Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Through All the Dust and Deception

I followed him with Violet still on my back; she was still shaking, silent.  Curious that, of the two, Luna was the one sending her into panic mode.  She was the more amiable of the two, or at least it seemed that way to me.  Princess Celestia may be kind, warm, but she kept things and ponies at a distance.  Luna didn’t seem nearly as afraid of making close friends.

“I have to warn you,” Blackout said.  “Princess Luna’s observatory was built to very specific standards, and with an extraordinary amount of countermeasures to protect against intrusion.”

No...that wasn’t as weird as it sounded at first.  Luna’s sky was her magnum opus, her legacy.  Her child.  Just the same as I would do anything to protect Whimsy, she would do anything to shield her night sky from harm.  So I nodded.  “Makes sense.”

Blackout glanced out the nearest window, his smoke-colored coat lit up by the evening sun.  “Most of them have been layered into a gambit the princess likes calling her Garden of Shadows.  A test, formed by and sculpted out of stardust.”

“The dust dreams are made of,” Violet muttered absentmindedly.

“Garden of Shadows,” I repeated, trivially noticing that the cloud I’d woken up on was still floating off to the side.  “I like it already.”

“I hope you can maintain that sentiment,” he said cryptically before addressing Violet.  “I’m sorry if Princess Luna upsets you.  She tries, bless her heart, but there will always be scars from her exile.”

“It’s...it’s not her,” Violet squeaked.  “It’s...her mane.”

“Mm?”

“I...I can’t look away,” Violet whispered.  “It’s so beautiful, but so cold...it reminds me how small we really are, in the universe…”

She shuddered.

“I mean, we get caught up in life, living day to day, worrying about things that don’t matter, but to the universe...nothing we do matters.  It’s just...cold.”

Blackout and I looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.  Every pony I knew, sooner or later and for better or worse, had gone through the same dilemma.  For any pony besides the princesses, there was no changing it, no bending rules, no avoiding it.  How they dealt with it defined them.  Some chose to ignore it, some tried to forget.  Some came to terms with it, and some poor, tragic few chose death instead.  I...I don’t know.

I guess I just pretended it didn’t exist, ignored the part of me that knew.  But there was that other part...the part that was unswayingly convinced that Whimsy could achieve the impossible.  That she could, in some way, in some bizarre, quirky, clever, Whimsy-only way...make a real difference in the universe.  Change it for the better.

That was her power.  That was her defining trait.  Not her blindness, not her illusions.  It was her imagination, as vast as the sea and as boundless as the sky.  Able to see that which is not and able to see in ways that cannot be.  She doesn’t accept limits, doesn’t obey rules, and that’s the key to breaking boundaries.  Limits, rules, laws, whatever...they’re nothing more than mental constructs.  How can you break a barrier that doesn’t exist?

I laid down and look Violet straight in her eyes.  “Look, Violet...Vi.  You’re right.  We’re tiny.  And—if my dad’s right—the universe is getting bigger by the second.  But...okay.  Imagine that we’re grains of sand in a desert, and everything we do moves that grain.”

She was tearing up now.  Wasn’t even bothering to try and hide it.  I wiped a tear off her chin; she had already soaked my fur with tears once.  As long as I got my hooves on a raincloud soon, I could get the salt out before it really started festering.  Ugh.

“That grain might not move much, but when it does, it moves every grain close to it, and when they move, so do all their neighbors.  See...when we do things, even something as small as cooking a meal, it shapes what happens later.  It might only be a meal today, but maybe that meal makes somepony’s day, and maybe it helps them have a flash of insight that brings something entirely new into being...it’s more than just something to eat now, isn’t it?  It’s something that can change the world.”

Through the single window amongst the towers of bookcases, a shaft of light from a dying sun bounced off the silver instruments on Luna’s maze of tables, creating a whole new daytime star system on the spines of countless books.  A single ray found its way to Violet’s eyes, and through her glassy eyes, her veil of tears, I saw a tiny speck of light come to life.  Once again I found myself with a coat soaked in tears that didn’t belong to me.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled into my chest, still crying.  “...It’s just so...scary...”

Blackout looked at me over her shoulder, speechless.  I couldn’t help a stupid grin.  For all his training...just like most stallions.  Stick a crying foal in their hooves and suddenly they’re clueless.  Half the time, the stuff they manage to stammer just makes it worse.

Time seemed to stretch like taffy.  Violet didn’t seem to want to move.  I knew we had to.  And even worse, Blackout’s awkwardness was starting to manifest as a flushed face, and despite all his discipline, his eyes were darting every which way, looking very much like he wanted to bolt.

 “Look, Vi...we gotta go.”

A cold draft told me she had finally managed to peel herself away from me, eyes red and swollen.  She seriously had to be near dehydrated, my coat was so drenched.  It was just a few tears’ worth before, but now….yeulgh.  It was all I could do to not try and rub the salt out.  Too long without a proper cleaning and the scent would take up permanent residence.  No thanks.

“I’m s-sorry,” she said again.  “It—I just—Sterling doesn’t—”

She chuckled weakly.

“Sorry for being such a crybaby,” she with a shaky smile.  “I know you don’t like getting your coat dirty.”

I waved it off, for her benefit.  “Nothing a bit of rain can’t fix.”

From the way the ends of her mouth curled upwards, I could tell she knew I was lying.  Of course.  She was lucky she hadn’t cried into my coat a decade or so ago.  The me in that era was far less...restrained when it came to soiling her coat.  But then, everyone has their pet peeves.  Things that just make them angry for no real reason.

Violet’s eyes were dry now, her thin smile more...eased.  The shakiness in her voice had waned, but wasn’t gone just yet.  “Rain can’t replace a feather if you pluck one out.”

I swiveled about, releasing my wing.  “I’ll have you know I’ve never plucked a feather preening, and I’m not about to start now.”

“Okay okay,” Blackout interrupted.  “If that’s dealt with, we really need to go.”

Violet wiped the last of her tears away.  “What?  Are we gonna miss something or...something?”

“Not really,” he admitted.  “But there’s parts of the Garden that are better during nightfall.”

“Better?”

“You’ll see.”  Blackout crossed over to Luna’s desk, picked up her beaded wooden frame, and shuffled the beads around before closing his eyes and reciting another poem.  He didn’t seem as bothered by this one.

“You’ll find it in the veil of night, where solitude is born

In the emptiness of a broken sky, at the mercy of the storm.”

The bookshelf behind him let loose an ethereal wail, a gaping maw of a portal opening right at the center.  Through it was mostly just pitch-black, but there was a ghostly, silver bridge made of light, spanning the breadth of a...something.  It looked like a river, but instead of water, there was just...sparkles.  Hundreds of sparkles, at least, flowing with and around each other in an endless, spirited dance, graceful, poised, like so many lightning bugs chasing each other.

Blackout stepped through, onto the black, and where his hooves should—stop it—have fallen through, splotches of the silver light appeared, preventing him from falling into the abyss.  He held out a hoof to help Violet through, and after some hesitance and a nearly-unnoticeable bit of her truth magic, she took his hoof and followed him through.  Likewise, little circles of soft moonlight kept her on solid ground.

“Wow,” she said softly.  “I...wow.”

I couldn’t help it.  “Um, Blackout.  Are you sure about this?”

“No.  But Princess Luna is, and so is Princess Celestia.”

Well, if it were a trap, he would’ve tried to get me to go through first.  So I set foot into the odd realm, and sure enough, discs of silver light formed beneath me.  There was still air here, and a warm breeze, curiously, and—unsurprisingly—the pitch black surrounding us was dotted with stars.  But even their beauty was eclipsed by this...river, full of sparkles as it was.  It was considerably wider than it looked at first, and it meandered this way and that, it extended, curling, until it was so distant I could no longer see it.  Odd.  There was no curvature of the Earth.

“Congratulations.  You two are now the among the dozen ponies, ever, to visit this bridge.”

I nodded at it.  “So how’s this a test?”

He pointed towards the other end of the bridge.  Just visible over the arched light was another portal.

“Cross.”

The instant he said it, Violet vanished.

“You’re on your own.”

And then he was gone, too, a fleeting puff of smoke in his place.  Interesting.  I got the feeling Violet was in her own instance of it all.  If all the tests were this way...then Celestia guide her, because if she doesn’t come out the other end, this would take a lot longer to resolve.  Whatever gambits the Calamus wanted to put me through...well.  It didn’t seem to have any reservations about putting me to work.

I poked the bridge.  It felt solid enough.  Just out of curiosity, I gave an experimental flap, but the air slid off my wings without so much as an ounce of resistance.  Unsurprising.  And it wasn’t making the tear-soaked part of my coat cold, either, but I was definitely breathing, and not dead.  Interesting, indeed.

So the bridge had to be linked to some part of me.  My love of the night, presumably, which wasn’t an issue.  Daylight was harsh.  Moonlight was not.  And, as I expected, the bridge did not fade when I set all four hooves on it.  It seemed straightforward enough.  But if it were a test, a trick question was inevitable.

And sure enough, despite nothing about me changing, no sooner than I had reached the halfway point, the moonlight bridge faded, and down into the river I went, headfirst, in a dazzling splash of sparkles.

I sank immediately.  It was chilly, but not uncomfortably so, and it wasn’t inhibiting me breathing at all.  Actually it felt like...like…

A cloud?

A storm cloud, too, of all things.

It was almost as if...no, of course.  Blackout hadn’t meant it figuratively—it was so obvious.  The sparkles weren’t stars.

They were stardust.

The stuff dreams are made of.

I closed my eyes, still sinking, and embraced their soothing caress.  The back of my eyelids almost instantly yielded to the overly vivid, heady euphoria of a dream...

A raging storm cast a long shadow over the Bluegrass Fields, pouring rain and spurting lightning like water from a leaky faucet.  She ever-so-gently squeezed my back, careful to avoid displacing so much as a feather.  I couldn’t resist a smile.  She had come so far—and now she was ready, too.

As I left the mountain’s cooled stone and took to the skies in a flurry of snow, I reached out and touched the wind, gently teasing it until it gave chase.  A proper tailwind.  I felt her wings brush mine, but even ruffled feathers couldn’t supplant this night’s beauty.  No, tonight...it finally happens.  After so long…after everything I’d been through.

We soared upwards until we were just underneath the storm clouds, and I took to gliding in a slow, wide helix with Ven at my side, to conserve energy.  Nothing to do now but wait.

All it took was a few moments before I felt the distinct crackle, fur on end and all, ever the warning sign.  I reached out a hoof, one last time.  She had time for but a single, piercing shriek of triumph before a forked, roaring, white-hot talon of lightning reached down from the aether and touched us.  Pain exploded, colors flashed before my eyes, and all yielded to darkness.

...Finally.

It’s either over, or it’s done.

Doesn’t matter which.  Not anymore.

Heady exhilaration lifted me up, inflated my lungs, draped itself over my mind like a soft blanket.  To finish...after so long...to find what I’d thrown to the wind and, perhaps, fly with that pristine, majestic creature at my side once more.  To share a stormy sky with her until we truly became one.  Oh, if only...if...

...only...

...if...

...only...

No.

I looked down, the ghost of an orange scarf resting on my hooves, fluttering in the wind.

No.

Two empty holes, dripping, oozing, dying a dirty-white coat a vivid crimson.

No.

The turn of a tail, the beat of a wing, the rush of a wind.

                                        No.

She faded to a speck in an overcast sky.

No.

And then she was gone, consumed by the great blue, and I knew, somewhere, that she was tasting the same sour bitterness as me.

                                                        No.

I twisted and shook my head until my brain felt like it’d turned into mush.  Lightning was arcing between my hooves, thunder and all, until I reexerted my will.  The energy retreated back into my bands without protest, and I drew several deep breaths until my innards returned to their proper places.

She’s gone, Zeph...she’s gone, probably dead, and you know it.  Stop poking the ashes of your gutted hope, they’re dead, they’re not coming back, she’s not coming back, and you know it.  You screwed up and there’s no turning back, no undoing what’s been done, and you know it.  You’ve known it since the moment it happened.

You...

...are not good enough.

                                        ...allowed happiness to get the best of you.

        ...let joy blind you.

...failed her.

I scraped the blood from my tongue and spat it out.  Hope is as vain as I am.

...Whimsy.

Just the thought of her returned a sense of peace.  She’s a constant reminder of my failure, a catalyst for my guilt, yes, but she’s also my gift to the world. The penance I’m still paying is my apology, too, but I doubt that’ll mean much to anyone.  What’s important is that little bundle of imaginative joy.  The only worthwhile thing I have left to give.

“You know that’s not true.”

The river was gone.  I was standing in the center of a spotlight, and just before me, the back of her cast in shadow, was Luna.  But two things momentarily stole my attention.  Whatever we stood on was blanketed in ghostly flowers that swayed in time with music that was echoing from somewhere off in the distance.

Luna’s gaze locked with mine, and somewhere in the blue-green depths of her eyes gleamed some tiny spark of sympathy.  It was impossible to look away.  And somewhere, the music kept flowing, building.  Maybe she understood...

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

She looked up.  Above me was a sparkling replica of Whimsy.  Accurate right down to the way she ties her blindfold.  A clean butterfly knot.  I was the only pony still alive who knew that, so it had to be a projection of my thoughts...

“Zephyr...come with me.  There is something I think you’ll enjoy seeing.”

And she turned away, splotches of moonlight glowing beneath her.  I followed curiously.  There was nothing but black around us but stars, yet the projection of Whimsy stayed, sleeping, floating.

But as we continued, faint objects and images welled up around us, mirages.  A massive clock made of glass.  A city encased in amber.  A twin set of mechanical wings, like a dragonfly’s.  A ring of multicolored orbs circling a candle.  A glacier in the middle of a desert.  And still, the music built, gaining more and more layers, chasing itself into intricate knots without end.

The mirages did not fade, and more faded into existence, like sunlight hitting fog.  Even above us, they congealed, skies littered with dragons right next to a patch of space, with a swirling galaxy, surrounded by a ring-shaped city made of stone.  And even those began to overlap, one over another, layers upon layers of colors and shapes that amounted to a...a...

Wait, how did she bring me here?

Or rather, how did Blackout open a portal that brought us here?

Luna came to a sudden halt, and every last mirage vanished.  All of them, except one.  Right before her was another flower.  A ghost of an orchid—which in itself wasn’t too odd, considering.  But it was all the phantoms that shone within its petals,, reflected in the flower’s center.  Alien creatures, machines that breathed, impossible landscapes.  A dark room with a solid carpet of what looked like tiny white rabbits.  An eight-headed dragon with a bell and garden on its back.  A small airborne island that kept breaking into pieces and reforming.  A tiny figure leaping from a sky-high tower.  A pony that appeared to have a snake coming out her head.  But...

Something remained constant.  No matter what shone in the flower’s heart, there was always a faint discoloration.  A faint discoloration that, were it not for its constantly shifting background, looked very much like my cutie mark.  I knew then what we were looking at.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

She glanced at me.  “Are you sure you don’t want to go in?”

I couldn’t resist a smile.  “I know what’s in there.  If I go in, there’s no way I’ll be able to find my way out.”

She returned the smile, then returned to gazing at the wisp.  “I’m sorry.  I forget not everypony is as apt at navigating these labyrinths as I am.”

“Pff.  That’s a labyrinth made of labyrinths.”

“A challenge, then.”

I chuckled.  “You’ve never seen one like this, and you know it.”

She brushed a fond hoof against the petals.  “True.  Your sister’s dreams are the most imaginative I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

We both watched the orchid in silence after that, but I couldn’t discern individual scenes anymore.  I could only see my cutie mark, marring every single one of Whimsy’s dreams...

                No.

Please.

                Don’t do this to me.

        I’m not worth it.

I shook it off and tore myself away from her kaleidoscope of dreams.  I had a job that needed doing, and it wasn’t going to wait around if I spent the next month drowning myself in self-pity.  No.  It was time to work.

“So, um...did I pass?”

“Yes.”

“Er...if you don’t mind me asking. just what—”

She met my eyes with her twin oceans again.  “It is a test of emotions.  If you still feel, and feel deeply, so deeply that your emotions can override every other aspect of you, then you retain that which makes my night sky the night sky.  That which makes it more than just work.”  She drew a deep breath and looked at her hooves.  “That the only thing separating a painting or piece of music from a work of art is the soul.”

The darkness began to recede, revealing a thick carpet, then a series of tables covered in astronomical charts.  A haphazard forest of instruments and a single shelf half-filled with books followed, then an easel and paint set, and finally a glass dome, beyond which the vast expanse of Luna’s night sky rested.

“The night sky is not my work alone,” she said quietly.  “Over the years I have found those who truly understand that the soul is what makes art.  You see...I am but a brush, and your souls, the paint.  So long as you feel, there will be a star in the night sky that is yours.”

“There is a star for every soul,” I murmured.

“Indeed.  Even those who do not feel, once did.  Starforging is a ritual I have observed since the beginning.  But...if you render enough services unto me, you may find there is more than one star to call your own.”

Since then...the beginning of time, or at least our time.  Luna had crafted a star for every living soul.  Explains why there’s so many.  But...

“What...what about Princess Celestia?  The sun?”

Luna closed her eyes.  “She was the first to forge a star, and my mentor in doing the same.  Once upon a time, she felt too violently...now her soul is all but muted.”  Sorrow tinged her voice.  “When I allowed emotions to override my reason, it became a sacrifice necessary to keep the world alive.”

Celestia...that’s how she survived a thousand years of guilt and regret.  She’d sacrificed her soul.  No...no.  Not sacrificed.  It wasn’t dead.  It was...

Abandoned.

“My transformation and betrayal forced her to enact her greatest fear,” she told her hooves, volumes upon volumes of a purified shame infusing her voice, a shame so potent and so deep it seemed a miracle she was able to talk at all.  “Princess Celestia drew upon the magic of the land, the Elements of Harmony, and exiled me to my moon.

“Of everything I have ever done, that alone stands as my deepest regret.  That I, in my pettiness and selfishness, forced my own sister to such extremes.  She spent the next thousand years with her own albatrosses of sorrow and regret slung around her neck, as a finely-crafted shell of who she used to be, and in order to keep Equestria whole, those are weights she must ignore.”

“...I’m sorry.”

Her eyes were as glassy as a stillwater pond at night, but no tears fell.  And slightly, ever so slightly, the corners of her mouth twitched when she looked back at me.

“Not as sorry as me.”  She paused, and there was a steely glint and a hint of iron in her voice when she spoke again.  “Rest assured, I will never allow my petty jealousy and overblown emotions to roam free again.”

We both jumped as Violet and Blackout popped into existence beside us.  The former seemed somewhat disoriented by her jaunt through the Dreamscape; the latter, almost bored—no, disappointed.  What’d happened to them?

It looked even worse when Blackout cantered to Luna’s side and spent several seconds whispering in her ear.  Violet’s apparent tenseness escalated.  Luna remained expressionless, although from the few glances I chanced, she was looking at me much more often that at Violet.

Admittedly the observatory boasted much less grandeur than I was expecting, but then, it was Celestia who was the organized, precise one.  Luna was more intuitive, artistic, and a heck of a lot more disorganized.  Except for that bookcase...I noticed then that an open book sat atop it, a quill and inkwell resting neatly on top.  Beside that lay another rack of colored beads.  Records.  But of what?

At long last Blackout stepped away from Luna, and the princess turned her attention to Violet.

“Violet...I believe it is time you learned just who your parents were.”