The Trinity of Moons: Ancillary Mirrors

I wake up startled, because the sun burns.

With a scream of pain I blindly roll over into the river. I dive nose first, pierce the water. Clouds of fine sand from the riverbed rise around me. An uneven hum fills my ears, Eyes now open, I see fish shadows wiggling away from me. I don’t feel too cold yet: the night was short, and my wings flatten more to my sides and back to protect me from the cold of the water. The flow carries me away but I am not in pain anymore, shielded by the high bank. I swim closer to it to stay protected for longer, and surface to take a deep breath.

Only then I begin to gather what just happened. So many times I was hiding from Red’s deadly gaze that everything in these beats was not me. Just a survival instinct.

I breathe in, deeply. I want to cry – I so hoped it would be alright here, in this quiet and peaceful world.

Calm down, Bittercup. Calm down and think, the same instincts of many lives tell me. For starters, the burn is not toxic. Not like the Red’s. I just—

“What’s going on?! Bittercup, are you alright?” Stylus calls from my right. He sounds like that was not the first call, just that I didn't hear him from underwater.

“Please bring me the tent. Right here, at the shore. I’ll explain!” I shout back.

He gallops away. Not a beat later I hear a loud splash — Quartz doesn’t bother to be graceful in her belly flop.

I swim to her, still under the bank's cover. "Well now, you ain't alright. Are ya?" she asks. At the surface, she sounds bright, yet flattened ears show her worry.

I can only nod. “It’s not that bad, I think. But I– I’m afraid I really have a lot of troubles now. It’s complicated. I promised you some answers — I’ll give them, just… the sun burns!”

Her eyes widen. “Well, shoot.”

“I’ll explain once we’re in the tent. For the both of you at once, okay?”

It takes time, and carefully prepared protection against the Sun. For it, Stylus summons an opaque black barrier for me when I explain it is about the sun — for me to reach the safety of the tent and breathe. He always was good with ink-associated spells. I can’t deny this one feels creative.

The tent gets more than a few splotches of black ink drippings, but soon we all sit under the cover together, and Stylys dispels his barrier.

I can’t really stop shivering. It was so painful, so sudden. So wrong. This burn would be– not alright — but maybe at least a little expected in any other history, not in this one.

They cuddle with me. They let me be for now, without asking, even though they clearly have some questions.

After a while Quartz breaks the silence. "So," she begins, her voice carefully neutral, "You gonna tell us what in tarnation just happened? One minute you're snorin' away, next you're takin' a sunrise dip, screamin’.”

They move a little away from me, looking at me intently.

“I wanted to see the dragons.” I catch myself sniffing.

In hindsight, probably, that wasn’t the best answer. They stare at me. Stylus covers his mouth with his hoof, giggles a little. “Spike is not a dragon enough for you? And how is this even an answer?” he asks.

“Do you remember any other lives? Well… for you, another life? Applebloom and Sweetie Belle?” I call for them like they are here. I see them in my mind’s eye: Stylus has Sweetie’s eyes, now I see it clearly. Quartz speaks pretty much like AB does.

Nothing answers, but as the silence draws, as I see them looking inside, towards the space they don’t know they have– for a few beats I hope it will.

They shake their heads. Stylus grabs a candy from his bag, chews thoughtfully and nods for me to go on.

“Well, I do. It is… I don’t think past lives are the right words. Alternate lives, more so. I have… a square nines of ponies who, too, were me.”

“Eighty-one spirits, huh?” Stylus tilts his head.

Oh, this head tilt. There was a running joke for me between him and Quartz, his third cousin. Both were showing really fiery emotions sometimes, and could assume this face of blank confusion paired with this tilt on top of it. I can’t stop myself, really. I have to defuse it somehow. “You’re still sure you aren’t a little kirin, are you?”

This hits. They relax a little. “You prank us to be a time traveler, or a ghost, like in mystery Sci-Fi movies, right?” Stylus asks.

Quartz presses her muzzle into my coat and opens her mouth a little as she inhales, “I dunno... You smell like you, Bittercup. But somethin' just feels wrong.”

“Because it is!” I cry. “The sun burns as if it were the Red. It wasn’t doing that before. I was thinking it’ll be simple. Just look for the other lives, find why we return, find myself a cool adventure. And what now?”

“Tell us more,” Stylus requires. “What is this Red? How does it work?”

I sigh, close my eyes, and begin to recite my names, Scootaloo first. They stop me in the first nine, but listen closely otherwise. They cannot grasp how bad the Red is: they have no reference frame for it. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom would have, but in this history there were no alicorn monsters to compare to — not yet. Discord could do but this timeline managed him so much more discreetly.

I don’t try to truly reach them in this regard. Some knowledge is better left unknown. I tell them about the Moons, about the death of the sun which comes in a few months. How well shaped is our city, how diverse it is under the appreciating Moons’ lights, so different yet almost never competing with each other. I leave out the Revolution — that would be too complicated to weave in the story. Bittercup loved storytelling, she tried herself as a Game Master, and I went with her flow. They listen, fascinated. I speak of S-sectors where the destination depends on where you look and if you are looking at all.

“Could we build a maze with that effect for Hearth's Warming Eve?” Stylus inquires. “I think I have an idea…”

“No, I don’t think so. You’ll need Black Moon’s glory for that. When you’ll have that glory in a few timelines,” I smile as my heart sinks a little — you can’t see Black Moon’s light unless you are aligned to her, and you can’t forget it ever. I need a beat to hold out the nostalgia and finish the thought, “then the maze will be the least of your concerns.”

I look at them, feeling more and more like Bittercup. Only Bittercup would find them both so pretty, so pleasant to just stay with. If not for this burn, I would likely never speak to them about it in so many details. It was a joy to simply be in their company.

They ask me to continue. They listen, and I tell more.

How not every me moves forward to the next life: some of my side-selves, I can guess, die before the world changes. How barely any creatures or races remain besides ponies; and how I want to see the dragons. How I descended to the depth of Metropolis and, against all expectations, arrived here.

How both of them accompany me through other lives, again and again, once memories of the past lives return.

They are disturbed at first by the scale of the upcoming change, but I do my best to reassure them it is not so bad. That we thrive, we are happy in our own way. A little, but they do believe me at the end. Stylus wants to visit our reality for a little while, if only to steal a few cool devices and stories to tell in our school; I feel inexplicably proud. Quartz stays more wary.

I avoid the very first history, Scootaloo’s one. That is too complicated to explain for now, mostly because of alicorn monsters again. I would rather not touch Nightmare Moon altogether. I mention we are in the second timeline though.

When I finish the explanation and we all see that I barely can get under direct sun rays without my coat slowly charing away, in a soft, pretty invisible smoke which smells of burned cherries — I can almost hear Stylus giggling inside as he diagnoses me.

“I see. You are a vampony-isekai from the dark future. That’s cool.”

They laugh, not at me thankfully. Well, put like that… I join them.

“Well, guess we ain't got much choice. Sun needs savin', we gotta figure out how." Quartz says.

I hate to break it to her. I need a moment to reply through the sudden bitterness of tears in my mouth.

“When I elseonce approached Black Moon about that, she said–”

I pause for a few more beats to adjust for the units they’d understand.

“It is too late already. It has been too late for a few hundreds of years now. Sun is done. Sorry. But,” I hurry up, stumbling, “We can still stop the Red!”