Somewhere bright and happy—somewhere painted by sunlight and songbirds—is a place as warm as a friendly hug and as familiar as a neighbor's laugh, and yet it remains a lonely village that waits in faithful silence for a chorus that will never be sung again.
Towards the front of this humble township rests a sign that reads “Ponyville.” Beneath this name is a Population Counter stating “0.”. It has loyally broadcast this neat, round, and simple number with quiet and steadfast dedication.
Until now.
With far too little fanfare or sparkles than the interminable anticipation for this moment would otherwise demand, the counter blips mechanically from “zero” to “one.”
Mint green hooves land on springy grass with the grace of falling feathers. Once they've settled into place, a sigh escapes in a soft breath—a breath that is just as quickly hitched. In a tender squeak, no less.
She gazes across the countryside with her muzzle hanging agape. Glossy amber eyes reflect gold-thatched rooftops and slowly flickering banners and rows upon rows upon rows of verdant trees. Granite mountains frame the distant periphery, embellishing the horizon with snow-capped peaks and wispy clouds. The ever-glowing sun hovers in the air, illuminating every colorful contour of this haunting paradise.
A haunting completely bereft of souls—save hers.
Lyra Heartstrings stands in place, continually gazing, and in her abject silence it is almost as if she's belonged there all the time that she's been gone. For a moment—quite foolishly, too—the mare is tempted to shout a question into the charmingly rustic void. However, the Population Counter on the town's front sign catches her attention: more specifically the single digit that belies her and only her. So, with ears drooped and eyes softened, Lyra chooses to keep silent... and instead trots forward into a dreadfully distant yesterday.
Before returning here, Lyra had expected a labyrinth of vague recollections that would send her stumbling in circles. Instead, she discovers—step after hesitant hoofstep—a home away from home, a second headspace shaped into easily-digestible memories by heart-fluttering geometry. She has lived here and laughed here and cried here and died here a million times over, so that now—submerged in the amicable familiarity of it all—she finds herself navigating the depths of the town like one might comfortably float through a kiddie pool after years of not swimming.
And it has been many... many years.
Lyra sees a lamppost, its brass finish marred by a wacky mailmare accident that happened one Hearth's Warming Eve, which triggers her to take a right and...
Lyra walks a line of open-air market stalls and tents, replete with immaculately-polished wares and freshly-plucked flowers, the scent of which forces her to look up and...
Lyra observes the gentle spin of an antique windmill above her head. The translucent blades of which have long reached higher than anything else in Ponyville—and the lazy sway they slice the sky with is the first thing to bring a smile to Lyra Heartstrings' face. She knows that if she pivots right and trots around a pair of oak trees...
She has finally reached downtown. The City Hall building stands majestically in the center, flanked by trickling fountains and decked out in Equestrian flags. Arriving here has been a breeze; it has all transpired in the course of fifty seconds, the encapsulation of fifty thousand lifetimes, all re-lived and re-tread in so few shuddering breaths.
Ponyville was such a small town. It is such a small town. And Lyra's here. And she smells the grass and she feels the sun and she hears the sounds of unseen wildlife echoing from the fringes of the Everfree Forest.
She does this all alone. And that is how her smile fades. It will not be the last time. This, Lyra knows more than anything.
Lyra pivots around—dutifully taking in the humble enormity of the village—and she spots something that puts a frown on her muzzle. More like a grimace.
Attached to the immediate hills along the north edge of town, there festers an elaborate facility—a monstrously garish tumor of a building that's been insultingly hammered straight into the cascade of a tranquil waterfall—planted atop the waters accumulating at an otherwise placid lake below. Towering spires are painted in artificial pastels, forming a pile of architectural vomit that clashes with the natural topography which... even now... is doing its damned best to tolerate the many balconies, windows, and archways that dreadfully define it.
Then—as Lyra pivots further—she wretches even harder upon seeing an unpolished crystal trident of a castle, lacerating its way skyward from some nebulous hellscape below ground. It resembles in no small part a lavishly embellished stalk of gravity-defying excrement, and the shuddering mare feels nagging desperation to somehow flush it all away.
Looking every which way, Lyra finds her muscle memory aiming her eyes towards a patch of ground located directly before the front entrance to Town Hall. In a brisk trot, she arrives, and immediately she reaches her hoof towards a set of curiously floating spheres that stand out from everything else in Ponyville. Licking her lips, she slides her fetlock deep into the impermeable body of the sphere and gives her hoof a counter-clockwise twist.
In a soundless flicker of color, the building against the hilltop vanishes, returning the mountain's foundation to waterfall and flora.
Lyra exhales in relief. Glancing towards the tallest structure in town, she continues rotating the sphere counter-clockwise.
Within the next few seconds, the castle also vanishes. So does a dam situated high up in the neighboring plateau. An office building disappears... as well as an auditorium... … … and a few other anomalous oddities that Lyra does not mind forgetting.
Soon enough, the sphere has been rotated as far as Lyra can manage. The town stretches around her: simple, flat, innocent, and happy. Much like the mare that has transformed it as such.
Lyra's smile returns. She chooses not to dwell too much on the fact. Instead, she drinks the environment all in—relishing as it aligns with her nostalgia—and she delights herself in suckling on the teat of long-forsaken memories. Of parades and gala celebrations for beloved ponies. Of crowds gathering to observe a magical braggart's traveling stage show. Of summertime songs and stormy sleepovers. Of late night agonies and ecstasies of threatening-then-vanquished Ursa Minors. Of the coical absurdities of parasprite invasions or chaos lords wreaking havoc. Of lessons learned and laughter shared and bright colorful manes flouncing in the happy, humming breath of it all.
She drinks. She fills herself up. And—in that very action—Lyra becomes once again aware of the seemingly unquenchable emptiness taking permanent residence inside of her, an emptiness beset by the inadvertent abstinence from all of these glorious things... and yet simultaneously defined by them.
She turns around and gazes... suddenly overwhelmed that she is turning around and gazing alone. For such an empty vacuum, this place screams at her. The beauty and the familiarity and the calm carve a cold chamber that howls the silence towards Lyra like a spray of bullets.
It wasn't always this way. It's become hard to remember when things were any different—different from how they are now, and different from how they were when she first started coming here... when she first started feeling like she was actually worth enough to be be something in the first place. The magic that greeted her here was so enthralling, so liberating, so mesmerizing—that Lyra immediately adopted it like a monicker, a religion, a spiritual mania for which she proselytized quite gleefully—unaware that it was completely lacking an afterlife.
Unless—of course—that is what precisely brought her here. A lone soul in search of purgatory, but finding heaven all the more punishing.
Now—as she trots back into the winding arteries of this pulseless heart—she suffers every whip and brand with faithful aplomb. In store windows, she sees gifts no longer being given. At outdoor restaurants, she sees carefully cooked meals not being consumed. The posters attached to brick walls advertise to nopony, with nopony to own them. There are names and numbers on every building, but nopony to bear them, and no faces to count.
It's strange that these streets were once filled with wagons and horsecarts. It's odd that ponies once milled in and out of establishments, conducting business visits and pausing to socialize with neighborly mirth. It's odder still—and definitely alarming—that Lyra once considered so much activity “normal,” and it was the gravest sin of all that she ever once assumed that none of it would end.
A sour lump forms in her throat. Lyra curses silently; she has long dreaded this moment. This inevitable descent. This black hole descending forever into nothing, with no room for hope or optimism. She has long grown acquainted with the dire colors elsewhere in life—but for them to follow her here... carried a woefully unfathomable dread from which there was no salvation.
But it does not mean she can't try. Taking a hard right, Lyra threads her way through alleys and corridors—until the town blooms into another open space of delicious grass, in the center of which rests a lovely sight. Lyra Heartstrings exhales with instant joy. She hadn't seen it reappear upon manipulating the spheres in the center of town, but she's relieved to witness it stretching before her now, its old branches stretching majestically towards the sky, dressed with leaves and bee hives and a single adorkable telescope at the highest point in the canopy.
She reaches the door. She doesn't knock—although once upon a time, she gladly would. Entering the Golden Oaks Library blesses her with a wave of scents: antique books, exposed oak, precocious dust, imported flowers from the Canterlot mountains, unicorn horn polish, and even a sprinkling of draconian brimstone—albeit infantile and tinged with magic.
Lyra trots a lazy circle around the wood finish base of the bottom floor, serenaded by her own lonesome hoofsteps. It's a great deal smaller than she remembers inside this place: humble, simple, and cozy—as it was always supposed to be. It's hard to believe that half of the town was once invited—and crowded—into this library on the very afternoon of the Summer Sun Festival Celebration. That was long before things became ridiculously complicated... long before Ponyville even needed an actual dot on the map... before Lyra even knew a thing or two about a thing or two, be they painted with flames, explosions, and a copious amount of rainbow lasers. This library has always been too cozy and aesthetically-pleasing to be anything but a dream-come-true, and considering just who in particular made it their home, it's not too terribly surprising that they went on to become the most important pony in the entire world—an importance that was leagues beyond what Lyra was comfortable with, or cared to be.
Leaving Golden Oaks, Lyra visits the eastern edge of town, and she immediately finds herself drawn to a fabulous structure shaped like a carousel. Stepping inside, she's attacked by a barrage of floral scents, and she wishes she could drown in the giggles that result from it all. She remembers a ridiculously eloquent voice—belonging to a duchess, or perhaps maybe a vampire—and all of the gemstones and sequins and tassels that would shimmer with the radiant inspiration beaming off their beautiful host. So many dresses and gowns and hats were once crafted here. So much generosity had been exercised—in days before... if only to be exorcised in the years to follow. Time—it seems—is the most precious gift of all, and Lyra hesitates to measure what little has been cherished against the sheer eternity of that which will continue to be wasted.
She passes the thought off with the distance it takes to trek towards the southwest side of town, and the emerald patch of land rising steadily in luscious hilltops, until a sprawling apple farm humbly greets her. It is also empty, save for the immeasurable harvest of apples—red and delicious and glinting in the sun—that hang forever unplucked from trees and more trees. Curious, Lyra wanders around until she finds a series of floating spheres in front of a red barn. She sticks her hoof into one object and twists—observing as the apples vanish from the trees and reappear in stacked barrels. She twists the sphere some more, and a line of tents form in front of a cider squeezing machine. Another adjustment, and a banner stretches over the entrance to the ranch reading: “Apple Family Reunion.”
Lyra sighs melodically to herself, trying in steadfast futility to emulate songs from the past. They carry her to the edge of the Everfree Forest, where a single cottage rests alongside a babbling brook. A singular maiden's chorus once enchanted this place, and a caretaker's hoof supplied food and shelter to countless fauna. Now the animals are all gone, and there is nobody to sing too. It makes Lyra feel guilty for even trying in the first place.
More than one cloud hovers over the mare's head. Lyra looks up at one in particular, admiring the towering columns of carefully-sculpted vapor. She remembers a great deal more color demarcating the endless blue haze of that ever-challenging sky above Ponyville. She recalls the brazen prismatic streaks and the adorable war cries that would wake her out of a late afternoon slumber. Mayhaps—at times—that loyally predictable noise was insufferable and the regular weather was cleared far later than it was originally scheduled to be, but it was never a dull moment dwelling beneath the thunderous claps that filled the firmaments in its place. Now there was a soul that wanted to escape the here and now more than anything or anypony. Lyra briefly wonders if the pegasus will ever find something worth all that flying to, and if the actual end of that boundless sky might bring with it the same void that has inevitably pushed her back to this place.
And yet—utterly alone—Lyra trudges on, until she enters a domain of complete sweetness, and simultaneously bitter hunger. The ringing door bell startles her upon entering, but—as it turns out—Sugarcube Corner is just as still and empty on the inside as the rest of the town remains beyond. Beneath the glass of the front counter, cakes and pies and cookies look as freshly-baked and delicious as ever. The furnishing is brighter than even Lyra remembers, and not a single speck of dust inhabits the place. This place is as scrumptious in the here-and-now as it ever was in the there-and-then.
So why is it that Lyra can't bring herself to smile inside this place?
She realizes—without too much thinking, really—that it was never what the place served that brought ponies here, but who served it. That pure and unmitigated joy was positively infectious, and every soul in town came here at one point or another to experience the manic energy on repeat. The more the merrier—and that craziness was diluted among a crowd. Birthday parties, baby showers, even royal engagements—they all had a home here. As did Lyra's heart.
A heart... that Lyra did not share alone. Even now, at the trail end of a loathsome decade filled with denouncing all these sacred foundations, she feels the faintest echo of the pulse that once serenaded her... that baptized them both, and in its sweet cadence it is infinitely more venomous than any fowl thing in the great bleak enormity beyond that has displaced her to this moment—right here—struggling to decide whether to whimper or growl.
And yet—in this here and now—she cannot rip her mind away from it... away from her... her blue eyes. The pastel bob of her bangs. How she sang with her, danced with her, smiled and frowned and laughed and shouted with her. How she brought placid normalcy to a chaotic day, and yet spiced up a dull conversation with creative intrigue. How she made the town worth more than a name—or a number—and how she always tolerated Lyra's antics, tolerated Lyra's gimmicks, tolerated Lyra's anxiety, and—more than anything—tolerated... Lyra.
They were never really ones to hog the spotlight. They were never at the forefront of the action, or the first in line to volunteer for one of the crazier adventures that beset this goofy town. But there—hidden deep in the recesses, softly ignored in the background—they brought more to this place than principles, plotlines, and friendship lessons. They brought the very vessels that friendship itself was meant to fill in the first place, and perhaps more.
None of this—sadly—changes the fact that Lyra acutely fears that all she took out of that life were slices, when there was an entire hulking plate left within hoof's reach to devour. It's a meal that she'd put off forever, thinking things would last longer than the dread of no longer having those things ended up truly being, something that now looms thick and weighted over her increasingly narrow existence.
And it's not as though she didn't possess the necessary foresight to avoid this. A part of her—facetious to a fault—had even sculpted a strawmare of pretentious cynicism, if only to temper the sheer joy she felt when she once dwelled in the manic thick of it all, day after day—when they both did. The worst part of dreams is that they're born in hope, but only truly realized in dying. And everypony dies alone.
But—for a moment... a moment when it mattered... Lyra was sharing that dream. She can even imagine the laughter today, even if she can't hear them. Perhaps that's what makes dying last so long.
And now—at last—the dullness of reality beyond has finally matched the haze of artifice within. The nostalgia has run its course; the memories and measures of the past have both aligned. With little left to remain for, Lyra Heartstrings exits Sugarcube Corner... and makes to leave Ponyvile altogether.
She retreads her hoofsteps, remembering a lasting thought or two or three, tiny threadbare strings that pull at the corners of her muzzle but nothing more: a brush-in with diamond dogs, an overcast sky breathed by a sleeping dragon, a job of waking and herding critters for Winter Wrap-Up. And the singing. Dear goodness, all the singing.
Lyra reaches where she first arrived. To leap is natural; to fall even more so. But before she makes the ultimate move, she turns to give the village's sign one last passing glance, perhaps for old time's sake. And that's when old time stabs her, forcing a gasp from the staggered mare's throat.
Welcome to Ponyville.
Population: 2
Lyra's eyes are wider than twin moons, and frantically they sweep the world around her for something to orbit. She spins in a circle—like a dog—and panting just as hard. All is empty and emptier—so she scampers fast and faster, barreling her way up and down roads, alleyways, and side streets. Her hooves kick up dust—dust that falls and lands on nopony—save for Lyra and her billowing tail as she turns corner after corner after corner after—
She skids to a stop. She shudders. She stares.
The figure stands at the top of a hill—just halfway between Sugarcube Corner and Town Hall. Two points anoint the upper frame—ears? They're pointed like ears, just like two spots are shiny like eyes. Bright and beady. Blue. And a blue mane—blue and fuchsia. A tail that refuses to flick. Motionless, like the needle of a dead record player.
Lyra mouths something; says nothing. It's too early. Too late. Too empty—save for her. If it is her. Colored like her. But—alien. Unmoving. Thoughtless. Like the words last exchanged between them, or the lack thereof. She wants to scream; she wants to apologize. She wants...
To move forward. Which she does. But when that moment comes—like all moments imagined before and thereafter—
There is a blink. And that figure is gone. It's as though she was never there to begin with.
Lyra Heartstrings squeaks. She jolts forward—breathless and desperate—ultimately cresting that hill.
Nopony is there.
Scampering, Lyra runs the full circumference of City Hall. She circumnavigates it twice.
Nopony is there.
Panting now—she bursts in and out of Sugarcube Corner. She plants her face against the stained glass window of Golden Oaks. She wanders in and out of stores and shops and restaurants and the post office.
Nopony.
Lyra is all alone.
Breathless, she considers galloping all the way to Sweet Apple Acres—but loftier instincts tell her to return back to the entrance of the town. There—awash in sweat and disbelief—she stares point blank at the front sign:
Welcome to Ponyville.
Population: 1
Lyra sucks her breath in.
She gnashes her teeth.
She paces back and forth, stopping only to seethe—to shake—to look at that sign once again.
Population: 1
She walks along the periphery of town—out to the very tree line.
She stares down every path, line, and intersection.
She comes back—without even exploring every nook and cranny—allowing herself to unsee the sign in some vain hope that returning her gaze once again to it would “refresh” the number differently.
1
Lyra leans back on her haunches and hugs herself. She fights a long and terrible shudder that overcomes her system.
Did she imagine it?
The number?
The figure?
The eye color?
The mare sighs.
What if she always imagined it?
Her... herself... them...?
What is the measure of a memory? Is it its distance? Its proximity?
She sighs again.
All are abstract clouds that dissipate under the numb lens of hindsight. To so much as breathe means to affect what's observed, until all that's left is to navigate the tempest of one's undying assumptions.
Lyra Heartstrings stands alone. It is what she's used to, after all. And the one permeating truth—emotionless as it is damning—is that she can only blame herself.
Especially when this is what she always anticipated... expected... and even wanted. If space and time have limits, then why not friendship? Or love? The words themselves are nothing more than expelled gas—or at the very least accidentally-sparking synapses. She knows this. She's lived this.
But now...?
She stands at the entrance to town. It is so easy to leave. So easy to return. The perpetual slope. The natural state. The switch that simply rests at “off.”
Instead, Lyra returns to Town Hall.
She arrives at the floating spheres, sticking her hoof into one in particular. She twists her fetlock clock-wise. The sky above changes. Overcast. Raining. Storms. Snow.
Then—after a few final twists—the heavens above Ponyville switch to a brilliant, starry night.
Lyra sticks her hoof into another floating knob. She clears the clouds away. She brightens the constellations. Then—with one final adjustment—she summons a meteor shower. Her eyes light up immediately—and just as quickly she weathers the wave of emotions with a sturdy breath, aligning the mental sails.
She cruises uphill. A firm but slow trot. Alone, winding her mint green soul up the streets, up the embankments, gradually climbing the hills on the edge of town, closer to the heaven, practically nuzzling the bosom of night.
In her mind, Lyra is far from solitary in her pilgrimage. Families trot alongside her. Mothers and fillies. Fathers and colts. Groups of friends—giggling gaggles, all—trucking along blankets and chairs and picnic baskets full of refreshments.
This was just one night. Just one moment. But it resonates with Lyra, more than the rest. Its calm unfolding. Its subdued excitement befitting an audience to a nocturne. Its hushed merriment under a cosmic spectacle. That soft purple curtain of the heavens—stretched out like a muted canvas above—against which the silver and golden streaks of countless comets kissed that great glittering sphere.
It is a labor trudging up this hill, embracing all of those emotions, but Lyra chooses her weight with remarkable taste for once.
She does not think of all the mistakes that she made—both accidental and cringey—that pushed so many friendships to the breaking point that it hurt to so much as sustain them any longer.
She does not think of the multiple promises that she broke and the stress that it put on others for having to tolerate her stubborn dedication to self-centered predictability.
She does not think about the growingly banal bifurcation of politics and how it has made enemies out of neighbors and traitors out of family.
She does not think about the baser humor and perversions that brought supposed “ruin” to a lifestyle that was never truly innocent in the first place.
She does not think about the bleakness of her life as it was before then—and the even bleaker state of how things will be thereafter.
Instead, as Lyra Heartstrings reaches the top of that hill and stands in the bedazzling penumbra of so many falling stars, she thinks about the smiling faces that they once illuminated, the eyes full of joy and wonder, the ears full of mirth and music, the muzzles full of laughter and love—of how joyfully sweet and simple and joyous it is to be a pony.
And only when she remembers—one memory above all others, in both righteousness and clarity—does she allow herself to cry.
It is when she remembers that—in a life within and without, mostly devoid of mattering or meaning—there was a singular moment when she mattered most. She smiled; they both did. And that—for them, if not just for herself—was more than good enough.
The stars continue streaking, neither falling nor rising. They simply shine—in a few lasting strobes that puncture the endless night, slower and slower—until the last light cascades off a sign at the front of that dreamy domain, illuminating a lone and perfect “zero.”
Author's Note
