The mint coated mare shut her eyes as the fallen leaves brushed past the tip of her nose. Lifting her head up into the deep eminence, or so she tried, resulted in only a blank state of oblivion.
Starlight Glimmer watched from behind carefully observing her silent phenomena. Her horn flickered and danced in the darkness casted between the sleeping forest and the deep black sound. She released a stressful sigh as she listened to the silent waves rolling over the compressed sand beneath their hooves. Only time would tell when her dreaming counterpart will ever speak.
Biting on her lips, Starlight was reluctant to open her mouth for the first word between them. Her heart was racing on the possible collapse of architecture if the conversation was to fail. She clumsily twisted her tongue when trying to pronounce the letter "L" many times in the past, and it sounded more like a self-entangled lie without "ra". But now was a perfect opportunity to follow her gut instinct and let it out.
Yet a sudden breeze stopped her cold. She turned towards the direction where the wind originated. Across the great sound, a lively metropolis illumined her eyes. While the flashy rays of its golden light failed to reach the unicorn's naked heliotrope body, the burning city streamed the upper air, irradiating and ringing the heavens above where the unknown presence of a certain being awaits for the selected few.
'At least those architectures won't fall anytime...' Starlight thought to herself.
"Lyra—" She immediately hoofed over her mouth. She didn't know why the name came out now, but she didn't have to know why either. A dream for a dream couldn't proceed any more abstract than this.
Standing on the tip of her hoof above a large stone, liquid droplets gracefully soared onto and over the mint unicorn's entire body. Each time the waves battered against the stone, Starlight had to remind herself that she was hearing them before she could see the same mare with a lyre cutie mark sprayed with pure saltwater.
It didn't make sense to her, for she was supposed to see the waves first. But since it's only a temporary dream, nothing was supposed to make sense.
"Ahh... The sound of the galloping Apple families stampeding Sweet Apple Acres. I remember it like it was yesterday."
She finally spoke! Starlight couldn't help but release a tiny grin. Immediately she joined in the conversation.
"It was yesterday. An Apple tradition where they gather a reunion and race across the Ponyville grasslands from the very tips of east to west, just being an outside spectator was more than emotional."
Hopping off the boulder, Lyra Heartstrings was now face to face with her dream sharer, frowning. "Yeah, and now you ruined it. Because that was supposed to be my dream."
Too ashamed to even meet her gaze, she sighed. "I know, I know. I'm sorry for forcing you to merge our dreams, but I had no better choice than to do this."
Lyra was unimpressed. "Because...?"
“It's a very personal question."
The musician raised a brow.
Starlight inhaled, and the cold air soon rushed out. "Why are you so obsessed to see the other world?"
"Huh?"
"These anthropological creatures called homo sapiens, and their behaviors. What does that have to do with our equinity?"
"Oh, humans?" Remaining unamused by the mare's words, Lyra rolled her eyes and stared down at the wavy shoreline. "Lemme guess, Bon-Bon told you to ask this."
Starlight Glimmer was silent.
She smiled as a hermit crab poked its head out of a shell, perhaps dumbstruck by the mare's lustrous appearance. "Of course. My obsession with that species annoyed her everyday, yet we're still two peas in a pod. Anypony else would've shut me up by now and accused me of being psychopathic."
"But that doesn't stop a foolish mare like myself from chasing her dreams and what she's fated to believe. A pony doesn't have to see with her bare eye, but rather to make something out of nothing."
Starlight remained still, but this time for a different reason: every sound that was supposed to be its own onomatopoeia were now string plucking and bow dragging. Everything around them were entwined in a golden aura that paralleled the sleepless metropolis across the sound. Gathering her self-esteem, she turned to face Lyra once more.
"This song was a personal collaboration with my neighbor, Octavia Melody. A truly talented musician who could play any string instrument. With a wooden bow and you'll see her light up further than the brightest morning star. Even Vinyl Scratch was eager to make a remix in tribute so she can play it in front of her audience of thousands."
"W-why are you telling me all this?"
"Why not?" She giggled. "It's always a good feeling to share your thoughts to other ponies. What's the point if you keep them to yourself?"
"Even if you can't prove their existence?"
"Oh please!" The air hummed with a rhythmic note pulling through the deep forest thickets as it breathed the ocean wind. "Don't tell me you're one of those stuck-up Canterlot guys who read the papers every Sunday morning."
"I'll take that as a no then."
"Do you ever fantasize?"
Starlight did a double take. "Me? I mean, of course I do, but I try not to because it means I'm daydreaming and not focusing on the task at hoof—"
"Would you ever want to at all?"
"I would naturally when I'm not feeling like myself." She forced an awkward smile.
"So you're not there yet..." Lyra Heartstrings stroked her chest, feeling the autumn vibe pulsing through her veins. For a minute, Starlight thought she had seen the mare's veins emanating through her body like an x-ray crystallography. Pressing against the side of her head, she tried to envision a sense of sharp pain tearing through her adrenaline. It resulted in only awkward posing and a facial scrunch.
"Are you okay?"
"N-no." Starlight faked a laugh. "I was just trying to picture myself in mental torture. Kept forgetting that we're in a dream."
"Why did you agree to help Bon-Bon with all this?"
She stopped cold. "Why, you ask?"
Lyra firmly nodded. "This is the time to tell me everything. I don't like keeping personal secrets. Bon-Bon should've known that by now."
Starlight Glimmer chewed on her lips. The golden hue of both the musical island and the great metropolis fell upon her, as if she was the central spotlight on the stage. She wanted to sing a song and get away with it all, but reality told her otherwise. And in this dream, she was no different than being wide awake on her bed, while surrealism gently fell asleep.
"I-I used to be like you."
Lyra rolled her eyes again. 'And away goes the organic empathy out the window, Miss Cliché.'
"Not in the sense that I had a similar goal. But I had my own social utopia that others couldn't have seen possible. It would've been ideal, it would've been perfect. I had it planned out in every way to work."
The musician's curiosity grew on her. "And what made you stop chasing?"
"Turns out, dishonesty was the biggest price I had to pay. One can't be empty hoofed like the others to make a difference." A lavender comet streaked across the night sky within a second of her last word. She gradually smiled as she wrestled against her own tears. "She who saw my ideology at work fixed me onto the right path, and here I am."
"Are you wishing to ever go back on your old path and seeing what comes out of it?"
Pausing in thought, Starlight simply smirked. "I'm afraid not."
"I see..." She hoofed a pile of sand before facing away from the sound. Away she goes into the tropical lushes, brushing away the dry hardened humidity that once had the the mare stale.
"Where are you going?"
The free spirited unicorn heeded no attention to the insipid question. And doing what she does best, Lyra Heartstrings followed the gentle rhythm committed by her magical island and vanished from Starlight's luminescent sight.
Author's Note
A fair share of inspiration to write this short prequel to my upcoming series (which I've took from my journey in Banff and Lake Louise in southwestern Canada (yes it's Alberta, I know my geography)).
A little sour taste of motivation from this gem :)
Author's Note
I had a hard time continuing after the first chapter, so I took my time with more music that rightfully pieced out the puzzle.
Apperception
"Lyra!"
Crunch crunch crunch.
Trampling over the endless blades of turquoise grass, Starlight Glimmer paced herself as she searched for the lyre musician. Her horn emitted a dim glow through the forest. Unbeknown to her, she winced as the thistle light on her horn was immediately dismissed with yellow sparks. Nor did she heed a green leaf grazing past her coat. As it was left behind in the cool environment, the leaf quickly changed to orange, red, yellow, before rotting into a dry piece of crisp. The leaf's particles soon danced away into the short-lived gusts of wind.
Crunch crunch crunch.
"Lyra! Where are you?!"
But of course, Starlight was too busy looking ahead for a particular unicorn's whereabouts. She ran past more and more dead leaves, yet the orbs of fairies continued to glister across this magical realm. The giant sequoias mingled within the faintest cyan beams which splattered onto the canopy.
Relinquishing her desperate chase, she took a deep breath. The mare surrendered herself to the sounding placidity by meditating senselessly to mother nature's deep, heartfelt song. Sparrows chirped loudly in the conifers. Squirrels chattered with hazelnuts rolling through the soft-cushioning grassland. A rainbow lorikeet careened through the mystic forest, screeching for mates as the rest of his kind silently looked at him from an acacia. Golden pheasants sat on hanging branches a few trees away, rejoicing life.
Crunch... crunch...
Standing under a giant banyan tree, a glowing horn could be seen with its owner faintly in sight. Starlight casted a colored light complementary to the environment, and squinted straight ahead into the turquoise luster.
Lyra! That has to be her! She thought to herself as she trotted towards the glowing mare wreathed within their surroundings. Hares and chipmunks poked their heads out of the grass, before dashing away into the shadowy thickets. Once she reached before the other mare, she was more than speechless.
"Lyra, this... this place is amazing! Did you fantasize it all by yourself?"
No words. Lyra's emotionless face stung her cold. Shocked? Perhaps somewhat petrified, or even unnerved by the musician's innuendos, Starlight was more than perplexed. Who wouldn't be astonished with such a quixotic paradise?
"L-Lyra?"
"Yep, as expected."
"Huh?"
Woebegone. A crestfallen Lyra Heartstrings shook her head. Her amber eyes paled to a moderately dull shade of yellow. "You really don't know what's coming, do you?"
"What do you mean? Isn't this beautiful to you?"
"Oh it's 'beautiful to you', alright." She mockingly said. "Because you only see what's appealing to your ignorant standards."
"Yeah! 'Because' that's only a natural reaction unless something's mentally wrong with you—"
Liberating herself from the sudden burst of hellish anger, she heaved a sigh. "Fine. What's your story?"
With a flick of her horn, the pace of the music snailed to high notes and ambient woodwinds. The mellifluous sounds of nature died out. The magical barrier silenced the cricket chirps. Their heartbeats were no more different than the tapping of the infrastructures of the Crystal Empire. The song felt rich, sincere, and the two magically gifted unicorns were more than committed to listen.
"How do you feel about the dramatic spewing of red leaves in the fall?"
"Spew?" Starlight rubbed her chin. "That's quite an interesting way to put it…” Once again, she drowned herself into the breathless landscape. Nearly losing her voice was the least of her concerns. “It's mother nature's beautiful mood swing. Just walking alone through the oak trees and the dancing flames enlightens my spirit. It's so euphoric yet maudlin that we don't get to see a natural occurrence like this often."
"And sooner than never, they die. The once healthy green organs of plants will turn into crisps of brown debris scattered across the realm."
"Well yes, they die. And at the same time the same dying leaves signal the trees' hibernation in the winter. But the process of their color changing is the highlight of their aspirations before life freezes."
Lyra shook her head. “Enjoy while it lasts, Starlight Glimmer. Because not all trees make it through the winter, regardless of how entertained you are.”
“What? That's ridiculous talk!”
“Admit it,” retorted Lyra, “you are like any normal pony out there who can't see outside his or her comfort zone.”
With a short growl, Starlight was now lost in words. “What do you mean I can’t see? I'm doing fine with my perceptions of others and being myself! I don't need some mad mare who can't even pay her rents telling me what to do in life!”
Rolling her eyes, she uttered a short sigh. “And here we go with the ego of “I” being abused in a simple conversation. The more defensive you get, the less unprejudiced you are.”
Lyra pointed a hoof at the conifers where the sparrows resided in. Once she resumed the background noises along with the string plucking and piano tapping, the two mares were able to hear the bustling creatures going about their night.
“Wow...” Starlight crooned. “Listen to how happily they’re chirping! What a beauty to witness such peaceful— mmph!”
With a sullen expression hung on her face, Lyra Heartstrings walked in front of Starlight. A golden aura wrapped around the poor mare’s mouth as she remained zipped. She simultaneously summoned back the same barrier and blocked themselves from the external sounds once more.
“This, is what’s been ticking me off throughout our entire conversation” — Starlight could see slight sparks of fire in her eyes — “What do you know about those ‘happy little sparrows chirping gracefully and on about their days’? What do you know about these blissfully ignorant souls who might die the next minute? What do you know about the ways of life that other non-pony species have?!”
Starlight knew that her magical abilities were evidently more sharpened than her minty counterpart. She could end the dream here once and for all. Yet, nothing in reality touched the melting surface of this dreamscape. For once in her lifetime was she ever overpowered by somepony who was less experienced than she was at magic.
Starlight was obliged to listen.
“Starlight, those sparrows not ‘chirping happily’. They’re arguing, bickering, and are always upset about something. It could be a family issue, or lacking of resources to feed themselves. Have you not thought about how we raise our voices to show anger and indignancy? And as for the other woodland creatures, they’re desperate, hungry and not even having room to think for a companion. They’re always meandering alone, in search of food and shelter from predators that will hunt them for life. And their sole objective is to survive, Starlight, do you know how much meaning is in a simple word? They either kill and feast on other living beings, or become the killed and feasted in this unfair “society” ran by wildlife. There’s no “mother” in nature when she’s too cold-hearted with the deathly struggles these animals have to face.”
Unable to speak at her will, Starlight tilted her head in confusion. Her wandering eyes sought for an exit to the blooming latency.
“You’re confused too, right?” Lyra sniggered with a turn to her back. “We know so little about the coexisting civilization next to ours. And instead of learning, we simply take the enjoyment out of their hopeless cries. On a side note, Zecora and Fluttershy should’ve been our ambassadors to the Everfree Forest.”
She took a crouching position and sniffed the silky blades of grass. Subsequently, a firefly emerged from the teal stalks, and soon lost itself in the growing darkness. The mare's icy eyes soon turned into sparkling fluid as she looked up. She did nothing but stare at the black void where the firefly was last seen.
“And it’s gone, forever. The rest of its kind will follow within a matter of weeks. A glimmer of hope just radiated for life before it vanished in a flash. That is how painfully cloaked the world beyond our reach is. Who knows? There could be corpses of birds lying around without our awareness. Because nopony will seek through the ‘beautiful nature’ for corpses, right?”
Arising, the mare continued speaking with a stone heart, “And you’re probably wondering why I wasn’t furious with your equinized ignorance. Well, I’ve made up my mind. You’re the second pony I’ve came across whom I was able to comfortably share my thoughts out. And honestly speaking, it felt great.”
Releasing the golden aura around Starlight’s mouth, Lyra Heartstrings quietly stared at the coughing mare who was short of breath. A red fox crawled through the grassland. It soon stopped in its tracks as it peered at the two mares through the lustrous forest. But as time slipped away, so did the swift fox into the redwood.
Starlight finally mustered the courage to speak again, "Lyra. Is this why you’re so keen to believe in the existence of humans?”
Lyra continued staring at her, coldly. The amber glow in her pupils renewed a fresh breeze of life. Unfazed, Starlight waited for an answer with a passionate look of her own.
Heaving a sigh, she responded, “Yes, and no. I painted you this scenery to let you know that I'm not a lunatic. I know what reality is, and it's harsh. But even if reality was cancer, I must carry on with it through a journey towards death. But the second stage will come forth before I know it. A new phase of life is waiting for me with the utmost patience.”
"How are you so confident that there's afterlife?"
"Easy." She shot Starlight a smirk. "We're ponies with the capabilities to think for ourselves."
"That doesn't sound anyway convincing to me."
Lyra shrugged. "You really can't prove anything before life and after death, so might as well believe something regardless of how surreal it may seem. There's really no point in fearing it."
“So what if it was proven that humans are just a fraction of your imaginations?”
“Then you write them out.”
“Write them out?”
Looking away, Lyra Heartstrings shut her eyes as she spoke, “When your emotions overflow, they seize your thinking wheel. And all of a sudden, the ship sinks into the bottomless ocean. You know why? Because your feelings pay the price of filling the ship's hull with holes! And they're so tiny that you don’t know what in Celestia’s name has been going on, so you just keep abusing it: the words, the gestures, everything you need to get your uncontrollable sentiments out of your chest. And in the meantime, your egotistical self bursts out with a naked body. You're focused on nothing but you. And that’s what writers do, when they have something in mind to express, they will do whatever it takes to make it come out, fictitious or not.”
She held a hoof to her chest. "I sometimes feel like one of them, a writer who's so pathetically lost in these infinite passageways. Every day and night I asked myself one thing: What am I living for? And I was right. What in the world have I been doing with my life not looking forward to something? This something could be anything! A dream, a religion, a political ideology, or something deeper. I stopped giving two feathers about how stupid I sound when I say my existence and character were pre-determined by zodiacal cosmologies, or another intelligent species existing out there in an alternate dimension. I don't care how ludicrous it is to have a fanbase dedicated to my beliefs. But I—"
"Wait," Starlight interrupted, "you organized a fan club dedicated to humans and constellations?"
Lyra stifled her giggle as she kept a smirk. "Why yes, I did. Other than myself, of course, that idiot whom I refer to as my roommate is the only other member in it, forcefully."
They chuckled delightfully. From above, the bellowing nebula peeked out through the gathering mass of the dark sky.
"Starlight. Had you chased your ambitions after reforming, you would've had it fine, even if ponies were against it. Considering you were under the Princess' wing for awhile now, shouldn't you know a thing or two about thinking for yourself?"
"I..." The former protege of Twilight Sparkle chewed on her lips. Cyan froth rebounded off her pupils as she turned to the glowing fairies who wafted through the thickets. Some of these tiny spirits slipped away into the trees, never to be seen again. "I don't know... It's not the same thinking on my old self, because back then I was morally uneducated. I can't see how I will ever replicate that."
"So?“
Upon hearing this, Starlight was at the very least, stupefied. "What do you mean 'so'?"
"I'm sure she didn't take you under her guidance to be like her. But rather, to find a better you. To live with less regrets, to strive towards greatness, even if it means fixing a single flaw from yesterday. That's what I tried to achieve everyday. I want to reinforce my hypothetical ideas that humans exist. Yes it might seem like a waste of time, but nopony will strip the very unique foundation which made me, me."
”And what you're trying to tell me is?"
"That you don't have to resign your past to move on."
Starlight was silent. Everything felt as if they rewinded back to the shoreline, when they were merely awkward and antisocial animals. Her tears raced for freedom, but a single string pulled against her aching heart. The little ponies were unmindful of the enormous golden pulsar simultaneously stretching across the galaxy. As liquids began forming in Starlight Glimmer's eyes, the pulsar's cosmic rays leapt like graceful deers through the forest ground they stood in. They traversed and bent through the galactic boundaries towards no endpoint in sight.
She was now on her knees. A fractured soul with a heart shattered into a million pieces. "I would, in no way, ever find concurrence with my old self. But somewhere in my heart, I have room to keep those memories of her: the dictator, the one whom they referred to as a 'villain', the bewitched who was a powerful unicorn and controlled others at her will..." She sniffed. "I don't want her gone! I don't want to erase her... me..."
On the ground with her was Lyra Heartstrings, who nuzzled Starlight's forehead with all her might. What a cool, tingy touch of refreshment! She wanted to question why, but the mellow sadness forced her to deny such doubtful curiosity.
"So try again, but don't drag others down to your own pit. For it was you who dug it in the first place. But you don't have to neglect your past self either. Everything is always beautiful in some sense, in the very least. You just have to twist your head around it... That was how Bon Bon accepted of me in her life, and I'll never be able to owe up to her genuine love and kindness."
Slowly they rose, and gazes they've exchanged. When Starlight sought for self harmony, she thought of her original purpose here: to perform a simple task for a pony whom she knew little of.
Yet, question after question, she was now here, ready to drench herself in a deep state of madness. What was she then? And what is she now?
She turned to face Lyra, who was no longer in her gaze. Turning around again, she saw an aquamarine trail snaking through the countless blades of grass. Under a giant banyan, Lyra Heartstrings blended within the rest of the environment. As Lyra distanced herself farther away from the unicorn, Starlight Glimmer pictured herself walking on a long bridge made of hour hands. From afar, the unhappy, angry, and hurt mare who looked just like her (minus the two nearly identical bangs and the equal signed cutie mark) stood at the cliff where the bridge started.
For many moons had she ignored her, and instead pushed towards social acceptance. But now, she reluctantly turned around. The time lapse between the two Starlights was immense. The old Starlight was so far away that she seemed like a flea from her current distance, as if she was no longer relevant to the present one.
Yet, I'll come back... I promise I'll come back for you one day.
Even when you're nothing I want with anymore, for you are the dreaded madmare of unsavory philosophies.
You are just a nopony now, erased from time.
The mare turned back around and continued her journey on the fragile structure bounded by time, which was further bounded by surprises yet to come. In reality, she was also distancing herself from her new friend. As Starlight drifted further away, she reminded herself that she was only a messenger between the two roommates. So why was she emotionally trapped within their relationship?
But... you brought me to where I am now, haven't you?
She hesitated. She didn't know what to tell Bon Bon after this traumatic experience. She was aimless. She was gone like the final twinkle of that deceased firefly awhile back. She was lost like the dying stars and wandering creatures of this lustrous night before everything is all over. To her, the normal (yet overdramatic) mare she encountered just now was in fact a thinking machine structured with a complex brain made of infinite networks traveling through synapses and nodes (as if Starlight was any different herself).
If they can forgive me, then so can I with you.
Lyra lied next to the banyan tree. She pressed her head against her front hooves while folding her stretched hind ones across the long, thick roots. It looked frantically weird, as if she was an alien from an alternate dimension.
No one was there to judge her, nor would she care.
A mind reader she was, a spark of yellow light was ignited to life when she mingled it with the heliotrope aura of Starlight's. Of course, it was done without the latter's awareness, for she was too attached for her own comfort.
We will find a sleepy little drake walking through the castle. We will find a particular Princess, whom I call a friend, with morning greetings. We will then embrace the forthcoming, inevitable chores of the day.
Stargazing, Lyra Heartstrings blinked just when the emerging stars had. Shades of nightlight breathed to life through the faded sun, who was now hiding on the other end of the world, waiting to end the silence. The lyre never ceased a single pluck as the incoming flute harmlessly filled the missing piece in the dense and hazy mist.
We will then find Trixie, Maud, Sunburst, everyone... We will laugh, cherish, play, love... and perhaps make new friends, gain new knowledge... do everything... Together.
And we'll do it over and over again, until we reach our eternal slumber.
And quietly, she listened. And wonderfully, she enjoyed. It was all done in the process of the social birds talking and singing to one another. Thought after thought, whisper after whisper, she was glad that Princess Luna overlooked their dream. And yes, she loathed hiding secrets. But sometimes they were meant to be kept for whom she entrusted with love.
But for now… let us live this dream before we awake to our labors.
