i therefore relay the following so that the token of so doing might in someway serve to ease my conscience as to allaying in some way the plaints/pleas of the persons concerned
Twilight was following ponies again. It started as a casual activity, stemming from curiosity that wouldn’t release her. Spending hours working in the library would inevitably put thoughts of a certain kind into one's mind. A patron who she might only see twice in a month filled her with questions.
What else did they do? Where were they when she couldn't see them? Did they even exist, or did they appear outside the door to the library? Was there a continuous line of cause that could be traced from her eye to some distant point in the past? Were there thoughts inside the head’s of others?
Would anyone notice if one of them were to die?
She shook her head, unsettling her mane and pressing the last thought back to the darkest depths where it belonged. This wasn't about …that. Nothing was about that. Such were the morbid imaginations of a teenage mind, and as an adult she had an obligation to herself and those around her not to get “all weird,” as Spike would put it.
Still ...
The purple unicorn nearly cursed aloud as she ducked behind an umbrella stand. The brown earth pony had looked behind him, or perhaps to the side. She had almost certainly been seen, identified, or even marked.
Her heart hammered in her chest, pressing blood toward her face in a rush as humiliation and recriminations assaulted her. Why had she been stalking him in the first place? Why couldn’t she just stay put.
But so what if he had seen her? She wasn't doing anything wrong. Who could question her for walking down the street where there were so many other ponies? So many others to be seen. Pegasi and unicorns and earth ponies mingled and wandered in the idle sun. Certainly, certainly, she nodded her head to herself, she was doing nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, but it was a little late for that. She was already crouched behind the umbrellas and, fuck, who was this?
"Miss? Miss?" A tan pegasus was standing beside her anxiously fluttering his wings. He had the sort of pinched, worried face that is just begging to be put out of its misery.
"What?" she hissed at the pegasus, forgetting her earlier decision that her actions didn’t need to be hidden.
"There's an outhouse over there if you need to,” the pegasus said as he pointed his hoof toward a wooden convenience stationed just off the road. Twilight noticed that he had coins for his cutie mark, those were the worst kind of ponies. Anything money related on their haunch and their psyches went to pieces. The pegasus was still talking, “I'd just prefer you not urinate on my wares. Again."
"That was not me!" Twilight rose to her hooves in protest against this fresh slander the world had heaped upon her.
"Of course not,” the pegasus stepped back, his knees buckling in subservience. His voice was so nasal, so pleading, so annoying. “Just, please don't do it again."
"I can't do something again if I never …" Twilight's voice trailed off as she realized her tail had wandered off, escaping back into the cloud of her ignorance. "Do you see what you made me do?" She snarled at the store keeper.
"Not pee on my umbrellas?"
"I'm trying to tell you that I am not that sort of mare, but, ugh." She spun and walked away, releasing another exhausted sigh of disgust. After a few steps she experienced a slight pressure and realized a most distressing fact.
As she rushed to the outhouse, the umbrella seller called after her, "I told you, miss."
The unicorn didn't even dignify his assumption with a response. Although, she did make an oath to piss all over his umbrellas next time she had a chance.
In the wee hours of the morning, Twilight was busily swearing off all manner of bodily function related humor. Sure, it made a good punctuation mark from time to time, but certain things were too easy in the manner by which they passed from signature to habit.
Also, things sometimes had a way of getting out of hoof. At the moment, she was … well, let's not think about that anymore, the unicorn agreed with herself. Now of one mind inside her head, and of one course in her solitary destiny, she stumbled over one of her four hooves. Her right foreleg rebelled against its master with a lazy tremor.
Twilight stared down at her disparate limb with a sense of forestalling. Moving in separation from her will, the left foreleg pressed back her lavender hide to reveal the watch which she didn't keep strapped to her femur.
This watch, unique among all the watches Twilight had never seen, sported five hands curling in multiple directions. They leapt from their base like angrily uncoiling springs, twisting back and through themselves as they tock-ticked merrily in impossible spirals.
Fortunately for her mortal mind, there was no need to trace their non-Euclidean geometry, because a helpful alarm was beaming from the analog contraption.
"Time to take your brain medicine!" the friendly letters notified her. They were colored a soothing pink, the sort of light shade that reassures one everything is going to be okay and also pretty cute.
"Thank you," she whispered to the animate object as it continued its impossible dance, occasionally twisting through the bone. Fortunately, such interactions with reality were not painful, merely bearing with them a strange sort of itch that demanded movement and a hundred milligrams of Thorazine. Washed down with a liter of bourbon, natch.
With her hooves once more firmly in the place of their being, she lurched out of the outhouse slick with all manner of bodily discharge. A scrawny unicorn, his bones jutting through his yellow-gray fur like the pathetic cross spires of a wrecked ship, glared at her in impotent fury.
"Took ye long enough," he grumbled.
"I wouldn't go in there," Twilight admonished.
"Yer boyfriend still in there?"
"Not as such, no," the lavender unicorn sashayed a drunken pirouette into the street, turning back one last time to warn, "I wouldn't go in there."
The other unicorn had already thrown open the door of the convenience, setting it to creaking and banging in grand style
"Sweet Celestia," he moaned, dropping to his knees and all dignity forgotten. His wastes escaped him upon the ground, in the manner of his uncivilized ancestors who ate of the earth while they travelled it ceaselessly.
That which is taken is in another form returned, thought Twilight as she passed through the early morning, and her hooves grew lighter with the promise of dawn. The umbrella stand was still there, unmolested and free from urine. Ponyville is a safe town. The stand will remain intact for three days, until the street license expires and it is collected up by the guards. No one will respond to the civil notices, and the stand owner will be tried in absentia.
All a matter of bureaucracy in such a safe town with such nice ponies.
She contemplated the failure of her oath earlier that day, but there seemed little point in defacing the umbrellas now. All is forgiven in due time, and the knowledge lightened her step further, driving her legs up in a ridiculous high step as she pranced down the street.
Above the unicorn’s path, signs hung in grim defiance of gravity, giving their secret messages up by their appointment in space and time. Once, Twilight would have written all these words in her journal, seeking a meaning in their arrangement.
She giggled at her naivety back then, such a silly filly who believed in masonic cults.
The real messages are hidden in the absences, and she takes note of a fallen "a," "e," "o," "U," and partially displaced "y," as she passes in shadow. They use these methods because they’re easier to remember. After all, if writing it all down were necessary, then every spy could be identified by his notepad as he continually recorded concert dates.
At the end of the street, Twilight found the only restaurant still open at this hour. Beside it, a stream provided her a place to clean herself from the filth of the day. Red and brown dyed the creek downstream of her as they twist out their strange patterns in liquid matter.
Hong Kong Garden, the sign declared as she approached, announcing the drunkards last redoubt against the progress from night to day. It was also the home of the finest in griffin cuisine available for delivery, carry out and eating in. Having a griffin restaurant in a town this small would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, but now they seemed to be everywhere. Cultural osmosis is a beautiful thing.
A unicorn, they always have ponies working the counter, looked over the arriving patron for a second before snapping out, “the usual?”
“I ...” Twilight’s mind froze for a second, as she realized how many hours had passed since the last time she’d spoken to a real pony. The unicorn behind the counter shifted his hooves for a moment before lifting a quill and scritching out a receipt. Entirely unnecessarily, Twilight said, “yes, please.”
“Two egg rolls and a pint of hot and sour soup coming up,” the unicorn turned back to the kitchen where a griffin was standing, “you hear that?”
The griffin’s response was lost in the havoc of screeches and chirps that composed his native tongue, but the answer sated the server.
“It’ll be a minute, hun.”
"I'd say I didn't come to this country to make egg rolls," grumbled the griffin behind the counter as his neat claws making swift work of the cabbage. That was why Twilight came here, because they shredded their own cabbage. A lot of places, they get their vegetables pre-shredded, which saves time, but it also reduces security. "However, I can't remember why I came to this country in the first place."
In a moment of deep frying intensity, the egg rolls were hardened and crisp, the soup spooned out and the whole mess floated toward the lavender unicorn. Twilight always remembered to tip well because you never knew who might spit in your food otherwise.
Behind her, two ponies with shaved manes were discussing something in hushed tones. She caught a look at one out of the corner of her eye as he, in a suddenly loud voice, asked, "what if socks didn't work orally?"
For a moment afterward, the entire restaurant sat in silence. Even the pony’s partner seemed surprised by the outburst. The only one who wasn’t reacting was the pony who spoke. His eyes locked on Twilight waiting for her response. She shifted slightly and dropped her spoon to break the silence.
The clatter shattered the cacophonous quiet, and conversation resumed. Vegetables sizzled merrily, and the world spun along its crazily off kilter course. Every few minutes, Equestria gets another centimeter closer to Celestia’s sun, and someday those centimeters will make all the difference as everything burns.
For a moment, Twilight wished she could forget the words sent to her. If she were any other pony, maybe she could. Just ignore it like the rest do. The centimeters would pile up of their own accord and everything would burn, but she was the personal student of one Princess and a good friend of two more. No one spoke to her without meaning, and no meaning could be left on the table.
Discretely, she pulled a napkin toward her and scribbled the phrase onto it. In a moment, “what if socks didn’t work orally” was tucked out of sight for her and her alone. The others could forget it, that was their privilege earned through anonymity.
The egg roll’s skin crunched crisp under her teeth. Someone once told her about the new pesticides they were using. Sometimes the leaves could absorb them, turning the lettuce rotten. This decay could be concealed only in certain, secret factories where they shredded the lettuce and changed it, but in this restaurant she could watch the strange griffin cook shred the lettuce each time she ordered. She could be certain here. She could keep herself safe.
Twilight finished her breakfast and wandered back into the street. Her mind was once more clear as she walked back to her library home. The secret question of socks hidden on her person, the secret knowledge of lettuce hidden in her brain, and all of it within her grasp. It was a good day to be in control.
Whenever Twilight opened the door to her library, she stopped. Her hooves positioned before the entry, she closed her eyes. For a moment, she tried to imagine what it looked like to an outsider. What it would be like to entertain those strange, alien thoughts that must fill their heads. To see this unicorn with a duotone mane.
Her nose would be in a book, as always. Did they think she was fat? She could see a little bit of extra meat in her cheeks, but that was her own eyes. Then again, a mirror’s reflection doubled the distance between the object reflected and the person looking, so maybe they could see her better. Did they recognize the bags under her eyes?
Blindly Twilight stepped through the door, trying to picture it all as if it were her first time. She cursed as she stumbled and opened her eyes.
It was all the same as it ever was. Hilarious in the pointlessly mundane nature of it all. Books, oh Celestia, why were there always so many books. Twilight hurried to her desk and pulled out her journal, laying the napkin down.
“What if socks didn’t work orally?”
The sentence stared up at her, more specific and directed than anything else she’d ever been asked. They were getting specific, that meant the end was near.
She dispersed the sealing charms on her journal and flipped it open. The book was filled with these notes. She always felt a strange surge of pride when she regarded her old writings, as she traced the past forms of herself through their course to her present state.
Understanding had been growing within her as the days past. Once, a feeble minded juvenile had attempted to apply its own definitions to these statements, but that time is well and gone.
The eye pollutes, she knew that now. The eye pollutes absolutely, and so she simply recorded the events. They spoke for themselves.
"money! shouted to me by a passerby shortly after midnight."
"white horse repeated two times on the bus by a pegasus wearing an orange hat."
"we're watching the house directed to me by a unicorn with a red sphere cutie mark."
What were any of these to mean? She was a personal student of the Princess. No one could think or imagine or even contemplate to tell her things without meaning. But how was she to take them?
It was certain they must know her. They must know she was a personal friend of the Princess. They must mean something by what they were saying to her. They meant for her to hear and understand and it was so frustrating. She knew the Princess personally, and the phrase whooshed through her ears like the chugging of a train. Twilight’s little head throbbed, her horn pressed from behind as if it were about to shoot off like a rocket.
Princessprincesspripriprinprincesscesscessprinprincesscesscess, pushing past and about her in a rush.
Repetition liberated syllables of their meaning, and the unicorn grew frustrated. She slammed her lavender hoof down on the journal. The noise, reckless and consuming, was dispersed by the sound of cuticle against parchment.
For a moment, she just sat like that, observing the stillness as it reverberated from the action of her will. For another moment, she waited. Finally, there was no more waiting, and she turned her face up from the pages to see the sun was rising through her window. If she was to be any good when the library opened at noon, she'd need to get some sleep. A couple hours, at least.
The chair, how had she gotten into that if she couldn’t remember, squeaked under her as she shifted her bulk back to four legs and staggered up the steps to her bed.
She shook her head and climbed onto the bed. Her hooves pressed restlessly against the matress, pressing and pushing out into a nest for herself. She spun, feeling the delicate tickle of tail against her nose until, at last, her position was secure. Twilight curled up on the curls, feeling the cool emptiness of the empty space where ...
Don't think about it.
He's gone and you have responsibilities.
Still, she couldn't help but fixate on it, in that strange, unwelcome way. The old feeling of warmth curled up on the outside of her left leg. Occasionally squirming with unfathomable dreams or whimpering in the grip of ghostly titans. His presence had been ...
Don’t think about it.
Responsibilities.
Soon, her carefully bundled body was restlessly spread over the whole of her empty bed as the night died, gradually waking twisted into dreams with a great, seamless effort. Thoughts of grandeur filled her head, and the little congratulatory notes that she was too quick to expect and too slow to remember.
Her world was paper, prophetically fragile. Everything will burn, centimeter by centimeter.
When she woke at noon, she remembered that she hadn't taken her pills.
Again.
This was becoming a dangerous habit, but she didn't have time to deal with it before rushing down the stairs. There were so many things to do, so many pieces to move.
A half-finished letter to the editor of the Canterlot Chronicle was hidden in her drawer. "I have observed," it began, "that the rate at which I am forced to go to the store to buy milk has been increasing dramatically over the past month."
Applejack approached the library with an unsteady step. Things were growing strange, that much she could tell, but how to reverse the strides taken in favor of madness? A train doesn’t know any world away from its tracks. There is but one past and one future, and nothing to do but continue toward the inevitable destiny in her blood.
In this case, her destiny was a social visit. Maybe it would all turn out okay? Had anything ever turned out okay?
She pressed through the front door into the library. Twilight wasn’t there waiting with an axe and a smile. Applejack allowed herself a smile. Not getting murdered as soon as she walked through the door, that was at least half the battle.
The rest was leaving before she was murdered, and that would almost certainly prove harder. Maybe she hadn’t properly figured the percents before entering, but the fancy mathematics were somepony else’s problem, right?
Her horseshoes clicked along the floor as she walked toward the kitchen, pursuing the footprints left before her by her parents. When she entered the kitchen, she stopped at the sight that confronted her. Twilight was looming like some deranged monster over a quart of milk, her face adorned with a complicated set of lenses. The black straps snarled through the unicorn’s mane, turning a nightmare of frizz into a slightly different nightmare.
The stalwart farm pony cleared her throat before asking, "am I interrupting something?"
"No. No. Not at all. I sent for you after all,” Twilight replied, waving her hoof dismissively.
Applejack started to open her mouth to protest. She had not been sent for, she had come, but ...
It wasn't worth the argument.
"Do you see anything special about this?" Twilight asked, lifting the quart of milk in the grip of her magic and proffering it to her friend.
Applejack took a long moment to look over the carton. She turned her head slightly, releasing her ponytail to brush the ground as she squinted and looked closer. Nutrition information, brand, all the things she expected to see on a carton of milk. When she realized that Twilight had begun tapping her hooves, the earth pony offered the best response she could imagine.
"No?"
"Good, because I need you to take it to your house. Don't let anypony else drink from it. Tell me when it is empty."
The carton was thrust into Applejack's tan hooves and she held it for a moment. It felt warm with disease and the spring sun, indicating that it had been in the open for a while. "Why?"
"A few months ago … when, well, then. My life flashed before my eyes, and I realized how much of it was spent getting milk from the store."
Applejack nodded her head, "okay?"
"At least two or three times a week I go out and by a new quart of milk. Do you know what that means?" Twilight frantically paced as she spoke, looking over her shoulder periodically to verify that her audience was still captive.
"Y'all should start buying whole gallons to save on money and time?"
"No. No. No. No. No!" Twilight shook her head angrily. "It means that someone or something is stealing my milk. Or evaporating it. They're fucking with me, Applejack. Someone is fucking with me."
Applejack looked down at the carton in her hooves and back at the pony which had put it there. "Are ya sure? Because that seems unlikely."
"What is more likely, that I don't know how much milk I drink. Just me, myself, alone. That I don't know that. Or, or that somepony else is drinking it? I know how much milk I drink."
"Y’all need to calm down, Twilight.”
“I don’t need to calm down Twilight. Twilight is perfectly calm right now. Her mental and verbal faculties are running at their peak. My mind is as smooth and deep as the sea. Now, take this milk and don’t drink it.”
Applejack took a whiff from the carton, verifying that the milk had begun to curdle. At least the not drinking part would be easy.
Taking a deep breath, Applejack began the speech she had prepared, the one that had driven her away from her duties on the farm and into the house of the mad, “Are-”
“What? No. That milk needs to be out of here as soon as possible. They might be stealing it even now. Evaporating it,” Twilight cut off her friend.
Applejack looked from the inanimate object to the animate one, and realized that maybe the destiny in her blood could wait. Just another day or two, then she could speak with Twilight.
The blond pony walked out the door of the library, carrying the milk, and bumped into a brown earth pony wearing spectacles. For a moment, they stared at one another. Applejack with her milk and the earth pony with his book.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“These books are just getting more and more post-modern, ain’t they?” The Element of Honesty lied with a smile. “It’s ... um ... by removing the text from the conventional bonds of the novel, and by printing it on the side of a milk carton ... the ... manifest ... message ... medium ... eeyup.”
“Oh, what’s it about?” His voice was smooth, featureless as a stone. Featureless as a brown earth pony with a gray tie and spectacles.
“Milk,” Applejack called as she hurried away wondering what it was about the presence of the brown stallion that made her so nervous. For a pony with her destiny set since the beginning of time, she was having a most unexpected day.
Twilight nearly expectorated upon herself when the stallion came through the door of her library. His head was turned to look over his back, giving her the advantage.
By the time Twilight had corrected her bearing and smoothed her mane, he had returned his gaze to the front. Once more, they confronted each other, the object and the subject.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” smiled Twilight politely.
“I didn’t expect to return so soon. I was wondering if you had any other copies of this book, someone seems to have written in it.”
“Written?”
He flipped the book, Diversity As It Is Held Among the Upper Class, open to a passage on Zebra surgeons. The entire page was covered in scribbles, some in pen and some in pencil. They outlined several pentagrams traced between incidences of the word “the.” The footnotes were scribbled over with a crudely written note about the repetition of three syllable phrases.
“We do have another copy. I’m sorry that someone vandalized that one, normally my assistant would ...” Twilight’s voice trailed off after the word assistant, or perhaps just because she was busy skimming the shelves for the required tome.
To break the silence, the stallion asked, “did you notice the umbrella stand?”
Twilight froze for a second. “What about it?”
“Well, it’s gone. The guy just left, I suppose.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” she shoved the words out too quickly to plead innocence as she grabbed the only other copy. It was unmarked, deliberately left so. The librarian had hoped he wouldn’t actually read the book, hoped that he would be content to disappear back into ignorance like the others.
“Everyone heard.”
“Heard what?” Twilight turned, the book floating between her and her adversary like a paper made weapon.
“I beg your pardon?” the stallion looked at her quizzically.
“Nothing, I’m just, here’s your book.”
“Thank you.” In the peculiar manner of non-unicorns, the stallion gripped the book in his mouth, muffling his words.
The stallion opened the door, setting it to creaking and banging in grand style. Before the door closed, the purple unicorn heard him mutter, “the whole town heard you do it. Socks don’t work orally.”
And then it was over. The muddle and distress dismissed, and with it the secret guilt.
It was a secret relief to know she was publicly damned.
Recognising the apparent social and economic credit (as well as relevance to one's good health) in having a reckoning of what the above is in reference to, what am I to deduce from any or all of the above?
Author's Note
Quotes at beginning and end from this letter, submitted to the internet.
What am I to deduce?
why are you looking here
what do you hope to find
