Twilight Sparkle looked up as a dark shadow passed overhead. She knew who it was, now - it was that batpony mare who had moved to town a few weeks ago, gliding on silent wings towards the Everfree Forest, which she did almost every evening. She had tried to warn her, the first time she caught her heading in that direction; the forest was dangerous, and she saw it as her duty to warn newcomers who might not be familiar. But the dusk-colored pony simply smiled pleasantly and thanked her for the warning, before continuing onwards anyway. She was a nimble flyer, and despite Twilight’s best efforts she couldn’t stop her from going in.
She remembered when the mare first came to town. No one was quite sure who she was or why she had come; she wasn’t a student of the school, and wasn’t related to any either. It seemed like she was only here because she liked it. Her name was Strawberry Glade, a fitting name given the narrow strip of dark red in her mane. The rest of her was colored similarly to every other batpony she had seen: dark grey coat and grey-blue hair. She had garnered a lot of attention at first, from townsfolk who had only seen her kind a few times, pulling Luna’s chariot. Having one live here full time was completely new.
She moved and spoke very quietly. It was quite easy for her to sneak up on somepony and startle them, so she usually kept to herself. And despite her habit of wearing bits of cotton in her tufted ears, she didn’t seem to have problems hearing anyone.
As she saw the mare flying away soundlessly towards the forest again, Twilight made a decision. This time, she would find out where she was going, and why. She wasn’t going to scold her, necessarily; if she kept making it back safe, she must have been doing something right. No, Twilight was simply curious, as was fitting with her usual demeanor of wanting to learn everything about everything (if you listened to what Spike said about her. She wasn’t that bad, really).
Twilight took wing and banked around to keep on Strawberry Glade’s tail, but kept her distance. She wasn’t trying to sneak up on her; by the way her ears twitched in her direction, she had already heard her coming. But despite this, she didn’t waver from her course, and Twilight followed. As they crossed into the edge of the forest, Strawberry departed from her leisurely flight path and suddenly began ducking and weaving through the trees. Twilight was far less nimble than she was, and struggled to keep up without smacking into something. Soon, though, the mare was gone, her coloration forming excellent camouflage amongst the sunset-dappled foliage. She landed and stomped a hoof in frustration.
***
Strawberry Glade looked over her shoulder. The purple form of the Princess could no longer be seen following her, and she corrected her flight to be a little less erratic. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the Princess, quite the contrary, it was just that she looked like she wanted to keep stopping her from going into the forest. Plus, Twilight would have only been a distraction from what she wanted to do here.
She banked and wove through the trees, pitching and angling her wings to make the minimum amount of noise. It was crucial. With the barest whisper of sound, she alit on the soft, grassy mat of a small clearing in the forest. With a final check that no one else was around, she closed her eyes and settled down onto her stomach, tucking her legs beneath her in a comfortable pose. Then she reached up to gently pull the cotton from her ears.
And she listened.
The forest was a kaleidoscope of sound. Her ears twitched this way and that, drinking it all in. Every scratch of an animal skittering into the brush. Every flap of a bird’s wings as it took off in search of food for its nest. Every tiny burble of a distant creek, and every susurrus of the leaves as the evening breeze tickled them, made its way into her ears. And behind her closed eyelids, whimsical patterns of color danced.
She breathed slowly. In through her nose, and out through her mouth. In, out. In, out. She laid there, meditating, just her and the forest, with all of its sonic beauty, for what felt like hours.
But it was not to last. It started as a twig snap, far away. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then something louder, something larger, crashing its way through the brush with all the grace of a rockslide. The thudding of hoofbeats. It was a pony, and she was also muttering to herself.
Strawberry sighed and opened her eyes, turning her head to look at where the intruder was. A flash of purple between the trees, then Twilight Sparkle burst into the clearing, covered in mud, sticks and leaves tangled into her mane.
“Ah ha!” she shouted, and Strawberry winced, quickly putting the cotton back into her ears. “There you are!”
“Here I am,” she replied softly.
She caught her breath and sat down, regarding her with a strange expression. “What are you doing here? You know the forest is dangerous, right?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re…not going to run away again?”
“Why would I? You know where I come now. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Well, yes, but…why? Why do you come all the way out here?”
“To listen.”
“What?”
“Shh…” she said, putting a hoof to her own lips. “There is invisible beauty all around you. All you have to do is listen.”
Twilight blinked owlishly, but then seemed to understand, nodding quietly.
“Everything has run away from you, with you smashing your way here like a hydra. But they’ll be back. So please, be quiet,” Strawberry said as she closed her eyes again, and pulled the cotton out once more.
“Why do you keep cotton in your ears?” Twilight whispered, after several moments of nervous fidgeting.
She sighed again. “Thestrals have very sensitive hearing. And my hearing is even more sensitive than normal. Being in town, around all those creatures? It’s loud. Too loud. It hurts.
“But when I’m here?” She gestured to the forest around them. “You might think it’s silent, but there is a symphony of sound all around you. All you have to do is listen.”
Twilight nodded again, but thankfully kept quiet. Blissful minutes passed where the two of them made no noise except their own breathing. And eventually, the forest came to life again. Squirrels and birds emerged from their holes. A lone timberwolf howled to the rising moon, many miles away.
Strawberry heard a quiet gasp from the pony beside her, and she opened her eyes to look. Twilight had closed her own eyes, and her ears were swiveling, taking in the forest around them.
“Do you hear it?” Strawberry asked.
“Y-yes,” Twilight replied. “I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before. It’s…”
“Beautiful,” Strawberry finished with a small smile. “Just tiny pieces of the Universal Sound.”
Twilight opened her eyes and looked at her with a quizzical expression. “The what?”
“It’s just something I’ve been studying. A theory of mine.” She thought maybe academic terms would interest the bookish pony beside her, and she was right.
“Oh! Really?”
She nodded. “Have you heard of a condition known as synthesia?”
“I…think so. It’s where a creature’s senses get mixed up, and they can taste colors and things like that, right?”
“Yes. But for me, I can see sound. When I close my eyes and listen, wonderful pieces of abstract art dance behind my eyes. The stream over there looks like a blanket, rippling and pulsing. The timberwolves’ howls are red starbursts, growing then fading as they do. And sometimes, I can hear the little tiny pips of the earthworms digging beneath my hooves. They look like…green circles, so subtle you could miss them amidst everything else.”
“That’s so fascinating!”
“I pity the creatures who can’t see as I do, sometimes. It’s a gift. A gift that lets me see and hear the things that others do not, and offer a glimpse into a part of the universe that they are blind to.”
Twilight didn’t reply, but leaned forward, captivated.
“What is sound, Princess?”
“That’s easy. Sound is produced when matter vibrates in a fluid. The molecules of the fluid vibrate at the same frequency and travel to our ears.”
“Yes. Sound is vibration. It doesn’t even need to be audible to make a sound. And everything vibrates. Everything.”
She motioned to the forest around them with a hoof. “From the growls of the animals, to the creaking of the trees as they grow, and even the stones around us, all make a sound.”
Twilight snorted. “Rocks? Rocks don’t make sound.”
“And before tonight you didn’t know that earthworms made sound. But they do. And so do the rocks - we just can’t hear them. You of all ponies should know that atoms and molecules vibrate, just by existing, yes?”
Twilight blinked several times, taken aback. “Y-yes, I suppose they do.”
Strawberry smiled and nodded again. “Everything around us, everything in the world, everything in the universe, vibrates at its own frequency, singing its own song, lending its own voice to one grand chorus. The Universal Sound. Even the oscillations of the moonlight as it shines down on us is a song.”
“But…what is it?”
“It is everything. It is life. It is matter. It is creation. My kind believes that the world was created from song, and that we will return to it when we die, lending our voice to the chorus. And the Universal Sound is that chorus. It’s the foundation upon every atom, every ray of light, every stone and blade of grass and every living thing that exists.”
“Wow, I…I never thought of it that way.” Twilight looked pensive.
“I hope to hear it someday. But for now, I am content to absorb its echoes.”
They both laid there and basked in the music of the forest for several more minutes. Or was it hours? It was impossible to tell. But at some point, Strawberry heard the Princess stand slowly. “Thank you for telling me this, Strawberry. And…thank you for showing me. Be safe.” With that, Twilight turned and walked back the way she had come - much quieter this time.
The sounds of Twilight’s hoof-falls slowly faded away, to the point where she could no longer hear them, and Strawberry Glade continued to listen. She listened to the voices lending their songs to the Universal Sound, and in the depths of her meditation, she drifted off to Luna’s realm.
On silent wings her mind flew. She rode the beams of moonlight as they reflected the sun’s passion and intensity, following their waves back to their source. They pinballed amongst the roiling, heaving depths of the sun for a hundred thousand years, and she found their progenitor. Impossibly small bits of energy, condensed like crystals of snow into atoms, vibrating with their own notes.
But even those notes were a conglomeration, a chorus of their own, as each atom was a collection of even smaller bits of crystallized energy, vibrating as well. And within each of those, a single string, amorphous yet immutable, oscillated like a musical instrument, strummed at the moment of creation.
A single note, a single frequency, joined with the songs of uncountable billions of other strings, amongst uncountable billions of atoms, amongst uncountable billions of stars, amongst uncountable billions of galaxies, combining to form a grand chorus of everything: the Universal Sound.
And she heard it.
