Alicorn Down

“Cad atá in ainm.
Cailleadh a n-ainm i bhfad ó shin, goideadh é.
Cailleadh, éitear don sruth ama gan teorainn, nó scáth éigin nó fay, dearmad fada freisin
Tá cuimhne fós orthu, fós canta faoi inniu.
Iad agus a n-lasair.
Cad atá in ainm.
Go deimhin b'iadsan a fuair Tiarna Brostaigh sa sneachta, a d'ardaigh an matriarch as a créachtaí.
Cara fíor ba ea iad.
Cad atá in ainm.
Ní raibh aon ainm nó céim ná teideal acu, níl aon eolas againn orthu seachas gur fhág siad a rian in am.
Cibé mallacht éigin nó casadh cinniúint éigin, ní féidir aon rud a scríobh i gcur síos orthu, fós canaimid a n-amhrán.
Cad atá in ainm.”

“Why do the cycles matter? Any-creature, any-creature?”

The professor's gaze crossed the lecturium assessing the many bord faces of the colts and fillies that made up her class.
They had good reason to be bored perhaps. Folk-Lore and Mythology as a subject were not the most interesting or practical… most just took it to fill out the extra credit, what idiot would devote their life to its study. The professor momentarily distracted glanced at her diploma and sighed. What was the point, it was a living, but what was the point, of perpetuating the myth that Myth was worth anyponys’ time?

She returned her gaze to her students, one of which, a particularly bright bulb in the bunch, was raising his hoof. The professor pointed his way.

“The Cycles are crucial to understanding our cultural, historical, and literary heritage, preserving ancient mythological narratives that continue to influence modern culture and national identity.”

A textbook answer nothing more, no passion, no fire.

“All right- “she proceeded addressing the student by name, a more difficult question perhaps,

“What purpose does the stranger serve in the Canterlot Cycles?”

The class stared at her in silence.

This was a difficult question.

It wasn't that the stranger didn’t serve any purpose at all… no it was almost the opposite… but she… or he… The Stranger was so plain, so boring, we know almost nothing about them, and yet…
A character who despite being completely undescribed (other than being vaguely ponish) in the mythos felt almost central to the story… Like glue, the character seemed to hold the stories together, there was also the Stranger's profound sense of empathy… the way the character always seemed to know the matriarchs before they knew themselves…
Many experts are tempted to say the cycles are about the stranger… but how could that be? The cycles which had so much to say on so many different things almost said nothing about the stranger. The character was a vague shadow of a being, a fade, a watermark on the crumbling pages of the mythos.
Some think that the stranger is an everypony, meant to represent us all, and yet the character is (despite us not knowing them at all) very much their own pony, and wouldn't a character meant to represent us all be put to some purpose, be designed to push some message, push us to be better… but instead they seem to be only a pony doing the best they could with what they had…
Sometimes the Cycles still clearly fiction seemed all too real.

“Professor?”

The professor shook herself from her thoughts, and the student was raising his hoof again. Another textbook answer, that we truly did not know… or something else, an original thought?

Hours could have passed, or days I could not tell, I could only notice the timeless whisper of the flames, my flames. Endless visions besieged me, and I did not care, endless whispers past and present and future of what was and what was to be and I did not care.
I saw many blessings and horrors, kindness and treachery, and all I could do, no. All I wanted to do was watch.

Suddenly there was a flash of bright light, my flame was no longer there, nor the cave, nor my visions, just gone… in its place, for a moment, as my eyes adjusted, was darkness, and then the steady red gold hum of dawn on the distant horizon over miles and miles of sand.

‘What, where, how?”

The desert was drenched in the red-gold ichor of dawn... No, not dawn.
I glanced at Rainbow Dash as the light faded from her delicate horn, a wisp of smoke trailing from its end. She grimaced, breathing hard from the effort of the spell.
Besides the eerie tenor of the endless wind, there was for a moment silence, as the sky blue Alicron and I stared in stunned aww at the ragged state of the heavens.
For the moment neither of us said anything.
Above stars stretched all too thin across the sky, and on the southern horizon lay the Sun and Moon. With no royal horn to guide them, they had fallen where they sat now eclipsed upon the earth. Images, flaming memories of the crumbled ruins of Canterlot flashed through my mind's eye.

She tackled me.

We were staring at the sky, and then she set her gaze on me, I could only imagine the rage in those eyes, or didn't have to as now they were set down on me, eyes like a pink flame as she pinned me to the dusty earth.

“....”

All though she said nothing I could see the meaning in her eyes, the blood on her hooves in her coat, the blood in her mane, the blood that painted her horn, the blood that painted her muzzle, said more. Even despite the scar that painted her throat, I could see her meaning.
“Where were you in the cave, in the fight, why did you leave me to fight the wolves alone. "Her gaze softened and she stepped away, freeing me from her pen.

“ I appreciate what you did for me in that blizzard,”
She shook something from her back, a wolf's pelt still dripping in blood fell to the sand at her hooves.
She looked back at me again “But what was so important in that flame why did you leave me to find them off myself … What is wrong with you? “

For a moment there was silence, and the wind blew again between us.