THE OTHER SIDE
an MLP:FIM fanfiction by: RUST
Pipsqueak woke up.
It was a bright and sunny morning in Ponyville. The stallion raised himself up out of his chair. Funny, he hadn't remembered falling asleep there. Or where he had left his scarf. The old, threadbare one that he still wore even when it was hot out. Like today promised to be.
Bah.
Tottering to the kitchen, he set about making himself breakfast. A simple bowl of oats and honey. When he had finally sat down at the table, wheezing, he realized he wasn't even that hungry.
The bowl was left on the table, untouched.
He wandered out off the back porch, letting the sun warm his creaky bones. It was a good day today. Not a perfect day, but a darn good one nonetheless.
He felt sleepy. Somehow the grass came up to meet him. He felt himself drifting off...
Beep-beep.
Pipsqueak's eyes creaked open. He took a long, shuddering breath, at first unaware of his surroundings.
Everything was white, and clean. Too clean. He flicked his gaze around. Four white walls, a white tile floor, and white speckled ceiling, and one window. Of course, the shades were drawn closed. Above, a soft, fluorescent bulb flickered a little.
Beep-beep.
Beside him, a machine steadily chirped away. He followed a series of tubes extending out of it and up under the blanket. Why was there a blanket there? It wasn't his.
He was lying in bed, he eventually realized. That wasn't his, either. He looked down at his body, old and withered underneath the pristine sheets covering him. He was surprised, a little. He could hardly sense himself. It was as if he were just....there. Some unknown force pressed down comfortably on him. He had the strangest sensation of moving forward. Maybe it was gravity, finally overcoming the stallion's ancient muscles.
To say he felt tired was an understatement. He was utterly exhausted. Simply breathing seemed to make it worse.
Eventually, the stallion came to the conclusion that he was in the hospital. Something had happened, so it seemed. Had he fallen? Suffered a heart attack? Stroke, maybe? He couldn't remember what exactly had brought him here. All his recent memories were just blurs.
Or maybe, he mused, it was simply his time.
How long had it been now? He was old, so very very old. There'd been some hubbub a couple years back about him breaking a record of some sort. He'd never paid much attention to it. Eventually, he'd reached the point where the birthday candles on his cake resembled something like a small bonfire than anything else. It was then that Pipsqueak had stopped caring about his age.
"How old are you?" they asked him sometimes. The colts and the fillies that he'd meet on occasion.
"Older than the sun, the moon, and the stars," he'd wheeze back in a kindly reply.
Strangely, they believed him.
"How old are you?" they asked him sometimes. The stallions and mares who'd grown out of their childhoods, secure in their notions of worth and their places in the grand scheme of things.
"Older than this city, and all the ponies in it."
Nopony out of them believed that one.
"How old are you?" Princess Celestia had asked him once, a playful smile on her lips.
"Old enough," he'd simply said.
She believed that. Just like the foals. But her belief was rooted from another source. Though she laughed at the joke, it saddened him to know so. Of course, age didn't matter to her. She was untouched by time, always had been, always would be.
Just like her.
Beep-beep.
Pipsqueak jerked awake. He must have dozed off. He sighed to himself, laying his head back into the soft pillow. He felt as though he had only closed his eyes for a second when the creak of a door roused him.
"My Pip."
That voice. That lovely, melodic voice. How he adored it, had always adored it.
"L-luna..."
She was at the bedside in an instant, gazing down on him with a gentle look in those stunning eyes of hers. She reached down and brushed away something on his cheek. Her hoof came away wet. Had he been crying? He couldn't remember.
"My faithful friend. How is thy rest? Art thou finding everything to be of comfort?" she asked him. Even now, after all these years, she still spoke that peculiar dialect of Equestrian...old and venerable. Like him.
Beep-beep.
"Where am I, Luna? Why am I here?"
It pained him to speak. Yet her very presence was like a glass of icy water, refreshing his tired voice.
"They found thee prone upon thy back lawn, out by the garden. Unconscious, breathing, but...weakly. They say 'twas from simple exhaustion, though I know otherwise."
"You? Tell me...is this the end? For me?" He hesitated. "For us?"
Luna was quiet for a long moment.
"That is a difficult question, Pipsqueak."
He chuckled, a rasping sound that sounded more like coughing. "You could just say yes or no. Never been one for beating around the bush, as they say."
"Nay. 'Tis complicated. Thou art dying, Pipsqueak. Thou dost not have long upon this world."
Pipsqueak sank deeper into his bed. He'd guessed, but hearing it from her lips had cemented the certainty. So, that was it, then. He was going to die. Just going fade away, like a candle going out. A puff of air...an then the light would be extinguished. It wasn't like he hadn't seen it coming. He was old enough that his joints popped like bubble wrap almost constantly. The signs had been there, he'd just not worried about them too much.
Until now.
Beep-beep.
"Do you know what comes next?" he asked her. "After...this?"
"Aye."
They were silent for a long moment.
"Will it hurt?"
"Only at first. And then, thou will find release."
"Oh. It's just, I've always wondered."
Luna pressed a hoof to his lips. "Hush," she gently ordered. "All follow this path one day. 'Tis the way of things." She then drew away from the bedside, before opening the window. In a rush of noise, the blinds folded up, and a glorious sunset poured into the room like liquid gold.
Luna's horn glowed faintly as darkness, soft as satin and blacker than sin, washed along the white walls. It covered the floor, and surged across the ceiling. Her horn shimmered brighter, and pinpricks of light sprang into existence all about the fading sky.
Pipsqueak never got tired of watching her do this.
"Do you remember," he mused, "the first time I saw you raise the moon?"
It was cold, frosty, winter night. The kind of night with a chill that sank into your bones and made your hair stand on end the moment you stepped outside.
Dragon's breath rose from the nostrils of a much younger Pipsqueak as he stood atop the highest tower in Canterlot. He hugged his scarf tighter around himself. It had been a gift from Luna herself, and he'd been eager to wear it here.
The colt bounced around in place. "Oh, wow! I can see everything from up here, Princess! This is amazing!"
The balcony view was breathtaking. The city of Canterlot lay below, shining in the sinking sun, colorful minarets and eccentric spires striking the light just in that right way, causing the entire city to shimmer like a dusky rainbow. Beyond that lay the world, quite literally. The Canterlot valley was beyond the rim of stone that held the city, a patchwork of green and brown farmland, some of the richest in Equestria.
"Aye, 'tis a magnificent sight," Luna agreed.
Pipsqueak dared to peer over the railing. The yawning void of empty space from there to the ground seemed to stretch and bend sickeningly. He withdrew from the edge with a shiver. "So, what exactly are we doing up here? Are we gonna play another game?"
Luna smiled gently. "Of a sort. 'Tis less of a game and more of a necessity."
"But you can still have fun with it, right?"
"Aye. It is most enjoyable."
Her horn sparked a few times, before the aura took. Pip watched as his princess chewed thoughtfully upon her lower lip. "Oh, you're gonna use a spell."
Luna did not deem it necessary to reply, instead lowering her head to the balcony deck. The aura faded for an instant, but abruptly reignited tenfold as bright. When she raised her head again, pointing her horn to the heavens, it seemed to Pip as though she were struggling with a great weight.
To the east, the silver moon jumped out of hiding, its entrance startling away her sister sun into hiding down below the edge of the world. Pip gasped with delight as Luna continued to pull the moon up, up, up! It was like she was flying a kite, tethered to the tip of her long horn.
When she was finished, the great whiteness of a crescent moon hung gracefully in blackened sky, the last vestiges of sunset chased away.
"Wow," Pip breathed. Then again, "wow!"
"Indeed," smirked the Princess. "Wouldst thou like to help with the stars?"
He stared at her, eyes huge. "Really?"
"Of course, little Pip!" Luna chuckled, moving close to him. She spread a huge, midnight wing in front of his face, blocking out the moonlight. Pip could feel her breath in his ear. "All thou must do is feel. We shall take that feeling, and make it the brush that moves by itself, the stars shall become the paint."
"What kind of feeling?" Pip asked, sitting down.
She bent down by his side, whispering almost like she had a naughty secret. "We want you to think of a time where you felt most happy, or sad, or frightened, or eager... fix that memory in thine mind, and hold it there. Any will do."
Pip scrunched his face up for a moment. "Okay. Got it." He hoped it would be okay...
He could feel her horn ignite somewhere behind his shoulder. "Don't let go," said Luna.
There was a strange sort of a pulling, a gentle tug that he could feel in the very back of his head. It felt strange. He had never been aware of that part of himself before. As quickly as it began, it was over. "Let us see what you have painted on this night," declared Luna, raising her wing from his sight.
Above, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen stretched from horizon to horizon.
It was like the sky had become a living thing, breathing and snaking itself around. Huge contrails of aurora danced with each other, playing through the mighty band of darkness and light that described the galaxy. Stars covered the darkness like a great carpet, twinkling and blinking with their own language. A lonely comet blazed off to the north, spewing a rainbow tail.
"The imagination of the young," wondered the Princess, in as much awe as he was, "never ceases to amaze." She cast him a curious grin. "What didst thou think of, little Pip?"
"Thou never told us, after all those years," said Luna.
"Hmm?" He opened his eyes. He had been thinking about that night, back when his bones didn't creak and his thoughts still ran straight. "Oh. It was you, Luna. I recall... it was the feeling of what I felt whenever I looked at you. You always made me feel... like I was experiencing something new. It was wonder, it was discovery." He glanced slyly at her, at the tears beginning to brim at the corners of her beautiful eyes. "It never got old."
She smirked through the sadness. "Wrinkly silvertongue."
He laughed, before wincing as a sharp pain blossomed under his chest. Spots appeared in his vision as he coughed and wheezed. They had been coming much more frequently now, he realized. Time was growing short.
Beep-beep.
"How," he fought back another bout, "how is Aurora?"
Luna looked over her shoulder, to the door. "She waits outside. Earlier, we shared the room, but she left before thine awakening. It... pains her greatly to see thee like this. We think she does not want us to know how badly she is taking to the news."
It really was the end, then. Pip sighed. "She'll be back. She always does. Even after she left home, she came back to live close by."
"Aye, and a long and winding road it took to get there!" Luna chuckled. "She took greatly after her father's penchant for unexpected journeys and strange circumstance."
"I didn't have to go looking for trouble," Pip countered with a wink. "I only had keep up with it."
They both laughed at that, though Luna awkwardly halted as he lapsed into another bout of painful coughing. When the fit passed, he found that the princess had placed a hoof upon his own, wearing a concerned expression. "Wouldst thou prefer if we fetch the nurse?"
Beep-beep.
"No," he rasped, "no more of that. I'm tired of feeling like I'm underwater all the time."
Her eyes took on a faraway look. "We seem to recall thou rather enjoyed that sensation."
It took him a moment, but he remembered.
"The King under the Waves?"
"Aye..."
The currents were warm, today.
He stood up in the balcony of the Coral Hall, basking in the playful eddies of sunlit water. His mane, grown longer since his foalhood years, was tied back in a ponytail, while his favorite scarf slowly fluttered like a flag caught in molasses. Upon his neck, a pair of gills worked tirelessly. An older, wiser Pip shuffled sluggishly in his barding.
Beside him, Luna crossly viewed the proceedings. She had taken much better to the depths, her wings having taken on a more webbed appearance, growing delicate gills, and her features narrowing, almost becoming predatory in a alluring way. Her mane, too, was tied back, lest it float in front of her vision.
She looked absolutely stunning in his eyes. Pip looked away.
"We sense his approach," she murmured. "Swiftly, must we spring into action."
Pip swallowed nervously. It tasted like seawater, but he was used to that by now.
When Celestia had decided that relations with the sea ponies needed to be improved, nopony had expected her sister to volunteer to make the trip. Luna had been working behind the scenes for years, now, moving and shaking in her own subtle, but effective way. But it seemed that the Night Princess was eager to see how the world had changed in her absence, and that world included all beneath the waves.
What really took the cake was her dragging him along for the ride.
"Protection purposes," Luna had explained to her baffled sister. "Every Princess needs a daring knight to aid her now and then."
Pip, of course, had tried to melt into the carpet.
He wasn't a knight, and it seemed Luna had been doing most of the aid while they had stayed here as ambassadors to the King under the Waves. But standing here beside the most incredible mare in the world, not to mention the mare who had become his best friend, he was still having the time of his life.
The Coral Hall was built upon the very edge of Atlantis, the reef-city that the kingdom of sea ponies called their capitol. Here, an aquatic utopia had grown in the bright shallows under the care of its stewards, cultivated from centuries of dedicated work. Pip honestly couldn't tell where the city ended and the reef itself began. In the Coral Hall, hundreds of millions of living organisms made up the building, bright and flashy displays of color on their tiny bodies painting it like a rainbow.
Below, the wedding procession continued onwards without a hitch. Princess Anemone was gliding through the aisle, looking stunning in her gown of scarlet kelp fronds. At the altar, the lucky groom, Prince Nemo, tried not to look uncomfortable in his seaweed suit.
"This must commence without the hitching," Luna murmured. "They are very supportive of our interests here." That was true. Anemone's father, Triton, had been somewhat unreceptive to the ambassadors, feeling that Equestrian presence in his realm was something he could do without.
Pip resisted the urge to smack himself in the face at Luna's butchering of modern expressions.
"Any minute now, the fiend will show his face," the alicorn continued to speak lowly to him. He shivered at the sound of the dusky whispering. "There will be precious little time to act."
"Luna..." Pip haltingly began. "If we don't make it out of this..."
"Neigh," she whinnied. "We shall prevail. Have faith, Pip," Luna pressed herself to his side. "If not in our cause, then at least thyself."
He stammered at the feeling of their coats meshing together through the water. She was so soft. "I... I just..." But it was no use. The words would not come out, like always.
"Look! There! Through the window!"
He broke himself out of his slump to peer where she indicated. Sure enough, something was moving past the great window behind the altar. A faint shadow was making itself known on the intricate aquatic designs. And it was... getting bigger!
"Prepare thyself!" Luna's horn sparked. The power made his pelt stand on end as the power conducted through the water. "Quickly, art thou ready?"
Pip gripped the harpoon he had been leaning on in his teeth. A gift from Nemo, the day of their arrival. "...Nof reary," he mumbled through the kelp grip.
"Excellent!"
A blast of light and heat. Pip closed his eyes. It felt like something had hooked itself under his ribs and violently pulled him along. When the sickening feeling stopped, Pip opened them, to find himself floating a few inches above the altar. He glanced behind him. Rows and rows of surprised seaponies looked back. "Uh... hi," he lamely muttered.
Luna, who had teleported them together, sprang upwards, fin-wings outstretched. "Anemone! Nemo! Brace thyselves!" The two seaponies darted behind the stone altar, just below and behind the Equestrians.
The shadow on the window grew dark. With a cataclysmic rumble, something huge struck the other side of it, bursting through at great speed straight for the altar and those upon it...
...Only to stop dead upon impacting an azure bulwark of light. Luna's horn immediately sputtered out as the alicorn gasped in pain, as her magic bulwark faded away. Half of a titanic sperm whale was now wedged inside the Coral Hall, the other half hanging limply out into the deeps. Pip gaped at the size of the thing. It must have knocked itself senseless!
Luna drifted back down beside him, collapsing to her knees. "Luna!" cried the stallion, dropping his harpoon and scooping her to him. "Are you all right?"
"Never... better..." The alicorn's eyes shut, and she fell limp in his hooves. Pip realized she must have overexerted herself, stopping this giant in the fraction of a second.
A booming laugh filled the hall. Seaponies immediately began to panic at the noise, scattering to the currents. "AH-HA-HA-HA-HAA!"
Pip shivered in his boots.
A figure appeared on top of the whale, a large, horned seapony colored white with burning red eyes. "HA-HA-HA!" He boomed again. "You may have halted my pet, but you cannot stop me! Princess Anemone is mine!"
The seapony princess poked her head out from behind the altar, pointing at Pip. Beside her, Prince Nemo swam upwards, bristling. "Not if we anything to say about it, Moby Di--"
"--DON'T SAY THAT NAME! THAT IS TOTALLY NOT MY NAME."
"Kind of suits you," Pip muttered under his breath.
"WHAT WAS THAT!?"
"Nothing, nothing..." Pip glanced around, weighing his options. Luna still dangled limply from his hooves, unconscious. His harpoon glimmered in the undersea light where he dropped it. Nemo swam beside him, worry upon his face.
"Is your mare well?" he asked.
"She's not my-!" Pip began, then grumbled, "She'll be fine in a while."
"Then we'll take him together," declared the Prince, lowering his horn at the foe.
"R-right." Pip looked down at the mare he cradled against himself. "Luna... if I don't make it out of this..." He bent his muzzle to her ear, murmuring softly. "...I want you to know I always loved you." Pip gave her a quick, tender kiss, feeling his heart aching.
With that, he gently laid the alicorn down, standing back up with harpoon in his mouth.
The albino demon atop his useless steed cackled. "TWO LITTLE TADPOLES LIKE YOU CAN'T HOPE TO STOP ME! SOON, I WILL WED PRINCESS ANEMONE AND BECOME THE NEXT KING UNDER THE WAVES! MWA-HA-HA-HA!" With that, he lowered his sharpened horn, almost three feet of ivory bone, the very tip sparkling in the shafts of sunlight that played through the waves overhead.
Prince Nemo roared right back, "For Anemone!"
Pip hesitated for a second. Oh, what the hay. The equestrian joined the prince, his voice cracking.
"For Luna!"
"Why were you faking it?" Pip wondered.
She blinked. "You knew?"
"No. Not until afterwards." The old stallion let himself breathe for a moment, not really aware of himself and hoping he hadn't wet the bed again. Not with her around. He still had his pride, after all. "I saw you stop a train, once. That time we were visiting Appleoosa and those bandits attacked? That was when I knew, you were capable of far more than the whale."
Beep-beep!
They were silent for a time, simply enjoying the company in the way that two ponies who had known each other for a very long time could do. Luna finally laid her neck across his chest, murmuring, "because thou needed to prove thine worth, the worth that we already knew thou were possessed of. But thou needed to prove to thyself, and find thy courage in doing so."
"You faked being unconscious so Nemo and I could get beaten up by a seapony three times our size."
"If we recall correctly, thou were the one who emerged victorious. The final blow was laid by thine own hoof! And 'twas..." her voice took on a husky edge, "...emboldening, for thyself. We knew thou could do it. But... in thine head, thou weren't yet ready to accept that."
"Hmmph." Pip looked away, pouting.
"Thou saved two princesses that day. One of which became thy lover shortly after." Luna waggled an eyebrow conspiratorially.
"You... you... are something else," Pip lamely stated.
"Mmm." She hummed in agreement, the vibrations of her throat feeling heavenly upon his frail chest. It soothed his aching lungs, and soon he found himself drifting off to sleep. "Would you have it any other way?"
"Never," he whispered, before he fell under the rising tide.
There was a house in Ponyville.
It was built near the edge of town, by the brook that flowed in from the Everfree. It was a good house, built of strong timbers and furnished with nice things and warm memories. If one stood on the back porch, one could hear the river sliding by over the noise of a growing garden. A chink in the upper part of the front door's frame was the only clue as to how strange the inhabitants could be.
A stallion lived there.
Earth pony. Palomino. Wore a scarf when he went out. Ponies liked him, he was the sort of chap who got along well with just about everypony, even if he didn't. Nopony really knew what he did for himself, only that he didn't seem to do any work in town, other than helping out with the changing of the seasons. He must have done something, because he always had bits to spend, and always tipped very generously.
Some said he was an old war hero.
If one stepped into his parlor and saw all the trophies, the strange objects from distant lands, the rusty harpoon hanging above the mantle, they would be rather justified in that. Some said he was just a gardener who got lucky, must have found the secret to grow some valuable leaf out in his back yard, where weird, beautiful things grew that only bloomed at night. Others thought maybe he was some sort of agent for the Crown, as sometimes reports were made that showed ponies flying overhead to his home in the dark hours of the day, ponies with wings and horn.
He had a daughter.
Unicorn. Coat like liquid shadow, a mane that seemed to shift without the wind. Sweet thing, if a bit of a temper. Had the eye of every colt in town before she left to make a mare of herself. Nopony knew who the mother was, because only the father and his daughter lived there. Sure, they had visitors from time to time. Once, a herd of buffalo spent the night in the field next door. Some rich gryphon stayed over for almost a month, leaving behind a chest of spices that the stallion simply gave away to the town. There was even that time when the black skyship moored to the chimney. Father and daughter weren't seen for an entire year after the ship vanished, returning back during the night with new, strange things to add to the house. The weeds didn't dare grow, even in their absence.
Nopony really knew them.
But from what they saw, the pair lived a good life. Better than most. If one was lucky, sometimes one could peer into their windows after dark and find them cooking together in the kitchen, spicy foreign smells emanating from the home. If one was really lucky, they might catch a third pony sitting down with them at the table. A mare.
They sure were something else.
Every once and a while, he'd throw a party, not very big, but enough so that the guests might spill over into the garden to walk among the strange flowers, or sit on the porch and watch the river pass by. Sometimes the little ones would ask for a story, much to the chagrin of their parents, but he never minded, not once. So he entertained them all, as they sat in his parlor, eating foreign foods and looking at the trophies. His stories were the stuff of legend, the tales of a brave adventuring princess, her loyal knight, and their young squire. Fantastical tales were described, the stallion weaving his words while his daughter painted pictures in the air. Unbelievable to the older ones, but the young took the tales to heart. One time the Princesses showed up at a party, all four of them! Imagine that...
But for the most part, the house by the edge of town was a quiet, peaceful place.
As the years rolled on, so too did the mystery.
And that's how it was.
Until the stallion keeled over in his garden one hot, sunny day.
Beep.
Beep.
When he awoke, he knew he was almost out of time.
He could feel it in his bones, how they seemed barely able to hold his spirit inside them any longer. It felt like he was about to crack open, and the liquid that was his soul would pour out. It didn't hurt. He found that he couldn't feel the pain anymore.
It was well past midnight by now, he guessed, and through the haze of his old eyes, he could see another figure in the room. A mare with a velvet coat blacker than secrets, and a mane of a cascading blend of blues and greens.
Aurora.
He tried to call out to her, he really did, but all that came was a soft gurgle. Aurora was hunched over the foot of his bed, weeping openly and trying not to show it, even as her mother gently rubbed her withers and cooed the lullaby they had sung when she was small.
He wanted to cry with her. He wanted to pull her close and tell her not to worry about him, he was just an old stallion and not worth the trouble. He wanted to laugh and dance and sing with her like they used to. He wanted to watch the sunset with her. He wanted to tell her he loved her, so very very much, and that he was proud of the daughter he had raised.
But he couldn't.
And that made his tired old heart break.
Beep-beep.
"Hush now, quiet now..." sang Luna.
It's time to lay your sleepy head, Pip silently wept.
"Hush now, quiet now."
It's time to go to bed...
"Hush now, quiet now, close your sleepy eyes."
Hush now, quiet now, my how time sure flies...
Oh, how it did. How he wished more than anything it wouldn't leave him behind. But deep down, he knew he should be grateful. Precious few had ever lived such a full and incredible life. He was sad and happy at the same time, the two emotions eerily meshing to make a strange sort of serenity.
It was getting hard to breathe.
"Drifting off to sleep, the day's excitement behind you."
Drifting off to sleep... let the joy of dreamland... find you...
Pip fought it as long as he could. The sounds of grief and comfort began to bleed away, until a warm blanket filled the room, muffling his noise. Something deep blue and sparkling filled his fading sight. Something soft and warm and familiar brushed his face, murmuring the words he could not hear but knew so well into his ears, even as that scent washed over him, that smelled of ice and starlight and the wild places of the night.
Some part of him accepted it. It had been a long time coming, but that was just the way of things.
Another part of him, the part that refused to go down, held on, begging and pleading and screaming with all its might, but it knew that the coming darkness was going to wash over it anyway and that made it try even harder until all he knew was a last desperate push to just keep going just keep going just keep living you old wreck of a pony why did you have to go and --
Beeeeeeee...
-- leave.
Pipsqueak woke up.
Author's Note
For Nathan Traveler.
