A Shadow of Myself

Charlotte stared up at alabaster buildings that must have been made for fantastic giants because the doors and windows were large enough that even one of the more giant Equestrian dragons would find them roomy. The street she stood in was barren of trash, dirt, dust, or any sort of item, nor was there another living soul to be seen. Despite this, she felt like the buildings themselves were watching her and judging her. It also felt old…like really old. She felt the need to say something poetic about how old the place felt, but she barely got a C in creative writing. Maybe if a certain bitchy unicorn hadn't had her spending her weekends trying to make her do magic, she could have practiced more.

"I know that face. You're thinking about Sunset Blessing."

Charlotte turned and saw an old woman so wrinkled that she made the buildings look freshly made.

The hag approached her. "You need to get over yourself. You're gazing upon a close facsimile of the oldest place in any known universe, and you're thinking about that crusty old unicorn."

Charlotte raised an eyebrow at her and crossed her arms. "You look crustier, a lot crustier."

The old woman chuckled dryly. "Touche. However, I think I look very good for my age. I'm not sure how old that is, but it is at least two hundred. I'm also not sure how far past two hundred that is. Two twenty-five? Two seventy? Three hundred? Four? Time and aging get so hard to keep track of when you travel all the time. You'd feel blessed to look as good as me if you reach my age."

"Who are you?" Charlotte asked, eyes still narrowed. "I'm dreaming; that much is clear, even if I don't remember falling asleep. Are you that primordial Dreamwarden?"

"I'm no warden, and primordials are rather simple creatures that are barely aware of anything," the hag scoffed. "I'm The Traveler, and you aren't dreaming. You are in The Outside. It is outside of everything, including universes and dream realms. Those aren't the most original names, I know, but I like to keep things simple; no need to get overly fancy. You won't remember this after you wake."

"I'm guessing this isn't my first visit then," Charlotte said. She then raised her wrist, showing the bracelets.

Traveler cackled. "Very good! Such an intelligent young lady!" The Traveler then focused on the bracelets. "I can't remember the prior visits either, but those bracelets keep track of what number we're on. Tell me, how many do you have? They all blend together at this distance, and I struggle to make them out. My eyes aren't what they used to be. I think I'm actually on my third or fourth pair of eyes, and they're still so old they're failing, just like everything else."

"Three, although I had two others, that were destroyed," Charlotte answered.

Traveler frowned and rubbed her chin. "Lesson six then, something extra I was supposed to remember about lesson six. What was it?"

"Lessons?" Charlotte asked in disbelief. "Lessons about what? And what good are lessons if I can't remember them?"

The ancient woman waved a dismissive hand. "I'm teaching you how to use your magic. You need someone human who is familiar with those kinds of powers to do it. You won't actually remember the lessons, but you will remember them on some instinctive level. I'm ninety-nine percent sure we have gone over this at least six times. It seems like something that would have come up. What was it I needed to remember for lesson six?"

"How should I know if I can't remember these sessions?" Charlotte asked in confusion.

"I'm asking myself, not you," Traveler snapped. She then sighed and snapped her fingers. A tiny portal opened up, and several notebooks fell into a messy pile before it closed again. "This is why we make notes. I can't trust my memory at this stage."

The old woman groaned as she bent down and started sifting through the books. "Aww, here it is!" She picked up one of the notebooks and flipped through a few pages. "Lesson six…I need to give you the glow-in-the-dark bracelet this time instead of the standard one."

Charlotte gaped. "Why is that of all things important?"

The woman groaned in pain some more as she stood back up. "Because it glows brightly. It doesn't do anything else, just glows in the dark, but you'll need it."

Traveler then tossed the notebook back in the pile, and the collective set fell through another small portal before that portal closed as well. "That's going to be a mess on the floor for sure when I get back. I'll have to have the robot clean that up. I'm not bending down more than I have to."

The woman then reached into her pocket and pulled out another bracelet, this time blue, and tossed it over to Charlotte, who adeptly caught it with one hand.

"Good catch. I wish I had reflexes like that," Traveler chuckled.

Charlotte examined the bracelet. It looked mostly like the others, aside from the coloring. It did seem to feel less plastic-like than them and more like glass. The blue was semi-transparent, and on closer examination, she noticed tiny filaments inside it like she would find in a light bulb.

"Make sure to wear that. Don't worry; it won't burn you. It barely generates any heat at all when glowing," Traveler explained.

Charlotte looked at the old woman. "Really, why is this important? Wouldn't an extra light have been helpful days ago?"

"It's your deus ex machina, or viator salutem, as it were," Traveler said with a grin. "You'd likely die without that bracelet, and that would severely crimp my plans and severely screw over a lot of people."

Charlotte went wide-eyed. "Wait…I'm in mortal danger? From what?" Her eyes then narrowed. "And how do you know it? How much do you know?"

Traveler scowled, or at least it looked like a scowl. "Telling you would be a pointless waste of time. You won't remember it, and it distracts from our lesson. What's important is you learning your lessons. I gave you the bracelet. That should be enough."

"No, it isn't!" Charlotte yelled. She turned and started marching off. "I'm not cooperating until you start giving me straightforward answers."

"Stop wasting time! You can't even get away anyway!" Traveler called after her.

"Watch me!" Charlotte yelled back as she turned and headed into one of the buildings. She crossed the threshold into the dark void at a full run…

Then landed flat on her face. "Oww…"

"How'd that work out for you?" Traveler asked. "Looked like it hurt."

Charlotte lifted herself off the ground and looked up. She was right in front of the building she started at.

"Want to try that a few more times, just to get it out of your system?" Traveler asked. "It doesn't matter where you run. The Outside won't let you leave this small area. You'll keep ending back right where you started as soon as you go too far. As far as we are concerned, what you see around you right now is the whole extent of the universe. As soon as you cross its borders, you get reset. Don't bother attacking me, either. It resets everyone when they die or get too seriously injured as well. No dying allowed."

Charlotte got up and glared at the woman. "You can come and go as you please. Let me out!"

Traveler cocked her head. "The Outside will let you go when you've learned today's lesson. It's always about the lesson. You are the one who controls when you leave, not me."

Charlotte pointed accusingly at the place the notebooks had been. "You can portal me out!"

"With your body still asleep somewhere?" Traveler asked in a condescending tone. "How well do you think that will go? I don't know about you, but I like being attached to my body, broken down as it is. Just pay attention and learn your lesson, young lady. I'm trying to help you."

Charlotte sat back down, back turned towards Traveler, and crossed her arms.

"Ohhhh, real mature!" Traveler snapped, then sighed. "Fine! I'll give you a reason to trust me, so you pay attention. You aren't going to remember this anyway. I'm you, you twat!"

That was enough to get Charlotte's attention. She turned around and looked at the frail older woman. "Just what I need, another older alternative version of myself trying to tell me what to do."

Traveler shuffled towards her. "I'm not an alternative version yet, and I'm trying not to be, but you can still go off course. If you go off course, you have a strong likelihood of dying. It isn't guaranteed, but even if you survive, it can screw things over for everyone. If you go off course, I don't know what is going to happen, and I then have a much harder time helping you."

Charlotte raised an eyebrow at her. "Why would I ever want to be you? You can barely walk, look disgusting, and don't even have all your original parts. You look miserable to me."

"Everyone gets old. I've just done it better than most people," Traveler answered as she reached Charlotte and struggled to sit down. "I've seen and experienced so much in my life, more than any but the immortals. There have been bad things, horrible things that I wished never happened, but there have also been many wonderful things. I think the good far outweighs the bad. I'm not going to tell you about it. For starters, you won't remember, and what's the fun in spoilers anyway? What I can say is that if you listen to me and do your lessons, you'll make it through it all to experience those things too. Dying at whatever age I am sounds much better than dying at eighteen years old, don't you think?"

"Why do I need you then? Isn't my future assured no matter what? We got to the point you existed to come back and help me," Charlotte reasoned.

Traveler held up a finger. "I don't remember it any more than you'll remember me, but a version of us made it to the point they could come back and help. I'm not the first version to come back and help the younger. I was helped when I was in your shoes. In some other history, we made it through, but things ended up being too high a cost by the time we made it through, and that version of us decided to create a mostly closed time loop to ensure the worst things didn't happen. At least, that is what I've puzzled out. Each of us does things just a little bit differently each time, so there is some deviation in the course and outcomes– it's The Outside's fault; it doesn't care about maintaining our perfectly planned out little loop. I don't know how many times we have been through this loop, and I don't know how much we have deviated over time from the course that the starting version of us planned out, but I know that we haven't drifted so far that we want to break that loop. Things are mostly good. Can you please try to be more cooperative? I don't want this all falling apart on my watch."

"If it still deviates, that means I can still end up dying regardless of your help and that you technically are an alternative version of me," Charlotte pointed out.

"True enough," Traveler conceded. "But I'm trying to keep that deviation to a minimum, so you don't die, so others that are important to you don't die."

Charlotte balled her hand into a fist. "Why didn't you help me earlier, so Kristin didn't die?!"

Traveler let out a long breath. "You had to have touched your power enough to even get here, and you hadn't yet at that point. I've tried to go back and fix things before, not just with her. I create widely different timelines doing that, and they always turn out terrible, or I fail to reach them altogether for reasons I still don't understand. It is like I'm blocked away from doing certain things, which is very disheartening. It's like some higher power refuses to let me interfere with specific events. Maybe you can figure it out, but I am about out of time to do so. You're my final task. We know that keeping to the plan works."

"I'll find a way," Charlotte said through gritted teeth.

The ancient version of herself sighed again and looked around with melancholy at their surroundings. "Good luck to you. Reality has not been kind to me on that front. I brought people back, but never the ones I wanted. This place…the place that The Outside is currently imitating, has been my opponent for so long, never giving me what I seek. You'll learn about this place, Jeg'galla'gamp'pi, in time, and you'll likely come to hate it, as I have. So much time was wasted searching this ghost for my ghosts. Once Jeg'galla'gamp'pi takes someone, it never gives them back, yet you still sense their presence, like they should be around the next corner or in the next building. It mocks you by giving you hope to keep you trying. I'd tell you not to bother with it and not waste years of your life in that hopeless pursuit, but you won't remember."

Charlotte wondered who she would lose here and decided not to ask. She didn't want to think about losing anyone. "You talk about it like it is a living thing."

Traveler shook her head. "I don't know. There is a consciousness here, but it is so alien it is unfathomable. No one knows how old this place is."

The older woman's speech suddenly, without warning, quickened into a frenzy. "There is no way to test it. It doesn't decay or break down or absorb particles that can be measured. It defies every rule of physics and order and instead makes its own– that it follows only when it feels like it. When the universe was born, Jeg'galla'gamp'pi was already older than we can comprehend. I saw it, the birth of the universe, and this cursed place was right there, just as vacant and oppressive as it is now, not a stone different. I stood on these streets and watched the Big Bang, protected by Jeg'galla'gamp'pi, for whatever incomprehensible reason it wanted, as forces you could not believe turned the sky into a blaze that it would make standing on the brightest star seem like you're standing in the deepest darkest cave that time forgot. I stood here during the Big Crunch at the end of the universe as well, and all light in the sky condensed down to a single dot that too faded and took time with it, and that too was not enough to make this place reveal a single secret. I sometimes think of what Sunset Blessing would call this place and decided that she would say that God long ago decided to just abandon Heaven to rot, and this is it, the husk of the creator's timeless halls. Yet it still takes all the souls and holds them beyond eternity."

The Traveler broke down into a coughing fit after that, and Charlotte got up to steady her. It took several moments before Traveler could breathe again, and when she did, she opened her eyes wide, revealing milky grey irises that were nearly white in spots.

"Jeg'galla'gamp'pi is a problem for another day. Today, you need to focus on your lesson, so you have days yet to come to chase ghosts."