, past the smeared window, and to the front door. Her hoof trembled on the bolt.

The streets were empty; the houses, dark and silent. Here and there the door to a shop hung open, admitting the rank air. Not a breath of wind stirred the little town; not a leaf whispered in the blackened branches cast long upon it. In the distance, faintly, through the amber haze, she could almost make out a figure, shining dully, where it had come to rest on the stoop it belonged to.

Its hoof rested on the handle.

Exactly as it had been, every day, for as long as she could remember.

She closed the door, and went back to bed.

Morning again.

She barely moved.

Dust, or something like it, lay over her like a blanket—choking, ashen, chalking her with a sickly pallor. Eyelids fluttered, shut tight against the added weight. The bare mattress sagged and clung, and the mouldering sheets in the corner stank, and she didn’t care. She was safe here, and secure, and if she really wanted, she could stay like this forever, until the mountains burned and the sun went out and only the stars and the dust remained.

No-one would come looking. No-one would ever know—not even her, when her vital systems failed and she lapsed into whatever final unconsciousness science demanded she put her faith in. Spike wasn’t coming home; the girls weren’t coming to visit. She could sleep, and sleep, and let the blankets fall over her in waves and waves as the sun charted its way again and again across the blank and empty sky.

All she had to do was . . . let it. And that was proving the hardest part of all.

And then there came to her dazed and addled ears a crash from downstairs, and her eyes snapped open. She was off the mattress in an instant, tearing through the bedroom down and down the stairs at a frenzied pace, shedding layers of dust with every articulation. Hope or terror, joy at company or rage at interruption, her heart was pounding as she ran, and she leapt the last ten steps to land with a resounding thud that rattled the library from treetop to basement.

She looked around frantically for the intruder, but—there, the front door was locked, and the basement stairway as barricaded as she had left it. But surely the noise had come from this room? She was sure—

And then she saw it, lying cracked and twisted beside the empty basket-bed in the corner: a framed photograph, stained now beyond recognition behind its cloudy glass. The string it had hung upon had rotted through completely.

And in that single moment, such a roil of emotions assailed her that it was all she could do not to throw back her head and howl. Would that it were as simple as going mad, that she could just succumb and be done. Would that it were as simple as lying there and falling, falling forever to sleep, where worlds still had promise and time still held its meaning.

And even as she thought it, even as she considered slinking back upstairs to her makeshift den, she knew that she never could again. The endless books she’d scribbled theories into, the frantic chalkboard equations piled high against the basement door, and now—at last—denial itself.

She stepped out into the street, and didn’t bother to close the door behind her.

The walk was silent, as it had been. Only her hooves crunched underfoot—only her tail swished restlessly behind her. She made her way to the square just outside town hall.

Her eyes flickered closed as she approached, and the rows of houses, and gift shops, and little tattered market stands were, for the briefest of moments, exactly as she had remembered them—alive and a-bustle, teeming with friends and visitors of all sorts. A merry tune carried on the air, to shouts of laughter and joy. Delicious scents crowded each other out in an endless procession: fresh-spun cotton candy, caramel apples hot out of the oven, a pan-grilled sandwich and hay fries; summer grasses, autumn rains, winter hearths. It was exactly as she remembered, exactly how it had always been.

And in one crystal-sharp moment, it was gone, and the skeletons were all that was left around her.

For that was what they were, now—standing exactly where she had left them, going about their days. Ponies haggled at the tattered stalls, ponies laughed on benches as they shared a meal long since washed to dust, ponies ran, ponies sang, ponies hugged and loved and played and frolicked.

And to a mare, they had come to rest in exactly the positions they had assumed in the life she could remember. Moments captured in time, bleached by sun and sand, half-skinned, meatless and hollow-eyed. Those with lips still smiled or laughed or sang or talked, those with eyes looked loving or happy or coy. Those without grinned toothily, gleaming, and their empty sockets followed her around and around the courtyard, as she went through each by name.

Applejack at her stall, negotiating a last purchase with a one-eyed Derpy Hooves.

Lyra and Bon-Bon, snuggling on their accustomed bench.

Rainbow Dash lying where she had fallen, complaining about her wings suddenly failing on her for the third—fourth?—time that week.

Minuette on her side, having balanced on her back legs for the final chorus of Pinkie’s latest hoarse rendition of Giggle at the Ghosties.

Sweetie Belle, sunbleached, staring skyward with a look of wonder.

On and on and on it went, without order and without purpose. In every store, every Ponyville attraction, it was the same: the candlemaker’s, the club, the grocer’s on the south end of town. And for each in the street, there were three in their beds—and she counted them the lucky ones.

She wished she could remember how long it had taken; whether it had happened to them all at once, or gradually, as the light slowly died from each of their eyes. She wished she could remember why nopony had talked about it, and why it had taken so long for her to notice, when the evidence was plain as day. It was as if something had snapped inside her one day—caught her unawares, like it had again this morning, and she could simply . . . see . . . where she had been blind before.

Had there been a particular shock? Had she just . . . realised? Had some background process of logic finally reached an inevitable conclusion and dumped it on her unawares? She couldn’t say.

She pondered that for a moment, rolling it around her tongue. She was certain she’d never spoken a word to the . . . dried husks that sat here in their little ossuary tableau. Would it help? Would an acknowledgement now—a simple apology—make up for the countless days she’d pranced by in utter ignorance? Or was that just the last selfish impulse of a mind trying to reconcile each sharp and sudden stop with her own apparent . . . what, luck?

She knew she couldn’t stay. However long her stubborn little subconscious had chosen to play house here, however many different ways she knew she could try to breathe life back into the place, well . . .

Why?

There was no-one else left, she knew, and in the . . . however long she’d been playing out this little cycle, no-one else had come back to check up on them. No Spike, no Princesses, no errant, wandering out-of-towners. And she was too smart—well, too self-aware—to have much luck submerging herself by force.

No. No, she would mourn her new (?) friends in town, and she would mourn Spike, but if there was any way forward, it lay outside the tall-walled valley into which her whole world of six months had oh-so-comfortably nestled. There were still certainties: inerasable fixtures of magic and the nature of things. The princesses would help. Celestia would help, sure as the sun still kissed her brow.

There wasn’t much to gather. Most of the nonperishables were gone, now, and what she hadn’t already used she was able to fit in a single saddlebag, with plenty of room to spare. She had a few journals—latter-day stuff, mostly; calculations, theories—that might be helpful if . . . if this was purely localised. A fresh, blank one, a quill and some ink, a photo of seven, and she was off.

She hesitated at the edge of town, just before the tall, wire-mesh gate that separated Ponyville from the world to the north. There were lines here, drawn in steel and sand and something less tangible, and the long-suppressed static of panic again washed up from the tidal basin of her consciousness, lapping steadily at the shores of her resolve. One last distant scream, assuring her nothing would be the same again, desperate to sway her back to the comfort of stasis.

And sway as she did, tidally; the mirage was altogether too inviting. She set a hoof over the line—and then another. No wire tripped, no alarm sounded, and the gate swung easily at her touch. Too easily, maybe—the upper hinge gave a little pop, and the whole thing just kind of . . . hung there, a moment caught in space. She tip-toed past it, wondering if at any second the moral arc of the universe would finally invert and crush her with it, laughing as the last of her luck ran dry, but . . . nothing.

And on the other side? An expanse of concrete lined with unfamiliar metal bulks, and a paved road that ran uphill, similar to what she remembered of the fresh cobbles of New Manehatten, or—to a lesser extent—the high street in Canterlot. It was hard underfoot, and unpleasantly grainy—she could feel it gumming to her hooves as she made her way along the closest avenue, ears twitching to the occasional creak of heating metal in the wan and dismal sun. Strange that all of this should be so close at hoof—just outside the town walls—and yet seem at so many worlds’ remove.

The climb up the hill took longer than it should have, to her mind—something about the perspective had made it seem shorter than it actually was in the hazy thousand yards or so from the gate. The road here had cracked, and the ugly gummy sensation underhoof had worsened. It stank like Everfree swamp-silt, or . . . or the tar-pits her father had taken her to see at the archaeological museum when she was a filly. She wiped her hooves in the dust and dead weeds at the side of the road, and that helped, a little.

She expected another tearing sensation as she neared the crest of the hill, but—no, the little panic voices, were they there at all, were lost in the clockwork pounding of her own heart, one-two, one-two. And so it was almost without ceremony that the landscape splayed itself before her: to the left, stubby mountains cast in ruddy bronze; to the right, a flat expanse of desert nothing stretching to the cloudless white horizon.

And just ahead? Spread like dry sticks in the wake of a harsh wind, the city—glittering metal spires here, squat, eyeless cuboids there, in a rough collection spanning . . . Nightmare’s Eye, fifty miles? A hundred, if the heat shimmer did it justice?

And all of it so obviously dead. The spires warped in alien contours, abandoned shards rising from the ground in a loose and craterous cluster, and even at this great distance, the rainbow gleam of a thousand picture windows’ shattered glass was evident. Not a soul was in sight—the only movement was the shimmer of the listless desert, and the only light the reflected glare of distant decay.

She felt the gorge rise in her throat. No Canterlot, no rail-lines, no River Steed—no Equestria. She trembled there, alone and vulnerable, in the narrow whitespace between the long shadow of the mountains, and the thinner, sharper patch of darkness to her r—

She choked. She knew the silhouette—had seen it too many times on her way to and from Manehatten, and along any number of train-rides to the innumerable nameless cities she knew she’d visited as a child: a tall funnel, and a wide rectangular expanse atop it, beckoning coyly to the excitable and travel-worn. She turned with agonising slowness, as this final horror slid at last into view.

She wailed then—a broken sound that rent the air with its passing, even as she clapped her hooves to her mouth. Half-wet eyes swept blankly, frantically, over the little rocky valley where Ponyville had found its home, and all the careless discard beside: the dry stream-bed, crack-mud and stench; the road, paved with the rust-worn hulks of unknowable conveyances; the skeletons—rictus-metal, shatter-bone, too many too-little—lying where they fell. Any horror, any fresh Tartarus would be better than the last vicious mockery gazing down at her from on high.

For there, rendered in the finest paint and canvas that a well-established property can buy, was the face of her beloved Princess, her Goddess, her rock and her touchstone, forever and ever: a cracking cartoon mare with a faded rainbow mane, smiling down beatifically at her subject and the petty fief she looked so proud to own. A queen in caricature, grinning over her bone-horde.

And beneath this tawdry idol, the rusted lettering of her final admonition, baking in the last of the too-red sun: Welcome to Equestrialand, The Happiest Place This Side of the Rockies!

Author's Note

Because “Tannhäuser Gate” would’ve been too obvious.

No, this is not a Fallout: Equestria story (and never would be). It is, however, as much of a metaphor for anything else as you want it to be.