Circles and Toppled Eights
It was without doubt the worst of times, though everyone with a say in things seemed to think otherwise. They pushed stalwartly towards what they thought was a better future, but were blinded so by their achievements that they could not tell heaven from hell. They believed cheap pleasure was more than enough compensation for friendship, and that the world was flat.
I
I was a colt again in my reverie. I sat on a barrel fastened with black iron on the roof of the warehouse next to the orphanage in Baltimare. Gulls circled on westward sea breezes before swooping off to the bay below Olympian mountains in the form of orange clouds. I sat there for a long while. I watched the sun set and thought about why I was and whether I had a destiny. Eventually it would be dark and I would remember that nobody would call me in for supper, I didn’t have parents, I was an orphan like all the rest, and so I would get up and climb back into the orphanage through the third story window. Sometimes, though, I would wait a little longer, just sitting there and watching Luna’s moon rise past the dark stratus and into the heavens, and pretend that I did have a mother and she would call me in soon. Celestia and Luna were my mothers, if anyone and I would pretend that, too. When I went back into the orphanage supper would be finished and I wouldn’t eat. I would lie in bed and wonder where I belonged until sleep at last took me.
“Would you like some more Lonicera Wine?”
I tilted my glass from side to side, the flow of my memories broken, watching the last drops of dark, alcoholic honeysuckle juice slide back and forth, not making I contact. I kept that up for an unreasonably long period of ten seconds before I set the glass back on the counter-top and opted to check out the bar-pony instead. She was young, pretty, light blue… Everything was blue. It seemed that the last reds and yellows disappeared when I crossed the river Lin and entered the region of Lael.
I had been scrutinizing her for some time now, 15 seconds give or take a few, and she looked slightly bemused. I think she liked the attention, however, as she showed no trace of disconcertion at my prolonged assessment.
“Forgive me if I stare. I mean nothing by it. Pray tell your name?”
“Livvy. What’s yours, and from where do you come?”
Everything was blue and every name started with an L, I mused.
“You can call me Fog, and I was reared in Equestria.”
“What brings you to this village of Sylthia? It takes years to reach this destination from Equestria with the fastest transport, and nopony wants to spend a year in a boat and two on trains without pause. Most take ten years to reach this point, stopping along the way to get the most out of their travels and to recuperate after spending months in transit. Those that make the voyage are pioneers, ponies who set out to find a new life, not those wishing to vacation. You don’t look like such a pony, and few return to Equestria after arriving hereto.”
“You are correct in your inference. I am no pioneer with hopes of starting a new life.” This I said to the pretty blue unicorn, and then softly, “Celestia bless me should I know for what purpose I came hither.”
“Celestia?” Livvy questioned, “I thought your ponies didn’t have much interest in her anymore.”
“Some still do. But scientists, lawyers, doctors, philosophers…intellectuals; they took the romance out of magic. We discovered new lands a thousand leagues away, like Lael, and places with intriguing plants and animals like Sylthia here. ‘Pioneers’ as you said, those who had no interest, even then, in the Princesses and the culture they stood for, headed south and settled with new found freedom. You must be descended from them, although I certainly do not hold you accountable for their actions. Nor were their actions really so bad: it was their mindset, which lives today in almost everypony, and is distinguished by a passionate obsession with progress at whatever cost, that ushered in a new epoch of impersonalism wherein ponies no longer care for community and instead rush away from family and friends for the ‘greater good’ of that wicked science. And so friendship, as magic, is dead.”
Livvy stood still for the duration of my speech, listened, and blinked several times upon its completion, before questioning:
“So you’re something of a traditionalist, then?”
“You could say that.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’d come here. In fact it serves to confuse me more; I would think one like you would wish to stay close to your Princesses and homeland.”
She filled my glass with Lonicera Wine and I downed it before answering:
“Princess Celestia has retreated into melancholy and nostalgia for past times, forsaking her duties (the administration of Equestria is now managed by a Parliament) and filling her thoughts and quarters with relics of that glorious past. She has not a friend in the country, now that Luna has left for the northern regions, and the general populace considers her herself to be a relic of a primitive bygone era. ‘The sun rises without her,’ they say, ‘the moon rises without her; she is probably not even immortal, and will die eventually. What good is she?’”
I held up my glass for another refill, this time savoring it with small sips, and continued:
“There was nothing left for me there. In a strange way I feel that, by travelling to this remote region, and further, where nopony has ever gone before (yes, I mean to say that I will, after taking my leave from here within the hour, set out to climb over the blue hills and into whatever eternity awaits), I can somehow be closer to her; to all of them.”
It was an idea that had long inhabited my mind; it was my hope, more theological than philosophical, more philosophical than scientific. Livvy didn’t press the matter further, though, and so I did not elaborate.
II
The big portrait in the entrance way of the Carousal Orphan’s Home was of a white unicorn with a blue mane. She seemed so regal and I always wondered if she had a softer side. Nobody talked about her much, save for once when I refused to give a wood block to a unicorn colt who was building a castle. It was a poor castle and I could have made a much better one. I didn’t want to give my wood block for such an amateur design. One of the caretakers, whose name was Miss Felicity, told me that Rarity, the white unicorn from the entrance, represented the Element of Generosity, and that she helped save Equestria from all kinds of dangers and villains. She built the orphanage and she would want me to be generous and share the block, and so I did, in the end. Later Miss Felicity stopped supervising playtimes, and I didn’t see her at the warden’s table at mealtimes, and I asked the new caretaker why. She only muttered something about sentimentalists having no place in the future, how the warden did right to sack her, and told me to go play.
I spent a lot of time in the orphanage’s attic. It was full of junk. There were antique maple desks and cabinets, a heavy cedar trunk filled with silk dresses and cretonne curtains, portraits of important ponies, long dead, and other vestiges of the past. In a dark ironwood case inlaid with a gold filigree depiction of the sun and moon, I found six statuettes carved of alabaster. I played with them briefly before losing interest and moving on to explore a chest filled with books. I read about a Badlands Sheriff named Quick Draw McGraw and played that I was him until I became bored and went back to digging in the chest. Finally I came upon a book called The Story of Nightmare Moon, and read it in the ample full-moon light that poured in through the big window that overlooked the harbor where there were boats with white sails.
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn. The younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance, for their kingdom, and their subjects: all the different types of ponies.
I sat there on my knees and looked out at the moon and wished, like my princess, that I was living in a happier time.
I read that book through to its completion and then found a thicker tome that was titled The Elements of Harmony and their Modern Incarnations. It had no pictures and the text was small. I tried to read it but after I finished a paragraph I would realize I was unable to remember anything of it, because the words were too big, and there were those horrible dates that grown-ups seemed to like so much. I left it for other amusements at the time, but it lingered always in my mind. I always assumed, as a colt, that it held the answers I looked for and that I would eventually get around to reading it.
When I did, at the age of 13, a year before I ran away from the orphanage, I realized the significance of those six statuettes. I thought about taking them with me when I eloped in a wild romance with my foalish dreams, but the place was hallowed, sacred, it was the former summer room of Rarity, I learned, and it was one of the last strongholds of the past. I never took anything out of it, and I never returned to that room after I left Baltimare.
III
Sylthia was famous, though it was no more than a small hamlet. It was the last frontier of the southward exploration; it was the place you heard about when you were told of the advancement of science and progress. The republicans and nationalists (only they can tell the difference between themselves), went so far as to declare Sylthia their own, declare her a symbol of their advancement and the advancement of their ideals. It caused tension between the mainland and the pioneers, and some in Sylthia were plotting to declare themselves and all land south of the Lin as the nation of Lael, separate from Equestrian influence, thus severing ties with the Parliament. There were scarcely twoscore ponies in Sylthia, and less than a hundred and forty in Lael total, so they had no real hope if the Parliament acted for Equestria to take up arms against them.
The village of Sylthia, with the tavern as its nucleus, was also home to the final Post Station in the Equestrian Line. Letters were sent via dragon magic, since it would take far too long with train and vessel, and the local dragon’s name was Garzner. Lizzy had given me directions to the station and, presently, I set off thither in my noticeably inebriated state.
Having left the tavern, I set off west through the garden-like village colony and pondered its aesthetics.
I crossed the Lin River a month ago and roamed from colony to colony since. It was always overcast, and the clouds radiated a cool blue light, which contrasted with the red glow that seeped through the thin paper spheres of the lamps that were hung from lines between the trees. I stepped from one raised stepping stone to the other, following the pathway that seemed to meander without purpose through the gardens. The ground was comprised of white pebbles and there were palm trees, gardenia bushes, and magnolia trees to be seen throughout, as well as bonsai trees and the hallmark lonicera honeysuckle. The stepping stones would be replaced by the tops of stone columns when the path would cross ponds. Water lilies, lotuses, and lily pads adorned the water’s surface and orange and gold fish were barely visible below in the swirls of dark water. The columns seemed emanate mysteriously from the depths of the water, unable to be perceived in the faint light for more than a few inches below the surface.
I arrived at the post station and prepared to write my editorial.
IV
Dear Ponies of Equestria,
Life keeps us always only barely balanced on the precipice of death. Some walk close to the edge and feel the adrenaline pumping in their veins as they fight a losing battle for some high and foolish ideal. Eventually they are pushed and fall gracefully into the abyss. Others have less courage and shy away from that daunting drop, only to eventually be unceremoniously kicked from their perch and fall with only ignoble attachments and cowardice to show for their lives. It is easy to declare in youth who was the better pony; it is harder to determine with the knowledge of age who was truly naïve.
The redeeming characteristic of our mortal race is not our defeatist wisdom, however. That is not true wisdom, and it is better, then, to leave such musings to our Princess Celestia, who is more immortal than us. The true virtue and endearing quality of our race is that same naivety, that same childishness which makes us rash and impulsive. We are born, we love with passion and affection, we die, and our lives are lost in evanescence and are forgotten.
That is the way it always was until fools in white lab coats told us that we needed to progress. And maybe they didn’t tell us, maybe not vocally, but with their discoveries and advancements they impressed it upon us. They took away from us the one thing that made our short lives worth the pain that came in equal shares with our pleasures.
We are all forgotten eventually, and the post-mortem fame of those that perpetuate themselves in life does them no good. I ask then, why? Why has our lust for technology and discovery become more prominent than our loyalty, our generosity, our truthfulness, and our kindness? Why did we stop inciting laughter and joy in our friends, and start laughing at the faults and misfortunes of others?
I cannot tell, and I do not have any miracle cure for this dilemma. There is no short cut, there is no panacea - the only way we can reverse this descent into selfishness is a collective upheaval of self interest for the interests of others, and not just our friends, but everypony. We must avoid forming factions, wherein one pretends to care for his fellows only to solidify his position in the faction, and where hate is passed from one group to the next, and revert to the ways of yesterday.
This is not, however, the way things progress. The downward spirals of history have always followed their momentum down to Hell. My hope lies in post-mortem ascension, even though I know the childishness of such faith. I wish for the heaven on the other side, for Eldorado…Mostly though, I wish for the Ponyville of yesterday. Heaven, Eldorado, Utopia – these are just names on paper, sanctuaries for the minds of tired philosophers, terms meant to bring to mind something you have wanted but have never seen. But you have seen friendship, you have seen love, and you can shape the future with your sweat and blood. I bid that you ponder this.
Your friend,
Fog
V
A foal sat in the square of light cast by Luna’s moon through the window. She was a filly. She wasn’t more than 8 years old. She would look out, sometimes, over the harbor with the ships with pearly white sails, over the thin barrier island on the other side, with its quaint houses, and across the sea. But for now she was contented with reading. She was reading a book about six mares that lived a long time ago. Rarity was one of them, and this was her bedroom. The little filly felt safe here. It was like a sanctuary against the cold, big world outside. But she was a brave filly. She didn’t believe that the world was as big as they said it was.
“It doesn’t scare me,” she would say. Sometimes, the she did get a little scared of the world outside of her sanctum, though. Sometimes, when she couldn’t be in Rarity’s room, and fillies and colts were mean to her, and the caretakers would scold her, she wanted to run away back up to the fourth story of the orphanage and bury her head the book about the six mares. But she always held her ground.
“I read something in a newspaper I stole from the warden today,” she told Applejack, one of the six statuettes, “it was an article by a stupid scientist. He proposed a theory that the world goes on forever. I know that’s not true though. And it’s not flat, either. I think it’s round.”
She remained silent for a moment, pondering.
“There was also another article. It was by a pony named fog. I liked that one.”
She heard the clock strike twelve. She had to wake up early in the morning. It was imperative that she left the orphanage before anyone else woke up. She required at least a few hours head start if she was to evade those that would be searching for her.
“What do you think, Twilight? Do you think it’s possible that the world might be round? That if I sail east from here, I might end up back here again?” she looked past the harbor with the ships with white sails, and the barrier island with its familiar homes, and out over the sea.
“What if time is round too?”
The cold alabaster statuette remained impassive, silent. She would have to act on her own unconfirmed thesis.
VI
Livvy watched as the plain, chestnut brown form of a pony she had only met within the day grew smaller in the distance. He wore a walnut brown saddlebag. He wore a red, white and black bandana around his neck. Browns and red. He was utterly out of place beneath the blue sky of Lael. He was lost.
She wet her cloth in the sink, dabbed some soap on it, and proceeded to wipe the bar. There was not a drop spilled where Fog had sat. There was no trace he had been there at all. She looked back up, hoping to catch one last glimpse of him. But he was gone. He had rounded the first of many purple hills, and entered the unknown. He would not return.
She continued to methodically wipe the bar even though Fog had been her first customer and no one had come since his departure. The bar would be extra clean that day.
