The Last Light

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Izzy Moonbow, Sad, My Little Pony: A New Generation
Length: 7630

For one Bridlewood filly to retain hope, the fire must come before the spark.

Nothing ever changes within the forest. Public joy is shameful, pleasure fleeting, and you're not allowed to talk about what you're missing. They tell you what not to say, because that's the best way to make sure you think about it all the time. The younger generation is taught to be just as miserable as the older, allowing the perpetual miasma of depression to occupy fresh hosts. And so the facade which calls itself 'life' goes on across the centuries. Without change and, for the pain of loss, without end.

There's nothing new in the forest. There never will be.

And then there is.

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Published 2023-06-15 20:50:03 UTC
Last updated 2023-06-15 20:50:03 UTC

This Is How A Unicorn Thinks

It's possible for the filly to catch rare glimpses of the stars from her place deep within the forest. She just usually doesn't have a reason to look. And when it comes to regarding the distant celestial fires, thinking about them at all... there isn't much of a point.

Stars are hard to find, for the forest canopy is thick. The tallest trees are allowed to grow wild. (Not that anypony understands how to grow them any other way.) She's been taught that this is because they're the first line of defense.

The adults were willing to tell her about that. There's a single category of education from which fillies and colts are seemingly allowed to learn just about anything -- but the lessons never stop and this particular unicorn filly, who's trudging towards home while alone under an occluded night sky after a long evening at her apprenticeship, long ago stopped wondering if anypony ever truly graduates from the school of Fear.

The trees grow wild at the highest elevations. Branches from one stretch towards each other, intermesh and intertwine.

(These are words which the filly has been learning from her future guildmaster, and that stallion didn't appreciate it when she originally giggled at 'mesh'. She couldn't help it. The word is inherently funny -- but there isn't an adult left who can see that. So she giggled once, and never again.)

(The filly hasn't giggled for a while, and no longer laughs in public. The community considers this to be a welcome sign of maturity.)

They've given the canopy untended centuries to thicken. Untended and, as far as the filly can tell, uncounted. Time slips by in the forest. If it pauses, it might have to stay.

During the day... light can just barely get through. Any shafts of illumination which penetrate will lose most of their strength on the way down. Everything is dappled in shadow. Those who move down the covered trails will find interesting patterns moving across their coats, or would if they actually cared enough to raise their heads. And this is the first line of defense, because everypony knows that the pegasi might attack any day now. They've been due to attack any day now for all of those uncounted centuries, and the elders believe in cumulative odds. So -- let the canopy thicken, because that's what stops the swoops. How can a pegasus hope to manage a high-speed aerial dive and snatch up foals for consumption if they have to push branches out of the way?

(Pegasi eat foals. That was one of the earliest lessons.)

And when it comes to aiming... something... there's apparently something the pegasi can do because monsters have all sorts of tricks, but the adults misplaced the details along the way...

...you can't hit what you can't see?

So there's shadows moving across the filly's coat during the day, which goes a long way towards matching the deeper ones which dapple everypony's heart. But at night...

...she can look up at night. She's one of the few who still looks up at all, even when you're supposed to do that if you hear really big -- two of the forbidden words -- moving around. But most of what she sees is deeper shadows. If there's a little wind, then portions of those shadows will shift: solid swaying patterns of more intense darkness. (The filly notices patterns easily.) And because the canopy has been thickening for so much time, that's just about all she'll ever see.

But sometimes, if she looks from just the right angle, when the wind is moving from precisely the right direction and maybe, just maybe, one of the oldest branches recently fell away... she'll spot a star.

The adults don't teach much about stars. Fillies and colts learn that the world comes in two parts: the forest, and everything which lurks outside and waits to destroy them. Behaving properly within the forest dominates the vast majority of the discussion. Stars, as something which clearly exists in the Not Within The Forest category, don't get a lot of coverage. Earth ponies and pegasi are much more of an immediate threat: so immediate that they've been due to attack any day now for...

...anyway, a star is apparently supposed to be like a sun, only a lot further away.

End of lesson. Forever.

The filly thought about that. And then she remembered that planets exist. (She's pretty sure she lives on one, and wonders why it seems to consist of a single forest.) So if there's other suns, then there have to be more planets. And people who live on them --

-- which was as far as she got before a shuddering adult stopped her. Yes, that idea has come up before. And now, in order to keep from scaring everypony, the filly is going to stop talking about it. Immediately. Because having pegasi and earth ponies beyond the forest is bad enough. Nopony should be thinking about everything else which might potentially target the last unicorns. Especially when those threats are clearly a very long way off and if the forest residents do happen to spot them coming, they'll have plenty to time to prepare.

(Not that you can spot much of anything through the canopy.)

Concentrate on the immediate dangers.

Any day now.

For centuries, any day now...

The filly trudges home, alone under the night's shadows and the weight of eternal fear. But there are times when she still looks up. (One of the last in her generation who will do so at all, and her parents are hoping she'll grow out of it.) Wondering if she'll see a star.

A star probably has planets. Places which support life. And anything which lives outside the forest is a monster. Something waiting for its chance to destroy the last unicorns, lurking and planning and plotting and any day now, any day...

That's what the adults think, if they think about it at all.

The filly sees a star as... a star.

A tiny bright light which exists outside the shadows.

Life has to be better there. It must be, because the filly has a lot of imagination. (Her parents are hoping she'll grow out of that too.) And if she can't imagine anything worse than forest life, then it doesn't exist.

There are places which are better and... she can never reach them.

Stars make her sad.

She turns right at the blue crystal. She always does, when she's coming home from her apprenticeship lessons. Where else would she go?

Little bits of loose thread drop away from her coat as she trots. She doesn't notice them. The filly is looking down. The older she gets, the closer she comes to growing up... the more she looks down. Becoming that much more like everypony else.

(She does occasionally notice if a tiny splinter has fallen off her forelegs, mostly because at least one will land on the path in such a way as to aim itself for the frogs of her hind hooves.)

There's pieces of old paint clinging to her horn. If she angles her head just right, a horn is very good for scraping away ancient layers of color. Also, you can balance things on a horn for a little while, or make punctures in weak objects. It doesn't do much of anything else.

The filly is usually covered in debris at the end of an apprenticeship session. Her guildmaster approves. It shows she's learning.

In the forest, schools have multiple purposes. (Very few of them seem to concern learning anything real.) One of them is to offer a series of aptitude tests. Those are very important, because everypony is going to be in the forest for their entire lives and that means the adults need to learn what they can do to make sure the forest continues to exist.

The filly's tests said she was going to be something truly vital. A unicycler. So she was apprenticed.

She didn't mind. She's actually sort of good at it. It's fun --

-- her guildmaster doesn't approve of that part.

You're not supposed to have fun.

Not where anypony can see.

Because fun used to come from having...

...forbidden word.

The filly doesn't say it. But she did think it. So she stops for a moment and, even isolated without witnesses, sways back and forth on the lonely path. Just in case.

...were there witnesses?

She's usually alone at this hour. If she picks up any company on the way home, it'll be a few turns from now. Such companions are accidental, transient, and usually need to be nudged a lot in order to prevent them from falling over. Sometimes she finds them collapsed in the path, sleeping it off. At the side of the trail. Or they just lean against a tree and weep --

-- she doesn't know if anypony saw her. Sometimes you get criticized if somepony sees you rocking and swaying in public, because it means you at least thought one of the words and --

-- they're the ones who taught her...

The filly stops swaying. Looks around.

Nopony ahead.
Nothing off to the sides.
She turns, just enough to let her peer back. Regarding the shadowed view which her unruly tail would have blocked --

-- the blue crystal is back there. (Of course it is. It always is.) Under the night's canopy, it's more towards black. The canopy protects them, as the first line of defense. It also prevents the crystals from being bright and beautiful. And you can't get rid of the crystals. Ever. Even when they're useless, because -- forbidden word.

She's about to sway again.

Then the crystal glows.

Just a little. The upper facets briefly flash green, then a sort of warm glowing brown, there's a little purple mixed in and the crystals aren't supposed to do that. They don't do anything except sit in one place and be immovable because the thing which made them special is gone forever, except that now this one is glowing --

-- no. Not from within. (They used to glow from within. The adults talked about that, on the day when the forbidden words were placed in her head.) The glow is drifting across the facets. It's possible to track its progress. An unexpected light source moving near the crystal. That's all.

Except that it's night. There's nopony else on the path. Any homes are distant and dark.

So where's the light?

The filly looks around again.

Then she looks up. (This is mostly because she ran out of other options.)

There's a star in the forest.

There's a star in the forest and it's moving.

It doesn't look anything like what the filly would have expected a star to be. She vaguely understands that stars only appear tiny because they're a very long way off. This one is drifting along under the canopy and it's only about half the size of her head.

The sides seem... soft. They glow, but they also bulge out somewhat. A star up close is a bright dome with red near the top and yellow along the lower sides and all the flame (because there's a little flame, and that's what made the crystal glow) is at the bottom. The flame is suspended in a little cradle inside the star. And there's something under the star, something thin and swaying and impossible to truly make out. Especially when she's looking at a new source of light in the darkness and her eyes have yet to truly adjust.

The filly can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything but stare, as more threads drop away from her fur and a sudden tremble dislodges a lost button from the permanent mess of her mane.

A star...

Most of what you can say about astronomy classes in the forest is that they're short. There's a world outside the trees and it's going to make its move any day now. Those who move through the sky are a danger. The sky itself, as a more distant sort of plotter, usually remains a lesser priority. But the filly did get a mention of meteors, because there are certain lessons which the adults will never stop teaching and one of the biggest is that anything bright and beautiful has a strictly temporary existence.

The forest is forever. Joy burns itself out.

She knows very little about meteors, except as an object lesson against the dangers of being happy. But she was told that they move as high-speed streaks, and the crash is inevitable. This isn't a meteor. It drifts. And stars move in the sky, so maybe they drift. Except that this is a star which is below the canopy and --

-- her vision adjusts.

It's a dome of thin fabric with a candle burning inside.

She shouldn't have dreamed.

(Her parents tell her to stop dreaming, because they love her.)

There's no star in the forest. Nothing new ever comes to the forest, and just about nothing ever leaves. That's why she's in training to become a unicycler. Because sometimes you get a technical level of new from within the forest, but 'new' is always just 'the same old except that somepony finally got off their unicorn butt long enough to make one' and when there's nothing truly new...

...it's not a star. Jut a dome of thin fabric with a candle burning inside and somehow, that makes it fly.

The filly has never seen anything like this before. And when you're going to be a unicycler, they show you everything. Because you might have to repair it, or turn it into something else. This dome is new.

She shudders again. Three lost pins part company with her tail.

Lungs restart, all at once. And the dome drifts.

...how long can she be away from home? For quite some time yet. Apprentice hours are irregular at best, especially when the guildmaster decides 'apprentice' equals 'free labor' and she gets the easy jobs which are supposed to teach her the basics. Her basics give the guildmaster a larger profit margin. Not that it matters very much, because nothing new comes into the forest and even the money just keeps going around and around. The filly sees money as a way of keeping score in a game which nopony ever seems to win. No matter how much money you have, the sadness is still there. Because money doesn't substitute for ma --

-- forbidden word --

-- she should sway. Maybe chant under her breath. But the dome is drifting. If it keeps moving, it's going to get out of sight. There is one light in the forest, one new thing and her parents expect her to get back whenever she gets back. There have been times when she's been at apprentice duties until close to midnight, because an apprentice is free labor who doesn't have enough seniority to say anything about working hours.

The dome is moving.

(She still can't make out what's hanging under it.)

The filly follows.

Technically, she's chasing the dome. But it mostly moves through drifting with the tree-broken wind (the trunks are another line of defense), so it's a chase which is happening very slowly. Sometimes she has to force her legs into a lower rate of progress because she's completely sure that when you're chasing something, you're not supposed to actually get ahead of it.

But she has to follow it. The dome is new. Unicyclers usually don't deal with new things. Just about nopony does.

Unicycler...

It's a very important job, and the filly is genuinely proud to be on track for it. But it's not one where you get to deal with anything new. Unicycling is, in large part, about postponing any need for the new or, in what the adults seem to feel is the ideal case, just about eliminating it entirely.

The filly learned about unicycling on the same day when the adults put the forbidden words in her head.

They won't come out again. She's tried.

...it's so stupid! There's a bunch of words which you're not supposed to say? All right, so you can't say them. And do you know how you guarantee that nopony will ever say them? You stop teaching fillies and colts about what they are! If nopony had ever told her the words, told anypony... then after a lot of 'any day now's had passed, there wouldn't be any need to stop and sway and chant because there wouldn't be anypony who could trigger it. The words wouldn't be spoken. How could they be, with nopony left to know what they were?

There's forbidden knowledge. She knows it's forbidden, because they had to tell her what it was. How does that make any sense?

Adults are stupid.

The filly tried to explain this to her parents, because they love her and aren't quite as dumb as the majority. Her father favored her with a very weak smile, which he could do because they were inside the house and smiling wouldn't upset anypony. Her mother spent about five minutes trying to teach the filly about a new word called paradox, and all that did was put a definition on the problem without actually solving it. Not that anypony ever permanently solves any problem in the forest, because existing here and only here is the first problem and for endless any day nows, nopony's been doing anything about that.

It's not her fault, knowing the words. It's theirs.

There's a class which is shorter than Astronomy, and that's History. The filly can think of two reasons for why it might be so short, and the first is that the adults have forgotten most of it. The other is because every day, every year, every generation in the forest is just like the ones which came before. When centuries are effectively identical, they probably blur.

History, as a class, is just about one day. Which seems horribly unfair, when she both learned so little of it and found out it was the reason her life was going to be like this. The same as every unicorn's life. The adults, the children, and all of those to come.

Just... not all of those who had existed before.

It took the adults two hours to set up for History. Most of that was doing weird dances around the perimeter of the classroom, because the jinxies are supposed to come if you say the forbidden words too much and the dances ward them off for a while.

(As with just about everything else she's supposed to spend her life fearing, the filly has yet to hear a workable definition for what a 'jinxie' is. At least 'paradox' could be looked up.)

Then they put the words in her head.

And to make sure the words had company, the adults added some fear.

...maybe that's not entirely fair. The fear's always been there. The sadness. You grow up in it. Sadness drifts through the shadowed air. You can see adults collapsing under its weight, adolescents staring to bow inwards at the spine as they recognize that they're about to join the majority and nothing's changed. And the fillies and colts, still young enough to laugh now and again... they get glared at. Laughter is something you do in privacy and even then, you make sure it doesn't last long or carry very far. How can you laugh when you're waiting to be attacked?

...when everypony's been waiting for...

...maybe that's when you most need to laugh, because to just live in fear forever seems like it would mean reaching the point where the attack was a relief. At least something would have happened. The attack has been anticipated forever, and yet it would be something new. Once the earth ponies and pegasi actually came, the unicorns would win or lose --

-- the adults act like it's going to be that second one --

-- and then it would be over.

Maybe ponies need to laugh more when they're afraid, because there might not be time after 'any day now' actually came and when it finally happens, there would be good memories to look back on. Just before the end.

But the adults are sad, all the time. Frightened, constantly. And fillies and colts, too young to know why, laugh because they're alive and the forest is just this place where they live now and things could always change.

Except they never do.

History instruction is when the adults teach the children to be afraid. The why of it. 'How' comes naturally.

And when you realize that you're scared now, that you're always going to be scared... you become sad.

The sadness never completely goes away.

And that's called growing up.

This is what the filly was taught in History.

(For this, she can remember the words without swaying. It's just recalling her lessons and besides, stopping for a proper jinxie warding might let the dome get out of sight.)

Unicorns used to live in the same communities as earth ponies and pegasi. Then the unicorns figured out that they were living with monsters who wanted to destroy them.

(The adults really didn't go into detail on what happened, much less why it took so long to work the important part out.)

And the unicorns left. Outnumbered two to one, after all. The best thing to do was establish a place where they could prepare for the assault.

The forest had looked defensible...

(There's a whole lot of forbidden word use coming up.)

The unicorns knew a lot of tricks --

-- that's the plural for an old word: one which somehow isn't on the forbidden list. A 'trick' is something personal, which only the unicorn who had it could do. A unique twist of...

...even on the chase, the filly braces herself...

...magic...

(She doesn't sway. She doesn't chant.)

And that's why there's so many crystals in the forest. Why they can't be moved. They're defensive emplacements. More than that: they're channelers. The crystals used to both hold and distribute magic, because the unicorns who settled the forest had a lot of things which used it. Portable miracles. Crystals sent that power out to where it was needed. And if -- when -- anypony attacked... well, the crystals could send magic that way too. And while making them was somepony's trick, just about anypony could be trained to use them.

There was magic in the forest once.

Then it went away.

The adults don't know what happened. But they're sure it wasn't the earth ponies or pegasi, because -- they would have attacked. If the loss had been deliberately inflicted, then... why not strike during the moment of weakness? But that assault didn't come. (It's still due any day now.) And the unicorns, realizing that their enemies didn't know...

...they had to keep it that way.

Forever.

There's another source of light on the filly's right now. This is illumination generated from within the forest and because it comes from something unicorns are doing, it has the potential to make everything worse. Because that glow is coming from the tavern. It's a place which never seems to close, even when she's not sure it should have ever opened at all.

Adults go to the tavern. Hollow shells stumble out, and sometimes the filly finds them along the path home. She's helped a few of them reach their own beds. Others...

...she's a little tall for her age. But she's still a filly. A small body and horn pushed against a collapsed adult doesn't offer much in the way of leverage.

She asked her parents about the tavern. And they told her about the place, because they love her. They want to make sure she fits in. Because when she was younger, she laughed a lot, and giggled, and there were times when she danced. She kept doing that for longer than most foals, to the point where the adults started to notice that she wasn't stopping. And when everypony around you is miserable, then the single worst thing you can ever be...

The unicorns lost their magic. Nopony knows how. And to the filly, the thing about a unicorn without magic...

...why did they tell her? There wouldn't be any forbidden words if she didn't know what they were! And if she had never been told that magic had once been there, if there were whole generations that didn't understand magic was possible, then you would just have... ponies. Or, within the forest, ponies with horns. Living in peace with themselves, and maybe even laughing.

You can't miss something if you don't know it exists.

But the adults know. That's why they're sad. They tell the children, to make sure the fillies and colts understand the sadness. Then the educated grow up, and they're sad and miserable and just depressed all the time, they see children laughing and the new adults hate themselves because they can't laugh any more, and then they teach the children why they should be sad too. And it happens over and over, across all of the uncounted centuries for which unicorns have been in this horrible dark forest, and one day the filly is going to hear her own daughter giggling in a crib and have the first thought on how to eventually make it stop so her child will fit in...

(The filly becomes a little more quiet every year. She still doesn't fit in.)

But they told her about magic. And a unicorn without magic, who knows that magic was possible once and they'll never have any, eventually becomes a mobile void covered in fur.

(Sometimes she feels hollow. She didn't feel that way before History.)

Voids need something to fill them. Usually, that's sadness. But with the tavern in play, it's also alcohol.

Unicorns barely make anything, and that's why 'unicycling' exists. The forest doesn't really contain any place which can do -- she has to concentrate to bring non-forbidden words back -- mass production. There's craftsponies and a few guilds: they manage basics. One piece at a time. If they're actually in a mood which allows creating to happen, usually over the course of several stalled moons. But for the most part, the majority of the manufactured goods in the forest have been here since the unicorns arrived. Most of what's left over dates back to just before the time when the magic went away.

Put bluntly: everypony's stuff is old. Things which are old enough start to fall apart. And with magic gone, and the majority of adult unicorns as disinterested in learning new ways to work without it as they are about... everything else...

A unicycler keeps it all going. Take the stuff that's breaking, then see if there's a way to bring it back. If it's beyond help, then maybe the pieces can be used to save something else. And the filly is good at unicycling. She genuinely enjoys it (and has to be careful not to show that). Her guildmaster feels she shouldn't be adding so many colors and doesn't understand using spoons for decorative touches, but there's no doubting her talent. The guild feels the filly will get a mark for the work, and there's probably enough time before that happens to... rein her in.

She'll be a professional, in time. A full guild member. Keeping it all going. Except that...

...things do break beyond repair. Very few ponies make new parts, and you can't always scavenge or substitute for old ones.

Slowly, surely, the supply of functional items in the forest is dropping. A comfortable level of wealth is demonstrated by having a completely functional bathroom set. It'll be a set which has been cycling around the forest for centuries, but at least it works. Those who don't have that level of resources...

Unicorns barely make anything new. The species seems to have collectively decided that if they can't manufacture with magic, then there's hardly a point to trying at all.

(The floating dome is new.)

But there's always somepony willing to make alcohol.

Her parents told her that the tavern is where unicorns go when they're sad. Since they're sad just about all the time in public, the tavern sees a lot of business. And the filly asked if alcohol made the sadness any better.

It doesn't. Alcohol turned out to be something called a depressant. Which means it actually makes you sadder.

So why drink it?

...because it makes you so sad that you can't remember things for a little while. Like the fact that the tavern owner wins a lot of games because he's playing against drunks. (He thinks winning things away from ponies is another way of keeping score. It still doesn't make him happy.) Or... why you were sad in the first place.

So now you're just miserable without a reason. You keep drinking, because maybe the answer is at the bottom of the mug. And after a while, you stagger out of the tavern, with a lot less money and maybe owing the tavern's owner most of your bathroom set. Maybe you make it home, possibly with filly help. Maybe you don't.

The filly really doesn't need somepony to come staggering out of the tavern right now. They might spot the light, see the dome, and decide that it was an attack. Because adults think anything new in the forest (like the sound of laughter, which isn't strictly new but gets them every time) is suspicious. And a drunk adult doesn't think much at all. They would just start kicking stones into the air. Saying the dome had to be sent by the pegasi, since it's floating and anything in the air --

-- you can't even tell the adults when you've just heard wings which are a little too large for a bird, because 'wing' is a forbidden word and how stupid is that --

-- is a threat.

...maybe the dome was sent by pegasi.

(The filly slows down a little.)

It could be a weapon.

She doesn't know.

But it's just drifting with the wind. Wouldn't a weapon be a little more... aimed?

The dome is something new, in a place where the only new things are the next generations. The ones which are quickly taught to be just like everypony else.

She still can't quite tell what's hanging beneath it...

The tree-broken wind is taking the dome away from the tavern. The filly follows.

They're well into the forest now. The filly has been stepping around dead branches for some time, because wood can always make more of itself. Wood is a lot like unicorns that way, except that the new trees probably aren't as sad.

Sometimes she steps on the branches. The sound produced by splitting bark makes her jump.

She's passed a lot of strange crystals.

The tracking trail, formed by odd gusts which bring the dome around various trunks, is currently so deep into the forest as to make the filly uncertain as to exactly where she is within it. They might even be on the verge of --

-- no. She can't. She...

...if she's about to come out...

After the History class... they were all miserable for a while. Then it pretended to lift, at least a little. For a few.

The filly overheard one colt saying that... he wanted to run away.

(It's usually overhearing. The other children don't really talk to her. She laughed too much, and for too long. They know that's not right.)

(She has no friends.)

(In the forest, a 'friend' is defined as somepony with whom you share your misery. Misery shared is sadness compounded. You're just as depressed as you were before, but now you're also carrying the sadness of another. Then you get to collapse together.)

(The filly isn't sure that's the whole of how friendship is supposed to work.)

But where would he run to?

The adults didn't answer a lot of questions during History. Not that there were many asked, because asking questions is... just about as bad as public laughter. But there was a single filly who managed to summon enough strength, and...

...when the magic was lost... why didn't the unicorns leave the forest? Because it could have been something the forest had done. And if you stayed away long enough, didn't come back at all, then maybe the magic --

-- it had been a rather weary sort of adult stare. And then they'd been told that ponies had tried. Set out, to find a new place. But that group had never recovered, and...

...they'd been traveling without magic. Out in the open, without even a canopy to shield them from a world of monsters.

They'd never recovered.

Only one had made it back.

Nopony runs away because there's nowhere to go. Pegasi still have their magic, and they eat foals. Earth ponies are vicious and stupid and, in what's probably a lesser offense, smell bad. A unicorn outside the forest can only bluff about having magic for so long. Eventually, they're going to find themselves in a position where they get tested. And if that's in front of an enemy, if the other ponies figure out that unicorns don't have magic -- then Any Day Now is the day after that happens.

She can't leave the forest.

Maybe the dome is a lure. Meant to bring somepony out.

She can't --

-- the light goes out.

The filly is crying, and she doesn't understand why.

If there was a trick (the other definition for 'trick'), then it didn't get her. She wasn't lured out. She's still in the forest and safe and...

...sad.

But there was a light. More than that: there was something new. And now it's gone.

She cries for a while. Her tears run into her fur, soak in new tracks and carry the smallest of paint chips away. She cries for long enough that her eyes adjust to the lack of light, and when she finally raises her head again, she sees the dangling piece draped over a high branch.

The candle ran out of wax. The flame was extinguished. And the dome has come to rest in the crook formed between branch and trunk. About three times her height above the ground.

The dome is still holding its shape: there's some internal ribbing at work. But the sides no longer bulge at all. And the dangling bit...

...is that paper?

There might be something written on it. Drawn. The filly almost feels as if she can make out colors. But it's all stuck in the tree, about three times her own height above the ground, and --

-- they told her a little about what magic had been, during History, on the only day when the adults would talk about magic at all. In a room which had been shielded from jinxies.

(What's a jinxie? How do you ward them off with dancing? Are they afraid of rhythm?)

In the ancient times, a unicorn could look at something. And then their horn would light up, the light would flow forward to surround whatever they were looking at, and the object would move. In any way desired, for as long as they wished.

If the filly had magic, there would have been no chase at all. She would have looked at the dome as it drifted through the forest, and it would have simply come to her.

She doesn't have magic. Nopony does.

(She waits for the new round of tears to stop. Sniffles for a while.)

She's just a unicycler in training. Somepony who makes things into other things. What good is --

...there's... a lot of dead wood around here...

Everypony says there's no magic left. The filly isn't sure.

Objects adhere to her hooves, when she wants them to. (If she's strong enough to lift them, and there can still be some trouble in getting everything aligned properly.) And ponies still get their cutie marks -- well, mark: singular. (Something in the History lesson briefly implied that ancient unicorns used to receive two.) Isn't that still magic?

The adults don't like those kinds of questions. The one teacher she risked it with just said something about biology in a rather angry way, and her parents... told her that growing up was about not asking silly questions all the time. Or even thinking of them.

The filly is completely sure that if being an adult means you even can't think of silly questions, then she's going to make sure she never fully becomes one.

Hooves adhere to objects, or maybe that's the other way around. That could be a sort of magic. Or biology. She's not entirely sure what the difference is.

But you still can't rear up, lean all your body weight into the wood, press hard, and then trot up a tree.

This seems horribly unfair. Especially after the fourth attempt.

So what the filly has to do is take the dead wood in the forest, any rocks which can be pushed along, then find the more flexible thin branches (recently dead, still springy enough to bend a little without breaking), use those to lace things together and when that isn't enough...

The filly has a horribly unruly mane and tail. The adults feel her giggling can be tamed, but nopony's sure what to do about her hair. It grows quickly, defies combs, traps splinters, and gets caught on everything.

Unicycle. Give things a new purpose...

...nopony's going to notice if she pulls out a few binding strands with her teeth.

...

...ow.
Ow.
OW.

Tie it all together. See if it takes the weight --

-- pick herself off the forest floor. Shake away freshly-broken pieces of bark. Rebalance. A few better supports there and there. Make sure it can all be climbed...

...it takes at least an hour, and everything she can gather is only enough to bring her to two times her height over the ground. Something precarious, and she can feel the entire mass shifting beneath her hooves. She still can't reach the dome. She's so close and she still can't --

-- but she doesn't have to.

It takes all four legs to push off for the jump: the improvised climbing mound collapses from transferred force. And at the very apex of her leap...

The filly's horn doesn't do much of anything, really. Nopony's does.

She still has teeth.

Her jaw snaps at the dome --

Her parents do ask why she's coming in so late. (It took that much time.) Also why she's so dirty, and absolutely covered in bark. She tells them that she was doing a lot of work with wood today, and they're proud of her dedication. Then they get her into the bathroom, so she can be washed and have her fur brushed clean of debris while they check her for splinters. There's a few splinters.

They do that because they love her.

They've told her that they wouldn't be putting so much effort into stopping the public giggling and smiles and making her fit in if they didn't love her. And like all the parents who came before them, they're telling the truth.

They nuzzle her: something which is permissible in private. Put her to bed. And once she's absolutely sure they're both asleep, the filly sneaks out of bed, gets outside, locates the right concealing pile of leaves, and very carefully smuggles the dome into her house.

It's a slow, exacting process which mostly involves freezing a lot and listening for parental movement while considering places to kick the dome out of sight and excuses for being up at all. The filly is, at best, medium sneaky. This may eventually become a problem.

Eventually, she gets it into her bedroom. Twenty minutes pass before she feels safe enough to risk a light.

A future unicycler has to know something about how parts work together, and the filly manages to puzzle out the construction. The dome holds the fabric walls well away from the flame, and the bulging was produced by the pressure from heated air: the same thing which allowed the dome to float. (There's a Physics class.) The candle was held by some very complicated rigging. It had to be kept level at all times, perfectly still in relation to the dome, and the flared curving rims of its dish are obviously essential to prevent hot wax from dripping over the sides. Too much of that, falling in exactly the wrong way, and its burden might have caught fire.

Its... message.

She looks at it for quite some time.

She doesn't think an adult drew this. Even an adult who's making something in a childish style uses more regular lines, extra colors, and the stars don't turn out this jagged.

(There was a star drifting through the forest tonight.)

It almost has to have been a child. Maybe a filly. Her own age, or a little younger.

She reads the text. Over and over.

Come visit us

Nopony ever leaves the forest --

-- that's not quite true. The aptitude tests are meant to see if children are suitable for a number of professions. The boldest, who also get a maximum score on Sneaky, have the chance to be scouts. They put on a hat and... venture out. To where they can see the enemy, without being spotted themselves. Checking to see how close the assault is, and the answer is always Any Day Now.

The earth pony town recently expanded somewhat, with the newest construction moving inland because you can't build much on an ocean. This was seen as a sign of aggression.

The enemy is close. They always have been, and one of the unasked questions at the filly's History class was as to why the departing unicorns didn't go a whole lot further away.

...maybe they were planning their own assault. Dig in, then move out. Something which meant keeping the enemy close.

...she's never thought about that before.

She's never thought like this before.

She's thinking...

She is looking at a message sent to her by what she's convinced was another filly.

Yu have friends

One who can't spell very well.

The unicorn filly looks at the images and words, over and over. Then she hides everything where her parents will never find it, and climbs into bed.

Yu have friends

She doesn't.

The filly has been taught that pegasi are cruel and earth ponies are vicious. This part of her education started shortly after she figured out what words were, and can be considered to be ongoing.

(She was also taught that earth ponies have a bad smell. But the paper didn't stink. And they're supposed to be kind of stupid, but some theoretical adult would have at least been smart enough to make a filly write this for them...)

She's also been instructed on the subject of propaganda, just in case the enemy ever tried to send some in. Propaganda consists of words which make you think in ways you don't like and if you make the mistake of believing it, you'll eventually find yourself in a situation which hurts you.

Words which, given enough time, make you miserable and depressed and... sad.

...so that would mean her classes are propaganda...

It's a funny sort of thought.

The filly giggles.

Then she laughs.

-- check the door. Listen for hoofsteps...

...her parents don't wake up. Nopony comes in.

Eventually, the filly settles down. Curls up under the blankets, and waits to fall asleep. But it takes a while.

There was a star in the forest tonight. And it was sent to her by a tiny bright light which exists somewhere outside the shadows.

She's not going to run away. She just decided that. Her parents would worry. But most of the other adults don't pay much attention to her. It's the opposite. They don't want to watch her, just in case she starts laughing. So if she laughs a little more...

...maybe a lot more...

...she won't run away. Not while she's still a filly, because adults have just a little more freedom. Certainly not before she carefully overhears a few scouts and figures out what the actual route is.

But there's a place outside the forest. And maybe life is better there. It could be, because the filly has a lot of imagination and she can absolutely imagine that.

(She never grows out of it.)

She can imagine something better than life in the forest. So maybe it exists. And the only way to know for certain is to...

...go and see.

There could be a place which is better.

A world.

There are times when she feels hollow, just like everypony else. A world would have to be enough to fill the void.

(A friend...)

The filly makes a lifelong vow, in the last instant before she falls asleep. It follows her into dream and across all the years of her life, until the day she reaches the ocean.

It's a chance. A risk, a terrible one. But it's her decision, her life -- in the worst case, at least that life won't end here -- and... it's also something new.

Izzy knows there's a tiny bright light, somewhere beyond the forest.

She's just decided to go see it.

She's happy.