The Modern Prometheus

I never thought that I’d become an egghead. That was never part of my dream. When I was young—you will laugh—I wanted to be an athlete. A star flier, soaring through the skies like a bird or dragon, wings tucked tight against my back, diving faster, faster, toward the ground, until...

Well, I broke my wing in a racing accident, and that was the end of that. I had to find myself a new pursuit, a goal to keep my mind and body occupied. It took me thirteen years, but find it I did, stumbling upon it quite by accident, and as the years grew it consumed me, ate me up, piece by bloody piece, till all that was left it swallowed in a gulp. But you know that part—or, at least, I think you do. There are few enough who don’t, I fear, and if you’re reading this, you’re not likely one of them.

I recall, lying there in the hospital, in the days after the accident, worried faces surrounding me at every turn, Twilight and Pinkie Pie and Rarity and Applejack and Fluttershy, thinking it were better had I died. At least then they could move on—weep, shed a tear, but get over it—instead of standing there, just standing, so terribly serious, talking in hushed, quiet voices about me. At least they could be elsewhere, and live their lives, without this wingless, useless weight hanging about their necks. As for me, well, I’d be dead, and not thinking much of anything at all. Or so I thought. Probably it would have stayed that way.

It was then I started reading, first Daring Do, then Clover the Clever, then Faust’s Histories, burrowing into greater, older volumes as time stretched on. I did not read as Twilight read, although Daring Do had been her recommendation, from books heavy with language and lore, but from older, stranger tomes. In Zecora I found a companion, a pony who was happy to sate my rising appetite with arcane volumes from her homeland, full of ancient heroes and scholars who left conscience quite by the wayside. In the Zebra Heartlands to be an egghead was a thing of power, and philosophers and students to them were as wizards and adventurers to us. Their magic, you will see, spilling forth not from horns of focus parcelled out unequally, but books and recipes instead: words—and it does not take wings to speak.

You may imagine that all this reading kept me quite engrossed, but this was not the case. I read because I could do little else: I had not the strength for earth pony labour, nor the skill for any more delicate employment. It was something I did to pass the time; an interest, but never an obsession.

In this fashion I spent the most of my youth, in total thirteen years, drifting through the world in a grey depression, reading aged Zebra manuscripts and watching life go by. I remained friends with all the Elements, but my relationship to them changed. No longer could I dart in ahead, take a monster in my stride, now I had to stay behind, become a different pony, watch as others did what I once could. Watch as others filled dreams that once were mine.

Until, of course, that dreadful night, when, in the darkness of the storm, a knock came at my door. A small and pitiful thing, and the pony who made it not much better. Twilight Sparkle was come with news.

Fluttershy was dead.