The Space Beyond the Stars
My name is Orion… or I guess it was when I was still alive… do dead ponies even have names anymore? Well anyways, I guess that’s a bad introduction, but you heard it right. I’m dead.
Now, now, I know what you might be saying, “Orion isn’t your reaction a little restrained considering how serious this is?” And you’d be perfectly justified in asking that. I mean I’m dead, I’m not with my family and friends anymore. What normal creature wouldn’t be mortified at the thought? It’s not all bad though, at least I don’t personally think it is. I led a long and rewarding life, met some amazing people throughout it, and I even got to live out my childhood dream of becoming an astronaut.
So why am I narrating my own life? To tell you the truth, I can’t really say. Maybe it gives me closure, maybe it just helps to reflect on everything I’ve seen and done, you know, just while I wait here in the great waiting room in the sky. Limbo, purgatory— call it what you want, but that’s what it is, a waiting room. What else are you gonna do? Listen to some old acquaintance you met maybe once or twice tell you his entire three thousand year long life story? Trust me, I’ve already heard it.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know how long I’ve sat here, but just thinking about everything I’ve seen and done has made it all so much easier to cope with. Maybe that’s the reason why this place is set up that way, just to give us all time to reflect on the lives we’ve lived, the people we’ve met, our stories... you know? Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to do that, and it’s definitely opened my eyes a bit.
I guess the first thing I naturally looked back on was my childhood. It’s amazing how much you can recall when you’re dead, but maybe that’s an effect of being here too. I grew up in a weird place called Earth. Now, that place called Earth that I grew up in never used to have ponies in it, but I guess that some pony from another world called Equestria tried to change everyone into ponies. This all happened before I was born so you’ll have to excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject. Now this alien pony didn’t quite manage to actually do that, but what she did do was change my world’s history forever. Humans still lived on as the dominant species, but even after her whole plan failed, there were still a lot of new ponies who used to be human. Mom and dad were both some of those ponies who used to be human, but I wasn’t.
I was one of the first generations of ponies born on Earth who had never been human, and I guess that made things weird for me when I tried to think about it too hard. I mean I grew up not really knowing anything about the old world, or about a life without magic— it’s like asking a human kid what it’s like to not have wings and be able to fly.
I lived in this pony centric area called the Oasis for pretty much all of my childhood, but it still felt lonely. I was a night pony, or I guess a bat pony to some, depending on where you came from or talked to. That in itself was fine, hell, it was downright perfect for a goofy little kid who had their head in the stars. I mean it meant that I got to spend time with my mom doing the best kinds of things. Things like looking at the stars, designing satellites that’d go into space, and even maybe make the journey there myself once I grew up, spoiler alert, I did!
But even though I got to do all sorts of awesome things that I loved, I still couldn’t help but feel alone. Night ponies were all pretty much nocturnal, and that meant that I didn’t really get to see very many ponies my age unless there were other night ponies around which there really weren’t for most of my formative years, or when I got to go visit auntie Sapphire and her daughter Aurora. Those were always some of my favorite memories as a kid. Auntie Sapphire and her family were all pegasi, but they were different from the other pegasi I knew.
Auntie Sapphire was like mom and dad, a pony who had been born a human, but her husband and daughter were different. Uncle Crescent was a pony from Equestria, and I guess he and auntie Sapphire fell in love when she got to visit Equestria. All three of them were somehow able to stay up late at night when we would, which didn’t really seem all that strange to me as a kid, but I guess it kind of was for everyone else. It didn’t matter though, to me it meant that I got to spend time with other ponies and go off on fun adventures together with them, and those were some of my strongest childhood memories that I can think of.
Now, of course they weren’t really my actual aunt and uncle, but mom and dad always treated them like family, and I was always raised to see them that way too. Though as nice as it was to see them and spend time with cousin Aurora, I still felt lonely back home. That changed when I met Starry Skies and Nimbus. They weren’t really my family either, but they were still treated like that. They came from Equestria too and my mom met them back when she got to visit there when I was still just a baby. Starry and Nimbus had two daughters, Bristle and Trinket, and the day I met them was one of the happiest days of my life. Trinket was a night pony like me, and Bristle was a pegasus, but they both stayed up late.
That couldn’t have been any more exciting for me, because for the first time in my life I actually got to spend time with other ponies my age back home. They didn’t live there for long, but they did stay for a few years. Even after they moved back to Equestria, they’d still visit from time to time, and eventually we even got to visit them, but that wasn’t until a few years later.
These are some of my favorite memories to think back to. There were so many adventures that we got to go on together, like exploring the old mines with Mr. Zipper and his friends, visiting his arcade with his wife Sine Wave, and playing in the lake that Auntie Sapphire had accidentally created. Those few years were some of my favorite and most memorable, but unfortunately like all fun things, those adventures one day came to an end. Starry and his family wound up moving back to Equestria, and I was all alone in the Oasis again.
That’s where my best friend in the whole wide world came in though: Cosmo, my childhood dog. Maybe it’s a little weird that that dog was genuinely my best friend, and maybe even weirder that losing him was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life when there were definitely things that should have been more serious for me. But that dog was special to me in ways that might seem odd to anyone else. I know that everyone loses pets, and it’s just a part of life, but Cosmo was different. You see, I didn’t really have too many friends growing up aside from Aurora, Trinket, and Bristle, so when they weren’t around he gave me that companionship I needed.
That dog and I did everything together. Stuff like going on our own little adventures down by the lake, chasing Mr. Zipper’s goose friends, and spending literally every waking moment together. Even when I slept, Cosmo was always close by. He didn’t talk like my other friends, didn’t play like them either, but he was still someone I could build an emotional bond with, and the day he finally died was one of the saddest days I can remember. Even as an adult thinking back to it made me tear up, because on that day I lost one of the best friends I had had up to that point.
Mom and dad obviously could tell how hard it hit me, and that’s when we went to visit auntie Sapphire again. As sad as I was, that at least made things better. I got to see Aurora again, it took my mind off of everything, and I even got my cutie mark! Now that’s a whole other story in itself… you see, I may have gotten a little emotional and decided to run off into the forest alone… and I may have even gotten lost. Okay, I did, and it scared my poor parents to death too. In dad’s case, maybe even literally. But in my defense it seemed like a perfectly logical idea to a grieving eight year old.
As for how it almost literally scared dad to death, well it’s not exactly quite the best description and it ties into his magic more than anything. Dad had always been a strong dreamwalker, and he and his friends wound up exploring some other realm called the chaos realm. I guess that it changed them in different ways, and one of the ways it changed dad was by boosting his magic, but at a cost.
He could do more, but his body wasn’t built for it, and if he wasn’t careful he could have seriously hurt himself or worse... And that’s just what he did. Back then there were a few night ponies that could do this thing where they’d project themselves to places outside their body. I never learned if dad could do that naturally, or if it was something he was able to do after visiting the chaos realm, but regardless he could do it back then, and he used it to try and find me, because neither of us really knew where I was, and at the very least he hoped could get a good idea of my surroundings.
So we were able to use that, and my understanding of the night sky to figure out a direction I could head back in, and that’s how I earned my cutie mark— by using the constellation I was named after to find my direction, and eventually my family. Things got scary though, when dad projected to me it was further than he had ever projected before, and it knocked him out for days after that. The whole ordeal wound up putting him in the hospital with a severe case of magic fatigue, and we all thought we were going to lose him.
In the end he recovered and never did anything remotely like that again. I guess the scare of almost losing his only kid and then his family almost losing him in turn convinced him to not try and over exert himself again, and that was that. I earned my cutie mark, and dad learned a lesson about flying too close to the sun, and in the end he learned that sometimes the best thing you can do with untapped power you weren’t supposed to have is nothing. We said our goodbyes to Sapphire and her family and headed back home, having grown closer as a family from that whole ordeal.
A couple years before, mom had gotten approval to move to Equestria part time, and she even got to bring dad and I. After the whole incident with dad, we decided to go settle down there for a while. Mom could focus on her astronomy pursuits, dad could get some R&R in peace, and I could spend time with Trinket and Bristle, learning all about how different it was to live in Equestria. The experience was understandably unbelievable, and as weird as it was, I felt right at home. You see, mom and dad raised me to speak Equestrian as a second language, which came in handy when I’d play with my three childhood friends, and it definitely proved more than valuable when we lived in Equestria for that year.
As memorable as those times were, they flew by in the blink of an eye. We eventually moved back home the year after, but we’d still spend summers in Equestria. My childhood during that time was odd, spending winter break in Michigan with auntie Sapphire, spending the fall and spring back in the Oasis, and then spending summers in an entirely different world. I loved it though, it meant that I got to spend time with all of my friends, and as I started to grow up, I came to enjoy those times even more.
Of all the ponies I had met up to this point, Trinket was the one I was closest to. Not only was she a fellow night pony, but she was also my best friend, and as we started to get older, that friendship turned into a budding romance. I must have been around thirteen when we actually started dating, and that was an interesting time. We’d spend our summers together, and then nine months physically apart, separated across universes. We still had ways to keep in touch, but it was hard because talking never really gave us that same feeling that we felt when we were together.
It also didn’t help that the mares back home were starting to try and get my attention too. That was the other hard part about being a night pony on Earth, especially a stallion— the gender balance was so skewed that if you weren’t in any kind of committed relationship, you were seen as something to fight over by the other mares. It got hectic at times, but I stayed true to Trinket, and we both spent as much time as we could together.
This routine went on for a few more years until we were around seventeen, and that’s when mom and dad announced that Trinket was going to spend more time with us back home on Earth. Both of our parents had to have known that we were lovestruck, and getting to spend all my time with her made me the happiest I had been in a long time. Things were still a little rocky at times, we were dating, but we weren’t engaged, and that meant that Trinket earned the ire of some of the others that had their eyes set on me. It was maybe a hastily made decision, but I proposed to her before we left for Earth, something my parents were overjoyed at, even though I knew it would be a while before we actually wed.
Even though we were officially engaged, I was still worried. Maybe it was foolish, but I thought she’d get scared away by the violently different dating culture the night ponies had back home. But in the end she proved herself a competent enough fighter, something that surprised even me. We stayed engaged through college, even as we moved twice. That was around when I really started to seriously pursue my life’s dream, and I actually did wind up meeting a few others who shared that same goal. So now I knew others who had their head in the stars, and one of them was my college professor of all people.
It was honestly a breath of fresh air being able to geek out about that kind of stuff with someone who genuinely enjoyed talking about it. Trinket put up with my space talk a lot more than she ever needed to, and I think she was secretly happy that she wasn’t the one getting the full brunt of it from that day onward. So there I was, in college studying for my future and actually getting a chance to work on it, and I was in heaven. And that’s exactly the kind of stuff that I did, I worked on a few pet projects from time to time, gave some input here and there, and before I knew it, I graduated college.
Trinket and I decided to move back up near auntie Sapphire, near some old airfield that mom’s team had taken up residence in. That was the perfect place for us, beautiful, peaceful, and cool, and it also gave me a place where I could put my education to use. It was a small job, but something I could keep busy with. We didn’t send anything into space at that time, but mom ran a satellite observatory out there, and I helped prep some of the simulations for the future missions she hoped to run out of there.
In time Trinket and I wound up moving between worlds like I had done as a kid, except this time it was different. We’d spend six months at a time in one world, and then spend the other six months in the other. The first year of doing this was definitely the most eventful in our marriage, because we found out that we weren’t just having one foal, but rather twins while we were off in Equestria. Trinket’s parents were overjoyed, and mine didn’t even wait a day before flying down to the portal to come visit us. That was one of the happiest moments I think we ever shared, shadowed only by the day that Corvus and Curio were born.
Even though we were having twins, Trinket and I still couldn’t help but challenge each other to a few competitive rounds in the arcade to decide on who got to name the boy, and who got to name the girl. In the end the names we chose wound up fitting perfectly. Corvus took after me and my mother, and had an eye for the stars above, and Curio took after both Trinket and her mother. The two were definitely a handful at times, and would regularly put their talents together and go off on some crazy adventure. As a family that regularly traversed worlds, it couldn’t have been any more perfect.
We raised the two just as my parents had raised me, and we continued to share our time in both worlds. Just as our kids grew, so did the spaceport we called home. Mom wound up handing me the reins on the facility, and that became the culmination of my life’s work. By the time we were able to finally set up a manned mission, my kids were in their teens, and I couldn’t be any more proud of where they were going. Both were starting to show signs of their own career interests, and Trinket and I made sure to always foster their interests in whatever ways we could. Curio helped Trinket down at the local museum where she worked, and Corvus helped me in the spaceport. When the day finally came for me to fulfill my dream, both Corvus and my mother were right there in mission control, keeping in close contact with me.
That first launch was exhilarating, I had spent so many hours in the simulators, but none of that compared to the real thing. Being up there and seeing the Earth from that vantage point was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen, and it genuinely made me happier than I had been since the birth of our foals. I orbited for a couple days and then returned, and that was only the beginning of what I’d go on to do. The details are more boring than you’d imagine, but I did get to finally make a trip to the moon, just like the stories dad had always read to me as a kid.
My life’s work eventually became Corvus’, and Curio went on to curate and expand the museum that she and Trinket worked at. Trinket and I retired to Equestria together, and eventually grew old. Our kids had kids, and they raised them just as we had raised them, making us as proud as we could ever hope to be. We still made trips between worlds together, but the allure of Equestria was something that kept calling us, and eventually we decided to settle down there for good. I guess you could say that that’s where my story ended, but here I am, waiting for the next chapter to begin.
And what is that chapter? I guess I won’t know until they call my number, and that’s probably true for every single one of the souls waiting here. But I have a feeling that whatever it is, it’ll be well worth the wait.
Author's Note
It’s a little bit of an unconventional story I know, but I’ve been going through some rough stuff and just wanted to write out a character who I really love’s life to help get my mind off of things.
Ironically a story about death is the form that an original concept lives on in. I’ve got lots of stuff I’d love to tell about Orion’s life, and who knows, much like Mystic Ember maybe he’ll actually get a fleshed out full on story someday in the future? He definitely has a lot more to share...
