Thousands of Moons Have Passed
Discord once joked that ponies that were turned to stone by the Elements of Harmony could hear and see everything that happened. He was kidding. But powerful alicorns can find a way to rewrite the rules of the world with magic. I’ve found a way to sense my surroundings, even with barely any magic. I wonder if Discord did that, and that’s why he was so insane.
Still, there’s not much to do or see in this castle. By the time I figured out how to sense my surroundings, I saw there was a magic barrier keeping almost everycreature in or out. There’s occasionally insects, and at night I’ve seen mice. And there’s some moss growing in a crack in the floor.
Wearing my frilly black gothic gown along with my choker and magic-boosting amulet was a mistake. They’ve turned to stone with me, and haven’t moved a millimeter. When I used the spell that I invented to sense my surroundings, it feels as if they itch, and I can’t scratch it.
I’ve been alone in this castle for thousands of moons; I’ve lost count of how long it’s been. Did something happen to Twilight, or did she just give up on curing me? I should have asked how Discord freed himself; The best I could do with my magic was to make a tiny crack in the stone covering my horn.
I’ll keep gathering magic, and take a nap. If anything interesting happens, it’ll wake me up. Occasionally, I’ve dreamt of ponies or other creatures rescuing me or visiting me. Those are usually happy dreams, but not always.
I awaken, feeling the uncomfortable weight of a pony’s hooves crawling on my back. A group of two pegasi mares and an earth pony stallion and mare were staring at the pony on top of me. Strangely, all of their hooves look like they have been dyed, even the stallion’s. I direct my magic senses upward. A grinning, lavender purple unicorn with a bright blue mane is staring down at me. “Hi, new alicorn statue friend! I’m Izzy!“
This is a new hallucination. And what kind of pony name is ’Izzy’? Is that a nickname, or short for Azalea, or is she some sort of foreigner?
Izzy licked my horn. I’m unable to express my shock and disgust. Those kinds of nightmares stopped a thousand moons ago! I would blink, glare at this hallucination, or yell at her, but I can’t, since I’m petrified. I focus on getting the sleep paralysis demon to go away, and desperately try to wake up.
She exclaims, “This statue’s sparkle’s pink!“
I don’t know what a sparkle is supposed to be, but mine is definitely not pink. It’s probably black or a dark purple.
Izzy goes on, “And it tastes medium cursed!“
I’d call that a lucky guess, but a hallucination would obviously know what I know. My Aunt Twilight enchanted the Alicorn Amulet to limit the corruption and make it perfectly safe. That was decades ago, after she gave me a huge lecture about what could have happened that one time when I used too much of its power.
Twilight also sent me and Shining Armor to Magic Kindergarten, which was thankfully just a nickname for extra magic and ethics classes for unicorns. And she’d brought back all the clones I’d sent to the Mirror Pool, and worked things out. In retrospect, it should have been completely obvious that I shouldn’t have banished clones that acted exactly like real ponies.
An earth pony mare with an orange mane and purple hair yelled, “Get down from there! You could break something!“
I’m not worried about that; Statues are thankfully almost unbreakable.
Izzy guessed, “Or is her sparkle dark purple? Coming, Sunny!“ She jumped off of my back, landing next to the annoyed mare. She pointed around, “Hi! This pink pegasus is Pipp Petals! And her sister’s Zipp Storm! And that stallion’s Hitch!“
Zipp, the white pegasus with brightly colored wingtips, looked at Izzy. “For the last time, ghosts aren’t real.“
Well, thanks for the introduction to the rest of your fellow hallucinations. I bet that there will be ghosts in this nightmare.
Zipp looked back at the monument “Huh, look at this. This looks like a monument to ’Princess Flurry Heart’. I bet that’s a statue of her, too. But I’ve never heard anything about her. If this statue is life-sized, then she might be even taller than Opaline. And they’ve written about her in so many languages. Hoof runes, and dead languages such as griffon claw marks and Prench. These hoof runes are almost identical to modern Equestrian, other than a few different letters.“
Wait, is this actually real? And who the buck is Opaline?
The group moved to take a closer look at the monolith next to the statue.
Zipp starts reading the monolith out loud. “Do not reverse the spell turning this alicorn to stone until a cure for Gradual Pony Ossification Disease is found. We failed to find a cure for Princess Flurry Heart, but we hope and pray that ponies will find a cure for our daughter in the future. The Elements of Harmony can reverse the spell.“ She looks down, at a smaller addition crammed underneath, written in neat hoofwriting. “The Unity Crystals can also be used to reverse the spell.“
Sunny said, “Wait. That’s the princess?“
And what’re the Unity Crystals? At least ponies can still read this.
They find my journal under a glass case, along with various other books on magic and history. Below the title, it’s clearly written, ’Do not read for the next hundred years.’ Sunny opens my journal to the first page filled with uneven crayon hoofwriting, winces, and reads out loud.
Dear Faust, no.
Deer Dairy,
Im Furry Heart! Im goss now bee-cause Shining and Cadence and ZA WORLD’s stupid. Itz not a faze!
The ponies started chuckling.
I got most of those words right, before I asked Shining how they were spelled.
Hitch asked, “Is a ’deer dairy’ a dairy company run by deer?“
Sunny answered. “Don’t be silly. Flurry Heart obviously meant ’Dear diary’!“ Sunny continued narrating an ink note added to the bottom of the page,
Addendum: Years later, I’m still goth, it wasn’t a phase, and the world continues to be absurd.
I cringe every time that I remember Shining helping me with my education as a young filly. Cadance is much better at nearly everything, except for magic barriers. Despite its awfulness, I’ve kept this page of my journal as is, to acknowledge his ongoing atrocities against grammar that his family has been unable to prevent.
Sunny held it up and stared at it. “Wow.“
Sunny read another journal entry, to my embarrassment.
I asked mom about why she married a pony as terrible at everything as my dad.
Apparently, it’s because of his stunning good looks and a few other good qualities; He’s something called a ’himbo’.
“What’s a himbo?“, Sheriff Hitch asked.
Everypony else stared at the stallion. Pipp responded, “It’s slang that basically means a strong, attractive, kind, but stupid stallion. I thought everypony knew that.“
It looks like ponies keep putting stupid, good-looking stallions in positions of authority, thousands of moons later. I guess that some things never change.
Sunny continued reading.
My dad taught me about gun safety today, when my teacher was late for the Parent-Teacher conference. Not with a real hoof-gun, thankfully.
I think he’s still pretty shook up about the changeling attack. He spent half of the lesson telling me to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to ’unredeemable insects’, and he swore to hunt the rest of the unreformed changelings down, before they tried to harm us again. I think he’s overreacting.
Izzy chimed in, narrowing her eyes, and glared at me. “They called their enemies ’unredeemable insects’? Flurry Heart and her dad sound like they might be pretty evil. Are we sure we should free her?“
That bucking annoying unicorn. I didn’t include the part about how Chrysalis replaced his wife and tried to imprison everypony! And he just called them insects since they look like insects.
And having these immature ponies read my journal is awful. Why isn’t Twilight here? Why didn’t I get rid of the embarrassing parts? I hope that they don’t find everything else that made me look bad?
“I’ll try to find out why she was turned to stone.“ Sunny flips past almost all of my journal, to a page near the end of my journal, skips over several pages while frowning and narrowing her eyes, then starts to read out loud.
My friends and family have done all they could, but my disease keeps getting worse. Twilight’s trying to find a counterspell or a potion to cure the disease. Discord explained that nothing he could do could stop the disease; Chaos magic apparently isn’t really useful for permanent changes or changing the fundamental nature of things. The Elements of Harmony are similarly unhelpful – those artifacts can remove corruption and magic effects, but they can’t cure diseases.
Sometimes, I find the constant attention of my parents almost as suffocating as the disease itself. They’re treating me as if I’m made of glass, not bone.
And the zebras have been utterly useless with their mysticism and rhymes. There’s just an obscure ancient saying about something that probably isn’t even the same disease. ‘At the end of the earth where all flows unite, let creatures have mirth under eternal light.’ Seriously! What is that even supposed to mean? Zecora and my aunt Twilight thinks that the cure’s probably an ancient artifact at one of the four so-called corners of Equestria or a magical leyline. And Pinkie Pie suggested that we should have a beach party. Can’t that mare take anything seriously?
Izzy’s ears perk up. She turns to her friends, stands on her hind legs, raises her forelegs in the air, and yells, “Ooh, a beach party! We should have one of those!“
Is this annoying unicorn related to Pinkie Pie?
Sunny’s ears perked up as she yelled, “She knew Princess Twilight Sparkle! And Discord and zebras weren’t fairy tale creatures. I knew it!“
Zipp floated above Sunny to look at the journal. “How did she get turned to stone, though?“
Sunny flipped through the journal, and read another page.
I find it harder and harder to breathe every day. None of the treatments have worked. I’ve asked Twilight to use the Elements of Harmony to turn me into stone, to keep me alive while they work on a cure. Pinkie Pie refuses to do it without trying a beach party, but Twilight agreed to let her six students from her School of Friendship attempt this. Twilight promises that it’ll just be for a short while, and that somepony will find a cure soon.
Izzy giggles and yells, “Well, that didn’t work, Twilight! Thousands of moons isn’t a short while.“
That unicorn’s right, but she’s still getting on my nerves.
Zipp asks, “But what does it say at the end?“
Sunny keeps flipping until she reaches the last page with writing, and I’m unable to stop her.
I really wish that Star Swirl the Bearded were still alive, when I was diagnosed with this disease. It seems as though nocreature ever invents anything new, and everycreature’s just blindly stumbling around with guesses, or relying on miracles that nopony else knows how to reproduce. Most of what my Aunt Twilight has accomplished seems to be based on instinct or sheer power, and she has just been finishing or rediscovering spells that ancient ponies had invented. She’s way too busy micromanaging the kingdom, and doesn’t have time for research. Her students are researching a cure, but I don’t have high hopes for their efforts; nocreature even knows what causes the disease.
In truth, I don’t expect to wake up to find a cure. Maybe I’ll wake up to a barbaric country where even more knowledge is lost, and everypony is filled with superstition and fear and hatred. Perhaps everything in Equestria will be dust and sand by the time I am freed from this stone, or this will be a dystopian Tartarus-scape filled with war. Most likely, I won’t wake up.
I’m only bothering with this so that everypony else can feel happy about it. A beach party would have been utterly pointless, but at least everypony else would have had happy memories. But it’s too late for that. I have a date with the Elements of Harmony.
Izzy frowns, puts a forehoof on my chest, and says, “Wow. That’s rough, buddy.“
Sunny exclaims, “Well, we have the Unity crystals. If anypony knows the cure to this disease, then we can save her!“
Hitch objected, “Her kingdom sounds more like a dystopian Tartarus-scape full of war, fear, and hatred than Equestria is nowadays!“
Zipp pointed out, “A few years ago, your deputy Sprout declared himself the Emperor of a military dictatorship, gathered an angry mob with a heartsong, declared war on the unicorns and pegasi, and tried to destroy the Unity Crystals and the Brighthouse with a giant bulldozer. It’s a good thing that he failed.“
Did I hear that correctly?
Sunny argued, “He said he was sorry and that he wouldn’t do it again. We shouldn’t call her country a dystopian Tartarus-scape! We haven’t even finished reading everything.“
Sheriff Hitch continued, “Even if we read everything, we don’t know if any of this is true. I have a duty to keep ponies safe. Maybe there’s a secret organization that faked all this evidence, to trick us into freeing their evil alicorn leader.“
Sunny argued, flipping through the book. “Nopony would make up this many stories about having a terrible dad!“
Zipp said, “Well, she was right about superstition. All this time without magic left unicorns suspicious of magic, after all. They still make that chant when anypony says magic, wing, feather, or mayonnaise!”
I focused my attention on Izzy.
“Bing Bong! Bing Bong!”, Izzy replied. “I wouldn’t normally say that, but I think this castle is super haunted! I feel as if something’s looking at me right now.”
What is that chant even supposed to accomplish? Is it supposed to annoy the ghosts enough to make them want to leave? If so, I guess that it’s effective.
Zipp complained, “And I’m the only pony here that doesn’t think or hope that ghosts are real.”
Zipp continued, “This Princess Flurry Heart had some good points, though. Barely anypony’s invented any new technology. Everything’s just rebranding or redesigning existing technologies such as new smartphone models. I write a lot of new software and know how to use tools, but I know only one real inventor anywhere, and that’s Izzy. But most of her inventions are uni-cycling things out of old junk, such as art and gifts for her best friends.”
What’s uni-cycling slang for? Unicorn upcyling?
“Aww,” Izzy gushed, and smiled appreciatively.
Zipp continued, frowning. “That, and a deeply concerning amount of instruments of war.”
“Name one!”
“Well, you’re one of the inventors of the sniper rifle, and you’re paid royalties for it.”
“I hate war! I was just trying to win a game of paintball!”, the energetic, cheerful unicorn Izzy objected. She explained herself. “I just uni-cycled a fun toy out of a paintball gun, a tube to extend the barrel, a tripod, half of a pair of high magnification binoculars, and lots of glitter! The ponies at Canterlogic were the ones who replaced my design’s paintball gun with a real gun made of metal, and they got rid of the glitter!”
Seriously? It sounds like everypony has to worry about being shot from far away, thanks to her.
Izzy then finished, “I’m donating all of those royalties to charity! And that’s just one invention.”
Zipp said, “Well, you rediscovered how to make a cannon, then shared the designs with everypony.”
Izzy rebutted, “It was meant for giving clothes and foam novelty items to faraway ponies, at sporting events and concerts! Canterlogic were the ones who added way too much propellant and put heavy iron balls in front of the padding! It’s not my fault if that company keeps finding ways to make my inventions hurt people.”
Zipp pointed out, “Leaving aside the rest of your inventions, you also invented trench warfare, then published a paper about it.”
How many weapons did she bucking invent! And Twilight said that the human techniques of war that she discovered in the portal should be kept top secret, unless there was an emergency, for the good of all creatures in Equestria!
Izzy objected, “That was just for a friendly snowball fight. I only wrote that essay to prove to that mare that my team won because of tactics and preparation, not luck! She was totally wrong, and being a mean jerk about it!”
The unicorn continued, optimistically. “I’m also working on plenty of things that will help everypony instead of hurting them. For example, I’m working on charging magic crystals so that everypony can use household magic items, not just unicorns. Except that they keep exploding, though; When they do, there’s a really disorienting bright flash and a noisy bang.”
Zipp shakes her head, picks up a glowing glass and metal rectangle from under her wings with her left hoof, and starts tapping at it with her right hoof, and it changes colors.
Hitch praised her, “You’re a genius! That sounds like something that law enforcement could use as a non-lethal weapon; I bet Canterlogic would love it. You could call it a brightnoise, or maybe a flashbang!”
Izzy glared at Hitch and asked, “Seriously?”
Something’s probably wrong with that unicorn; She’s probably just pretending to be innocent and naive. Nopony could invent that many weapons accidentally. She’s suspicious and vicious, and might be another possessed pony. I better get far away from her, as soon as I’m free.
Zipp looks down at her glowing rectangle and says, “I found an article in Scientific Maretime about it.“
Is that rectangle some sort of magic library?
Zipp continues, “It’s a rare recessive condition called Familial Stress-Induced Ossification Syndrome, formerly known as Gradual Pony Ossification Syndrome. It gradually turns some ponies that have it to bone, but it only affects one in two hundred ponies. Most ponies go their whole lives without realizing they’re a carrier for it because they have good parents, or don’t spend much time around their parents. Scientists only found out three decades ago that the disease was caused by stress, probably as a mechanism to strengthen bones that went out of control. It gets worse for a variety of reasons, such as spending way too much time with your parents into adulthood, or having family that doesn’t understand you and your hobbies at all.”
And are you bucking serious! My parents really caused this, unintentionally? Both from their genes, and from everything else happening at the Crystal Palace?
Zipp continued, “Earth ponies only found the cure for it recently. Ponies were doing a study on new compounds that might inhibit the hormones that trigger the ossification. None of them were effective. But one day, one of the lab’s interns, Blaze Flowers, claimed to have had a revelation, after reading some poetry rumored to be written by zebras. He chartered a bus to take everypony in the study to the beach for a party. Everypony went along with it there was free food, and he tricked them into thinking it was part of the study.“ She went on, “Wow, Blaze sounds like a piece of work. He got fired for misappropriation of lab funds, theft of research materials and office supplies, poor research protocols, and various other workplace complaints.” Zipp continued, “Amazingly, though, everypony’s symptoms all improved a few days later. The scientists later found out that U.V. light and sea-water would inhibit and even reverse the effects of the disease with weekly visits, even if you weren’t near the ocean.”
And Pinkie Pie’s insane suggestion was actually right this whole bucking time?
Sunny summarized, “So, we just need to find ponies that understand her hobbies, unpetrify her, and throw a goth beach party?”
Zipp confirmed, “Basically. But more importantly, we also need to keep ourselves safe.”
Hitch said, “Maybe we should just leave her here? If she’s as powerful as Opaline was, or even stronger, like other alicorns were rumored to be at the peak of their power, then we might not stand a chance against her. We only beat Opaline because she made mistakes.“
Buck. I should have burned my journal.
Sunny objected, “But we could learn so much from her about magic, and what Equestria was like before Twilight sealed away pony magic! She could be somepony who could help save Equestria. We don’t have to be afraid.“
She’s right. I’ve saved Equestria many times already. But what the buck could possibly make my aunt seal away magic?
Zipp looked at Sunny and said, “Twilight never mentioned her, though. And like my mother always says, ’To be scared is to be prepared!’. Instead of just winging it like we did last time, we should prepare before freeing somepony that might try to take over Equestria? I saw a lot of books about magic and cantrips in this castle. I bet that everypony would be on a more even footing if we knew what magic she was capable of, and if unicorns and pseudo-alicorns learned how to use it. For example, does she know how to use her father’s barrier spell, and what can that spell do? It might take a few years for us to learn everything, though.“
What the buck is a pseudo-alicorn? Do they mean a winged unicorn?
Zipp continued, “Whenever we decide to reverse the spell that turned Princess Flurry Heart into stone, we should take some simple precautions. We don’t really know what she wants, or how she’ll react once we get out. First, we should take all the books here to study them, so that every pony kind can learn as much as we can about magic, and to figure out what her goals could be. Second, we should move her next to one of the Together Trees, so that their vines can trap her if she’s evil, like they did to the other alicorn Opaline. Third, we should hide three snipers as a fallback.”
Will I ever get out? They’ll find out that I was almost as strong as Twilight.
Izzy frowned, ears drooping, and said, “That seems a little harsh.“
Pipp interrupted, “Don’t joke around, Zipp!”
Zipp frowned, and continued seriously. “I was being sarcastic! Obviously, potential threats to Equestria are important enough for at least ten snipers, plus extra snipers hidden around the edges of town. And besides, everypony’s magic was weakened when Twilight Sparkle sealed away magic. Her magic should be weaker, too!”
They turn to leave, continuing to joke around and discuss their plans as they trot out.
Izzy turned to wave at my petrified body. “Bye!“
I wait around for an hour, to make sure that they’re gone. Then, I use my accumulated magic to try to break out, before those potentially dangerous ponies and that crazy unicorn can get their hooves on me, or try to seal me away.
Thanks to them, I finally know how to cure my disease, though. Hopefully, Izzy, Zipp, and Hitch aren’t actually as awful as I think they are.
I flare my horn, attempting to break out of the stone, but the spell doesn’t work any better than the last time that I tried to unpetrify myself. I see another small crack appear on the stone covering my horn, before I fall asleep once again, exhausted.
Several years later, I wake up next to an immense, glowing purple tree, to loud singing.
I don’t need food or water, but I really don’t want to be trapped inside a Together Tree for all eternity, if they think I’m evil.
A far away group of mostly earth ponies is doing all the singing. A group of enormous, quadrupedal dragons is standing around cautiously, including one that reminded me of Spike. There are at least seven ponies crouching and pointing long metal rods at me in the distance, and I assume that those are the snipers and sniper rifles. Sunny and her friends are floating next to me, and their bodies and cutie marks are glowing, along with what you assume are the Unity Crystals.
I wonder if this will fail, and the spell will banish me to the moon, or worse. They didn’t seem very good at magic. If it works, though, then I better not do anything that will make them shoot me, imprison me, or roast me.
Moments later, they finish their spell, which hits me with a rainbow blast of magic, undoing my petrification.
The disturbingly cheerful mare Izzy approaches me, reaching out a hoof. “Hi, new alicorn friend! I’m Izzy! And you’re invited to a goth beach party!“
I fake a smile, pretend that I don’t recognize her, and shake her hoof. “Hi. I’m Flurry Heart. It’s nice to meet you.“
Author's Note
This has been a submission to the Shining Armor is a Terrible Dad Competition!
The main part of the story takes place after the events of My Little Pony: Make Your Mark
G5 References
Series overview (blog post)
