Sparkles (And The Bits and Bobs that Bind Them)
The Door was found nearly exactly 200 footsteps from the house furthest west in the borders of Bridlewood, past 72 trees. It was about twice the height of the average six year old unicorn girl, as Izzy proved through experience, made of some sort of fine wood which did not naturally grow on any trees in Bridlewood, and bore no visible handle or knocker on its face. The only clue that it was A Door was the fine crease running along the center that divided it into two panels, preventing the twirly engravings from ever truly touching.
The Door was also the voice behind it. As far as Izzy knew, her name was not actually The Door, but she had never actually deigned to give a name, and Izzy had never found reason to ask. So, she was The Door. It was difficult for Izzy to describe someone who was only a voice, but she could best describe it as something like a weary mother, maintaining sweetness for her daughter's sake so they wouldn't have to see their mother's weakness. The daughter always knew, but they played along anyway, and so the voice remained.
Izzy had met The Door and The Door at the same time, deep in the woods where girls her age were forbidden to go. A great many words had been told to her about going into the woods, many of which began with N. Naturally, she had gone.
The Door knew everything, and Izzy discovered this very quickly. Her first question was very simple.
"What's on the other side of The Door?"
And in her weary but loving voice, The Door had replied, "You are."
Izzy decided that The Door was someone smart; that one answer had been far more sensible than the answers most grown ups gave her. So, she prodded further.
"What do you look like?"
After a moment of consideration, The Door responded.
"I have a horn."
Izzy would visit The Door again the next week, which The Door seemed very grateful for.
"I think you're very smart, Miss." Izzy pointedly told her, resting her head against the face of The Door and looking up above the treetops absentmindedly. The sky above The Door was unobscured by the foliage that covered all in Bridlewood, and she enjoyed the view of the sky it gave her.
The Door acted surprised at this. "I used to think that a lot. But anyone can be smart, really."
This was alien to Izzy; intelligence wasn't a far off goal to her, or a high juicy fruit she'd have to get creative to pluck. It was something some people just Were, and she Wasn't. She told The Door this.
"Oh, no. Anyone can be smart."
"How can I be smart?" Izzy asked.
The Door thought long and hard on this, sorting through wrong answers, which only made Izzy more confident in the final verdict.
"You can be smart by learning how to give people what they need."
The visits continued for a good many weeks. Izzy enjoyed The Door's company, but it wasn't long before she expressed her one gripe; it was always best to be upfront, in her eyes.
"I like our little talks, The Door," Izzy spoke, and now she began to circle The Door where it stood in the middle of a clearing, noting with disappointed remark that it was the exact same on both sides, leading to nowhere. "But I wish I could see you."
"No you don't." The Door shot down simply and surely. "I haven't been worth looking at for a very long time."
"I don't care if you're a little ugly! I'd like to see you just once."
"And why is that?"
Izzy thought it over. "When I can't see anything, I don't know it exists for sure. That's what my parents tell me. I worry that if I can't see you, you may just disappear."
The Door laughed at this. "Your parents are very smart. But not everything is beholden to that; sometimes, if you can't see something, knowing it's there only reinforces it further. And besides," She added mischievously, "I don't have anywhere to go."
Izzy sighed, resting her cheek against one face of The Door. "I think you're really neat, Miss."
There was silence. "That makes one of us."
Izzy would quickly learn not to ask questions about The Door, not that she followed that rule much anyway. In return, The Door answered a great many other questions; she never betrayed a personal opinion, was never annoyed or disinterested like so many others often were when Izzy asked a question. She treated each one with respect and contemplation, and never responded immediately.
It would be another month before Izzy's curiosity got the better of her.
"The Door, you seem unhappy. Can you do anything fun? I shouldn't think you could play very many games, stuck alone in the middle of the woods all day long."
"Of course I'm happy. I don't think I've been for very long, but things have changed lately."
"What happened?" Ideas began racing through Izzy's mind.
"I met you." The Door replied.
Izzy felt very modest all of the sudden, and quickly ran off. When she returned, she carried in her teeth the long stalk of a brilliant blue flower. Delicately, she laid it on the dirt in front of The Door.
"I don't know if you can see it," Izzy admitted. "But I picked one of my favorite flowers for you. Well, maybe. My favorite changes a lot."
There was a soft exhale on the other side of The Door. "You're very kind, Izzy."
"I hope so! I just..." Izzy collapsed onto her haunches downtroddenly. "I wish I could offer you more! I barely know anything about you, and you can't really pick up what I give you, or even smell them! All I can do is talk!"
There was a shifting, and a long, pained groan. When it ended, Izzy was listening closely with worry, allowing her to pick up her quieter words.
"I think we've both saved each other from a world a lot lonelier. If talking is all you need to look at each day a little brighter, than it's all I need, too."
The very next day, Izzy returned to The Door and found the earth disturbed, shifted. Her flower was gone.
"You picked it up." She spoke forlornly. "You can move."
"How do you know the wind didn't pick it up? A herbivorous animal, perhaps?"
"I don't. But I wanna think that." Izzy took her usual seat leaning against The Door, staring up into the sunlit sky. And as they did, their conversations began to drift.
"Miss, are Earth Ponies and Pegasi real?"
The Door seemed thrown.
"Of course they're real. Why wouldn't you think so?"
Izzy gasped. "I knew it! All the grown ups back home, they told me they were just stories, but this proves it!" Izzy reached into the saddlebag she had brought, and shook around the paper she withdrew so The Door could hear it. "It's a letter! It was attached to a lantern, and, and it says I have friends, and they live in some place called Maretime Bay, and-"
Izzy petered out. "And I'll never get to see them."
"You can't leave?" The Door prodded gently.
Izzy shook her head slowly, briefly forgetting nobody could see it. "I've been forbidden. They say it's dangerous, that there are monsters. Is that true?"
"There are monsters everywhere. That shouldn't keep you in peace and safety your entire life."
"All they think about is monsters, monsters in the village digging holes, monsters outside eating little girls, monsters, monsters, monsters. They never let me do anything."
"You have reason now, to take what they've said and face it. If what you say is true, and you have friends, you should go find them."
"But..." Izzy began. "I have a friend here."
"Ah, you've already forgotten the monsters?" The Door amusedly noted. "That's a good sign, but an old woman like me shouldn't keep you down. Please, if it's what you wish, then go."
Izzy thought it over, and the periods of silence she had grown accustomed to began again, only with her as the conduit this time.
"Is there anything I can give you, as a parting gift?"
"I think I'd like another flower, if it's all the same to you. Who knows if your favorite will change while you're out adventuring? I'd like to be the most up to date I can be."
The next day, Izzy returned to The Door. The Door heard her approach, but didn't implore for an explanation.
"I couldn't do it." Izzy relented.
"Okay." The Door replied softly.
"I'm just a kid. There's so much out there. I can't leave yet."
"I understand."
Izzy took her familiar seat in the dirt, freshly disturbed, as if something had been dragged through it.
"Do you think my... friends in Maretime Bay will wait for me?"
"Good friends always do."
Izzy nodded. "Have you ever met an Earth Pony, or a pegasus?"
"I've met a lot of creatures."
"What were they like?"
"Like pieces to the same puzzle."
"A neighbor of mine is sick." Izzy slowly tasted the words as they left her tongue. "A poisonous herb of some sort they ate obliviously. I haven't been able to see them for a long time, and now nobody wants to talk about them. But they sure want to talk about death."
"So it goes."
"Do you ever worry about death sometimes, The Door?"
"I often find I have far more important things to worry about. Sometimes, for example, I get an annoying crick in my foreleg."
"I don't understand it." Izzy complained. "Ponies are so smart and pretty, and then sometimes they just decide they've had enough. How could anyone do that?"
"I don't think I'll ever have enough." The Door pondered. "But dying is such a big thing to consider at your age. There are far worse things than it; really, it's a fate you'll come to understand, in time, when you're at its Door."
"The grown ups don't think of it like that way. I wish I could be more like them sometimes." Izzy admitted.
"Don't bother." The Door reassured. "What they want is something nobody could ever accomplish in their lifetime. Believe me; I've tried. You let it consume you, and it takes everything."
When Izzy grew older, she chose what childish things to shed very carefully. The Door told her she was proud of her. But Izzy still matured naturally, and as she began to learn, she became curious about different things; not esoteric, wide things like the meaning of life, but more grounded specifics. And as she grew more sensible, she began to understand what The Door was more, and simultaneously less.
"How is there another side I can't see?"
"It's an old trick. From what you told me, I doubt it's possible to do anymore."
"What does it look like inside it?"
"Like me, and nothing else."
"That doesn't make sense, Miss."
"Ah, ah- remember what I told you?"
Izzy begrudgingly relented. "You're probably right. I wasn't even around when magic vanished. Were you in The Door when it happened?"
"I've been in here a very long time."
"Why did you? Enter it, or create it, or...the whozit you did to get you where you are."
"I needed to. I was... sick. Hurt. I closed myself in here so I could get better."
"Has it worked?"
For the first time in what felt like forever, The Door left a question unanswered.
Years passed. Nearly every afternoon, Izzy would meet The Door. The Door taught her things like seeming very important to get people to listen to her, using big words to earn respect, and understanding what people really needed. Then, when Izzy learned all that, she moved to what she thought might be practical matters; how to talk down a dragon, how to tame an Ursa, how to survive in the arctic; The Door never offered, only accepted, and Izzy learned very quickly that if she wanted to learn something, she needed only ask. Not even The Door knew how many of those skills were useful anymore, and Izzy once again got the impression that The Door was far, far older than she could ever have known.
Finally, years stopped passing. Izzy was the grown up she still sought to understand a little better, and she made up her mind on a decision she had been considering for years now.
"I'm gonna leave, The Door."
"Okay."
"I need to find my friends. And... I don't know when I'll be back."
"I understand."
And for the final time, Izzy asked. "Can you at least tell me what you look like? I might never see you again after tomorrow."
After a moment of consideration, The Door responded.
"I have a cutie mark."
Each time, Izzy had taken these responses. Now, on the eve of her leave, she refused to be satisfied with this. "What is it?" Internally, she hoped it wasn't a door.
The Door laughed, a genuinely hearty and full laugh, a far cry from her sweet yet hollow and tired ones Izzy had always been used to. "What does it matter what a mark looks like? It's how the owner thinks of it, how it shapes them, the, the sparkle it gives them that makes it matter. Not the skin and bone and mark that holds them together."
"Sparkle?" Izzy was a grown up now, but not past her childish things.
"How someone walks, talks, the little things that make them who they are. When you look for it, really began to look for it, its as clear as day. That's more important than a mark."
Izzy took this, digested it as slowly and carefully as she could, trying to look at it the way The Door looked at every spoken word.
"...Still. I'd like to see you at least once."
"Izzy. You came to me when I was at my weakest. I've healed since then, and you've helped me greatly. I owe you my eternal gratitude.
And that's why you can never see me."
That night, The Door worked as she never had before.
She barely remembered how it had happened; it must have been years ago. Her Alicorn magic had once been one of the most powerful forces on the planet; no matter how grievous the injury, it could heal her as good as new. Nothing compared; it was virtually invulnerability to go with her thousands of years of life. Whatever monster she had been fighting, it was practically standard routine; fight it away from the settlement it threatened- it had barely been a collection of houses when she first discovered it deep in the woods, who knows how large it had grown now- take the blows she was given, and when she was finally too weak to fight anymore, when the monster was out of its warpath, seal herself inside The Door- nothing special. Little more than a pocket dimension only operable from inside, somewhere she could wait to let herself heal.
It hadn't gone according to standard procedure. She felt it in her very bones; as the tatters of her skin and bone pulled themselves back together, suddenly everything gave out. Across the entire planet, all magic dwindled like a torch before simply vanishing. Poof.
And Twilight Sparkle was trapped inside The Door, broken, shredded, torn, one foreleg twisted to a strip of skin like a forgotten toy.
She would have gone mad were it not for her; a wandering little girl from the last settlement she had saved, stumbling upon her with the wonder and obliviousness of a child. She gave Twilight company, and a reason to go on.
A reason to drag her mangled body from The Door each night, when she was certain Izzy was gone, and through the dirt of the woods to a patch of land where grass never grew, 100 steps from the distant lights and sounds of Bridlewood. Here, buried under the dirt beneath the rows of headstones, was everything she needed. And as she dug with chipped teeth and rotted hooves for hours on end, she thought of Izzy.
When she returned to The Door each morning, it was time to begin working, using the last vestiges of magic contained inside The Door to sew tendrils no thicker than strings to whatever she had acquired the previous night, practically hanging them off her like a patchwork puppet.
What she was now was barely a pony. The savior of Bridlewood had become its bogeyman, desecrating the dead to keep herself alive. Shreds of skin, organs, entire body parts, stitched back together over the course of years. She was whole now, only as whole as she needed to be and nothing more.
When she finally heard Izzy's familiar hoovesteps, she took a raggedy breath through ramshackle together lungs.
"You know I love you, Izzy. You're the only friend I have left. I don't want you to ever forget that."
"I know. You really won't let me see you, for old times sake?"
"Izzy, Izzy, if you attach a face to me... I'll only exist less."
Izzy rested her hoof against the face of The Door. Inside, Twilight did the same with a hoof that wasn't her own.
"I'm gonna miss you."
"We..."
Advice failed her.
"I'm going to miss you, too."
That night, by the time Izzy was miles and miles away from it, The Door opened, and it never closed again.
