Mille Nox Noctis

45 AB Quiet

The silence is surely what will drive me mad first.

Of the five senses, each one a marvel of function and necessary for a pony to live, there are ponies born without the abilities of each. Of course, saying there are 5 senses in the first place is inaccurate. There are more than a dozen possible senses when the living pony is considered in all of it's complexity, but to keep from being consumed by that thought process, let us stay to the child's lesson of five. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. These senses are all cooperative and incredibly useful, but survival without one or many of them is not only possible, it is nearly routine in the modern world. Those ponies who do not have the ability to see or to hear are treated kindly and raised to live as full a life as any other. So I cannot say that without sensation I will crumble, it would be incredibly petty of me.

But I may state with certainty that I personally am less capable of surviving the loss of some sensations over others.

Touch I have. I can make smooth and rough surfaces, and though dust invades every waking moment I can even clear myself of that feeling, and close myself off in a cave or rocky area where I am free from it. I can carve like these words into stone and metal tablets, and I can feel my own body. A softness that feels like an imitation of any normal pony.

Sight I also have retained, even if I cannot see what I would like, I can observe my surroundings, and I can observe your sun, and your Equestria. I can even obtain some color by scorching things and making them shimmer.

Smell and taste, though things I greatly enjoy, are not critical to me. They are luxuries for an alicorn that does not need to eat or breathe. There is no point in taking joy from things.

Hearing... I hear a high pitched ringing. No sound, not even when I slam stones together and create explosions violent enough to vaporize rocks. There is no sound when I try to breathe and choke on the lack of air. There is no sound when I try to scream, airless lungs expelling nothing.

I think that the quiet will be the first thing to drive me mad.

46 AB

Chemistry is really fascinating. The study of the particles that form our reality.

I had to start with creating a sealed area. Deep under the surface, twenty hooves thick metal shell around a fifty hoof wide spherical room, just barely big enough for my wings to spread.

From there, I brought down dust and began heating it. You see, when you heat something you encourage it to disassemble. When you apply pressure, you encourage randomness and action. In a sealed container, there is nowhere for any products from the process to go, and products there were.

Air.

Certainly no pony would call it air. It is a toxic gas that my lungs barely register as breathable, and which has more heavy metals in it than any Equestrian creature could survive, but it is enough to carry sound. A surprise gift from my experiments to me was the byproducts. Not just metal, but glass. Glass!

47 AB

How incredibly egotistical of me to think that I could make a violin that could play any recognizable notes with moon glass and metal. It's shrill and flat, or it could be the odd quality of the air I've created. It seems my voice is tinny and high pitched. Strange. I have fashioned my failed violins into lenses though. This I know much about. Optics and telescopes were a passion of mine, do you remember? Of course you remember, I pestered you for hours to come stargazing with me when I made my first telescope.

You never did.

I assembled a new telescope, moon metal and moon glass and months of careful assembly while talking to myself in my own little chamber. Talking to myself is a welcome reprieve after so long unable to hear any sound that was not created by my magic or delusions.

Five feather diameter, twelve hooves long, it's a refactor type, simple but certainly more sophisticated designs would require silver to create mirrors, and I have yet to distill this moon metal to anything more exotic than it's base mixture.

When I took the telescope out for its first viewing, my eye strayed again and again back to Equestria, instead of the beautiful stars. I keep looking at the curve of the Eastern coast, following the lines of the landmasses, and wondering at the lack of borders. I cannot see where Equestria ends and the dragon lands begin. I cannot see where the Crystal empire used to be. It all looks so... Whole. Untouched.

48 AB

I found your new capital city, sister. I found it like an insect perched on the side of Canterlot mountain. It's blasphemy, that you would abandon our capital in favor of some elitist retreat in the mountains.

Stars, I sound like you. Do you remember? When I was talking about grand decorations and facades of marble?

You can have your castle on the mountain, and I will have my buried refuge and my spyglass.

I keep trying to see more. I want to see you. I want to see you being miserable, alone, defeated. You're all that I can obsess with. I have to try and understand you in order to defeat you, or to understand how you defeated me.

But this telescope is not powerful enough, and it will not show me anything but the small lump of grey on Canterlot Mountain.

I will keep refining it, I will keep trying to gain this advantage, after all I'm certain you cannot see me, or would want to. You are happy to have me gone, and Equestria to be all yours.

49 AB

I saw you, sister.

I saw you crying in the garden. Three years to build my telescope and refine it, then rebuild it again and again with a singleminded obsession, and this is my bitter reward.

I saw you crying in the newly built gardens of Canterlot.

How could you cry? You've won. You finally got rid of me.