From One Immortal To Another
~~Dear Queen of the Nerds.~~
~~Dear Marketable Children's Toy.~~
~~Dear Princess Smallhorn Featherbrain.~~
~~Dear Royal Pain-in-the-A~~
Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Hello. How are you?
I don't care, honestly. So reply to that if you wish, but the answer is inconsequential to me. It is of no doubt that at this point in what you call 'time', the true extent of immortality must be starting to settle upon you. It's rather a lot, isn't it? It tends to addle the mind, the early days, where the world around you marches inexorably onwards while you remain stationary. A fixed point, anchoring yourself to the universe while it passes by in that dreadfully cheerful manner it insists on wearing.
Give yourself a century or two, and you may well come to loathe it too. Celestia and Luna certainly did, though I dread to admit that they stood up to the mental strain with more resolve than myself.
It's a funny thing, time. While you ponies are subjected to it in a linear fashion, I am privileged in my ability to come and go from it in a more flexible manner befitting my station. If I choose it, I may return into the dimension you inhabit having had no time pass by at all... at least, from your perspective. I may also accelerate my perception of time, should I wish, something that comes in very handy on occasion. Every instance you made me sit through a Hearth's Warming Pageant at your friendship school, for example. Yes, my abilities to manipulate time serve me very well.
Oh, but petrification suspends those abilities. Thank you so much for that.
Although to be fair, you and your friends only encased me for around a year. Celestia and Luna, they trapped me for millennia. So you get the runner-up prize on that one. Sadly, moments of being turned to solid stone notwithstanding, there are in fact further limitations to these abilities. Though I may pause and unpause my journey through time whenever I see fit, I am still restricted to journeying through it in a forward direction. No going back.
Though I ought not give away too many of my secrets. Gosh, you might not even see this letter. Whether or not I even give it to you, I've still yet to decide on that.
Where have I been since we last met? Oh, Twilight Sparkle, I've been all over. I've seen things you couldn't begin to imagine. Some of my time was spent in a delightful corner of reality where the primary form of currency is custard. Yes, custard, the inhabitants carry it around with them in their pockets. It was a dreadfully messy place, but dry cleaning services were the most profitable industry by a wide margin. I can still smell traces of custard on my paw and talon. And as far as I'm aware, the presence of custard-based capitalism was not my doing. It had been a staple of their culture long before I ever set claw or hoof there, I assure you.
And then I visited a world I believe you've been to already, inhabited by creatures called 'humans'. Many years before you were there as it turns out, my pocket dimension appears to lag behind whatever portal you used for transit. Relativity can be a tricky mistress. That was rather a prolonged stay, actually, as I attempted to pass as one of the creatures for a while. You know, see what all the fuss about a mortal life is. I had a 'job' at something called a 'drinks kiosk' at a place called an 'airport', and that kept boredom at bay for... oh... at least twenty-five minutes. Maybe thirty. But alas, mundanity settled over me. So I ventured on board one of these 'aircraft' that the humans do so enjoy destroying their atmosphere with as they journey on them, where I caused somewhat of a disturbance. I think my alias 'D.B. Cooper' might go down in Earth history, but from my perspective it was all just a bit of good fun.
Should I elaborate? No, it's more fun to keep you guessing. Oh, but maybe just a hint for you? Well, let's just say that of all the characters I've ever played in Ogres & Oubliettes, my absolute favourite was Midnight Breeze. A rogue. Just ruminate on that, and we'll leave that subject matter there.
What else? I saw nine-legged eldritch horrors with the most wonderful singing voices, visited a land inhabited by mechanised ponies that could only speak in haiku, oh, and then I actually went back to the human world a few decades after my first visit. Yes, to pose as an orange-faced lunatic with eyes on political power, and would you believe the morons actually elected me to the highest seat in the land?! Like my previous trip, I daresay I made a bit of a name for myself, but it was just so much fun watching them sow the seeds of their own chaos with just a few vague statements on my part to egg them on.
And believe me, Twilight Sparkle, 'fun' is a concept which is in short supply for me right now. So I'll take all of it that I can get.
I don't know how long it's been now, at least, from my perspective. Quite simply, I've lost track. When you see me again, it is entirely likely that no time will have passed for you. So your grief will still be a fresh wound, cutting at you. Dragging upon your soul. Burning inside you like a relentless inferno, ignoring all your pleas to be left alone. Incessant, unyielding, agonising pain. But time heals all wounds, so they say.
So why is it that no matter how much time I spend away, the grief feels as fresh as it did the day we lost her?
You made me feel this. You did that, Twilight Sparkle. You and your insufferable friends, you made me love and feel loved in return. And you know, at the time I actually managed to believe that it was a better existence? I have watched this world rise from its primordial state since the beginning of time, long before I had any form to call my own. Pitiful, mindless beasts crawl from the ooze, only to evolve, grow, become sentient and intelligent. I saw entire societies rise and fall, nations grow from nothing into powerhouses of military dominance, only to succumb to their own hubris. Even when Celestia and Luna were thrust from the womb, I was already ancient. And for all that time, I had been alone. It suited me just fine, thank you very much.
Until you.
How dare you? What kind of monster looks at a being cursed to live forever, and decides that said being should be allowed to fall in love with a mortal. And not just any mortal, no no, she was the most gentle and kind and caring mortal I have been privileged enough to know for the entirety of my endless existence. She was never unjust, or judgemental, or anything less than her very truest self. Because down to her very core and through every fibre of her being, she was the full embodiment of her Element of Harmony.
How could I not fall in love with her?
Not that I was ever deserving of her love. I turned her home town into my own personal arena of chaos, tried to tear her friendship group up by the roots, attempted to corrupt her into a bully, and was turned into stone once again. Fair enough. Then when Princess Celestia set upon her the task of reforming me, she did so without ever holding my past actions against me. And as you very well know, initially I was skeptical. Well, 'skeptical' may well be an understatement, I simply played along in order to get her to yield her Element. And when I succeeded... I felt something I had never felt before. Guilt.
Because to me, it was just another game. More opportunities for fun. But to her, it was genuine. Her friendship and acceptance broke through to parts of me I didn't even know existed. Thousands of years upon this world, and not one single creature had ever shown me sincere love. Until Fluttershy.
So why, Princess Twilight Sparkle, did she have to go first?
Oh I saw you all at the funeral, your Council of Friendship gathered for the final time. Applejack, that loathesome mud-horse, struggling to push around moronic Rainbow Dash in that wheelchair. And did I spot Pinkie Pie wearing an insulin patch? Poor Rarity looked absolutely bewildered as well, like she wasn't fully aware of where she was. Is her genius mind beginning to fail her in her old age? And then there was you, stood among them, not looking a day older than you did decades ago. The five ponies you care most about, all of them slowly coming apart at the seams as the passage of time causes them to wither away, but you remain a picture of perfect health.
Immortality is dreadful, isn't it?
Though you have succeeded in making it worse for me. Why, until you came along, the worst problem I had was boredom. Watching entire existences unfold in front of you gets very repetitive after the first ten or twenty thousand years. And so the one time I decide to spice the world up somewhat, in marches Sultan Sunbutt and Mistress Moonface to end the first piece of fun I'd enjoyed for as long as I could remember. All of a sudden I become a decorative piece of garden scenery, subjected to vicious mockery from local pigeons in the form of precision bombing raids on an hourly basis.
Thousands of years entombed in stone, bored witless and conscious for every moment (you would not believe the debauchery I saw go on in that garden, quite the plethora of royal scandals at play) until finally three obnoxious little fillies get into an argument right in front of my statue. Just enough chaos for me to latch onto and free myself. So, I pondered with delight, what better way to celebrate my freedom than with a little bit of fun? Nope, you shut that down. And I found myself stoned and bored once more.
If I knew then, that the final year I spent in my statuesque tomb would be the last time boredom was to be my biggest problem, I might have appreciated it more.
You know that I eventually moved into her little cottage, of course. My dimension was homely to me, but it was also cold and empty. Lacking in the true comfort of home: companionship. At the time, we deluded ourselves into calling it a decision born from necessity rather than choice. Oh I was still quite the rapscallion, we declared. Even post-reformation, the transition from chaos to serenity was one I struggled with. Maybe more permanent residence in a quaint little cottage, one that bordered the hectic Everfree and the rural Ponyville, would be the perfect way to ease me in to a more civilised way of life.
There were teething problems, naturally, a magnificent beast such as myself doesn't change tens of thousands of years of instinct and behaviour overnight. That would be absurd. When I was still taking up residence in my pocket dimension, I did in fact have some wiggle room to let old habits loose. So when we were suddenly co-habiting, there were some slip-ups on my part. My penchant for chaos and her love of tranquillity regularly found themselves at odds, with situations that often amused me and exasperated her, but vice versa did occasionally come into play.
Time passed though, and while we certainly both had an effect on each other, I'm not entirely unashamed to say that she changed me far more than I changed her. She taught me so much. She gave me many small and subtle lessons that, on the surface, she presented to me with use of her close connection to the wide assortment of animals in her care. I learned to see the beauty of nature, in all its untampered intricacies, and how to value the chaotic harmony of its own making. I like to think, in return, I brought a little more unpredictability and laughter into her home life. And maybe a little more confidence. She began to venture further outside of her comfort zone, and in rare moments I experienced self-doubt in my newfound way of life, she was there in her unwavering compassion to lift me up again.
I mean it when I say immortality is a curse. Sometimes decades can feel like mere minutes. Yes, I suppose we had our 'happily-ever-after', but why doesn't a single creature comprehend that there must be something that comes after that?
As her age advanced, time brought new challenges in its wake. The energy she could summon to care for her critters, previously inspiring in its boundlessness, wavered and waned. Her rigorous routine slowly began to cause her to struggle. It started off innocuously, she would say she needed to sit down and would ask me to finish off for her. Much to her sadness every time, she loved checking on all her animal friends, but she recognised the need to care for herself as well. As things progressed, I would have to take over more and more of her duties. I daresay that the creatures grew to appreciate me as much as they did her. And I rather grew fond of them, though my heart belonged fully to Fluttershy alone. She was my home.
Then that day came.
She had retired indoors, leaving me to finish off her list of chores. Initially it was the last one or two animals that she had to leave me to, but by this point she could barely manage a quarter of the way through her list. I was moving on from the chickens to the nesting birds, when panicked chittering noises erupted from the cottage. I dropped what I was doing (literally) and materialised inside. There, surrounded by terrified little animals, Fluttershy was sprawled out on the floor. Her breathing was shaky, and she barely had the energy to open her eyes. As gently as I could, I picked her up, opened a portal, and stepped into the emergency room of Ponyville General Hospital. The rest of the day is a blur, but I remember assuring her that she was in the best of hooves.
A week later, she was gone.
Do you know, Twilight Sparkle, why I actually will return to Ponyville without letting any of your time pass me by? Because it's not for you. No, it's for her. Her animals, her love and legacy, need me. Because for all these years, it's just been me and Fluttershy, and not a single other creature knows her routines like myself. Feeding schedules, dietary requirements, cleaning regimes, veterinary appointments, not another living being knows how to care for her livlihood. Maybe that's why she trained me so diligently? Perhaps, she saw comfort in knowing that after her time had come and gone, her critters would be cared for.
And maybe she thought I'd need it too.
But every single time I try to step hoof back into Ponyville, I see her cottage, and all I can see is her. The years I spent with her, they stretch out in front of me like a long carpet, daring me to walk back to the front door. And I can't. It simply hurts too much. Knowing that the cottage is where she should be, but she isn't. Grief is a curse to be subjected to mortals only, an accepted part of a limited lifespan. It is because of it that I am currently failing her. She left me a task, to care for the things she loved most in the world, and grief has paralysed me to the point I cannot bring myself to fulfil that task. Grief... I don't want it, Twilight Sparkle. Please... make it go away...
So what do I do, in my paralysis? I run. Anywhere. Everywhere. Except the one place she wanted me to be. So this, Twilight Sparkle, is why I loathe you so. You made me love, you made me grieve, and now because of the chain of events you set in motion, you made me a coward. You, and your abhorrent friendship magic, gave Celestia reason to see me as a figure worthy of redemption. Of forgiveness. Of love...
I am stuck, Twilight Sparkle, in a loop. An endless cycle. Every time I try to return to Ponyville, I panic, and run away. I hide myself in new realities, distract myself by marvelling in the wonders of the multiverse. And then to top it all off, I write you a letter that I can never bring myself to send. Sometimes I write to you angrily, sometimes pleadingly, and once or twice I've simply screamed obscenities at the paper in the hopes of feeling anything other than pure agony. It all amounts to the same. The cycle repeats. Cowardice wins. I'm so tired of being a coward.
Long ago, I gave up counting how many letters I've scribed to you. This one is the longest so far, maybe it'll be the last. I don't know any more. Do you want to know the worst part, though? Every time I click my talons and open the portal, I find myself silently wishing to feel nothing. To be numb enough to allow myself to proceed with the duties left to me by the only pony I ever dared to love, and not break down. Every letter I finish, I hope that I find myself unable to care what you think of me, and have the guts to send it.
But the biggest problem, Twilight Sparkle, is that I do care.
Were it not for your interference, I never would have spent the best years of my life in that cosy little cottage on the outskirts of Ponyville, with the finest soul I've ever come to know. Nor would I have had the insight to look back on my many millennia in this world, and fully appreciate how deeply seated my misery and loneliness was. How much I needed her, and how her kindness, acceptance and love would change me forever more. I shall see to it that her spirit of kindness lives on in me. To do otherwise would be a disservice to her memory.
When I return, as I said, you'll still be grieving. So you might not see this letter straight away. Or ever. I really am not sure if I am writing this with sincere intent to pass it along to you, or because it's therapeutic. Either way, I think it's beginning to help. So there are some words I need to say to you.
Thank you, Twilight Sparkle.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to love. The next few years for you will no doubt be tough. One by one, the Council of Friendship will continue to fall. Once they all have, you will be the last one. Everything I am currently feeling, you will feel again and again. No doubt, grief will weigh on you for much of your existence. But you have shown me that it is far better to love and lose, than to never love at all. I hope to stand by your side, as an understanding compatriot as we face eternal life and eternal loss, together. And, hey, what fun would living forever be without a little chaos, eh?
I shall return to you in due course, when my cowardice finally abates. And perhaps we may grieve together.
Yours in chaos,
Discord
