Kirins were around. They simply were; too close and too attentive.
Fluttershy lowered herself and made an involuntary awkward smile; kirins stepped closer. They kept staring at her.
Her wings twitched, offering to carry her away to treetops and sunshine, to the gentle flow of the winds, to birds chirping.
She wasn’t sure, since she never was, whether it will work. Still, she could jump in the air and follow Rainbow Dash’s way of ‘act quick, think later’; go away from these weird not-ponies, and never turn back. Scrap for a living from the forest’s gifts, and ask local starlings and squirrels for advice. Then, sometime later, Applejack would return to her, changed, and they will come home.
For a moment she tried to catch the wrong word that inserted itself in her thoughts; she forgot it, as right then for the first time she had heard the sound of silence.
Fluttershy knew a fair bit about allures and desires. The steady rhythm of hunger and satiety, lust and afterglow, dreams and waking up for the next day. She felt it; she knew when one of her creatures needed food, be it a bunch of grass or another of her creatures. The world was running on it, it sang with too many strings of wanting more, of thirsts and itches surfacing and being done with. This song of life was always there, flowing to no particular end.
Except here.
It was, in a way, akin to Our Town when it was Equal; when nopony had been striving for anything better or attempting to win over another pony. They were living, loving, and welcoming the day as it is, unconditionally. But there were strains, hunger, and subtle poverty in Starlight’s village; without marks her ponies weren’t able to do anything wonderful.
Right here, though? They wanted nothing and asked for nothing. They were colorful and deep, and their eyes were a way to… just being there. Their silence was a sign of all wants fulfilled; they were content, and it was the only thing that mattered.
No need to strive for a wonder, if you are the wonder, Fluttershy thought.
She flew up a bit; not to fly away.
She hugged a kirin — warm and attentive and looking for her soul — and asked for acceptance; it always was there for her.
She made not a sound while doing so.
***
Applejack was not tired, precisely speaking. Autumn Blaze was too energetic, powerful, and welcoming. The kirin was so hungry for the ponies around, and they moved on, and on, and on, from a forest to typography to musical theater to mountains far away, so eventually Applejack just stopped caring about what goes on except for a beautiful fiery black goldish gray not-pony nearby that was so ready to smile and joke and touch and invite and laugh some more.
That laugh, in particular, was what made Applejack worry a bit sometimes — it was maybe of the thunder in the hills sort of laugh; one that does not exactly care if you were long dead, struck by the lightning. Applejack was sure that Autumn Blaze’s eyes were always, always, warm yellow, never flaming white; so she was always glad to kiss the kirin, dance with the kirin, and be there for the kirin as well as for a song that kept flowing in eternity even while the Autumn Blaze herself was maybe too busy with her tongue in one special play that they sometimes did share.
And as the seasons and years went on, warm autumn and new experiences, little rain and small talks, gentle wind, and striking pleasure were there for them.
Then the song was complete, and the kirin was no longer there.
***
Applejack raised her hoof, looked at it, and saw nothing. She turned her head around, and in a place where her back was supposed to be saw exactly nothing. She jumped in a place, but hooves that weren't there struck the ground with no sound at all.
She thought that she should be afraid, as she didn't exactly feel herself in any specific way. Not tired, nor sad, nor joyful. She spent a minute or two moving through the feelings that once were but were not anymore. Only the space to be filled.
And so, she went up and walked on her non-existent hooves back to the infinite forest's border.
She knew that a friend was waiting for her, that she should find her, and that everything will be as it was.
She was coming, and with each step of her determination, Applejack was becoming alike to her past self. A hat. Whitish mane. Shining green eyes. Orange coat. Tapping sound of hooves. The somewhat damp smell of her wet fur. A branch that was broken away by her too-forceful step.
So, as she came to kirins' village - ash-black and quiet, with a bitter smell of burned wood in the air, with mere shadows of once-bright homes, with nopony — and not-pony — around, she was almost herself.
A pony.
On a surface, that was.
Fluttershy came to Applejack later, at the devastated village's center, at the dry fountain. She was not talking, being of kirin kin for too many moons, but by careful incisions of silence in an eternal song of the world she managed to convey what had happened: Autumn Blaze, with her insatiable hunger for impressions, and talks, and events, came for the village. Thundering and flashing, like a storm, she tore the silence which tried to fight back, but each such attempt led only to the fallen kirin becoming ever stronger.
Fluttershy the kirin was not participating in a battle. By other kirins' silence it was decided for her to stay aside, and — once the fight would come to the silence's inevitable fall — to meet Applejack, whoever she was now, and rekindle together a new peaceful and happy song in place of the forceful and rejected Autumn Blaze's one.
Fluttershy was not mad at Applejack either — not like she was able to become mad after all this time.
She tried to say, and to her wonder succeeded at that with Applejack’s support, that by sacrificing herself and feeding herself to the Autumn, Applejack delayed the end of the world for a full thousand moons, and many creatures, ponies, and spirits were able to be born, live through and die in between; and that now the time for a new creation comes again.
Applejack tried to be proud of herself, to be strong, and to feel some hope for the future despite the scorched ruins around and the void inside.
She succeeded, with Fluttershy’s gentle help.
Two once-ponies — Applejack and Fluttershy — hugged each other.
Two ponies-to-be — Sound and Silence — moved on to discuss their first draft.
