Benediction

by Eustatian Wings

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Original Character
Length: 5788

We are. They are more.

We are everything. They are the ponies who live in us and give us our meaning.
(Or, the author ships everything - all of it - with ponies.)

"... amazingly well-written. ... It actually reminded me of Madeleine l'Engel's A Swiftly Tilting Planet " - Golden Vision

"This is the most pretentious thing I've ever read. And I've read the Inheritance Cycle, god help me." - Pracca

Published 2012-12-25 04:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-12-25 04:50:02 UTC

Breath and Blood

We are the thunderheads gathering over Los Pegasus. We are the silent caverns under Canterlot. We are the chatter and cant of squirrels in the trees around a forgotten meadow.

We have spent an eternity dead. We have waited for them and they are our joy.

By night the moon gilds our foliage. By day the sun blesses us with her heat. Our waters rise as mist over our forests; our skies boil and bear our clouds. Our rain falls and carves our face. Our currents churn at the roots of our mountains.

We are trembling earth, cracking stone, gouts of fire, thunder's flash.

We are terrible. We are beautiful. We are cruel. We are kind. We are all things as they have called us, and without them we are what we are and nothing more.

We are the salt of the sea. We thirst for life. We are all things that creep and overgrow. We are sweet fruit and stout lumber. We are flesh and breath. We bask in the light and drink our rain and sway in our wind and let our uncountable children fall from our branches. We run and stalk and wait and hunt and play and live and kill and die. We lend our blood to our creatures, to our selves. When we can use it no more, we return it to our earth.

We drift and flit through our sky. We are the cotton seed. We are the fireflies. We are the icy rainbow halo around the sun. We are updraft and shade and storm. We are wind and blizzard. We fill sails and lift hearts. We wear mountains down to dust. We are the aurorae. We are zephyrs and we are hurricanes.

We are undiscovered fortunes. We are power and patterns, ritual and rite. We are the stars and moon and sun. We are seasons and eons and ages. We are the aether and dragons' fire. We are magic and rhythm.

We have spent an eternity dead. We are life loaned and lived. They are other - they are not us. They borrow our flesh and live our life and they give us that which we had not before. Our voice is the whisper of wind and crack of thunder, meaning without words.

He is hungry, starving to death - not soon; he does not know it yet. But then all our creatures are starving whether they know it or not. We together are eternal. They are each by each evanescent. Days without food will weaken him. Weeks without food will kill him.

He and his family have now lived for months on only the food kept in their cellars. We are harsh here, our soil thin and unbroken. We grow rocks and pine trees, which thrust narrow and tall into the mists of this spring morning. The sun has barely risen. No birds garland the air with their song.

Our frost picks at the hairs of his nose. His breath billows in clouds and he sets himself once again against his collar. It is anchored by means of two stout chains to a plow set into our earth. He is a stocky earth pony, tawny-coated and gray-maned. Where the chains run across his flanks he has wrapped padded cloth them.

He grunts and pulls, and the plow moves. It grates and the chains jingle and no other sounds disturb our air. A few more steps and he crosses for a moment a bright pool of sunlight. The white of our frost has faded there. Above the chains, the images of three gems shine emblazoned on his hip: one blue, one pink, and one green.

They are the dream for which he came here. Here we grow rocks. But a pony is a creature like all our creatures: he breathes and excretes and bit by bit his body dwindles. Here we must grow alfalfa and vetch and squash; if we do not, no matter how much he dreams, he will blow away on our winds. It is not our nature to grow such things here. Even now, steam rises from his sides and evaporates to nothing.

The plow catches. His forehoof slips on an icy rock and he stumbles and scrapes his knee. He sighs and pauses, sits back on his hindquarters, soft metal sounds. He watches his blood ooze out into our air. The cold stings his knee, but our ground is a relief against his hams. For the first time that morning he hears a jay's raspy call.

And then in a moment the silence is broken again when the door of his farmhouse snaps open. The sound is hollow, like a woodpecker's strike. Then the cold air is filled with the laughter of his foals. His son shuts the door softly, an attentive, considerate soul. Hit daughter has broken into full gallop. Small as she is, he can hear her hooves strike our ground. She is a pegasus; her coat and plumage burn bright and warm. Somepony might capture a sunset and spend weeks simmering it down and in the end its color would not be half as rich as hers.

A smile crosses the stallions face. He can't let her catch him slacking and so once again he makes himself stand. She giggles and leaps and glides to his side. He tells her to mind the blade.

Steel-shod his hooves trample our ground. Steel-sharp his plow binds us. We are stony. He is stonier. At his command our life will occupy the soil. It will embrace the light, drink our water, become his flesh. He and his family will not starve this year.

She has been cursed with this blizzard, utterly cursed, and it's giving her a headache. She can feel it gnawing somewhere at the root of her horn. Her book lies forgotten next to her couch. She sprawls on it next to the fire, her coat slate-gray and blue her mane.

"I told you already, you're the hydra."

"But I don't wanna be the hydra. I wanna be the knight."

"You can't be the knight. You're a girl."

"Am not! Oh. Uh, wait..."

"Hahahah! You said it - little brother."

Children are such a blessing and a curse. The mare groans again and rubs her eyes with a hoof. Our wind whips along stone passageways chiseled into the side of a mountain. On a clear day, the unicorn town can be seen from farther than a day's trot away. It is whitewashed stone and roofs of yellow slate. Bright banners flutter from its parapets.

But today we are not a clear day. The sun barely shines; it is the red hue of blood. The banners have all been taken in, except one forgotten. Our wind rips it to shreds and tears away what little is left.

"Ouch! You bit me."

"Well, you said I was supposed to be the hydra."

"On the ear!"

Twins are double the blessing and double the curse. Their voices blend in perfect singsong cacophony. "Mom!"

She definitely has a headache now. She opens her eyes. Even the indirect light from the fireplace throbs against her eyeballs. She envies her neighbors and their thick stone walls. "Glitter, you are not to be nibbling on anypony's ears. Not for a good long time."

Glitter laughs - it's such a silly idea to her. Her voice rings like sleighbells. Her brother sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry at her. "Now apologize," he demands.

They face each other, perfect visual complements. She is white; her curly mane shines baby blue and gold. He is a dark brown; his mane is straight and spiky, black and shot with streaks of red.

"I have an idea," their mother says. "How about a field trip?" She hopes the little wretches enjoy it. They might even learn something too.

"But there's no school today." Glitter doesn't complain, her voice is curious.

"That's why it's the perfect day to learn something on your own. Now bundle up, both of you."

Their chipper cheers slice into her brain, but it is a happy wince that crosses her face. She finds her sunglasses and a warm scarf and, in the back of a closet, an old traveling blanket . Pride swells warm deep inside her when she sees that, yes, they can dress themselves now.

The door of their apartment opens into a courtyard. Our snow, a fine sandy dust, falls in sheets that whip horizontally across it. Within seconds, the mother imagines, her foals have had all the outside they could possibly want.

She leads them out and shuts the door behind the three of them.

"How far are we going?" Glitter asks. She nuzzles close to her mother. Our wind sings.

"Oh, not far at all," the mare replies. "Now, what do you know about windigoes?"

She leads them around the edge of the courtyard, where the walls help break the power of our wind. It is a bitter cold. She spins a terrible tale of the founding of Equestria, how our windigoes once fed on the coldness of bickering ponies and lay a blizzard over our land. We are windigoes no more. She knows this but she does not tell her foals.

They turn across the courtyard. The gardens have died back and the trees are all skeletal and leafless. Only the fir at the center of one side stands green. Beyond it a staircase descends under a stone arch, the gateway to the town's square. Where the snow has drifted deep in the courtyard, it comes up to the foals throats so that they aren't sure if they are walking or swimming in it.

As the mother is turning to the final act of her story, where friendship melts ice, she realizes Glitter is missing. She turns and looks back in her tracks, searching for a white filly in white snow. Her heart jumps into her throat. "Glamor!" she calls, "Stay close!" and her dark-coated colt obeys.

He too realizes his sister's absence. They call for her in turn. "Glitter!"

"Glitter!"

They find her shivering behind a planter, her hiding place barely betrayed by the shock of gold in her mane. She is crying. The mare levitates her daughter, paying no attention to her headache now. Her magic, like her eyes, is the pale amber of clover honey. On a clear day they never would have left the sight of their door, but today we are not a clear day.

Along the way home she asks the filly atop her back why she had stopped. Glitter hugs her neck tighter and sobs. "I- I'm sorry," she says. "I need to stop fighting with Glamour so the storm can end. I didn't think I could and- and then I couldn't see you..."

"I think you missed the best part of the story," the mare says. She resumes the legend, telling of the fire of friendship. We freeze her tears to the corners of her eyes.

We are sickness and we are suffering. We are griffons' eggs that never hatch. We are the ground which drinks our blood returned. Glitter and Glamour never knew their big sister. They are their mother's pride. She dearly longs to be worth their love.

There is no more bickering the rest of the day. The foals have found themselves stories to read each other. The mother has at last her quiet. Even when their voices swell they do not seem too loud in her ears.

When we rage we have no restraint. She is more terrible still. She is the calm within our storm. And our blizzard will not cross her threshold.

We are death and we are birth. We are family. And we are the summer sky. The western sea is at our back. We face a dry landscape of mesas and stone stained red and brown. We are wilderness of which pegasi forge their city.

She is the last of her bloodline; she will die before she bears a foal, and yet she does not mourn. She does not know. Today she has stolen herself to a forgotten alley at the edge of the city. There the cloudstuff grows softer and untamed, and there she lounges in a hollow where their clouds are becoming our clouds.

It feels so good for her to yawn and stretch. The vanes of her feathers, each a pale lilac hue, spread and reach deeper into the cloud. Like the thick salt water of a dead inland sea, it offers just enough resistance to keep her floating on top.

Her eyes are closed. Her mouth opens wide. She stretches straight her forehooves she had clasped behind her head. She is youth, lithe and nubile, and when she opens her eyes they are a lucid, delicate orange full of wonder and hunger.

Today we are a fine day. She is at once content and desiring, like a foal one step through the door of the shop of a world-famous confectioner. She has felt this way often since spring, and she likes it. It is not like the ache that gnaws deep in the bones of her limbs. It is the feeling that everything is possible and that she possesses all our time with which to enjoy it.

She has only flown a little. It exhausts her and she envies the adults who make it look so easy. But in this moment, she is full of energy. She draws her forehooves back to her chest and for no reason she giggles to herself.

Then with a twist, she rolls over and climbs unsteady to her hooves. The cloud shifts; she has to keep her legs loose and slightly crouched as it rolls and rocks beneath her. Once she has figured out standing, she grows bored. She next becomes exuberance, splashing and skidding and running about. She pops up for brief moments on flittering wings. She slips and falls and the cloud is so soft it doesn't hurt at all.

Our sky is in her heart. She and we are family. Her bloodline dies with her.

She stops for a moment. Our blood runs in her veins. It warms her hooves and rushes in her ears. Our breath fills her lungs. It is sweet. She crouches low, so that our cloud reaches up and holds her belly and chest. Her tail lies relaxed. It is long and straight and spills across the cloud like a mariner's floating line. It is three brilliant spectral colors: red and yellow-green and blue.

She spies one of our wild birds soaring from over the city. It floats on huge black wings. Its head is naked and tanned leathery and red. It settles atop the last building, a little shed at the edge of solid cloud, and eyes her calmly.

She decides, out of pure, innocent, youthful impulse to hassle it. She edges close. The bird watches and ignores her. She edges closer and crouches low and holds her tail high and twitching.

Only when she launches herself upward, do we take flight and glide to another building. We are patience.

She skitters and laughs and flitters and chases back and forth. Gradually she strays further and further and the clouds grow softer and softer. When she lands on them, she sinks deeper and deeper.

Before she knows it, the clouds are missing. Our wind rushes around her. Our blood rushes within her. She is weightless. She is falling. And from the height of the deck of Los Pegasus, she will fall for a long time.

After a second and a half of mindless, voiceless screaming, she knows that the only thing that can possibly save her life are her untested wings. She spreads them. Our wind rewards her with a vicious tug that threatens to rip them from their shoulders. A jolt of pain runs from their roots, down either side of her neck, and deep into her chest. She falls into a tumble, clutching her wings tight.

She has shut her eyes against the wind. Tears of pain and frustration and self-disappointment fill them. She hurts. She feels sick. And now she's angry, too.

It is so very hard to tell through the tears and the disorientation, but she thinks the ground is getting closer. It has to be. And she has to do something. She opens her wings ever so slightly. It takes all of her strength to control them - we try to pry them away.

After a moment's experiment, she realizes she can speed up her spin with one wing and thus slow it with the other. She steadies herself. She hoots in happiness and regrets it at once, because it's so hard to draw breath when we are a cataract against her face.

She leans upward, and zooms away from the ground. Her wings ache, but the pain feels distant and unimportant next to the torrent of panic and pride and all the other feelings rushing through her. She turns speed to altitude and, as she slows, smoothly spreads her wings fully open. She tries to hover at her peak. Pain shoots through her chest and wing-shoulders, so she falters and catches herself into a glide. Los Pegasus is far, far above - she cannot reach it. But, she realizes, she can reach the ground. She has no idea what she'll do after that. All her feelings crest and burst out as a barely coherent yell.

"Woaaaaaah-yeah! Take that and eat it, sky!"

We are the joy in life. She laughs brighter. The wind in her wings tosses her aloft and buoys up her soul. She will never bear a foal. But our wind, her wind too, will buoy the souls of everypony she will teach throughout the long years to come. She is the first of her dynasty.

Once upon a time, a road crumbled on the side of one of our mountains. It fell, and with it fell a cart being pulled by a unicorn. He carried his life's savings. He carried his hope to prosper. We carried him to his death.

He was for us a windfall. We took back from him the flesh we had loaned him. He had carried food in his cart. Our mice thrived. They built themselves an empire until, within the season, they stripped the very last edible scrap from his wreck.

We had had a surplus of grain. We now had a surplus of mouse-flesh. Our mice are not sentimental. Our mice are not fools. The strongest survived and escaped. The weakest fed their strength.

It is a grave insult, even if not entirely unprovoked. He stands, hooves set strong upon the cloud macadam. His holds his wings high and his head low. He glares at the ponies ringing him. He is young and strong. His chest is broad even by pegasus standards.

And he most certainly does not do that to his sister, whom he loves dearly - and by no measure perversely.

Sundog is watching his reaction closely, triumph shining atop his forest-green irises.

"Sundog, ye wound me." He can barely keep his voice from shaking, so great is his rage and fear. "And I, Quiet Drift, demand satisfaction be it in word and deed or be it in bone and blood!"

We are ritual. We are power. He is pegasus, not unicorn, but his voice resonates with us still. We are struggle. We are sacrifice. We are the fire that proves the passions of life. We sniff the air and lick our lips.

"Oh," Sundog says. "Th'art wounded. What of your lies, then? I am no cheat, no scoundrel. I have earn'd my victories, as thou knowest well and art too cowardly to say! Aye, satisfaction shall be had."

Ritual thus appeased, the ring of pegasi closes in. They chant, "Fight! Fight!"

Sundog demands their silence with an upraised hoof. "Not now, guys," he proclaims. "Tomorrow. Atop the Thunderfall Heights at first light."

"Sounds good to me. Bare hooves and bound wings. And I trust you to remember that the dawn comes early up there!"

When Drift announces his choice of arms, he sees a flicker of fear cross his foe's eyes. He softly and with self-satisfaction snorts. It was, after all, a grave insult, worth a split lip at the very least.

Our autumn air carries the first breaths of winter. Sunlight sets the Heights aglow, a beacon shining above shadowed city streets. Even so Drift has arrived early. So has Sundog. Their parties take their places at two points along the bank of the thunderflow, a crackling and roiling river of our aether. By night it beckons ponies home to the city with its flickering glow. Not a single pony says anything until the dawn comes and throws their shadows long across it.

"Quiet Drift, I see you made it." Sundog sashays easily across the spongy cloudstuff.

"You too, Sundog. Don't you have something to say?"

"You still think you're getting an apology? Sleet, if I was gonna apologize, I wouldn't have gotten my wings tied. You're goin' down for that alone."

Quiet Drift rolls his eyes. "Let the record show my opponent's disdain for my choice of arms."

"I ain't complainin'! I'll fight you any way you want!" Sundog cries. He drops his head low and charges.

Drift keeps calm and centers himself, his only sign of tension how he shifts and widens his stance. He tracks Sundog's incoming trajectory, timing exactly when to sidestep. A tiny motion in Sundog eyes tells Drift that he plans to turn. Drift stands firm, casually adjusts his hindquarters, and neatly trips Sundog's forehoof against his quadriceps.

A sideways shove helps send Sundog sprawling; he throws up a spray of mist as he skids atop the cloud. Drift wheels and rears, ready to meet his recovering opponent. Sundog instead stays lying down. Drift drops down to all fours to move, and that is the moment Sun chooses to rise. He has a double-kick practiced, one for lift and another to strike. Drift doesn't quite dodge it, he takes a glancing blow across his shoulder.

The strike on his shoulder is barely a bruise, but Drift finds himself backing off seeing stars. Tiny bones and tendons sting: Sundog also struck the wrist of his wing.

Sundog is circling, eyes locked to Drift's. "First blood?"

"Not what I'd call blood," Drift growls. "And we're going 'till somepony gives in." His next move is sudden, launched from stillness, giving no tell for Sundog to read. He catches Sun's neck between his own and his forehoof. Grappling is his strength; he throws Sundog down.

Quiet Drift's next kick would, were they fighting on hard-cloud or ground, quite possibly maim Sundog's ear. On the softer cloud of the Heights, it sinks into mist, passing by almost without harm.

Sundog is barely scraped - there's a ringing in his ear - but he knows at that moment he has to get free. Quiet Drift is heavier and a better wrestler. Sundog, on his back with his wings bound, is in trouble if he can't get up soon. He tries to wriggle his hindquarters into a position where he can buck Drift off of him. He has no luck.

Drift consolidates his hold and draws his hoof back. He's just about to beat the everloving snot out of the punk.

A filly's voice, high and clear, cuts through the morning air. "Quiet Drift, you're gonna be in so much trouble!" Drift recognizes his sister at once. Looking up he sees her in silhouette, wings flared, framed against the fires of dawn. Small as she is, she stomps towards him with the authority of an avenging angel.

"It'll be worth any punishment, sis. You wouldn't believe the unspeakable things he said about you!"

"I've heard," she says. "And you still can't hit him. If you mess up his face, Whisperbolt is gonna make my life a living Tartaran nightmare. Ugh! Boys. You pick fights and never think about the consequences!"

Quiet Drift looks at his hoof and down at Sundog's face and back up into his sister's icy stare. "Who's Whisperbolt?" he asks nopony in particular.

"My marefriend," Sundog admits. "She's a terror."

"You," Drift begins, picking his words carefully. "Seriously, buck, you are some kind of whipped..." He lowers his hoof, steps back, and lets Sundog up.

"You're just as bad," Sundog says. Drift shoots him a withering glare. "Sorry. Not meaning to imply anything. Just, you know..."

He rolls his eyes and the two young stallions say it together: "Mares."

We are cruel. Their mercy is crueler. Ours is the law of tooth and claw, bloody hooves and crippling kicks. When one of our creatures is broken, we are death. We are new life. They demand each day more and more of each other. They grow towards perfection. And as for Quiet Drift... he and Sundog will one day be grandfathers and old friends. We know their granddaughter. She will have the sky in her heart.

Before they came we were freedom. We are the wild spaces, violent and majestic. We were the seasons. We were the plans and patterns of life. We are the silent wings of death.

They made us their slaves. They took our freedom. They put us under the plow. They carved our stone to spurn our storms. They mock our challenges and tragedies with their laughter. They deny our just law.

In these and a million other varied ways, they frustrate us, subvert us, ignore us, and break us. It seems there is no limit to what they will do. They will increase. We will diminish.

And yet, they are each our creatures. We are not resentment.

She is our creature, flesh and breath and blood. We have clothed her in her coat of aquamarine. We have given her a mane the color of the summer sky.

She is an earth pony. Her father farmed our soil. Her mother felled our trees. She sits in a gully, by the bank of our stream. She is quiet and still and her eyes are closed.

We are hungry. Our claws are sharp. The stinger that tips our tail is full of venom.

She lets her mind drift empty. She listens to our birdsong. We are late spring and food is good today. We are finding plenty of insects. We have turned our voices to each claiming his little slice of forest.

She listens. She knows us. We smell her calm perspiration on our breeze.

Her ear flicks towards us and we freeze. She climbs unhurried to her hooves. We pad behind her on soft paws.

She does not return home, not yet. She is not eager to hear again the arguments. Ponies wish to put us more and more under the plow, to fell our trees and grade our soil. She speaks for us.

She sits down again and lets her voice fill our air. She calls to herself our birds. We are beautiful and we are terrible. We are jays and quail and fateskaits. We are a peahen with her chicks. We are a phoenix shyly perched above.

She sings to us. We sing to her.

We stalk closer and flex our claws. Our voices hide us. She cannot hear. It is luck alone that spares her life. She rises to dance the instant we pounce. Our claws lay open the flesh over her ribs.

She wheels and she bucks. Our nose stings.

"Bad kitty!" she cries. Her blood scents our air. Her chorus has fled. She and we both stop for a moment and stare. She stands defiant. We sit back stunned.

Slowly and softly a smile crosses her lips. "No, you're not a bad kitty. I bet you're hungry," she says. "You just need to learn some manners."

She glances back briefly to the wound on her side, then pins our eyes again - there's something about her eyes. "Speaking of rude, I'm making a mess." She looks around and finds the right kind of moss. It grows on the side of a tree, by a bush flowered yellow and white.

She trots to it and leans against it. We growl and stir. Once again she stares into our eyes.

"This hurts, I'll have you know," she adds. "You really have to work on your pounce, mister."

We nod silent, embarrassed agreement. She and we wait. She looks over us carefully.

"Oh," she says. "Sorry. I should say, 'Miss,' shouldn't I? No cubs this year? That's okay, me neither. I'm sure that you'll have better luck next year."

We do not know why but we find ourselves purring. She hums quietly herself and then gently adds, "Oh, you're looking kind of thin. Don't you know about the hog problem? I guess not."

She turns her attention back to her side, then seizes a strip of moss in her teeth. She pulls it from the tree, leaving it stuck to her wound. Then biting off a vine she finishes the dressing.

Thus engaged she looks away from our eyes. Our hunger stirs. And yet, strangely, it doesn't stir now towards her. She seems family. She is kin and kind.

"Now, come on," she says. "I'll show you a good place."

We traipse up-hill, through vines and low bushes. The canopy covers us darker, insects swarm in shafts of light. She notices a rare flower, we go around it.

We come to a cliff, a sheer fall of stone. Above is the ridge and a strip of blue sky. It is not too high, but she looks at it sadly.

"I thought there was a fallen tree," she says. "I can't jump that."

We grumble and set our forepaws against it.

"Oh, I guess it looks like you can. I don't know how well you can understand me, but listen. Over in the next hollow-"

It is all we can do to not make it a full roar. She blinks and looks at us again.

"Oh. Right." She climbs up our back and stands on our head. From there she can reach the edge of the cliff. We back up and bound and catch and scramble. Our claws scar the rock. Pebbles scatter and fall.

"Come on. You can do it," she gently cheers.

With a growl and grumble, we too crest the ridge.

She leads us to a place where our earth has been trampled, a muddy riverbank our creatures have dug.

"There are a lot of hogs around," she says. "Too many, really." She pokes our ribs with her hoof. "Go get 'em, tiger."

We growl.

"Sorry. I know you're a manticore. It's just a figure of speech."

We watch from the air as she makes her way home. Our birds are her vanguard as she follows the ridge. Her ponies are shocked when she returns to town. They offer to bring their fire and axes. They offer to make us safe for them all.

She declines. And then that night she stands before them all, in the center of town. They are gathered and seated and perfectly still. They must be silent to hear her voice.

She tells them our stories, about our birds and our worms, our lizards and our bugbears, our trees and our streams. She wears her wound with pride.

We are beautiful. We are terrible. We are cruel, she says. She is kind.

"Trust," she says, late in the evening. Fireflies dance over her head. "Trust is when something can hurt you, but you do it anyway. Now I know this isn't the best argument, but I think we need to keep little bits of this land the way it was. No farming. No weather control. No safety. But no fooling ourselves either. We're animals too, you know. And when I go out there, I learn and... I don't know how to say it, but maybe 'live,' I guess."

She didn't expect them to listen, but they did.

We are indomitable. She has tamed us. They break us and make us new and take everything and make us better than we were. She listened to us. They listen to her. She gave us her words. They are written in books the ponies read kept in places that are not ours. But they give us places that are not theirs, places that we do not deserve. Across our land, we serve their desire. In those places we are ever free.

Between first spark and final entropy, we are the turbulence. We are noise and noise alone. Before they came we had no meaning. We were cold, wrapped in winter. Under the fire of the ponies we come alive.

Five syllables. Five syllables to ensnare our gratitude as like smoke it drifts away. To bottle our fear, our joy, our unease, our love. With them we are many things. They say we are terrible. They say we are beautiful. We never were these things.

We are. We always are. We merely are. They are more.

We are light. They are every color refracted through a shattered gem.

We lend to them our life. They lend to us their... We have not the word, but it is as if they were alive and we dead. They plant themselves deep, they discover meaning, and we know not from where their (talent, perhaps?) comes. It is not from us. It is wondrous new.

Five syllables echo, an empty shell of what in agony we long to say.

We are wordless voice.

We are truly blessed.

Author's Note

In this story, I literally ship Everypony with Everything, and did most of it in under 72 hours.

(For the curious, the competition edition is here.)

This was a blast to write, and I encourage other authors to join in the fun. Roger and the staff of MLPchan throw a contest about every month or so.

If you liked this, please consider following me. I promise, I won't spam your notifications with my personal life. I just post stories once I'm done loving them to death.

I think this is the best story I've sent to FiMFiction to date, so I can't say it's as good, but "Watching Paint Dry" has a similar style and folks seemed to like it. It's about the Crusaders and the meaning of family. It's also pretty short, so I'd be honored if you give it a shot.

Thanks for reading, and I especially like comments. Reading them is like being a dog and getting scratched behind the ears.

~ EW