Our Creation Myth

by AltruistArtist

Rating: everyone
Tags: Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Sphinx
Length: 1044

After Somnambula's disappearance, Prince Hisan meets with the monster who made her a hero.

After Somnambula's disappearance, Prince Hisan meets with the monster who made her a hero.

Gold Medal Winner of Bicyclette's A Thousand Words III contest in the Drama category.

Cover art illustrated by me.

Published 2024-07-15 00:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-15 00:10:00 UTC

The First Visit

On the dreadful morning after his dearest friend's disappearance, Hisan went out into the desert and found the sphinx in exile.

“Where is Somnambula?”

He was in the kinghood of his power, wings flared in pharaoh’s might. The monster who slunk into his nightmares to drag him back to her keep would not defeat him.

Instead, she wasted here, scraping her claws along the cave floor. The once brilliant gold of her diadem and wesekh were dulled by a powdery layer of sand. Lifting her head, she turned her eerie equine face toward him.

And from her cavernous chest, she asked, “Why do you believe she is here?”

Hisan’s heart beat against his ribs like a whirring scarab. “Because you took me.”

“That was a decade ago.”

Hisan’s wings fell, feathertips brushing the dust-laden floor. “She isn't here.”

“She’s not. But in a way, I did take her.” The sphinx's lips rolled back, revealing her wet teeth. She recited:

“For to claim my power makes you a prisoner.
Through me you are known, yet never understood.
To refuse me is to die in peace.
To earn me is to live forever.”

Loathed to hear her riddle, Hisan fled the cave.

The Second Visit

“I’ve received word from the Mighty Helm—from the East. From Canterlot. All of her friends are gone, too.”

The sphinx flicked her tail as the pharaoh spoke. “Why have you returned to tell me this?”

Hisan hovered in the cave entrance, sunlight slitting through his feathers. “Because I can’t stop thinking about what you said.”

The sphinx grinned. “So you have an answer for me.”

Hisan’s throat was tight. Somnambula’s string of glowpaz was wound around his neck—too precious to travel the world with her. “Hero. She became a hero when she defeated you. When she saved me.”

“And whatever sacrifice she and her friends made is merely the cost of that heroism,” the sphinx said with distant neutrality.

Hisan cried, “Did you know she would disappear one day? Is that why you let her win all those years ago?”

The sphinx’s gaze was as inscrutable as a single grain of sand in the desert. “Her victory was entirely fair.”

The Third Visit

“I didn’t know monsters were beholden to fairness.”

The sphinx dragged her rough tongue across her paw. “Have I not upheld my promise? Your kingdom has remained untouched for ten years.”

“Perhaps my kingdom, but not my mind—my dreams.” Hisan’s hooves struck the cave floor. “Not when you’ve haunted me all this time.”

Her pupils narrowed to slits. “Is that the truth of why you continue to return here?”

Hisan exhaled through his nostrils. “You've made me think of the future, how Somnambula will be remembered—now that she's gone. Indeed, she became a hero that day, but what am I? A great pharaoh? Or the prince who needed to be rescued from a monster? Her tale was already being told long before she left this world and I know how my role is played.” His head hung. “I don't want to die a victim.”

The sphinx, in silence, watched him wage his internal war.

“It frightens me less, when I'm able to speak to you,” Hisan said. “It takes away your power.”

A slow, constrained smile crept upon her mouth. “A sphinx's magic is bound to words. It's not fairness I'm beholden to, but language. I'm only a monster as long as you call me one.”

And to his shock, the sphinx said, “You don’t want to die a victim. Who would want to die a monster?”

A Visit Bearing Gifts

“Why did you steal from us?” Hisan asked—a question left unspoken a decade ago.

The sphinx’s teeth broke the crust of the hearty barley loaf the pharaoh set at her paws. “I was hungry,” she said. “And your kingdom had food.”

“That’s… simple.”

“It was easy. And fun,” she went on. “And I was alone. As all sphinxes come into the world. We are licked clean by our mother before she leaves and that warmth sustains us for the centuries we live. And if it doesn’t, we learn to take.”

Hisan did not eat with her, for he brought nothing for himself. “But you are intelligent. You know valuable truths about the world. Why not share with others? Why not ask for what you need?”

The sphinx’s eyes had a waxen glow about them. “Do ponies always ask for what they need? Do ponies want to know all truths?”

“Perhaps,” Hisan answered, “if the one speaking offers enlightenment.”

The sphinx stood, her shadow draping across the pharaoh. She circled once, then sunk her bulk upon the cave floor, her pelt sagging around the bones of her haunches.

“It is a cruel fate,” she said, “to be enlightened and starving.”

A Visit After Nightfall

“Do you think of yourself as evil?”

Hisan asked this as he and the sphinx sat together beneath a wash of stars. At night, the desert was cool and all was still.

“I think of myself as a sphinx,” she responded.

Hisan looked up at her and his eyes were sad. “Then why do you ask us questions about monsters, and heroism—and hope.”

“Because despite these being the words of ponies, few of you know what they truly mean.”

A Visit

“Hello, friend.”

“That is not what I am.”

A Visit

“Hello, sphinx.”

“Hello, pharaoh.”

“I’ve brought more bread and honey cakes.”

“This will sustain me.”

A Visit

“My first child was born today.”

“Your lineage will continue.”

A Visit

“I’ve told a new story of you to my ponies. That you are intelligent, and good.”

“But that is not what I am.”

The Final Visit

“The first answer I gave to your riddle was wrong,” Hisan said. “The answer is not hero. It’s name.”

The sphinx smiled. “So you understand now.”

“I cannot change what you are,” Hisan said.

“You cannot. Because a decade ago, I took you.”

A Death

When Hisan died, his family entombed his body in a golden pyramid.

In the future, ponies told his story.

A Death

When the sphinx died, her body remained in the cave.

In the future, ponies told her story.