My Little Xyloto

Mylo heard something.  He stopped dead in his tracks and somepony ran into him from behind.  "Oh, sorry!" he said, stepping out of the dazed pony's way.  "Goodness, really!  I... do you hear that?"

The stranger blinked.  Mylo couldn't tell if his eyes had color.  "Hear what?"  Make that her eyes.  He could never tell the difference between a mare and a stallion until they spoke.

"That... high voice."  He looked up and around.  "Or... high voices.  What is that?"

The mare stayed still with him for a moment.  Other ponies hurried past, away from the factory.  "Sorry, sir, I don't hear anything," she said.  Her voice was nasally and a bit annoying.

"All right, that's fine... that's... so strange..."  He trotted off, tossing his eyes up and around in search of whatever made that noise.  It almost sounded like a child, but there was a pattern to it.  It sounded familiar in a way, but not enough to bring back any memories.  It wasn't saying any words, just an open vowel sound, but the way it jumped between those soft high sounds... over and over...

"Like my..."

Mylo broke into a full gallop.  Spotting an overhead group of Angels he slowed, but only for a moment.  When the squadron had passed he picked up the pace again, darting from street to narrowing street and listening all along.  The voice was distant, hypnotizing, fascinating.  He hurried past several ponies, but none of them seemed to hear or care.

He smiled nonetheless.  It was getting louder.  He turned onto another street between two very tall buildings and plunged into the darkness.  He had never spent much time exploring Heaven and was certainly getting lost, but the excitement of the moment overwhelmed him.  Never had he heard anything that reminded him so much of the noises he made with his mallet every morning.  Did it have a name?  Would this voice have the answers?  Did it know about the ponies who could write the shaded words?

Mylo nearly ran into a wall at the end of the alley.  It branched off at a sharp right and Mylo continued to follow the path without a second thought.  It took a moment for him to realize how alarmingly narrow these passages were.  Openings in the walls briefly appeared to the right and left of his swift gallop.  Intersections?  How many tiny streets wove around back there?  Who used these?  Where were they?

He looked up.  The ever grey sky loomed above the building tops.  And as he stared and ran--

WHAM!

Something slammed into his right side.  Both he and the other twisted and fell, sprawling in the corner of one of these dark intersections.

"Sorry!" Mylo said for the second time, rubbing the side of his head while he instinctively helped the other pony to their hooves.  He closed his eyes against the sudden throbbing.  "Oh, dear, that hurt... are you all right?"

"I've gotta tell you what a state I'm in, I've gotta tell you in my loudest tones that I started looking for a warning sign," the warm voice of a stallion said quickly.

Mylo popped one eye open.  "What was that?"

"Canterlot," the stallion said.  He was behind Mylo.  "Do you remember what your parents sounded like, kid?"

"Huh?"  Mylo balanced himself against the wall and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Did they sound more like me or more like you?"

"My... parents?"  He groaned and started to turn around.  "Are you sure you're all right?  I was going pretty fasssss--"

He cut off, staring at the pony behind him as his hidden jaw unhinged.

"Can anybody stop this thing?" the stranger asked through a glowing grin.  "We've been living life inside a bubble."

"You're... oh no, did your jumpsuit rip?"  Mylo spun around in circles, scanning the ground for the stallion's missing cover.  "I'm so sorry!  Quick, we need to find what's left of it!"

"Ha ha ha!"  The stallion's hearty laugh was enough to freeze Mylo.  It was the most genuine sound he had ever heard.  He faced this happy stranger with wide-eyed fascination.

"Who are you?" Mylo asked.

"Charlie Brown," the blue stallion answered, bowing low.

"Charlie Brown?"  Mylo blinked.  "Really?  That's your name?"

"Well, no," the other admitted, "but that's the name I use.  It has meaning."

"What does it mean?"

The stallion rose to his full height and raised his eyebrows.  "Good question."  He took a step closer.  "My song is love, love to the loveless shown, and it goes up: you don't have to be alone."

Mylo's chest filled with a warmth he didn't know existed.

"Your heavy heart is made of stone, and it's so hard to see clearly: you don't have to be on your own."

"I-It'sss like the words," Mylo stuttered, trotting in place.  "It sounds like the shaded words."

The blue pony grinned.  "Ah, you've seen them?"

"Yes!  Yes, I look for them everywhere!"  He, too, took a quick step closer.  "Do you write the words?  Is it you?"

The stallion's eyes were so clear.  With no mask or lenses to conceal them, Mylo could tell they were as bright and clear as the shades of his own body.  Though not the same, he had seen that shade among the words, and it was similar to one of the pieces on his treasure.

Those eyes were quiet and shifted up and down, as if taking in everything about Mylo's suited form.  "Why do you think that?"

Mylo pointed under a baggy sleeve.  "You have the shades!  Your body, your eyes, they're not white!"

Charlie Brown laughed again and Mylo nearly burst.  "Do you have something against white coats or white manes?  I've never seen white eyes myself, though I'm not sure I want to.  Seems unsettling."

Before Mylo could speak, the suitless stallion continued.  "We all have colors, kid.  Every one of us is colorful, whether or not the colors are seen."

"Colors?" Mylo repeated.  He choked on a breathy laugh.  "Is that what they're called?  The shades?"

Charlie Brown was silent and still for a long moment.  He sighed loudly and swung himself to Mylo's left, draping a foreleg over his shoulder.  Mylo twitched back, fearing the radiation, but soon found that the embrace of the stallion was anything but painful.  In fact, it filled him with a sense of warmth and belonging that was entirely foreign.

"There are all sorts of words you don't know, kid," he whispered.  "Names.  Everything has a name.  Major Minus is trying to subtract those names from history, from the world, from your mind.  I'm trying to keep them there."  He ran a hoof through his own mane.  "Yeah, these are colors, kid.  Blue, green, red, yellow, orange, magenta, fuchsia, beige... there are hundreds of 'em.  But that's just the start!  You don't know about art or dancing or stages or lighting or cameras or records or even music!"

Mylo felt as though he'd just sprinted home.  "Music?"

"Yeah, music.  It's like colors for your ears."  He winked and raised his free hoof to the sky.  "The world is filled with music, kid.  It hums and buzzes through every molecule of the universe, no matter how hard Major Minus tries to freeze us all to silence.  Even silence has a sound.  But we're not there yet, we're not even close.  Everything makes music.  She thinks she can take the instruments away and make us forget about chords and rhythm and notes.  But we are worthy of notes, my friend."

"Friend..."  Mylo smiled.  The word had a taste.

"Oh, yeah, friendship!"  The stallion barked another laugh and shook Mylo a little.  "Friendship is magic!  And not the kind of magic you're thinking of, I mean real magic.  Beautiful stuff, powerful stuff."  He lifted and dropped his right hoof, giving Mylo a heavy pat between the shoulders.  "Yeah, kid, this world sucks right now.  But boy, oh boy, was it beautiful.  And it'll be beautiful again, as soon as everypony starts listening to the music."

He took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes.  The silence was long enough for Mylo to hear the high voice again.  It still sounded so distant, and yet it took on a whole new depth as Charlie Brown added his own voice to it.  An open vowel, soft and long, as his voice moved up and down in that same hypnotizing pattern.

Mylo dared to try.  He closed his own eyes and listening closer.  A buzzing came to his throat, far more than when he was simply speaking.  He followed the sound in the air--the music, he thought--and lifted his own voice to join the strange one that called to him from the sky.

Charlie Brown stopped.  He leaned away from Mylo but didn't move his foreleg.  Mylo continued his noises unhindered, relishing in the new sensations pumping through his chest and throat.

The naked stallion stepped back.  The look of surprise on his face mirrored Mylo's from minutes ago, though it was infinitely more visible.  "You can hear it," he said.

Mylo stopped, too, but didn't open his eyes.  "Yes.  Yes, I can hear it."

"Haahaaaaaaaa!"  Charlie Brown erupted, scooping Mylo up in his arms.  Mylo gasped and squirmed as the blue earth pony spun him around in the narrow alleyway.  "You hear it!  You can hear the music!"

"Uhhh... yeah!"  Mylo managed to laugh when Charlie set him on his hooves.  "I didn't know it was music, but yes, today I heard it.  I can still hear it."

"I can always hear it," Charlie Brown breathed, wrapping a fetlock around the back of Mylo's neck and staring into his eyes through the filtering lenses of his mask.  "What's your name, kid?"

"Mylo," he answered slowly.

"Mylo."  Charlie Brown beamed.  "I love it.  Mylo, how'd you like to be a Lost Boy?"

He didn't reply for long enough that Charlie Brown tried again.

"How would you like to leave this life?  To join a band of brothers and sisters who hate Heaven and seek Paradise?  To learn all about the colors and why they were taken away, and then give your life to bring them all back?"

Mylo gulped.  "Give my life?  You mean..."

"I don't mean die for it, Mylo," Charlie said, beaming.  "I mean live for it.  Change everything!  Take control!  Brothers and sisters unite, it's the time of your lives!"  He reared onto his hind hooves and shouted to the sky.  "Break down, break down, gotta spread love around!"

Mylo found himself laughing.  Whether it was a laugh of confusion, absurdity, insanity, or elation he couldn't tell.

"You can hear it," Charlie said again, pacing back and forth.  "Hee heeee!  You can hear it... you're gonna be great, Mylo!"  He reached up and unzipped the mask around Mylo's head, pulling it back between his shoulder blades.

"Uuaaahh!"  Mylo gasped and held his breath, reaching up to replace the full hood.

"No, Mylo, stop!  Breathe!"  Still smiling, Charlie Brown swatted at Mylo's frantic hooves.  "It's not dangerous!  That's all a lie.  Just breathe it in, smell the sin!"

Mylo slammed his hooves down close together and blinked rapidly.  His vision blurred until he finally gasped in a sour breath.  "I'm going to die!"

"You won't die, Mylo," Charlie said, rolling his eyes.  "I've been naked for years.  There's no such thing as radiation."

Mylo gawked.  "There's not?"

"No!  It's all a lie, to keep everypony from seeing their colors.  Don't you see?  Major Minus thought of everything."  He flashed a suave grin.  "Well... everything but me, of course."

He watched as Mylo breathed experimentally, bringing a hoof to his face to check for any burnt patches or swelling boils.  When nothing happened, he actually smiled at Charlie.  "It's all a lie."

"Do you ever get the feeling that you're missing the mark?" Charlie asked.

"Yes!  Oh, yes, every day!  I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine!"

"Ha haaa!  You do read our words!"

Mylo's eyes glistened in the unfiltered skylight for the very first time.  "Ours?"

"We are the Lost Boys," Charlie Brown said, "and we'll set you free."  He motioned for Mylo to follow him and took off into the tiny dark alleys.

Mylo's heart matched his hoofsteps as he thundered after the mysterious stallion.  He caught up quickly, following through twists and turns and impossibly angled corners.  Charlie Brown slapped an image painted on one of the walls as they passed.  "Bright red rose come bursting the concrete," he said over his shoulder.  Mylo took notice of the strange image.  It was a little like his mallet, but of two very different shades and more curvy and natural.

"A cartoon heart!" Charlie said a bit later, slapping his hoof against another image.  This one was familiar, the symbol of a heart used for health classes.  But the shade was so vibrant, so strong: it matched the top part of the first image, burned into Mylo's memory.

"What are they?" Mylo asked.

"A message!  A whisper!  Warning signs!  Sparks!"

The answers echoed around Mylo's ears like something from his dreams.

Suddenly they reached a short, square hole in the wall.  It only went back a foot.  After so many turns and narrow streets, Mylo was certain they were absolutely lost.  Charlie Brown never lost his brilliant grin, however, and took a key from a pouch hidden in his tail.  He used it in a crack low on the wall.

A click from the key was met with a twinkling voice.  "Passcode?"

"Light a fire, a fire, a spark; light a fire, a flame in my heart," he chanted.  "We'll run wild, we'll be glowing in the dark."

The hole hissed, and suddenly the concrete slipped away.  Through the new hole they went, Mylo and Charlie Brown, and down a tunnel longer and blacker than what some secret part of Mylo had been expecting.  The doorway behind them shut itself and plunged the duo into total darkness.

"Keep crawling," Charlie Brown assured his companion.  "We'll be glowing in the dark."

"What does that mean?" Mylo asked.  "I mean, it's pretty and all, I like how it makes me feel.  But I don't understand what it means."

"You used the word pretty.  That's good."  Charlie Brown's voice was crackling, excited.  "They'll love you."

"Who?"

"All the boys, all the girls," Charlie answered.  "All that matters in the world."

And then there were sparks.  As the low-bent ponies shuffled their hooves forward, ethereal streaks of light appeared along the edges of their vision.

"Here we are, Mylo," said the blue stallion.  "Where the Lost Boys meet."

The sparks surrounded them magically, and suddenly Mylo was falling.  Then, just as suddenly, he wasn't.  He was standing in the middle of an enormous, spacious room, lit by a hovering chandelier of candles and quiet torches on the walls.  The room was brown and earthy and divided into four parts.  In one there were dozens of shelves full of books and couches to sit and read.  In another there was an array of musical instruments, ready for ponies to play.  In a third there was a miniature museum of art, displaying beautiful paintings, statues, and open catalogues waiting to teach.  The fourth was a kitchen, and there sat most of the ponies in the room, cooking or eating or both.  They all stopped in unison and gaped at Charlie Brown and his unexpected visitor.

But Mylo didn't know the words book or couch or brown or play or museum or statue or catalogue yet.  He didn't know any of those ponies names, or even the names of the colors of their coats and manes.  He didn't know about the staircase behind the bookshelves or the beautiful view of the stars from the balcony.  He didn't even know that he had been teleported to a cave in the mountains many miles from Heaven.

But he did know that somehow, for the first time in his life, he felt that he was on the mark.

***

**M**

**X**

***

"And this one?"

"That's red."

"What about this one?"

Lyra giggled.  It was as musical as when she had played the harp for him.  "That's red, too, Mylo!"

"What?  But they're different!"

Lyra grabbed the apple.  "This is red.  Like, classic, darkish red."  In her other hoof she took the tomato.  "This is a brighter red, or a lighter red.  But it's the same color."

"Same color..." Mylo repeated.  Lyra smirked.  He did that a lot.

"What about this one?" he asked, tapping a bowl full of berries.

"Oh, come on, you know this one!"  Lyra nodded at him.  "It's the same as Noteworthy, and the same as--"

"Ahem," said the blue stallion behind Mylo.

"Ugh, sorry," Lyra said, rolling her eyes.  "I meant it's the same as Charlie, and the same as your eyes, and the same as--"

"My eyes?"  Mylo blinked.

"Yes, would you please let me finish my--"  Lyra stopped herself and blinked a few times as well.  "Wait, you didn't know?"

Mylo shook his head.

Lyra leaned forward across the kitchen's counter.  "You've never seen your reflection, have you?"

"Uhhh... my what?"

"No mirrors in Heaven, Lyra," Charlie Brown said, helping Mylo off of his stool.  "Come with me, kid.  I've got a few things to show ya."

"Thank you, Miss Heartstrings!" Mylo called back to her.  "Your swong was beautiful!"

Lyra laughed.  "It's just song, Mylo.  But thank you."

He knocked himself on the forehead while he followed Charlie Brown.  "Oh, right, song, song.  I gotta remember that, such a beautiful word..."

"Take a gander, kid," Charlie said, gesturing to a big mirror on the wall.  "You'll wanna take a good look."

Mylo hesitated.  "Am I going to see myself?"

"Exactly."

Mylo took a deep breath.  "I feel like I've done this before."

"I'm sure you have," Charlie said, "but we'll explain that later.  Go ahead, take a look."  He beckoned him forward.

Mylo took a few slow steps before aligning himself with the glass.  Above his clean white jumpsuit, the face of a bright earth pony looked back at him.  He recognized the shades of his coat and his mane, though he still couldn't remember their names.  He had seen them hundreds of times on his legs and his tail in the solitude of his own apartment.  But he had never seen it on his face, or the wideness of his jaw, or the way the locks of his mane fell back on top of each other between his ears.  He grinned, glad to see that his teeth were as white as his eyes.  Through all their flaws, at least the Angels had taught the citizens of Heaven to take care of their own health.

But those eyes.  Mylo had never seen his eyes.  They were a brand new color--or, no, that's not true.  He focused.  They were a different kind of the color of Charlie, different like the two foods Lyra had shown him.

"Blue eyes," Charlie said, nodding.  "Bright ones, at that.  You're a handsome stallion, kid."

"Blue!"  He glanced at Charlie.  "But you're blue."

"Right."  He looked down at one of his hooves.  "Let's call me, uh... cobalt blue.  And your eyes are, like, ice blue."

"What do those mean?"  Mylo looked back at himself, wiggling his ears.

"They're just names to help you know what shade of blue you're talking about.  You know how you called colors 'shades'?  Well, now you know they're actually called colors, and the different types of the same color are all shades of that color.  Make sense?"

"Ice blue," Mylo repeated, nodding.  "Yeah.  Yeah, I like it."

Charlie Brown waved his hoof.  "Take that stupid thing off.  Take a good look at yourself."

Mylo hesitated a moment, but finally complied.  With a practiced bite he unzipped the length of his jumpsuit and stepped out of it.  Nopony had ever seen him naked before.  It was at once embarrassing and exhilarating.  His tail was short and limp, hanging between his legs.  It was a much darker color than his coat or his eyes.

"Name them all," Mylo said, taking a happy bound closer to the mirror.  "Tell me what colors I am."

"Yellow, mostly," Charlie said.  "Your coat's all yellow.  To give it a more specific shade, I'd say, uh... cream yellow.  Sometimes yellow can be hard on the eyes 'cause it's so bright, but yours is a pleasant shade.  Good on ya."

Mylo said the word over and over.  "Yellow, yellow, yellow... ice blue!"  He laughed, and then lifted a hoof to the back of his mane.  "And this?"

"Purple," Charlie said, "or violet, whichever you prefer."

"I like the first one."

"Yeah, me too.  Purple.  Really dark purple."

"I'd say rich purple," a newcomer added, stepping around Mylo to stand next to Charlie.  She was sort of yellow too, Mylo thought, but even less bright than him.  Her mane had two different colors.  One was blue, dark blue like Charlie's mane, but the other was new and very bright.

"Where did you find him?" she asked Charlie.

"In the back alleys, not far from the door," he answered, never once looking away from Mylo.

The mare with the different colors in her curly mane scrunched her brow.  "Uh oh.  How did he get back there?"

"Let's ask him," Charlie said, lifting his chin a little more.  "What were you doing in the back alleys, Mylo?"

"Following the high voice," he answered, turning his body to see himself from the side.  He was skinny.  "The music."

"He hears it," Charlie said, pointing upward.  "Bon Bon, nopony else has ever heard it.  Just me and... and Octavia."  Mylo heard a brief strain in his otherwise melodic voice.  "But he hears it, too, he even sang along!  He doesn't even know what music is, and he sang!  Ha haaa!"

"Sang?" Mylo asked.  "That sounds like song."

"Yeah, it's all connected," Charlie said, gesturing for Mylo to follow him back to the corner of musical instruments.  Lyra was there, back at her harp.  She would play a few notes with her magic and then write with her mouth on a nearby sheet of paper.  Mylo noticed close, straight lines running all across the page.  Lyra's writing appeared as black dots, almost like she was filling in answers for a test.

"These are notes," Charlie explained, tapping Lyra's paper under Mylo's gaze.  "I used to have a pretty set of those right here on my flank."  He slapped a hoof against his side, close to his short tail.  "We all used to have Cutie Marks, y'know.  The Alicorn got rid of that.  But, heh, one trot at a time."  He moved to a strange box next to a shelf full of large squares.  The box had a spike in the top center, and out of its side twisted a large, shiny cone.

"What is it?"

"Listen," was Charlie's only response.  He pulled down one of the squares and tilted it enough for a large, black circle to slide out onto his ready hoof.  Then Charlie set the square aside--it was red, and Mylo was proud to know it--and carefully placed the black circle around the spike in the middle of the box.  He rearranged a few loose parts and set another spike, dangling down, onto the middle of the circle.

"Bum, bum, bum bah dah bah dah bum, bum, bum bah dah-ahh!

Bum, bum, bum bah dah bah dah bum, bum, bum bah dah-ahh!"

Mylo's breath left him.

"This is another song, Mylo," Charlie explained over the low voice.  "These ponies are singing."

"Everypony's sayin' you should learn to express your voice,

But if talk doesn't seem like it's the answer, luckily you have a choice.

When you find you've got the music, got the music in you,

Find you've got the music, got the music in you!"

"I love this song!" Bon Bon cheered behind them, nuzzling Lyra.  Mylo's chest felt full.

Lyra swatted her away, albeit with a smile.  "Ugh!  One new pony comes around, and a mare can't write in peace."

"Come on, let's dance!"  Bon Bon urged her unicorn friend to her hooves.  It was still so surreal for Mylo to see ponies unclothed, but then to see them touch each other and laugh together?  And then to see a unicorn?  He hadn't seen a unicorn in years.  When Lyra had played that first song for him, the fluidness of her magic was almost as captivating as the music.

Almost.

"Hot outside and you see the sunshine, something's in the air today!

Sky is clear and you're feeling so fine, everything's gonna be a-okay!

If you listen carefully, on every corner there's a rhythm playing,

Then it happens suddenly, the music takes you over and you--"

"Fiiiiiiiind the music!" Bon Bon sang, twirling her hesitant friend away from the harp.  Lyra laughed and joined the refrain, singing... differently than Bon Bon, but it still sounded nice.

"Harmony," Charlie whispered from his side.  "It's like another shade of the same color.  The main part is the melody, and Lyra's singing the harmony."

"Harmony," Mylo repeated.  He felt his body sway back and forth with the...

"Rhythm," Charlie offered.

"These are the most beautiful words in the world," Mylo hummed.

A different shade of a smile passed over Charlie's mouth.  "I think you're right, kid."

They listened to the Ponytones and watched the mares dance and laugh and live.