Tower of strength

Twilight cracked something and gazed up at the girthy task ahead of her with barely-restrained excitement.

She was settling in for a sweaty and exhausting (though ultimately satisfying) afternoon and possibly even also evening of re-sorting and re-cataloguing every single book according to recent updates in classification and arrangement methodology. Twilight always kept up to date on these things. Perhaps a little too up to date.

As might well be expected for someone looking forward to doing something, she was interrupted before she could start. There’d been a knock at the door. She could have sent Spike, but he had some time to himself - because she’d explicitly given him the time so he’d be out the way once she got properly stuck into her organising. Backfired now, of course.

Sighing, cursing Sod’s law, she slouched off to no-doubt be told something to her disadvantage.

Opening the door, she found all the others gathered all at once. Rarely a good sign. None made any move to immediately speak but all looked just a touch apprehensive, and Twilight’s anxiety - tweaked on seeing them all standing there - rose a notch or two.

“Did we have a thing I forgot about? Or is this an intervention for something? Like my need to rearrange books? Or is the thing I forgot about the intervention?” She asked. The six of them shifted awkwardly, shuffling hooves and rubbing necks and failing to meet eyes. Confidence was not boosted.

“Um, no, darling,” Rarity said, delicately.

“Although, it is an intervention. Just not for you,” Pinkie said. As far as clarifications went, not the best one. Twilight sagged a little.

“None of this is improving my calm. Can somepony just tell me what’s going on?”

Another round of shuffling. They were silently electing a spokespony. In the event, Applejack stepped up. Figuratively speaking, obviously - she stayed put, as did all the rest.

“It’s Julian.”

Twilight’s eyes would have rolled out of her head had they been able. Of course it was Julian.

Mean, it could have been any number of things. Dozens, frankly. Scores of things. Nary a dull day passed around here, some nonsense was always rearing its ugly head (or heads). Could have been magic. Could have been monsters. Could have been magic monsters. But that it was Julian came as such a potent anti-surprise she now felt stupid for having needed to ask at all. It should have been the first thing she specifically asked about, if only to eliminate it as an option.

Of course it was Julian.

“What’s he done now?” She asked.

“It’s not what he’s done, it’s what he’s doing.”

On the scale of things, present-tense was the worst tense for bad stuff to be happening in, as it meant you had to do something about it. If he’d done something then there might have been a possibility of taking it a little bit at her own pace, she’d feel less responsibility, it’d be leisurely. Having it be happening now meant she needed to do something now. Unfair.

“Even better. What’s he doing?” She asked.

“He’s building something again. Right in the middle of town this time.”

Tracked, given his record. A question was begging to be asked here, though, at least as far as Twilight was concerned.

“Okay. And you’re talking to me because…. ?”

Rarity was the silently-elected spokespony this time.

“We’re all a bit worried about him, darling - you’d know why if you saw him - and we were rather hoping you might have a word with him.”

Further questions, or rather a refinement of the original question.

“And me as opposed to any of you…?”

“He listens to you,” said Rainbow Dash.

This was plainly untrue, and that she’d even try to say it (with a straight face, no less) was gobsmacking. Twilight’s gob was truly smacked. It could not get anymore smacked.

“No he doesn’t! He doesn’t listen to anyone!” She protested.

This was plainly true, and so true that no-one could even begin to mount an assault on it.

“... it’s that he’s more likely to listen to you,” Applejack said, wincingly, this apparently being close enough to dishonesty to cause her some level of discomfort. Twilight scowled.

“Eurgh! Fluttershy should do it! He likes her!” She said, pointing at the Fluttershy in question.

All eyes went Fluttershy-wards, and Fluttershy went extraordinarily red as she shrank in on herself. You could have fitted her into hand luggage (and she probably wouldn’t have complained that you did so).

“H-he does?”

A shared thought whipped around the group. In it, they pictured this tiny, quivering, retiring Fluttershy being shoved towards Julian as one might move pieces across a war room map, and they pictured what might happen after that. A shared conclusion was reached.

“I don’t think that’ll work,” Pinkie said, frowning gravely.

“Yeah, I can’t see that going anywhere,” Rainbow Dash said.

“So it has to be me?” Twilight asked. She was scowling up a storm, for all the good it did her.

“Looks like,” Rainbow said, nonchalantly. Twilight’s scowl upgraded to a grimace.

“Eurgh! Again! Eurgh again. Fine! Whatever. Talking to Julian again, fine. What am I meant to be saying to him?”

“Just make sure he’s okay, you know?” Rainbow Dash said. Twilight averted her ears and eyesfrom her, wounded by how profoundly unhelpful this was, and asked everyone else:

“How is anyone meant to know what that even looks like for him?”

“We’re just concerned,” Rarity said.

“Yeah, I’m getting that. And what’ll you all be doing while I’m off doing that?” Twilight asked.

“Rooting for you!” Pinkie said, replete with a hoof pumped enthusiastically in the air.

“Real far back,” Rainbow said.

“Wouldn’t want to distract you, darling! Or him. Or get in the way,” said Rarity.

“Yep,” Applejack said, by way of drawing a line under it all (Fluttershy wasn’t in any state to contribute). Twilight looked at each of them in turn and could see no escaping this hole they’d dumped her into.

“Great, thanks. Well fine, I’ll go now, might as well. Not like I was doing anything else or anything like that, what could I be doing? I just sit around waiting for Julian to have another breakdown so I can…”

Twilight continued grumbling as she headed off.

On the plus side, given the apparent lack of general havoc or mayhem, whatever he was doing didn’t seem to be having much of a detrimental effect except to himself. Which is to say, he was not causing any obvious kind of chaos. That was a plus, albeit a slim one. Twilight clung to it as she trotted to the heart of town, where she quickly found him.

She could see why the sight of him might rouse concern.

Immodesty - or, more accurately, a lack of clothing - was not unusual among ponies and was, in fact, SOP, but somehow Julian always managed to make being only-barely-not-naked look somehow uncomfortable to be around. It was probably just how he managed to be at once so hairy, so smooth, and so angular. The crude loincloth he’d fashioned from what was left of his trousers really was the touch that set it all off as well - had he been simply and gaily flapping free in the breeze it wouldn’t have looked as bad, somehow.

But he was not flapping loose and gay. He just looked rough. Like he needed a bath and a sandwich. And probably some fresh bandages on his plainly sore hands, and not the filthy rags he had wrapped around them right at that moment.

At least he looked cheerful, Twilight supposed, girding herself and zeroing in on him.

“~sick sense of humour, and when I die, I expect to find him lau- Ah! Twilight! Hello! I assume you’re real,” Julian said brightly, clocking her approach as she sidled in at him from the side. He still wasn’t looking at her, his attention instead remaining focussed on the heap of sticks, twigs, branches, and planks he had in front of him.

“Have I not been real?” Twilight asked.

“There have been yous that were not real, yes. I may have been asleep, or may have been in that thin zone between asleep and awake. You’re the least worst thing I tend to see in that zone, let me tell you. Point is you are real,” he said, and now he actually turned to look at her as he was talking at her. “I assume. Hello! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She considered how best to approach this. Delicately, she decided.

“What are you doing, Julian?” She asked, and he sputtered, gesticulating at his wood.

“This is the culmination! What you see here is the conclusion of my journey! I can’t just start at the end! You’d lack context, none of it would make sense, it wouldn’t do at all.”

When he wasn’t like this, Julian was actually quite nice. When he was like this, Julian was quite exhausting. Twilight gathered her patience and rationed it out carefully.

“Fine, so start at the start, then get to the end. Please,” she said.

Julian adjusted his loincloth, solving none of the issues he sought to solve.

“Okay. I was feeling listless and directionless and generally at a loose end and so I did what I always do when I feel like that: I embarked on a spiritual journey.”

“Right.”

“Now, a spiritual journey can take many forms of course, as I am sure you are aware! In this instance I decided that my enuui could best be banished by heading into the woods - those woods there - and consuming whatever plantlife I could find that looked like it would have a spiritual impact.”

He was pointing off in a direction, and Twilight blinked at him slowly.

“... I’m sorry?”

“Went to go eat some weird plants. Mushrooms too. They aren’t plants, you know.”

Twilight did know this.

“No, no, I understood the words that came out of your mouth, I’m just having trouble unpicking some of the thinking behind them. So you went into the forest, the Everfree Forest, alone, and just started eating things?”

“Anything brightly-coloured, you know? It seemed the best idea.”

“Did it?!”

“Oh, I’m not a complete fool, Twilight! I wasn’t simply grabbing at random! I had a guide.”

“A guide?”

“Yes! From that, ah, charming zebra lady whose name presently eludes me. Very helpful, she was! Knows a lot about the forest flora. She provided me a list. I may have, ah, perhaps strayed from the list once or twice, but not unwisely. Just enough to ensure optimal results! And I can tell you, results were most optimal. I went on a journey, Twilight!”

“How are you not dead, Julian?!”

“Because I had a guide! Weren’t you listening? Fascinating woman. Magnificent stripes.”

“Julian! You need to rest! Or see a doctor! Or both!”

“I feel wonderful!” He said before promptly turning to the side and vomiting. Twilight, understandably, was taken aback by this.

“Are you okay?!”

Julian, bent double, his hands on his thighs, took a moment to catch his breath before carrying on as though nothing had happened.

“I’m quite alright, really. That’s happening a lot less!”

“Argh! Come on, Julian! No! Not okay!”

“Where was I… oh yes. So! Spiritual journey. I went on that and through that I was granted new, fresh perspective on, well, everything really, but especially on me and my place in the great scheme of things. I saw that I hadn’t been doing what I should have been doing! Just been digging silly holes and twiddling my thumbs, you know?”

“I am aware of the digging.”

The ditch - or dyke, however you preferred to think of it - remained, albeit only mostly finished and now something of a local curiosity and low-key health-and-safety risk. Julian was actually a little embarrassed by it now, as he was of most things he’d started and hadn’t finished, but such was life.

“Overwhelmed as one would be, placed in my position, I re-evaluated. What was needed was a structure. A big structure. Tall, specifically. It must be tall. I was thinking stone at first - a menhir, you know? - but I decided I can’t realistically be lugging huge stones about on my own! And besides, that’d limit my height. So it’s going to be wood! A tower, of sorts. Decorations to follow. I made notes.”

“And this is a tower?”

“It’s the start of a tower.”

Twilight gave a very pointed look to his sticks and planks. His very flat, shallow, close-to-the-ground, not-built-at-all sticks and planks. Even in the midst of a profoundly fey mood, Julian got the message.

“... very early stages of a start, I’ll admit, but a tower needs a bottom, doesn’t it?” He asked, somewhat defensively. Twilight allowed herself a calming breath.

“Julian, I am concerned for your wellbeing, physical and mental. And maybe some other ones I don’t know about. I’m worried about you.”

“Whyever would you be worried about me, Twilight?” He asked before throwing up some more. From the sounds he made (and what came out), it didn’t seem his body had much more to give, but this wasn’t dampening its enthusiasm to give it. So to speak. After a few enjoyable moments of painful retching he straightened up again, wiping his mouth on his wrist. He was, once more, smiling.

“Yeah see, it’s things like that.”

“Oh it’s not that bad. Maybe some of my forest bounty was better left in the forest! It’s mostly vacated the premises now anyway! And look at me! Picture of health!”

It should go without saying that Julian was likely a picture of a few things, but health was none of them. The look on Twilight’s face could have planed wood.

“Yeah no, no, I don’t think I can’t let this go on, Julian. Sorry.”

“You used to be so much fun,” he said, pouting.

“I was never the kind of fun you’re thinking of.”

Now she mentioned it, she had a point. Julian tapped his chin.

“Might have been one of the imaginary Twilights…”

“Obviously. Look, I’m not saying you need to not do… this thing you’re doing, I’m just saying that maybe for today you should take a break, okay?”

“A break? No! No no, that wouldn’t do, Twilight, no. It’d disrupt my flow! It’d throw my whole schedule off! I must finish the tower, Twilight! It’s part of the plan, Twilight! This is simply one piece of the plan. Step one!”

“Plan?”

“Yes yes, the plan which came to me. Well, the plan didn’t come to me, what had to happen came to me, the plan came once I was coherent enough again. The plan is how to achieve what has to happen! See? My notes, here.”

He handed her his notes. Where he’d been hiding them Twilight preferred not to think about, and even holding them with magic she felt a little dirty. She had a quick flick through his pages and pages of scribbled notes. They were, unsurprisingly, gibberish. The spidery, splintered scrawl of a man who’d clearly feared that if he didn’t get down what was in his head fast enough he’d forget it. Twilight learnt nothing of value.

“It’s part of a greater design. This was my failure before, I feel. Beyond my inability to finish anything, heh. My true failure was failing to know what I wanted to achieve. What the goal should be! And now I do. This is a grand pattern, you see? A grand design. Something sprawling and magnificent and connected. More than the sum of its parts! And I will see it through, one step at a time, and I will actually finish it! Then the universe will notice me! That’s the plan, at least.”

“... it is?”

“Yes!”

“... why is that the plan, Julian?”

“Pardon?”

“Why do you want the universe to notice you? Why is that the plan?”

He opened his mouth to confidently respond only to pause when the words failed to come. He looked genuinely perplexed by this and tried a few more times but still words failed to come. By the time he gave up he looked outright confused.

“You know, it’s quite slipped my mind.”

“Alright, and if you don’t know why you’re doing something there’s no guarantee what you’re doing is what you need to be doing, is there? So how about you take a little break. Maybe see a doctor? Maybe put some clothes on.”

“Feels an awful lot like timewasting to me, Twilight.”

“Wouldn’t be doing the wrong thing be even worse than wasting time, though? That’d be like wasting twice as much time, if you think about it.”

Think about it he did.

“... hmm. What sort of a break?”

She had him on the ropes.

“I do want you to see a medical professional, that’s non-negotiable for me, sorry. I need to know if you’re hours from death. After that, though, how does lunch sound?” She asked.

“It sounds tempting, I must admit. Other than things I found in the forest I haven’t eaten in… you know, I’ve quite lost track!”

His ability to deliver deeply concerning lines with such casual ease never got any easier for Twilight to endure. She rubbed her face with a hoof, eyes screwed shut.

“Julian… I really…”

“Just you and me, is that?”

Twilight stopped rubbing.

“You, me, the others,” she said, feeling not a jot or tittle of remorse for volunteering her friends for Lunch With Julian duty, given they’d happily shanghaied her into Talk Julian Down duty. She then decided on a whim to needlessly specify: “Fluttershy.”

His ears pricked.

“Fluttershy?”

“Yes, she’ll be there.”

Whatever Julian was thinking at this point was unclear, but he was standing up just that tiniest bit straighter and was trying to do something with his hair. What he was trying to do was open to interpretation, but it wasn’t nothing.

“Perhaps a little break wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world…” He said, staring off into middle distance. Twilight nodded. Job done. Or step one of the job, anyroad. The two of them started heading off, side by side.

“There we go. Doctor first though, just to make sure you don’t drop and start frothing on us,” she said. Julian barked out a laugh to the heavens.

“Oh I doubt I’ll need to do that again so soon after last time!”

Twilight decided she didn’t need to say anything to that.