We Are (?Not?) Our Avatars
Non-royal ponies seemed to feel that the existence of daylight -- say, the amount you got at roughly three completely unreasonable hours after sunrise -- indicated that it was well past time for getting out of bed and starting into the day. Pipp, who had the benefit of what she felt to be superior intelligence added to a lifetime of regal training, responded to having been jolted out of her well-earned rest through doing two things, and the first was instantly recognizing that having sunlight trying to shine through spring blankets (which she'd taken a lot of trouble to drape over her eyes) meant it was a completely unreasonable hour for doing anything.
Which very much included the following: 'waking, hearing loud hoof-hammering sounds not so much drifting in from outside as delightedly breaking a window pane for better access and, when it comes to whoever's making all that noise, it is definitely too early in the day for that person to be breathing'.
Not that the breathing made much of a difference on the decibel front. (Unless you were cleaning up the sound mixing on an upcoming release, and then you absolutely had to strip out every stray inhale which wasn't exactly on beat.) But if the craftsmare wasn't doing that, then she presumably wouldn't have been up to much of anything else.
Why aren't the guards making her leave?
...because I'm in the Brighthouse.
Unless I give him advance notice, Rocky's only on-shift at Mane Melody and he's officially listed on the payroll as a stylist.
So technically, I don't have any guards.
This currently felt surprisingly unwise.
The hammering stopped. Pipp had exactly enough time to begin desperately hoping that the renewed silence would be permanent, and then the scraping sound came in. This particular cacophony represented unsatisfactory items being, for lack of a better term, anti-hammered. A lot of ponies would have gone off to fetch a prying tool, but the unicorn happened to feel that her horn had all kinds of uses. The fact that so many of them left listeners marveling at the sonic travesties produced by a horn scraping against wood had never really registered.
It was far too early in the day to do many things, and that certainly included magical experimentation. Regardless, Pipp tried. And in doing so, found that she couldn't force thick, sound-absorbing clumps of fabric into adhering to the interior of her ears.
This seemed unfair.
Pipp enjoyed sleeping in. Over a decade of Zephyr Heights royal guards had spent cumulative hours of their lives carefully explaining that to anypony who happened to be shouting, yelling, or putting on a cover performance of the latest hit within speaker range of her bedroom window: 'the Princess likes to sleep in'. Because being second in the birth order came with some unexpected privileges, and chief among those was a distinct lack of early-morning responsibilities. The heir, who needed training for her future responsibilities, had to get up early to attend some very specialized classes. The spare had been told to serve as the public face of the royal family, and those constantly-filmed features really needed to look like they'd gotten eight hours of quality rest.
So Pipp had become a pony of the night. She'd stayed up as long as she liked. In a way, she'd seen it as offering a service to the public. She did livestream her gaming, after all. Could an audience member really say they'd had a good time unless three yawns interrupted the sentence? Additionally, the relative privacy offered by somewhat emptier castle halls gave her a chance to test out the acoustics for new compositions in unexpected places. And once the Second Age Of Unity had begun, with the siblings mutually freed from the wires and pushed out into the world to learn something about what it was...
Pipp was finally in a position where she could meet her fans. Ponies who were in town for -- some kind of art thing which would take place in a few days. (She'd been putting something together for it, but the visual arts were no part of that effort.)
And she could just keep meeting them.
For hours.
And that had been the whole of the previous night, along with what might have been a barely-noticeable fraction of the morning.
...that wasn't a hammer, and it also wasn't a horn. Neither one squeaked. The royal had no idea what the craftsmare was doing outside, but quickly learned that it hadn't been to the unicorn's satisfaction. There was no other explanation for the squeak having put itself into reverse.
Pipp was the youngest of the Brighthouse group. There had been some worries about this after Misty had turned up, but then Alphabittle had provided the unicorn's actual birthday and Pipp had found herself saved. The nice thing about being the youngest in a group was that if you were very careful about whom you allowed to join, you could pretty much keep that status forever.
Sleep was for the weak. And the old. (The latter group now included Misty. The former... did not.) But a princess needed to know when to display a little artistic weakness. Pipp's social batteries only held a near-infinite charge and after she'd pressed so many hooves as to feel that her own were risking permanent indentation, she'd expertly made her excuses and gone to bed.
She was -- almost sure she was allowed to be in bed right now...
...'allowed', applied to a royal, was a funny word.
Hammering.
I think that's a -- what's the word? I saw maintenance crews in the castle -- drill. Maybe that's what a drill sounds like.
Or maybe she's just doing something weird with her horn again.
...she stopped.
Please. Let that be it.
I want to sleep...
The silence stretched out and for a single moment, Pipp began to once again hope it might last.
An unseen unicorn took a very deep, extremely audible breath.
Izzy had an unusual approach to cursing. She felt that any given term lost force with repetition. And clearly the best way to make sure your profanity meant something was to guarantee it had always maximum impact. But there might be a lot of times when you just wanted to curse: for stress relief, at the very least. You couldn't hang on to the few 'accepted' words for the whole of your life, hoping for just the right opportunity.
Izzy cursed through spontaneously stringing nonsense syllables together and projecting them with Maximum Aggravation. Sunny, whose father's notebook claimed they were still missing a few species, had some concerns about the craftsmare accidentally duplicating a language during a stressful First Time? (For Us Anyway) encounter -- but otherwise, the method was surprisingly effective.
It was also rather loud.
Pipp's wings spontaneously unfolded to their full span, and carefully-layered thin blankets were flung across the group bedroom.
She wanted to go directly outside. She wanted to have Words with the unicorn, and it was only a last-second flicker of memory which reminded her that she was still in the Brighthouse, would be speaking to a Bridlewood resident, and couldn't make any of those Words into Orders.
But she had to take a short detour first.
Pipp was merely a princess. Her bladder was a tyrant.
Zipp, Sunny, and Misty were nowhere to be found. Zipp was probably somewhere which wasn't actually the sheriff's office (but could be used to reach it in a hurry), Sunny had work and Misty, whose endless worries very much included 'I am taking from this place without making any contribution in return', had been job-hunting for most of the spring, without success. As skill sets went, 'dubiously-talented ineffective minion' was in limited demand, and most of the ponies who'd lucked into those posts had no plans to change careers.
(The total disconnect from how normal ponies lived did technically qualify Misty for politics, but she didn't want to do it and besides, nopony could try for Grand Vizier unless they were at least a little evil.)
Izzy was self-employed, and tended to do a lot of her work on the Brighthouse grounds. With hoof-hammer shoes and wood and metal and all other sorts of too-loud things.
Pipp... understood what Izzy did, but only on the intellectual level. The creation of art... well, Pipp sculpted in sound: they just had different mediums. But Izzy also repaired things, and Pipp didn't get that at all.
The earth ponies and unicorns in the group were still trying to figure out how to live in a world of magic. Pipp had been immersed within such wonders for the whole of her life. Just for example, anything in the castle which became broken? Would soon vanish. And, shortly thereafter, an identical (or upgraded) version would mysteriously take its place.
Unfortunately, that particular effect seemed to be tied to her original home -- and the castle staff, whose efforts had created the virtual casting. It still worked perfectly well there, but none of its power had followed her to the Brighthouse.
The same cruel law of non-travel also meant that casually admitting "I'm hungry" to the air didn't make full trays appear within ten minutes.
In Maretime Bay, Pipp was expected to clean up after herself. Cook for herself, on occasion. (She wasn't bad with teas and various soups -- but beyond that, had been sampling a lot of spring grass.) She'd been told to be normal, and conflicts with previous beliefs frequently arose.
The spare was fully sure that normal ponies were entitled to sleep in.
Pipp, if she was working on new musical arrangements and didn't have access to her studio, would frequently input notes and commands into her phone. It would simulate every sound and instrument desired, allowing her to test how the music within her soul would come across when heard by the relatively-weak pony ear.
"Oh, hi, Pipp," weakly drifted up to her as white wings brought the royal in on a smooth descent path. "Was I loud? I was probably loud. I know you got in late last night. Or early this morning." With weary curiosity, "Where's your headband? You really must have been in a hurry if you didn't put it on. Your mane is sort of everywhere --"
Pipp blinked. "-- you know when I got back --"
"-- you sort of stumbled past me when you were coming in. I said good morning. I'm not sure you heard me. Or remembered where the ramp to the sleeping level is, because it took you three times to get the aim right."
Which was when the unicorn sighed.
Izzy doesn't --
"I can move all this," the craftsmare offered. "Take it off the grounds, once I find where everything went." Wearily, "I don't think it'll make much of a difference if I go fail somewhere else."
Which was when Pipp truly looked down, and saw how the unicorn was mostly regarding the lawn. Or... the myriad of rejections which occupied it.
Pipp tested compositions with her phone.
She did the first-draft composing on paper.
Because when you were using a phone, it was just a little impractical to chew rejects to death before kicking the remnants across the room.
The younger Princess was still trying to work out certain aspects of the 'real' world, which very much included whichever one would let her finally admit that in public. But she looked at the screws, thread, buttons (although she never looked at the buttons for too long), wood (mostly fragmented), and --
she's been biting off her mane hair and trying to tie things up with it again
-- other bits of assorted craft debris which was strewn about the lighthouse's perimeter, none of which was being stored in what was usually a carefully-organized supply cupboard -- and instantly recognized a creative failure in infinite lack-of-progress.
Her soul perked and unknown to Pipp, a hum of familiarity began to synchronize towards some level of harmony.
She just didn't understand what had caused the problem, and -- that was a little too frequent with Izzy. The unicorn's mere existence could produce confusion in observers -- in the moment. Many activities, regarded well after the original fact, could turn out to be oddly rational.
But you had to get there. And Pipp was still anchored to the present. A place in which virtually nothing the crafter did made sense.
"What happened?" the spare worriedly asked.
"You can land," Izzy failed to answer. "There's a clear spot over there. A little one, but you don't need much room."
Which just made Pipp determined to stay airborne for a while longer, because royal authority had limits and silently having ordered every other Brighthouse resident to Be Shorter had pretty much defined the borders. At least when she was hovering, she could look down.
"What's wrong?" the royal attempted to stay on subject. "You never have this much stuff kicked around." Things which had been nailed together, taken apart, had some of the pieces nailed to other things, and then those had failed...
"It's the Unity Art Festival," the unicorn sighed again. "I know the creators are starting to come in early, because you met some of them last night." Her head momentarily turned, and weary eyes regarded the not-so-distant view of flowering plants. "I thought it was nice to have the outdoor part of the exhibit in the community vegetable garden, because I wouldn't have to carry anything very far." Her head dipped. "Now I mostly just feel like I can just go to bed right after everypony gets a look at where my piece was supposed to be. And it won't be a very long trot."
"You're submitting something?" Pipp asked. She didn't remember Izzy mentioning --
"So are you," the craftsmare noted.
Pipp had been trying to harmonize three cultures of music into a single theme to be played at the opening ceremony. "I'll have it ready on time." With a soft snort, "Trying to incorporate the bongos isn't exactly helping. But what were you making?"
"If I knew what I was making," the unicorn miserably declared, "I would have made it."
A large hoof shoved at stray splinters. Three of them slid under the earth and, even with earth pony magic about, completely failed to generate a tree.
Pipp blinked.
"You don't know?"
"I know it needs to fit the theme," Izzy half-groaned. "All of us together. Pegasi, earth ponies, unicorns back together. And promising each other that we can stay together this time. That we have more in common than differences, no matter what."
Pipp nodded.
With a minor rear-up and a surprisingly-small stomp of two rather large forehooves, "But I can't figure out how to say that in wood. Nothing's been good enough. This is the first Festival, Pipp: it says so right on the application form! And it also said First Annual -- but everypony knows we only get a next year if this one goes really well. So if this really is a new start, then I need something which makes ponies want to see what everypony does the next time. And I can't make something so bad that nopony ever wants to do this again --" her head was steadily dipping "-- and I can't think of anything, everything I did come up with only works until I think about it a little more, and I thought -- if I just come out here and start putting things together just about at random, then maybe something will start to look right. And I could build on that. Except it didn't. And I couldn't. And..." The horn was now being used as a pointer, slowly sweeping around to indicate the full extent of the debris field. "...this."
I can always hum a middle G.
A perfect one, just to prove I can.
(She could.)
Because middle G is a good note to start a lot of things, and...
...there has to be a next note.
There's been times when it was four a.m. and I'd been staring at a soundboard all night.
If I can't figure out what the next note is, the level settings should at least be able to give me a hint.
She understood.
She had full sympathy.
Complete empathy.
"You're trying too hard," Pipp immediately said. "Forcing yourself to be creative doesn't always work. Ideas come when they come."
"If they're coming soon," Izzy's soul-deep weariness inquired, "do you know which road they're using? I could go meet them. Because staying here waiting for one isn't helping. And I don't know where to go looking -- your hover just dipped. Maybe you should land? You really didn't sleep much."
She also wasn't used to hovering, and the magic behind flight had this odd insistence on muscles putting in a contribution. Pipp reluctantly touched down.
"I need to get this done," the unicorn insisted -- just before the exhaustion added, "But if I can't, then... I can just not do it anywhere, right? There's a lot of stuff to pick up, though. So this may take a while."
Except Pipp was still thinking.
Trying to get an idea...
She'd done some stupid things in trying to find ideas. Like listening to the entire ancient Twentieth-Bit-Back catalog, just to see if there was any way in which it could be improved. The answer had been a solid Yes, but the royal archives had somehow felt a princess wasn't entitled to set master recordings on fire.
But you really couldn't force creativity. It was like trying to push a block, only you also happened to be standing in front of it.
"You need to distract yourself," Pipp quickly decided. "Get your mind off the Festival. Take yourself out of the way. And then ideas can come through."
The sad "...how?" seemed to be fully sincere. "Because all I can think about is that I'm not making anything. And if I think about that, that's what my brain is doing. Then I think about not thinking about it, which means I have to define what I'm not thinking about and that's thinking. I can't just stop."
Leaf-green eyes went wide.
"Stay here!"
With open confusion, "I wasn't going to. Because it isn't helping you. You should sleep --"
"-- I'll be right back!"
Wings flared. Sore muscles expressed an opinion. Wings refolded.
"...Pipp?"
Who was already on the gallop and trying to look as if that had been her plan the whole time. "I've got to get your phone!"
It was just about a Brighthouse truism: you almost always had to remind Izzy to carry her phone. And then you probably had to help her find it. The rectangle had a tendency to burrow deep into clothing drawers: the usual assumption was that it was either trying to hide or had been working on an exit tunnel behind the winter boots. In this case, the thing had been under the unicorn's bed, lightly shivering from what was either a just-missed call on vibrate mode or raw fear.
She trotted back out with the phone proudly carried in her teeth. (Her wings were still sore, and that hadn't been helped by all the flying demonstrations at the party. Plus it was hard to reliably walk on three legs when there was a phone adhered to a forehoof.) "Hot nit!"
"...what?" a still-confused unicorn technically contributed.
Pipp carefully deposited the phone on a makeshift workbench. "Got it. Can you just activate that for me? ...no, take the hammer shoe off first... hold your right forehoof over that part -- don't press down! -- and let it just read..." She exhaled. "All right. Let's look at the app store..."
"So there's an app which has ideas for you?" Izzy asked. "Because I don't know very much about apps yet, but I'm pretty sure that's going to be a subscription service."
"I," Pipp firmly declared, "am getting you a game."
The unicorn was silent for several seconds, which nearly achieved the original goal.
"A game," she repeated.
"Yes," Pipp definitively stated.
"Is it a game with a crafting system? Because I heard about those. You gather all sorts of little parts, put them near each other, and then you get something new. With no work. Or ideas, other than 'put stuff next to other stuff'. It all just sort of poofs with smoke, and then there's a new thing and all the parts are gone." Some of the misery was slowly being displaced by anger. "I don't like crafting systems. They're not realistic. And it wouldn't help --"
"The goal," the royal carefully explained, "is to distract your mind. I'm going to find you the kind of game which you play without thinking."
"...I don't think that's actually possible --"
With the typical Pipp level of confidence (utter), "-- it turns your brain off."
Izzy thought about that.
All things considered, "So you're trying to kill me," was both surprisingly neutral and seemed to accept its fate.
"No!" She searched for the perfect metaphor and as befitted a royal, instantly found it. "I mean it's the game equivalent of looping through the castle hallways over and over for the billionth time."
There was a too-long pause. "...I don't get it."
Of course, you had to grow up in the right place if you were going to understand perfection. "You don't have to think about doing it, because you know the path so well that your body does it without thought. They're games you can play on reflex, Izzy. Automatic reactions. And then your brain needs something to do. Sometimes that's coming up with an idea." And with the usual enthusiasm (200%), added "Just try it! So can I install something?"
The unicorn awkwardly shuffled her impressive mass across all four hooves.
"I guess it's something I haven't failed at yet," effectively equaled permission.
"OKAY! So let me find the right game --"
"-- and if my brain turns off, I don't have to worry about the Festival."
No hidden object games. Pipp had seen Izzy doing rummages. There would be a drawer with six hundred -- buttons -- in it and the crafter would sort down to the one she actually needed in under a minute. Pipp could never watch the full process, mostly because of the... buttons. Even the crafter's mark...
Refocus.
Match-3s were out. All of them. 'Unicycling', which Bridlewood frequently treated as 'keeping older pieces going when no one's made replacement parts for six centuries', sometimes seemed to partially be about getting disparate items to come together as a functional whole. Izzy would be a little too good at spotting anything which was actually meant to be united.
"...this is taking a while," Izzy noted.
"Give me a minute," Pipp said. "I'm trying to get exactly the right game for you."
Speaking of matching...
...no. Same skill set. She'd probably speedrun the stupid stacked-tiles game.
And beat my record.
That could be tolerated. The upload of the new number to the official tracking site, however...
"I just feel like you're supposed to be at Mane Melody by now."
Pipp managed not to grit her teeth.
"I saw the appointment book. It's a slow day. Rocky and Jazz can manage without me." They could certainly manage to flirt more efficiently when she wasn't there. And, presumably, with less in the way of royal interruptions.
"But you're supposed to be there."
"Except," Pipp didn't quite order Izzy to understand, "I'm here."
'Normal' ponies had an inexplicable obsession with time. To wit, when you operated a business, you were apparently expected to be personally present during every posted operating hour and Pipp's response to discovering that bit of utter illogic had been the sort of profanity you really couldn't use twice: she didn't think it would lose too much impact from repetition, but couldn't risk having her mother hear it again.
She was expected to treat the shop's advertised schedule as something very much like a blood oath. Pipp also had a staff, they had keys, and she liked to sleep in now and again. Customers were supposed to treat every minute with a royal in attendance as precious. In that sense, scarcity increased value. And let her sleep in.
...besides, if certain Maretime Bay residents were going to insist on complaining about the minor bits of magical fallout which had resulted from Pipp's perfectly normal ownership learning curve, then they should be happy if Mane Melody was closed once in a while. They could view it as -- bonus safety time.
Also, making small errors absolutely helped to poninize her in the eyes of the populace, so what was the problem?
There. That is the most mind-numbing game available. She can play it without focus and if she does try to think about it, her brain will be begging for anything else in ten minutes.
Near-zero user participation. Actual Zero Strategy.
Perfect --
-- the hot breath from the unicorn's nostrils fogged up the phone screen.
"I know that one," Izzy commented.
"...you do?"
The unicorn nodded. "Maybe it's one of those things which we all did before the split and everypony thought they were the only ones who got custody in the divorce?" And shrugged. "Anyway, a lot of ponies played it in Bridlewood. Only without an app. They use cards and this really watery ink to mark the spots if somepony calls out the right number." She sighed. "I think it mostly caught on because it's a really good way to get depressed. Because you've told yourself that there's this huge friendly thing somewhere in the world which can make luck better, and obviously the only reason you've losing is because it doesn't like you." She squinted. "What's that red spot? Right in the center of the five-by-five."
"The free space."
"Is that the only name?"
Pipp frowned. "No. Some ponies call it the Breeze." But it was still the free space. Something acquired just for turning up, with no effort involved or even desired. So the name didn't make any sense.
"We don't have that," Izzy casually remarked.
"...you don't?"
"You can't be as miserable if somepony noses over a gift," the unicorn confidently announced. "That's why I like making things to give away. Or put on display, because ponies can look for free." Shoulders and hips mutually sagged. "If I can just think... You still need to get five in a row to score?"
"As many times as you can, yeah," Pipp considered, and was almost sure. Most of what she truly understood about remuda was that it was one of the most boring games in the world, and somepony had created the blended 'mu' character for the alphabet just to prevent the dumb board from needing a sixth column. Pipp felt that you could never fully trust a sixth column, even if it was supposed to be secretly on your side. "There's a limited number of calls for each round, though." And more players than calls. Some were guaranteed to have multiple rows of five, while others would see none. Manipulating scarcity was also important, which was why Pipp's posable doll line always had chase figures.
The game also gave out a bonus for being the first pony to get a remuda, and Pipp appreciated that. Even when it was the result of pure dumb luck, the spare felt there should always be a significant reward for coming in first. Or, in her case, second.
"Who calls the numbers? Is there somepony drawing them out of a hopper, and then they type it into their own phone?"
"The code picks numbers. Randomly. But this is going to be the game. I know it." Or rather, she was fairly confident and for a princess, that was the same thing.
"So... I should install it?" Izzy carefully asked.
Pipp paused.
There was a certain problem with allowing the unicorn to operate anything high-tech for the first time. Motors were generally okay and basic wiring usually went fairly well, but when it came to code...
Put bluntly: Izzy was to computers what Izzy also happened to be to segregation. In both cases, it was best to assume that if you left the craftsmare unsupervised, the best possible result was for everything to break in a really interesting way.
"...I'll just get that set up for you," the royal decided. "And walk you through the full dressage." Downloading happened. "All right. It wants you to provide a name for the account. It'll be visible to other players."
Promptly, "Izzy Moonbow."
Pipp was the youngest of the Brighthouse residents, and hoped that she always would be. But in terms of online time, she was approximately four hundred and ninety. "Don't."
"...don't what?"
"Don't use your real name. Or a picture of yourself. Some ponies do, but you want to be anonymous. At least a little."
Because... it had all started with Izzy. And in the opinions of those who still wished that the three cities had never reestablished tentative speaking terms, it all went back to Izzy.
There were ponies in the world who didn't like Izzy very much. The Brighthouse crew tried to keep all who weren't Posey away from the doors.
"So why don't I just use a picture of my mark?"
Pipp had trouble understanding normal ponies. Drama, however, was more or less automatic --
"-- flinging your body into the grass from disbelief," Izzy calmly considered, "is probably a really big flourish. Normally. When the grass doesn't have a lot of buttons and wood samples hidden by the blades."
They mutually got her cleaned up, and then Pipp showed Izzy the loading screen's warning.
DO NOT USE YOUR CUTIE MARK IN YOUR AVATAR
The too-big unicorn frowned. "Why not?"
"Because it makes you too easy to identify," Pipp calmly explained to a mare with an online age of about three seasons. "And not everypony is nice."
There was also that thing which the one fan sent me.
Something about how in the first days of photography, somepony thought that every time anypony got a picture of your mark, it drained a little of the magic. And if you appeared in enough pictures, it -- all went away. Forever.
Pipp had immediately dismissed the idea. She was among the most recorded personages in the history of ponies -- at least for the portion anypony knew about. She absolutely would have noticed something by now.
They sorted it all out. Izzy assumed the extremely cunning online identity of Oddments&Bobs: a name which Pipp felt really needed to be the other way around. The avatar image became all the buttons and -- oddments? -- which had been recently removed from her coat, as they made for an easily-photographed pile in the grass.
Izzy felt this was more than sufficient protection, and Pipp failed to talk the digital newborn out of it.
(The younger princess always tried to have at least twenty false identities available online at all times. Some were young, others were old, a few were now unicorns and earth ponies because those options had become available, and what she never quite managed to recognize was that every last chosen avatar image had a crown somewhere.)
"And now you can play," Pipp finally declared. Or not-play. And not-think. And very much not-hammer. And then she remembered one more detail -- a split-second before the crafter spotted it.
"Using what?" Izzy innocently inquired. "Because the real thing is sort of gambling, and that's why you have to buy the cards." Thoughtfully, "Even when it's more of a rental. And I'd rather not spend any money, especially since I'm not earning anything for the display piece."
Pipp looked at the screen.
The game was quite happy to give out its currency for free. It also paid winnings in that same electronic coin, and had gone so far as to work out an exchange rate. Which was to say, if you wanted to play more than what the game was willing to offer at the base level, then you were free to convert your bits to game credits. Just... never the other way around.
She worked out the daily login bonus, added it to the every-two-hours free chip package for a newcomer, then compared those totals to the cost of extended play and automatically figured for multiple long losing streaks.
"...I'll just bump that balance up for you," the princess decided. "So you'll be able to play for a while." Several hours. The duration of a normal day's sleep. "But once it's gone, that's it. No more. Okay?"
"Okay," Izzy readily agreed.
Pipp browsed the store, picked out a chip package, paid for it, and then the youngest mare in the Brighthouse silently engaged the parental controls to make sure nopony could ever give money to the game again. "Here you go! And you already know how to play. And I'll get you some styluses." Some of the card numbers on the screen were rather small for casual hoof-targeting.
"Thank you for offering," the unicorn immediately said. "But I have a bunch in my supply cupboard. They're only slightly used."
"You do?"
"They're hollow metal tubes with a soft microknit mesh at one end," Izzy proudly stated. "They've got all sorts of uses. It's amazing that most ponies only try them for the one thing."
A stylus was fetched, and Pipp watched as Izzy 'purchased' her first game.
The game went to a loading screen, as the code assembled randomly-chosen players for the remuda round. Izzy, who had locally initiated the match, had her avatar flash in at the very top of the screen, along with that extremely stealthy name: the picture was bordered (and cropped) by a small circle, with the account ID underneath. Neither was particularly easy to make out. The whole thing would have been much more legible on a tablet -- not that Pipp was ever going to tell her sister that.
Then another avatar popped in: a small orange cat. Below Izzy's picture, and well off to the left.
Another appeared: a random stretch of meadow. Two more (a picture of the sea and an earth pony half-buried in the sand, respectively) made a row of four, and more started to appear...
"...Pipp?"
There had been something in the unicorn's voice which was almost -- entranced.
Good. She's interested. Given enough time, 'engaged' also meant 'quiet'.
"What? Oh, and when you tap a space, it's easy to miss. So look for a little glow. Any activated part of the card will be brighter -- "
"-- how many are there?"
Sixteen more avatars had popped in. Pipp made a quick mental note of the obvious Zephyr Heights resident, and silently thanked them for having so much Petals merchandise in the background shot of the bedroom.
"Players?" She frowned. "Twenty-eight to thirty-five per round. I think." She hadn't exactly played remuda a lot. Technically, you couldn't play it all. You just sat in front of your screen, or in some forlorn echoing event hall somewhere, and hoped any degree of game came to you.
"It's the right guess for what I was asking," the unicorn said as the long manefall leaned in closer, "but the wrong category. Not how many players per round. In the game."
Pipp, when confronted with that kind of question, had several options available. She could go to the game's app store page, try to find a download ranking, and use her vast knowledge of all things phone-hosted to make a surprisingly-accurate estimate. There was also the possibility of calling the app's development studio and just asking. Or, should that somehow fail, contacting ZHMI6 and having her nation's intelligence agency deliver the exact answer without technically ever asking at all.
She went with the easy choice.
"Lots," the spare announced. "Just play the game." Quietly. "And have fun." Whatever that is --
-- but the crucial part was to free the crafter's mind. Give her a chance at having an idea.
Pipp judged her wings to have recovered somewhat, and attempted to fly away.
The younger princess glanced down as she moved over Izzy. The unicorn was raptly staring at the screen, and its rows of displayed avatars. Utterly absorbed.
Just keep that up. Maybe the idea will come.
And the remuda round hadn't even started yet.
But until then, the important thing is that she's quiet...
Pipp opened her eyes again and because it was spring, the sun was still in the sky. But it didn't look as if it would be hanging around for much longer: turning a half-lidded look towards the nearest window found hints of orange and rose in the sky. Sunset wasn't that far off.
She still would have preferred to have her first renewed atmospheric glimpse include stars.
Nopony's looking out for my needs.
...the length of days and nights should be royally regulated.
She immediately rejected the 'idea' as a sign of just how badly she needed food to go with the sleep, and carefully got out of bed.
The Brighthouse was still empty of other residents, which brought her food options down to the raw fruit and vegetable drawers. Pipp looked at the inadequate selection for a while.
Maybe I can make a cute face and pout Izzy into cooking something for me --
-- the spare looked up at the kitchen clock.
I got hours of sleep. Without interruption.
Without noise.
Which means she either packed everything up and took it somewhere else -- quietly -- or she's still...
...check on Izzy.
It was almost like a dance.
She'd found the unicorn almost immediately, because Izzy hadn't changed locations. And then the royal had simply stayed in the air, watching as the crafter repeated the same strange sequence. Over and over again.
At some point -- probably fairly early on -- the unicorn had fetched glasses: a pair of the minor magnifiers she liked to wear when doing detail work. So each round started with Izzy, whose smile was beaming so brightly that the mane itself seemed to shine, staring at the screen. Waiting, as her muscles tensed and the bright expression took on mixed aspects of anticipation, curiosity, and rapture.
She would buy her way into the game.
A small, circle-bordered image of supposed oddments would appear at the top of the screen. Others would begin to manifest below it, and a magenta gaze would almost frantically flick to each one in turn. Some would receive relatively extended examinations: others were passed over in less than a heartbeat. But everything got a look.
The fully-assembled parade of players vanished. This signaled two things: the start of the actual round, and the departure of Izzy.
She didn't go very far. The unicorn used those too-long legs for racing over to a second makeshift workbench: one which had an open sketchbook resting on it, with a pencil nearby. The pencil would be snatched up between Izzy's teeth, because the crafter sometimes swore she got more control that way.
The remuda round, unattended and ignored, played out on the phone. Izzy...
...Pipp couldn't watch it in action. Not from overhead, because she didn't have as good an angle for the second station and the unicorn's heroically-excessive manefall was in the way. But it was easy enough to see the results once Izzy moved again, because the book was being left open to save time. The unicorn would spend no more than two and a half minutes in sketching, and then raced back to the phone. The circle-bordered rough sketches stayed behind.
Two and a half minutes. Because a game round was about three.
Back to the other workbench. Snatch up a stylus between her teeth and frantically poke at every numbered space which had been called. Sometimes she would get a remuda, or several. Or she wouldn't. Izzy genuinely didn't seem to care.
Once the results had been determined, the stylus was dropped. Go back to the sketchbook bench. (Izzy could sketch a little, although most of what Pipp had seen her use the skill for was repair diagrams.) Take up the pencil again. Make a few adjustments.
Return to the phone.
Start another round.
Repeat.
Everything.
Every time.
It was almost a dance. Pipp could see the beats...
The hoofbeats could be a drum.
Four-time, of course.
The pencil... that's almost a piccolo, isn't it? Pretty and lilting, but high-pitched and potentially trying to get it all done in a single breath...
...she's not playing the game.
She isn't making anything either...
Pipp watched, as sun dipped ever-lower in the sky and the Brighthouse's lights began their automatic power-up sequence to compensate. There was plenty to observe, and even a little room to designate the stylus as a flute. But she didn't understand what the crafter was trying to accomplish.
It was a frequent question in the presence of the unicorn and sadly, there was only one true source for answers.
Pipp, whose wings were starting to feel sore again, went for the direct approach. She landed a short distance behind Izzy: after the unicorn had reached the phone again, but before a new game could be launched.
"What are you doing?"
And when somepony asked the crafter that question, they would always get an answer.
"Not thinking!" Izzy beamed.
An answer which was both comprehensible and sane was somewhat harder to come by.
"...what?"
"That's not quite right," the too-tall mare reconsidered. "I'm absolutely thinking. On some level. The one where it's really deep and doesn't contact the surface until the full team is put together. So really, I'm just trying to figure out what I'm thinking about. And I think I know, but it's the sort of thing where I can't be sure until I actually try it."
The smile got wider. Multiple ponies had tried talking to Izzy about that smile. She'd grown up in a place where ponies didn't openly revel in their misery, mostly because they didn't openly revel in anything and frankly, reveling probably took too much energy. It had convinced her that she had to sell her happiness as being something truly real. The usual result was the kind of tooth display more suitable to a pack of predators which hadn't eaten in two weeks.
"I think it might have worked, Pipp!" Izzy enthused. "But I won't know until I turn that --" a head tilt towards the sketchbook "-- into that." The horn indicated a pile of wood. "But if it does work -- it's from you, thank you, I'd just really like to --"
The beaming unicorn started to move towards Pipp, most likely for a friendly nuzzle of gratitude. The little pegasus mostly saw a Very Large Mare closing in and briefly wondered how long it took to suffocate on manefall.
"You're not even playing! Not for real! I was watching you --"
Izzy's hoofsteps paused.
"It's not a game to be played," she said. "It's a game for not thinking." With mild offense, "I've been trying to get chips at the end of each round by marking off my spaces. So I can do a next round. I've been okay so far. And I know I've missed some first-remuda bonuses, but I wouldn't get very many of those and I need the time for something else anyway."
"But what else --" was nearly a wail.
Izzy's head tilted very slightly to the left. The manefall shifted.
"Also," the unicorn said, "a hovering pegasus creates a downdraft. I've known you were up there for a while. Or somepony was. Some pegasus. Having the fur on my back rippling all the time is sort of a clue. Pipp, I think -- see? I think you might have helped me find my idea for the Festival. Can't I just thank you?"
"I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THANKING ME FOR!"
Three Brighthouse windows threateningly vibrated.
High C.
Great for actual wails.
Has some issues with aim.
Izzy considered that.
"Come here," she said. And trotted past Pipp, going to the sketchbook's makeshift resting place.
After a moment, the pegasus followed. Another second made her realize that Izzy probably wanted her to look at the pages, and it would be a lot easier to do that from the air. A tall mare had put the current placement level much, much too high.
She took off. A few seconds of frantic hoof gestures from the ground got her to back off enough to put the pages out of wing-wind risk.
"See?" Izzy proudly asked, and nodded to the sketchbook.
The grounds were becoming increasingly well-lit, because the place was called the Brighthouse and felt a nightly need to live up to it. Pipp could see what was on the pages -- in rough detail, because Izzy's talents really didn't allow for quality speed-sketches and besides, every image stopped precisely at the rough circle's border --
-- Pipp looked more closely.
"These are avatars," the royal slowly said.
"All the ones I thought were interesting," Izzy confirmed. "And could remember." She paused. "And could fit on this page. There's more on the earlier ones."
"...why are you sketching avatars?"
"Because I can't remember everything," the unicorn reasonably said. "Remembering everything is probably somepony else entirely. And I don't get very long to look at them before the game starts, so I just put in a rough idea of what I saw and hope that same player comes back in another round. I've had to flip back a few times to fix things."
Pipp turned it all over in her head. No rationality tumbled out.
"...why?"
The unicorn looked up, and an odd degree of thoughtful patience radiated from the magenta gaze.
Hornlight ignited. The glow surrounded the book, then carefully lowered it to the grass. The too-tall body followed, legs folding until the unicorn was flush against the lawn.
She looked up at Pipp. The royal reluctantly descended, landed close by, and refolded her wings before trying to settle in at Izzy's side.
They were closer to the same level now, within the Brighthouse's increasing pool of light, bordered by night's warm shadows. But it didn't really help. At this sort of proximity, Izzy loomed.
It was like the smiles. She didn't mean to. But it still happened.
"Drawing avatars," Pipp tried, and Izzy nodded. "You could have just kept the book right next to the phone --"
"-- it was when I started," the crafter said. "But this is a long project. Being motionless for hours isn't a good thing. So I decided to kick in some exercise."
A composer who had frequently suffered from Get Up From The Soundboard, Take One More Pass Around The Studio, And My Knees May Unlock failed to get the point.
"But why avatars?"
The hornlight intensified slightly along one paper edge. Pages carefully turned.
"This is Ghosteemaze," Izzy failed to introduce. "That's an odd name, isn't it? And an unusual picture to go with it. I was lucky. He got randomly picked for my group eight times. I've only seen some other images once."
"It's just a section of garden labyrinth," Pipp argued. "We have one at the palace --"
"-- so maybe that pony works for the palace," Izzy proposed. "Maybe they're even one of the gardeners. But why use 'ghostee' in the name? Because this is how they want everypony to see them in the game, Pipp. As a little section of maze and a name which says there might be ghosts there." And paused. "Most of Bridlewood is still trying to decide if ghosts exist. And that's when they used to know for sure."
"...unicorns," Pipp tried, "know about the afterlife --"
"-- they used to say that since being in the forest was so miserable, the only punishment worse was to do it again forever after you died. So everypony was a ghost. But you never saw them. And now unicorns aren't sure, because we aren't as sad and maybe the dead want to be somewhere better." She peered through the glasses at the sketch. "I really don't know what the point of a ghost in a maze is. It's the easiest solve ever. Aim for the exit and pass through every wall between them and it. But the name is interesting. And the choice of picture. It's what this pony wanted me to see as him." Paused. "If it's a boy. I'm not sure."
"Izzy --"
Another page flipped itself. "This one's Buttonhead! -- are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Pipp's strictly-minor childhood trauma lied.
"You're not," Izzy quickly insisted. "I felt the little jump. From a prone start. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," had been a little too insistent.
"I just realized something," Izzy said.
By contrast, "Really?" was far too tense.
"My mark," Izzy cautiously began, "has a button. Sometimes you don't look at my mark. Or you look anywhere else. Or you stand on the side where the mark isn't. A lot. What is it with you and buttons?
"There was this movie..." Pipp's most natural instinct (to talk about herself) began -- and then stopped. "Buttonhead, right? Not buttons for eyes?"
A little too carefully, "No..."
"Then it's okay. What about Buttonhead?"
Izzy hesitated. Briefly glanced back along her flank, then looked at the sketchbook again.
"We can mostly skip Buttonhead," the unicorn decided. "I just thought it was an interesting name, because I work with buttons so much. And it's just the name, because there weren't even any real buttons in their avatar picture."
"Seriously?"
"I," Izzy solemnly pronounced, "know a misplaced cufflink when I see one. Or with them, sixteen. And I'm curious, but I won't try to meet them. It's a little intrusive to track somepony down just because their avatar is interesting. But maybe Buttonhead will be at the Festival."
Another page flipped.
"See Janlulu's dolls? They're fruit-scented. And very old. I know because they're Bridlewood antiques. That one would smell like strawberry shortcake. The other is a raspberry tart. "
"But --" probably represented Pipp's maximum deductive contribution, and she wasn't going to tell her sister about that either.
"Here's Bushyquiver! Without a bush. Or a quiver. I think that one is somepony's private joke. And..." With a little sigh, "...this is TypicalPony. I'm not sure what to make of Typical. Either they feel really bad about themselves, or they're completely honest while being extremely self-accepting. You don't find that combination much. Also, do you know what that plant is? With all the spikes and needles. I don't."
"Cactus," Pipp determined. "You don't get them in forests."
Izzy nodded. "'Cactus'," she repeated. "Somepony who wants to invoke a plant. And other ponies show off their pets. A few have pictures of themselves, and I may use one or two. But no more than that. The rest of the stuff is more interesting. Even the pets. Because showing their mark makes somepony too easy to identify, but the dog they walk in public three times a day? Nopony will spot that."
"Um," Pipp said, because there were times when it was impossible to tell whether the unicorn was making an extremely random observation or a decidedly sarcastic joke.
"But maybe they just love their pet," Izzy proposed. "A lot of ponies do. Or they love the pony they're with, so you get a picture of them together."
Another page flipped itself. Izzy glanced at the revealed results, and the next page instantly started to descend --
"-- you're trying to hide that," Pipp observed.
The cover-up page froze. Reluctantly flipped back the other way.
"I guess it's okay to show this one," Izzy tentatively decided. "Because it is the one which probably told me what the theme was. Even when she really isn't a part of it."
"The theme --"
Izzy sighed.
"I know who Unicorn#1 is," the crafter said. "In the real world, I mean. That's Prima. She's the only mare I know who would make her species into her entire identity. I won't introduce you to her, though. She wouldn't talk to you, because you're a pegasus. Or to me, because I'm talking to you. And -- because she doesn't like that there's anypony to talk with. She doesn't even like other unicorns much. And she'd hate you." Fur shifted across the furrowing brow. "Which is weird, because she sort of wants to be you."
"I don't need that kind of fan," Pipp instantly declared. She'd already had her share, along with the share for all of Zephyr Heights and most of the other two cities. Those who hated her music, weren't exactly fond of her either -- and yet followed everything she did, because they needed to see what that was. After all, they'd already declared that they were capable of doing it better, and how could they surpass her unless they knew how she'd most recently failed?
Four of them still tried to get through the firewall every week. All had endless suggestions, and none ever attached personal demonstration performance videos.
"I mean she wants to have your authority," Izzy clarified. "Or your mother's, really, at least right now. Be her without any of the reasons for being her, especially the self-restraint. Prima won't be at the exhibit. Or in Maretime Bay, not as long as anypony else is here. But... I saw her avatar. I knew it was her, because nopony else would do that kind of close-up on a horn and I'd seen that horn trying to get a little too close to my eyes every time I charged her full price for repairs. She'd never come here -- but she went into a game. A game where she doesn't know exactly who's playing, but -- she has to guess there's earth ponies and pegasi, right? Because some pegasi take pictures of their wings. And earth ponies..."
The next page flipped.
"I had to ask Sunny about this a few weeks ago," the unicorn reviewed. "After I saw the first one when I was looking out at the ocean from the boardwalk. That big rainbow billow of domed fabric, hanging in the air with a boat pulling it along. And a laughing stallion held up in the sky. It's called a parasail. It's how earth ponies fly. Over water. I'm not sure the avatar I saw was the same pony. But only earth ponies use parasails, because unicorns don't have an ocean and pegasi use their wings. So when Prima sees a parasail... she knows it's an earth pony. And she doesn't like those. But she still plays the game."
Oddly-serious eyes gazed at Pipp, and the only annoying part was that the unicorn was looking down. "I thought about it. All of it. Everypony here could have any name. Even if one's chosen, you just add a number at the end, right?"
"...right..."
"And any image. Anything they can picture, imagine, draw, or photograph. Anything, Pipp. And it's not like marks, is it? We choose our own -- once. Or maybe they choose us." And before the pegasus could respond, "But an avatar is something different. Name and picture together. It's like somepony's entire life is an art gallery -- but there's only one portrait on display at a time. The thing they want to most symbolize them." Thoughtfully, "And tomorrow, it could be a different symbol. You only choose your mark once. But with avatars... every day, you can choose a new face. Except that it's always you. So those choices are important. The avatar... says something about the pony. How they want everypony else to know them, at a single glance. One picture at a time from a private gallery, out in public."
The book closed itself.
"And that's my idea," she said. "A gallery of galleries."
The last of the sun slipped below the horizon. It was all moon and Brighthouse for illumination now, and the rainbow-tinged glow of renewed harmony coated the mares' fur.
"...I don't get it," Pipp finally said.
"You will," Izzy decided. "I think. When it's done. But don't worry. I'm going to work on it for a couple of days, but it'll mostly be away from the Brighthouse. No noise. But it'll be a lot of hours, and I have to do it."
"Have to?" almost didn't feel like a mistake.
"I think it's a good idea," Izzy proudly stated. "Good enough to still be good when it's real. Plus if I don't make it stop being thoughts and start being wood, then it just takes up space in my skull. I need to clear that for the next idea. And I think I've almost got enough avatars to make my final picks from, so I'll just do five more rounds and then come inside."
"...okay," mostly brought the royal that much closer to what had just occurred to her as a near-future goal. "Are you going to make yourself something? Because I'm pretty sure you've been out here all day. You need to eat. And as long as you're cooking, you could bump the amount --"
Izzy leaned in. Gently nuzzled Pipp as too-long manefall brushed against shock-frozen royal features, then stood up.
"I'll meet you in the kitchen," the unicorn said.
The pegasus stood. Trotted towards the Brighthouse.
I don't understand. A gallery of galleries? Izzy was just going to print out the pictures and paste them to something?
Except she doesn't have to sketch that. For that matter, a competent phone user could have just taken a series of very small screenshots, then enlarged and reviewed them at will. The Bridlewood unicorns were practically from another century.
"A gallery," Izzy mused to herself as Pipp moved away: tapping sounds from the stylus suggested the unicorn was starting a new round. "Because of the game. We all come together --" and stopped. "Pipp?"
"What?"
"Either your mother plays this or somepony really likes Cloudpuff."
This was the thing about Izzy. Virtually nothing she did made any sense while she was doing it. And all anyony could do was watch her, treat the headache, and occasionally wonder if the next attempt to interrupt would actually do something.
But when you looked back, after the fact...
It was the first day of the Festival or, given how Pipp had chosen to sleep in after the performance of her welcoming composition, the first mid-afternoon. She'd been entitled to extra sleep, because the composition had been very well-received. Ponies had noticed the four-time drumbeat. And the flute portions. She'd received several compliments on the piccolo solo.
Pipp was an artist. She simply sculpted in sound. Any artist had to take inspiration where they found it, because trying to force an idea could block everything. And when it came to other forms of art...
The crafter was in the garden, because that was where the outdoor exhibits where. Along with the ponies who were touring them and given the sheer scope of the central displayed project, they were largely touring through Izzy's imagination.
What did a unicycler do? It was mostly about keeping the old stuff going, long after it already should have been magically replaced.
But there were times when Izzy would carefully collect the debris from everypony else's dreams.
And then she would turn it into something new.
There were spheres in the garden. Spread throughout the greenery, sitting in whatever room could be made available (while not interfering with anypony else's exhibit) while still forming a five-by-five grid. With no free space, which meant the only Breeze was a gentle ocean one.
Each sphere was about the diameter of Pipp's torso. They rested on pedestals, bringing them up to what somehow wasn't too great a height. And the thin wood had been smoothed and painted into the traditional colors for ramuda columns. Some of them even had numbers lurking within the designs, just in case anypony wanted to check a card.
But most of the marveling wanderers were checking for themselves.
The crafter was no good with code. But she could use wiring, and there were very few problems with setting up a switch. So when somepony got close, and their hoof contacted the buried plate -- the nearest sphere would light up from within. And in doing so, granted highlights to the avatar without.
Because a sphere offered an endless border of circles. And so the unicorn had done some work on the exteriors. Some of that was painting, while other portions were relief images: building up bits of wood here to create a three-dimensional tiny section of labyrinth, or bright cloth to suggest a parasail. Carefully-blunted splinters aided with the cacti. Styluses had been put to a myriad of uses. A lot could also be done with buttons in that aspect, but Pipp was mostly trying not to look at those parts.
Every sphere bore at least three avatars: possibly more, depending on where you were standing. (Or hovering.) And ponies happily moved through the community garden, trying to recognize those they might know. Ever so often, a cry of delight arose from an unexpected quarter, as a pony came face-to-face with the way they wanted the world to know them. The digital made real.
Those ponies would then seek out Izzy.
She was in the community garden. Just about all of it: the exact trot route was a cross between museum guide and mobile inspector for any needed spot repairs. And the discovered, the seen would find her, ask about how she'd gotten the idea, sometimes what had made her pick them (although she would always tell those who couldn't work up the nerve), and she smiled. Because just about nothing made Izzy more enthused than new meetings, and the crafter was steadily becoming so delighted as to render her smile into something a little more -- relaxed.
Pipp... looked down at the whole of it, and really didn't understand. Everypony had an avatar: at least, anypony who was online. Real people. She had dozens, partially as a security precaution and occasionally because she had to go into her own fan forums and defend her case somehow. It wasn't as if anypony could spot her there.
(She never really consciously noticed the crowns.)
But the unicorn seemed to feel it was important. The ponies who were touring the exhibit were having fun.
And Izzy was happy.
She'd said something to Pipp on that first night of the idea, while making them both dinner.
"We all come together in the game. Even if we don't know it. Even if we mostly don't think about that. So I'm going to remind everypony. That everywhere you look, there's a person. Lots of people. And when the exhibit goes up -- all of us together make five in a row, in so many directions. That way, nopony ever loses."
Pipp didn't really understand that either. There was a chart of trending songs. Somepony had to be at the top, and that meant somepony else was on the bottom. It was the way the world worked.
But she was performing for mixed audiences now. They all came together at the concerts.
The stupid, deliberately-brainless game, declared as some near-equal form of unity...
...she still didn't get it. But the important thing was that the crafter was happy.
So the royal waited until the unicorn had a moment of free time.
Landed in front of her.
Openly offered public thanks for the composition idea.
And nuzzled Izzy back.
