A dying sun cuts the sky. The stars are long gone, the moon vanished into dust years ago, and I sit alone on this hot and rugged beach.
The beach stretches infinitely into the fiery horizon. An ocean lays in front of me, boiling up for months. Great vapors climb up to coalesce into more hot air, joining the all-consuming sun. They leave behind dead fish, dead corals, dead everything. Only hot boiling water remains, and its minuscule waves burn my hooves. The only thing stopping these hooves from burning up is the cold-enchanted armor I wear: keeps my insides from evaporating.
The ground shakes; another earthquake. How many, I’ve lost count. It’s the most exciting thing here—some movement and life. Gives me a challenge: try to stay still and not fall over while it’s happening. It’s all harmless in the end: no buildings to destroy, no trees or tall things to topple over and crush me in its embrace—just the silent sea burning my hooves numb but comfortable as I disobey every solar expert imaginable and stare into the sun. The red death sun doesn’t burn my eyes—it’s dimmed so much—but the heat never stops coming.
Until the scorching winds removed all trace of them, a trail of hoofprints dragged behind me. Now it’s as if I was born here and lived here all my life, as if I will die here too. I will certainly die here.
My armor’s failing. That kooky scientist told me he can’t make the perfect armor. It has a breaking point, and the sun’s about to smash the world record for the hottest day in Equestria. The sun’s a stupid overachiever though: it’s been breaking that record non-stop for hundreds of days.
I’ve sat here for weeks. I’ve slept and woken up to a slightly bigger, slightly hotter, slightly more unbearable sun with a tiny chance of the earth swallowing me up. I sleep knowing nothing more will happen the next day. The harsh winds destroy my sand-writing within the hour, so the only way to tell time is to check how many biscuits I have left: get super hungry after two or three days, and one lucky biscuit rides down my throat. I know I’ve been here for weeks and not mere days or several months because I arrived here with ten biscuits in hoof and now only one’s left. Plain, a little salted; closest thing to good company. In a sense, the biscuit used to be a living thing: some grains, a plant—now all the grain’s gone too. To that lone snack: you’re the world’s last biscuit with the world’s last pony. You better taste good.
That’s the end of the world, but one mystery remains: Who goes first? Me or the sun? I’m cutting it close with how long I’ve lasted in this scalding beach. But I know the better option: taking the sun down with me. I’ll make sure I won’t die until the sun’s forced to kill me by going all supernova to engulf the world. Its patience would’ve worn out, and I’d have won. If for nothing else, I exist for that: to win history’s final staring contest.
So I wait. Wait things out. Minutes, hours pass. Don’t feel hungry yet. The water still burns my hooves, but I let it be because it keeps me awake. It’s not like I’ll do any serious trotting up and down the beach. I’ll lock eyes with the dying sun and say, You and me. One on one. Hoof to hoof. If I can’t win, I’ll make sure you can’t either.
Something blue lights up.
Another earthquake rattles the ground. Stand still, stay on guard. Maybe it’s some sunken ship exploding under the sea, but no jet of water shoots out of the ocean. No dead things ooze out of it either.
The blue light doesn’t disappear. Instead, it hovers over the orange sea, still floating. A floating lighthouse? A magic lighthouse appearing out of nowhere? But the light doesn’t dim. It keeps getting bigger. Keeps getting closer.
It’s not just a light, then. Not a ball of light but a complex form, a complex shape, of light coming in fast. It’s hovering its way here, and a minute later, I can see its faint reflections on the sea’s glassy surface.
The light switches from complex shape to complex being. Someone. Maybe even somepony. I punch my fried brain with too many theories: a ghost to haunt me, a soul to comfort me—I’m not alone?—a hallucination to deceive me, some magic artifact drone roaming around the world to record its final moments before squirreling away into an underground shelter and the jerk can survive the death of everything because it’s enchanted with archaic magic and I’m not. Or an angel to carry me to the Elysian Fields. Or to Hades.
They never said anything about reindeer angels.
Her short blue antlers come to light, and the rest of her clears up: a doe, a deer the color of cream, alive with blue freckles and a big fat red ribbon tied around her neck. Jingling something: ringing bells hung on that ribbon. Antlers so small, but they shine so bright: some color in this brutal landscape other than red, orange, or yellow.
She’s tired; what she gets for traveling how far over a burning sea, cutting through those hot vapors, but she’s almost to shore. I stomp the ground and throw sand in the air, almost scream at the sky: the sun’s outlasted me and I’m already dead. A deadly red sky to cover me, an infinite beach and ocean to surround me, and a heavenly figure from across the world to usher this tired soul into a better place. Or Hades. I heard that demons sometimes disguise themselves as angels.
But neither demon nor angel, I’d been told, sits down on blistering hot sand to greet dying creatures with a cheerful “Hello!” I can still tell she’s some other-worldly being who looks down on me like I’d look down on ants: wholly different, a simpleton. She’s sounded too cheerful to be that happy inside. Yet I humor her; don’t want to risk my chances on Elysium by riling up an angel. She smiles, her merry voice like rushing rivers back when those things were still around.
But she doesn’t talk about the afterlife. Not a thing. First thing she asks is my name. I’m Spiral Star, I say. She thinks it’s a nice name, that it’s a shame there are no stars to spiral around, no beautiful stars to gaze upon, no constellations to connect dots with, no night sky at all. She’s so sure that the future doesn’t look so bright. Would’ve called her Captain Obvious if it weren’t for my fear of her, of this dainty little deer angel who’d probably threaten me with a flaming sword if I’d crossed the line.
Then she takes out a box. A gift box: colorful in gaudy gift wrap, topped with a shiny red bow. She hoofs it to me, says she tied it up for me. I ask her why me. I get my answer: she knew my name from the start, knew about me even though it’s the first time we’ve met.
I ask her how she knows anyway. A daunting prospect, but if this angel’s going to hang around and take her sweet time, might as well get something out of it. Or at least some talk. This angel seems friendly enough.
She turns my question around and asks me to tell it to her. Maybe she doesn’t really know about me, just heard of me somewhere somewhen. But when I start telling her my past, she cuts in and completes sentences with me. She guesses everything correctly milliseconds before the words leave my mouth: I was born in a far-off border village, and unlike the collapsing cities and the heartland towns during the solar crisis, our place stuck together for a while longer. Eventually, ponies started leaving for farther places, away from the equator to afford themselves a few more days of survival. Our community dwindled but we held on. Mom and Dad quickly burned up in a solar flare—they were outside at the worst possible time—and then the population was just me and the armor-crafting kooky scientist who we’d let live in our basement.
When the roofs were melting and the grass caught on fire, he dumped the armor on me and begged me to run north and never stop until I reach the edge. Though the earthquakes had flattened the mountains and filled the valleys and messed up the shorelines, and though the sun had rendered void the existence of snow and was incinerating everything in sight, the Farthest North remained the “coldest” place in the world. Maybe I’d find something of worth there. Perhaps I’d find a magic artifact to stop the death of the world or at least transport me to another universe or timeline so this world would somehow live on through me.
So I traveled up north. Past the Northern Pass, went up here to find nothing but the beach and ocean. All the buildings and caves I journeyed into along the way yielded nothing: only corpses and ponies’ last words. No magic gem to save us, no magic portal to whisk me away to other-worldly safety. Just me, the sun, and now this reindeer who’s not polite enough to let me finish my sentences.
But I don’t stop her. Sure, it’s annoying and a little scary how she knows what I’m going to say before I say it, but it’s nice for this little cherub to just hang out.
I ask her another thing. She confirms that I am indeed the last pony in the world. Couldn’t help the smirk on my face; I’d at least survived everypony else. But, of course, I shot it down right away: there is nopony else.
She reminds me of her gift, that colorful gift box. One of the last gifts to ever be given, she quietly proclaims. Angels don’t give gifts like that. Only eternal bliss and eternal torment are their menu, so why give me something that’ll last only a few days?
But I don’t question it. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. I remember the box that’s been sitting on my forehooves the whole time, and I untie the bow, slowly unwrap and destroy the wrapper.
I open the box.
It’s too hot and I let it go, shouting in pain. Something shoots out of it: a geyser of fire! Did she prepare fireworks for me? Maybe it’s beautiful, but I feel like I’m melting under the explosion! But the angel isn’t fazed at all: just staring at what I’d unleashed.
Purple fire manifests under the ruby sky. Though it’s much hotter than what I’m used to, I can’t help but keep watching, wondering what it’ll do. Will it be one of those fire-based “telephone calls” I read in a sci-fi book? Will it send me a letter or a message from the past? Is it imported dragon magic to enchant me with fire protection against the sun though the dragons are long dead?
No, it turns into a heart: a flaming pink and purple heart. Standing against the endless red-orange sky and water and beach, this blazing fire is not burning hot. Just warm. Only warm. Peaceful and warm.
She tells me the gift’s name. Whispers it into my ears so the sun won’t hear it and maybe kill me straight on the spot.
Impossible. Such a thing shouldn’t exist, at least not now. Not when there’s no more history to record. It belongs in the annals of history, the times of which my kindergarten teacher told us ancient stories, stories of that forever-inspiring fire while autumn leaves bump into my classroom windows to make way for the incoming snow.
But it belongs here too, and this angel made a gift out of it. The last gift ever. As my teacher would’ve added, the first gift too. Blazing in that dark mountainous cave where ponies almost froze to death before finally learning how to depend on each other, how to be with each other. He might’ve said that it’s how Equestria was made: this very fire—
The reindeer looks down, forlorn. The angel shuts her eyes. I ask her what’s wrong. Almost stopped. Sounds stupid to ask an angel what’s wrong.
But she tells me of her own life, her own home, for home used to be here. The sun leveled it long after she and her best friends had moved out. By then, she and her troupe were already going around, providing aid to all they encountered, becoming reindeer chaplains bestowing peace to everyone in the final days. Then one terrible day (for it’s always a day, never a night), her friends disappeared: killed by solar flare. Says she knew it would happen, but no matter how many secret tears she shed and how many warnings she gave to her friends and how many times she howled at the sky for a way to change the future, she knew she couldn’t fight fate. She saw the death in her visions, in her nightmares: they’d go out and they’d die. Such is the curse of her gift, of future dreams and knowledge.
A sandstorm whirls past us, blurring the sun into pleasing light. The ocean finally whips up some real waves though never strong enough to wash us out. She doesn’t mind, but the hot water saps my strength and I buckle down. It splashes onto my legs, my chest, my head, my face. It burns despite my armor.
But she is here. The pain shrinks into numbness to me. I can still look at her; I can still ask her. She’s an oracle. She’s the future.
I ask her who she is.
Without delay, she tells me her name. Clearly not a pony name. Sounds like one of those fantasy hewman races from Laurel Foster’s plays. Not a reindeer name even, but I know nothing about reindeer.
It hits me. She’s not really an angel. She’s not here to take me away to the next life. She’s not some super-strong superior being spending idle time with a creature of lowly status. No, she is not one of these wondrous beings.
She’s just a reindeer with magic powers.
But I ask her, without missing a beat and just to not embarrass myself, what it’s like. I haven’t met anyone with that sort of power. Reveals to me that it’s like that for her friends. One friend could see into the past to know every gift that’s ever been made, the other knew every gift that is being made right now while seeing into creatures’ hearts, and this non-angel herself can see into the future and knows every gift to be given.
There are no more gifts to be given.
A great rumble. Though the earthquakes keep coming and we don’t care, though the oceans rise up and the waves crash in and we don’t care because I can still shrug them away, though the winds and its sand may beat us blue—
It’s no earthquake. The rumble comes from above.
The sun rumbles. It shakes, it quakes, and great lights launch out from it. My eyes snap open. It will finally fulfill its destiny: to be a superstar, to become a supernova, to usher in everything’s end.
It won’t be a few days. It will be a few minutes.
I clutch my chest. They always say I shouldn’t fear death because no one living knows what being dead is like. But it always chilled my bones. Silly me for trying to stare down the sun. I’m still right: I may end up going down with it, and it will never win.
And then what?
A reindeer gives me a gift.
But then what?
She looks at the sun, half a smile on her muzzle. Her eyes stare down a thousand miles, watching her whole life on repeat from birth to death. Especially death, I believe.
I’ve almost forgotten our fiery umbrella. The heart-shaped Fire of Friendship hovers over us, staying steady against the winds and the flaming sky like a balloon too heavy to fly away.
I ask her about the fire’s futility now that I know she’s no angel to fear. Why go on with giving me that gift? Why go on with giving gifts anyway when she knows nopony will last for more than a few years or a few months or a few weeks or a few days or a few hours or a few minutes?
There was something about seeing the future. Sees herself in the future so it must be so, it must be done, and it is something she’ll end up doing and will want to do. She cannot fight fate for she will desire fate.
I still ask her that ever-important, ever-curious, soul-puzzling why.
Though the sands of time batter us in their wailing winds and though the sun burns into a blinding brightness, I hear her. They’ve learned to give gifts, to dedicate their lives to cheering creatures up, and it cheered her up too—no better way to spend one’s life than to give rather than to receive. Have been at it for centuries because it’s good, the right thing to do.
But there’s not much time left, I tell her. I ask whether it’d be worth it.
Her hoof shuts my mouth. It doesn’t matter if we’ve had a million years or a single second. It is good, it is right, it is kind. Why not do it?
I protest but I clamp my trap. Lightning bolts rage in the cloudless sky, and gigantic explosions fire across the sun. My armor’s really heating up, and sweat drips across my body like mini waterfalls. The enchantment’s failing.
With the Fire of Friendship flying above us, I hold her hoof and she holds mine. We watch the sun slowly expanding, slowly taking over the sky, slowly lighting up our day into oblivion with the world’s only gift left to be with us.
But she completes my sentence: the fire isn’t the only gift left.
In the spiral of dust and burning water, I look to the purple fire illuminating our spot, a cool shade against the forces of darkness. Though sweat and tears steam off the unarmored parts of my body, as the world sucks the life out of me and I feel a fainting coming on—
She tightens her grip on my hoof. Makes the pain go away. I stop biting my lip. The agony becomes bearable and I exhale.
The reindeer tells me a riddle. Yearns to hear me answer it: What’s the best gift someone can ever give?
She’s stupid. Stupid because it pretends to be important but seems so trivial, but the pain’s left me for now, so I think: She gave me a nice gift in the form of fire, but when everything’s falling apart, when I’m a little afraid about what happens after my hopefully quick and painless death, when there’s nothing to look forward to but to be the last one out to close the lights and to go out alone into the long dark night—she goes all cryptic on me. There’s no lesson left to learn. Not that I’d be alive to apply it.
But she smiles at me. The dumb smile of someone who thinks she’ll survive the end. I must ponder the riddle, she says. Which is dumber. I’m about to die, she’s about to die even if she thinks she won’t, and the world’s going to die and no one will ever hear this conversation.
I sputter many things to answer her riddle: love, peace, joy, purpose, destiny, self-improvement, impacting others’ lives like what she did. She shoots them down like the sand attacking our eyes, but somehow her magic keeps them safe, keeps me sane, keeps me from screaming in torture for there’s no pain when she holds me. Though the sun and the ground and the sands and the waters rip me apart, the deer’s with me.
I feel it. The deer is with me.
She is with me.
Alice is with me.
For all I know, I’m hallucinating. A fever dream, a near-death experience. This Alice reindeer is fairy-tale enough: dropping gifts everywhere while Mom and Dad weren’t looking on Hearth’s Warming Eve. That’s certainly Santa Hooves if he hired three reindeer to do PR for him. But the more pain and agony seep into my muscles and nerves, the more this torture strikes me—but the more it’s numbed by her hold, the more the Fire of Friendship stands against chaos, disaster, and extinction, burning brighter than the sun—
I’m not alone.
Cracks emerge on the fragile ground. Sand dunes turn into sandfalls, and cliffs yawn into waterfall-dotted canyons. The heat breaks into my armor, but I can still look down. Soil and caves split in half, and the other side of the world shows its face: a black horizon, the graveyard of stars and moon. Even that foreign sky lights up in the sun’s fast-increasing realm. Thunder peals across my sky, the weather dying in a frenzied seizure as clouds appear and disappear to rain or snow or hail. Black-hole portals manifest to suck up the world, the sign of magic crumpling like burning paper.
I hold her tight. The Fire remains.
White light covers everything.
She can’t hold back the pain, but it becomes a familiar if drunken joy. I feel the pain too and my armor vaporizing into a million pieces.
I hear that great explosion, the world’s death knell tolling for me and her.
My eyes open up to see nothing. In my dying throes, it’s still too bright. I quickly accept my withering away, that my journey’s been paid for the next life wherever it is.
But in the echo, a slight blue glow.
Then I hear an echo. I listen to the echo. Her sing-song echo.
And so it worked out, and a lesson was learned, there’s no need to obsess; Gift-giving is simple as long as you recall:
Friendship is the best gift of all.
And I won’t die alone.
I whisper my thanks to her. Shout my thanks to her. Thank her for the little friendship we’ve had.
I don’t hear her back but the blue glow lights up just a little brighter. Don’t let me go, Alice. Please don’t let me go.
My eyes turn to the sky I can’t see.
O dear Harmony, may I meet Alice again. They say that friendships multiply forevermore in your golden fields. I wish I could’ve been more, but there is this. You have given me this. You have given me Alice, and I won’t die alone.
Thank you for the friends I’ve had, and for this last friend you’ve given me to sweeten these closing moments. Now and forevermore: I give back to you the gift of life you’ve blessed me with one final Alice-colored bow on top. On these outstretched forehooves, I bring back to you my life.
I bring to you my smiling spirit.
Let it be with hers.
Author's Note
Afterthoughts.
