*Note: most of this was written before Keep Calm and Flutter On came out and ruined Discord as a villain. Therefore, this is AU because he's still a statue and hasn't been loved and tolerated to death.
THUS DWELL IN JOY
A tragichaocomedy in infinite acts by the parasprite Discord
A Preface, Interlude, and Epilogue—also by His Chaoticness, Discord
Let me say a few words about the setting and some of the background props that aren't trees and domesticated flightless birds before we finish this this tale. As a major character in it—the tale I'm going to tell you, that is—I believe I can offer the closest thing to a perspective on the world you're about to enter that your obnoxiously orderly brain can process.
Verily, you have been warned of the chaos to come.
Before the beginning, there was less than nothing. It's a difficult and slippery concept for mortal ponies to grasp, that one; the idea that there could actually be something which is less than the absence of being. And they're right, in a sense: there actually never was anything but nothing. Equivocally, it's also impossible for a pony to comprehend everything, as it's simply too big to fit into your brain.
Time is utterly absent in this story, which is one of the many things that makes it so different from your many boring fairy-tales of heroic red and black alicorns fighting hordes of gryphon-minotaur-changeling hybrids, and such things. Speaking of things without time isn't a particularly simple matter when you're using language to communicate, but I'm sure we'll manage, won't we? Either that, or we won't.
Another thing mortal ponies have some trouble understanding is the idea of forever. This is a particularly hard thing for them to comprehend, you see, because without nothing, everything, and the absence of time, you cannot have infinity or eternity. We will simplify it to an almost pointless degree and say that it happened before the beginning.
To describe the 'setting', if it could be called that, one would have to have a mind vast enough to encompass it. There was no distance fog there, and the view was panoramic; all that wasn't was thrust upon your mind in one overwhelming landslide in which you were forced to comprehend how insignificant you were in the scheme of an infinite, eternal carnival of nothing.
This sort of state is far, far beyond your capacity to understand, so don't bother trying. I'll warn you, many things here are beyond you, because we are speaking of Lovecloptian ideas and not your boring, orderly world where everything always makes sense. Simply put: to comprehend would be to go mad.
If you're really, truly in need of a visual, picture a vast, expanse of completely blank space that went on forever in all directions. There was no name for the color it was painted; black is the closest cousin it had, but even that's not dark enough to describe it. Light and dark were one and the same before the beginning began, anyway, so it doesn't truly matter. Not a single ray of light could be found anywhere, and yet you could see everything at once in a massive, overwhelmingly desolate panoramic vacuum like a night sky without stars.
The cold in that place was bottomless. Again, beyond your complete comprehension! In the mortal world of Equestria, absolute zero is reached at zero degrees Kelvin, or -273.15 degrees Celestius. This, however, was an eerie cold that just kept getting colder with each moment that didn't pass. If you'd been there with a thermometer (not that you would), it would have gone down and down and down until you had a red line past negative infinity.
But you would never freeze, as there were no particles to freeze, you silly scientific pony. There can be no particles in dead, empty space, after all—those came much, much later. It was just damn hellishly cold before the beginning.
In fact, I suppose Hell, or Tartarus, would be the most fitting name you could have given this state of nonbeing. There was no death, of course, as there was no time—and where would your soul go, anyway? Detrot? No, in the Void, everything was immortal and untouched by time. The first immortals were creatures that, again, were far beyond your comprehension. They were far more than mere omnipotent gods. They were greater than the gods; greater than the creators of the universe; greater than themselves.
Does that make any sense? No? Good. It shouldn't.
They drifted about in this less-than-nothing, lonely and alone, and they did not want it any other way because they did not want. They did not have these equine desires... They simply were, and are, and will always be. And they did things that you, in your wildest dreams, could not possibly begin to consider, because of your narrow pony mind and your fearful pony heart.
To these old things, the unnothing was... Well, I suppose you could call it a home, but that would imply that they thought in any way like you do. A cold, horrid, painful, miserable... dwelling, perhaps? It doesn't matter. Semantics. To them, it was perfect, and all was well, and the universe went on and on and on. And on. And on, and on, and on... and on... I think I've made my point clear.
Do you truly understand what it means to be immortal? I doubt it.
It's more than just sitting on your rump, drinking tea and shooting ponies onto to the moon. Outliving friend after friend until you find your one millionth replacement Best Friend Forever, or living in a plastic dollhouse full of ponies who are supposed to be dead but aren't. It's so much more.
No, being immortal means that you will never end. You will exist past forever and into the phantasmic nothing that precedes and follows and intercedes it. You cannot cease to be. There is no beginning, and there is no end.
And that is precisely what is so terribly hilarious about this tale.
For you see, there were two who sort of drifted through the coldness like all the others—who were immortal, like all the others, and yet weren't quite right. So much like the others, and yet so unlike them in that they somehow lacked the ability to comprehend the universe and its complexities, and the hilarity of their combined meaninglessness. To say... immortals cursed with the minds of mortals.
Oh, how it amuses me these days to see Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia, Regent of the Sun, Ruler of Equestria, decked out in her royal finery and looking every bit the all-powerful goddess. Now, Tia does look very nice in all that, you must understand; let nopony ever claim otherwise. But she was a very different creature before the beginning.
Imagine for a moment the most pathetic little foal you ever saw; the most pitiful orphaned beggar you ever encountered on the streets of Canterlot, and you haven't even come close to visualizing how hilariously powerless Celestia was before time began. She was a mere filly; a scruffy, dirty off-white alicorn filly with a pink mane and massive black-and-blue bags under bloodshot eyes.
And oh, the tears. She cried enough tears to drown herself a thousand times over. She was practically born crying. Why, I do believe she did begin crying before she even opened her eyes. Poor Tia was just so alone and so terrified, and all she wanted was to be held by her mother (though she never had one) and told it would be alright. Celestia was doubly cursed in that she could not even understand any of her situation with her profoundly limited mind. She spent her infinity wondering why. Why they were, why they suffered, and why they couldn't just die.
Her only companion was her little sister, Luna. If you thought Celestia was pathetic, Luna made her look almost as perfect as... well, me.
Luna wasn't even out of her foalhood yet and dreamed nightmares that would scare you into catatonia every time she closed her eyes. I think she cried even more than Celestia did. She was afraid of the dark, you see. That's why she made the night. It's brighter than the color of un-nothing.
They spent the endless, beginningless time before time holding onto each other as they drifted through the vast expanse of ichorous darkness. Spinning together in a spiral of loneliness and despair, doomed to live forever in that icy place before hell. Poor Celestia, having to hang onto her sister when they had nightmares, lest she lose her grip and they be separated forever and ever.
That was a valid fear, mind you. Things tended to get lost easily, or simply cease to existnotexistexist. Do you catch my drift? Could you imagine spending eternity by yourself?
No? Lucky you.
Oh, you think you can imagine the horror? You think you can empathize with that loneliness?
Just you wait and see, dear friend. Listen and learn.
While they drifted aimlessly through this ultravacuum of silence, it was usually Celestia who thought about why. But it was Luna who asked why.
"Why are we here, Tia?" she would often ask when she was supposed to be sleeping. Which was always and never—you know, because it was better to be asleep than awake, and without time, everything was just sort of mashed into one ball of instant action.
"I don't know, Lulu," Celestia would reply sadly, stroking her sister's starry mane with one hoof. The other foreleg was always locked tightly and protectively around Luna's body, ensuring they were never apart.
"It's so cold. I wish it wasn't so cold."
"So do I."
"Why is it so cold?"
"I don't know, Lulu."
Luna, of course, would begin to cry, and let me tell you it would have been a heartbreaking sight if there had been anypony around but Celestia to witness it. Immortal things, you see, don't have hearts, except for Celestia and Luna—and theirs, of course, were broken a long time ago. Gag, gag, gag. Excuse me while I see my doctor about my sudden onset of spontaneous bulimia.
"I'm so cold..."
"I know. I am too."
"I don't want to be here, Tia. I wish we could leave and go somewhere warm with a lot of other ponies like us to keep us company."
"Am... am I not enough for you, Luna?"
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way! I love you so much! But I can't stand this any longer... why do we have to suffer like this, Tia? Why? Were we bad? It does't make sense... was I bad? Did we do wrong? Are we being punished?"
Hmph.
If I were capable of being shocked and appalled, I would be stunned by the inability of mortals (and those with the minds of mortals) to comprehend the nature of the universe. Always thinking there has to be a reason for everything that happens...
What's that? You want to know the nature of the universe?
Ha ha, fine. I'll tell it to you.
It's quite simple. I don't think you'll fully grasp what I'm saying, though. Not when you've been biologically hardwired to make order out of everything.
The nature of the universe is... less than nothing at all.
It is a thing beyond order; beyond chaos, even. Your limited language couldn't truly express how utterly meaningless the universe in which we have and have not resided is. I know that there are ponies who believe there is no higher power than the goddesses, and others that there are no goddesses and dear Tia and Lulu are mere horses with wings and horns and a lot of fiddly-widdly magical power. Pretenders to the throne, if you will.
They spend so much time and effort arguing over it and generating such lovely chaos.
'I have received a vision from the Goddess Celestia in my dreams that thou art a deceiver leading the innocent astray into amorality!'
'Oh, the thirty-six degree curvature of the inner space-time continuum on my quill pen proves that the Princesses are not goddesses, only lying frauds!'
But has the former group ever detuned their righteous fervor for a moment to wonder from whence their all-powerful goddesses sprang, or the latter ever come down from their proverbial cloud of arrogance to wonder from whence they themselves sprang?
Probably. I doubt they've ever come close to finding the correct answer, though. Neither side has ever spoken the word 'Discordism', so I don't think they've done very well in working out the truth.
In the end, they're both somewhat right, to a degree. The Princesses are indeed your goddesses, but in the big scheme of things—which, mind you, is so big even I have a bit of trouble comprehending it, though I'm still able to do so—they are less than less than nothing. This religion versus anti-religion conflict is so utterly pointless because both sides are wrong and right at the same time.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, with all this springing and fervor and proverbiality and defensivaberbialation. Right now, our story is about two lonely little alicorn foals floating through the eerie cold of the unnothing. Oh, my friend... if only you could see it. Your all-powerful princess of the sun trying to comfort her lonely, frightened sister in the very depths of what you, with your limited vocabulary, might call hell.
"I can't sleep," Luna would whisper, clinging to Celestia. "There are things watching us, Tia. They want to eat us... they'll eat us if I go to sleep."
"I'll keep us safe," the little white alicorn would assure her. "Go to sleep. I'll protect you while you're dreaming."
Luna, of course, would have none of it. She would begin to cry softly in the maddening emptiness.
"B-but what if you can't? The things I see, they're so terrible! They're slimy and disgusting and evil and they want to eat us because they hate us because we're being punished because we're bad ponies because we did something horrible!"
Let's switch tenses for a bit so I can tell this part of the story with more emotional depth.
You ponies and your emotions... gag.
"Nothing will hurt you while I'm here," promised Celestia. She stroked the smaller alicorn's mane with her hoof. "Shh... please don't cry, Luna. Please... You're not a bad pony. You're the best sister I could ever ask for."
You may be wondering how Celestia and Luna could talk about having other sisters when they were the only two ponies in the unexistence. It doesn't make sense, does it? There, you have your answer: what fun is there in making sense?
Sniffling and shivering simultaneously, Luna nuzzled Celestia. Her crying, however, did not cease.
"Let's play the imagination game," Celestia suggested, smiling a strained smile despite her own chattering teeth. That game usually helped calm Luna down. "What are you imagining?"
Luna went silent for a little while. Her tears stopped and dried away.
"Painting everything," she eventually replied in a soft voice. "I made up a color. It's called black."
"What's black like?"
"It's a lot lighter than everything else except blue," said Luna. "I want to paint myself black and blue so I'll be the brightest thing ever. Then I'll take a brush and paint everything above my head the same color so I can hide up there when the monsters come and they won't see me."
"What about me?" Celestia asked. "Will I be black and blue as well?"
The younger alicorn bit her lip a little as she thought. "No, we'll make up another color for you so you can be part of The Night, too."
Celestia smiled a real smile. "The Night, Luna?"
Nodding enthusiastically, Luna said, "Yes, I'm going to call it The Night. It's a pretty word, isn't it?"
"It is," agreed Celestia.
"What about you, Tia?"
"Light," said Celestia without hesitation.
"What's Light? Is it like The Night?"
"Yes, it's very much like night. But instead of making the sky black to hide in it, I'm going to make up a color so bright it'll scare all the monsters away. Then we'll never have to worry about them ever again."
"How will you do that?" asked Luna curiously. "What will it be like?"
"I'll make a huge ball of this Light and hide it behind your Night. Then when the monsters come I'll take it out from behind The Night and it'll shine on them and hurt their eyes."
Luna clapped her front hooves together delightedly, holding onto Celestia with her back legs. "That's a brilliant idea, Tia! What are you going to call it?"
"Pardon?" said Celestia.
"Well, you have to have a name for it." Luna nodded her head as though this was a matter of the utmost importance. Which, to her, it was.
"I shall call it The Sun,” Celestia decided. Luna clapped again in approval.
Of course, I’m only compressing a few moments of their time into a block you might find relevant. In truth, that conversation took place over a great many endless infinites, seeing as untime is infinite in its length, and was punctuated by a lot of crying and telling each other that everything would be better eventually and affectionate nuzzling and sleeping and Luna’s nightmares and talking about inane things nopony but them could possibly care about and all the other things ponies do that nothing else outside the universe does.
But I doubt you would be interested in that. Let me tell you, it gets dull after a while.
Dull, dull, dull.
I’m sure by now you’re wondering how the Princesses, and indeed, you, are happily docking your plots on this oasis in an ocean of nihil, given how helpless they were before the beginning and how you didn’t exist or not exist at all. Well, hello, my friends! That’s where I come in!
I was not like your princesses in that I rather enjoyed hanging around in the dark and doing whatever the hell I pleased. I still do, but I've grown rather rebellious in my teenage years, and have begun attending rave parties as well. Being a creature of chaos, I often grew bored of the Void's predictable unpredictability, and so to find these two creatures who were somehow less than the darkness, and who were predictably the same thing over and over forever, was quite novel.
It was after observing the Princesses for quite some time that I first set eyes upon them. I decided to introduce myself, because, well, it was just the polite thing to do, after all. Thus motivated, I slithered from the dark depths and, extending a clawed appendage, said, "Good darkness, my dears... I am Discord, the spirit of Disharmony and Chaos. What brings you to this open range of the Void?"
"Don't eat us, Mr. Monster!" cried Luna. She burst into tears.
Celestia, always possessed by that need to be the protector of all things weak and helpless, pushed in front of little Luna, eyes wide with a look bordering on insanity. "You keep your jaws and claws away from my sister, creature, or you'll regret it!"
"Aaaahhh, I'm shaking in my boots," I told them, folding my arms indignantly. "Really, now. I was only trying to say hello. Is that any way to greet a fellow traveler?"
"Why would you want to talk to us? Just leave us alone!"
"Because," I huffed, "I'm bored. Eternity is very boring once you run out of tic tac toe partners, not that you actually can run out of them. I've been listening in on your conversations about... oh, what was it... Light? And what was the other one?"
"Time," said Celestia warily. "It's where things don't stay the same... they change."
I shivered delightedly at the very thought. "Oohoohooh... that is so very interesting."
"Maybe... maybe we'll even... go away."
"When you say 'go away' is that a euphemism for 'die'? 'Cease to be'? 'Expire'? 'Meet your maker'? 'Shuffle off this mortal coil'?"
Slowly, Celestia nodded. Naturally, I burst into laughter, as this was indeed quite funny. She wasn't amused, and turned away in humiliation to cover Luna with her little filly wings as best she could.
"Oh dear, that is priceless," said I, slapping my clawed hand upon my knee in mirth. "Don't you know that we can't die? There's no such thing as death—We are forever! We are immortal! Oh dear, you two will definitely entertain me for quite some time."
"Just go away!" shouted Celestia as Luna began to cry again. "If you're just going to mock us, go away!"
I looked around at the endless emptiness, then turned back and smiled at them. It was not a particularly kind or unkind smile, but one of mischief and delicious, lovely chaos—for, as you know, I am a creature of mischief and chaos.
"I could," I said, "but I could also give you Light."
"You could?" asked Luna from within the cocoon of Celestia's wings.
"Oh, yes, my dear child... Let me show you."
(1) And Discord placed his shades before his eyes and said, Let there be light: and there was light.
The Void shone with what Celestia and Luna had only imagined for so long: a glowing point where the absolute darkness was absent, and rays of light burst forth instead from its depths. Wherever this vast, expanding sphere of light touched, there was warmth, safety, and happiness like neither had ever known before. It shoved away the vacuous emptiness and replaced it with something, which I assure you was unheard of at that untime.
(2) And Discord saw the light, that it was good and could provide lots and lots of chaos and entertainment: and Discord divided the light from the light from the light.
First, there was light, and then there were many shades of light. If you got closer, there was more light, and if you got further away, there was less light. And if you got furthest away, you got to the least light, until you reached black, which was without light. Simple, yes?
(3) And Discord called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
(4) And Discord placed the greatest light in the Sun, and he gave this to Celestia, that she could watch over the Day, and he placed the least light in the Moon, and he gave this to Luna, that she could watch over the Night.
"How very biblical," I said when I was finished. This all took just a snap of my fingers, of course, because I am very amazing and powerful and godlike and all that. "Let's get worldbuilding then, shall we?"
Celestia and Luna, in their infinite fillyishness and such, looked upon the creation with wonder and were understandably awed by the sights before them. All they had ever dared to dream of had come true. But now, suddenly, they were filled with creative ideas and desires they would never have allowed themselves to consider out in that dark, evil Void, for such things would have been far too painful.
"I'd like it if we weren't so lonely," Celestia told me hopefully.
So I obliged and created a gigantic globe you could walk upside-down on (because what would be more chaotic than walking upside-down on a huge marble), and populated it with other ponies that were kind of like Celestia and Luna. It was soon filled with unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies to be friends with Celestia and Luna, and then I created other animals to share that world with them too.
"I want the world to be filled with bright and pretty colours," added Luna. "So that everything and everyone is always happy."
So, being the infinitely nice draconequus that I am, I made everything bright and colourful, and it rained chocolate milk from clouds made out of cotton candy, and all the ponies had blindingly bright schemes and silly names like Cuddles, Raincurl, and Surprise. Such fun!
"We wish everypony would always get along with each other, no matter what," the two original alicorn fillies said together.
Well now, that didn't seem like too bad an idea at the time. My little experiment was coming along swimmingly so far! So I took a lot of Disharmony and put it through an excruciatingly complex process that removed all the Dis and left only the Harmony. Then I turned the Harmony into the Elements of Harmony: Laughter, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Kindness, and Magic.
And when I presented them to the recently crowned Princesses, I even added a little 'Ta-daa' to make the event all the more grand. It wa—Why yes, I did indeed create the Elements of Harmony. Yes, I—What?
No, of course I don't know how they work.
Why would I know something like that? All I did was make them.
Anywho, there were many, many, many other requests, and most of them were insipid, so I won't bother mentioning them to you. This newfangled invention called time passed, and Equestria ran quite smoothly for several thousand years. For the most part, it was good: we frolicked through the flowers, tiptoed through the tulips, and generally did a great many entertaining and chaotic things. It was such a delightfully chaotic experience to create life and manipulate it as I pleased, despite the increasingly needy Princesses and their reliance on me for all their power.
I let them have their wishes and kept them around, because they inspired me; in the same way a muse inspires a great artist. But though Celestia and Luna became very comfortable in their idealized little world, they could not pretend it was anything more than a dream swirling inside an opium pipe, waiting to be inhaled. They still dreamed their terrifying little nightmares of the Void's vast and ageless emptiness, and the tantalizing madness they could never fall into to escape their terrible fate. They suffered through these nightmares even after I made Luna the Princess of Dreams, and they still crawled into one another's beds to hold each other and cry every night for thousands of years.
They were still afraid, you see, even though they put on their strong fronts to the ponies who now worshiped them as goddesses. If only those ponies knew how truly pathetic the Princesses once were... how powerless in the endless scheme... they would be very angry indeed. Of course, if they truly understood their relevance to the scheme, said ponies would be more likely to either go insane or commit suicide out of sheer hopelessness.
So one day the Royal Sisters came to me atop the highest mountain peak in Equestria, which was also the lowest, and the middle, and the one most surrounded by cotton candy clouds, which was a height relative to that mountain. They came with yet another wish; the first one I could not grant.
"We wish this would all last for ever and ever," they said to me.
"No can do," I told her—most apologetically, because I am a very polite draconequus.
"What?" whimpered Luna. "But you must!"
"Ah, but I cannot. One day, my little alicorns, I will grow bored of this, and then I will move on to a different part of the nothingness. Perhaps we'll meet again, but I doubt it. I can't really give you a time frame, though; it all depends on how much this world continues to entertain m—"
"You can't destroy all this," Celestia said sharply. "Discord, that's not funny."
"Oh, you have no sense of humor," I chuckled heartily. "Your reaction to the time I blew up Manedinganoonga was proof enough of that. But I'm afraid this is not a joke. You see, that's the catch when living in a world created by a capricious and whimsical god such as myself: I can just as easily destroy all that I create."
Celestia fell upon her knees, openly groveling like a noble before my admittedly grovel-worthy self. "Discord, please... I beg you... without you, there's no light! We can't go back there! Please, we can't! It's so lonely—I can't go back there! Please, I'll do anything! I'll do anything!"
"Sorry, Tia, but I shall not be swayed by your pleading. You're just as much of a god as me—you'll survive. Time means an end to infinity, and that means this place has an end. Forever doesn't. We don't. "
"I don't want to survive if I lose Equestria!" shouted Celestia. She was crying... Gag. How melodramatic. "Here, we have a purpose! We have a reason to exist! We have Equestria, and our little ponies! Out there, all we do is float around in space and cry!"
"I can't help that I have attention deficit disorder," I told her with a shrug. "I get bored easily. What am I to do? Nothing, that's what. I do know of something you could do, though—you could start appreciating what you have, instead of constantly wishing for more, and more, and more. Enjoy your little ponies; live in the moment, and don't fret about the future. Otherwise you won't even know what you've got until it's gone."
I turned away, toward the east, and started singing 'Don't Know What You Got, Till It's Gone' in a loud, booming voice that probably blew out eardrums for miles around.
Unfortunately, I had, in a moment of most embarrassingly ungodlike lapse of concentration, forgotten about the Elements of Harmony, which were at that moment in the saddlebags of the Princesses, as they always carried their fashionable magic jewelry around with them at that time. Being the spirit of chaos and disharmony, and all, I tend to react rather badly when hit with pure, concentrated harmony (which I invented—sort that out in your head; I dare you to even try), so it was a very foolish thing to forget that indeed.
I don't think your Princesses actually knew the Elements would have such an effect on me, of course. They were just panicked and fearful, and they chose to react by hitting yours truly in the behind with that rainbow of light.
Just like that!
Not even an 'Oh Discord, dearest and oldest friend of ours, we're going to turn you into a stone statue and put your (attractive, I'll give you) body on display in the gardens for thousands of years while we play in your creation like foals in a puddle of mud'. It's so uncouth, as my good friend Te'oma's dear darling sweetheart would say, to turn ponies to stone; but to do so without asking first is just flat-out impolite and rude.
And there I was, frozen for millenniums in the midst of my great ballad of loss, knowledge, and glass slippers. Trapped within a shell made of pure harmony, able to see and hear but not to move or speak. And so, time passed... and passed... A few thousand years of imprisonment here, a day of freedom there...
And time continues to pass. And pass...
Until one day, it simply won't anymore.
And that's how the universe began, and how I ended up trapped in stone the first time around. Now, if you want to hear all about the unending grief I gave Celestia from the gardens about it, I can tell you about that, too, but I don't think you'd be interested. It's quite boring. Celly’s mere presence does tend to have that effect on so very many things.
Don't you agree?
...Twilight, dear, I hope I haven't been the first creature to bore an immortal to death. Especially not so soon after your ascension.
Oh, the Elements? Well, having never been sealed in stone before, I thought it might make an interesting experience. It was in fact excruciatingly boring. Having never been sealed in stone twice before, I'm trying to determine whether that is a bit more interesting.
Aha, no. I’m just pulling your brand-new alicorn wings of immortality and foreverness. To be honest, my second imprisonment was simply due to hubris on my part. I was still trying to have fun that time, and I just felt like playing a bit of a game of chance with you girls—it seems I lost, unfortunately. I shan’t be making that mistake again, let me tell you!
How am I talk—Oh, Twilight, you and your silly logic! I'm talking because I'm talking.
Of course it doesn't make any sense. No sense makes sense!
You'll never be able to understand why that makes sense, because it doesn't! Nothing makes sense except that which exists within this tiny little bubble-—and this tiny little bubble, I assure you is quite small indeed. Outside, there’s a howling anticyclone of silent illogicality that would break your brain the moment you tried to sort through it. Sanity is just something silly Luna came up with one evening after too much ice cream with chocolate sauce on top. Science and reason didn't even exist before the beginning.
Do please understand, my dear... you will never make sense out of the universe. You can't make sense out of a place without rules, after all. Oh, don't get defensive on me! The fact that you mean less than less than less than nothing in a nonexistent universe you'll never begin to comprehend is no reason not to sit back and enjoy a nice glass of chocolate milk.
Yes, by all means, speak to Celly about what I've told you. Cadance did, you know.
I expect the cake-addict will bury me in the ground now; perhaps at the center of the earth, where she thinks no chaos can reach me. But there's always chaos, and I will always be. And one day, I'm going to leave this statue, and then what? You've imprisoned me in stone twice now.
I might have tried to leave a little piece of myself behind to keep Equestria alive, but I just don't feel like it anymore. That’s what you get for being so rude as to trap me in stone for thousands of years. I had planned, you know, to stick around for a few billion years more; maybe a couple trillion, if the weather was nice; maybe wait for the planet to get a little too close to a black hole and start getting eaten up anyway, because I’ve always wanted to see that happen.
But I've discovered I just don't like being sealed in stone very much. No, not at all.
And I don't want it to happen again.
This world; this grand adventure; it was all such great fun... but I’ve had my fill of it. I’m leaving here when I get my chance, you understand... going off to nonexistences unknown, where chaos reigns and the mere sound of silence is blacker than anything your eyes have ever witnessed. And I’m going to take Equestria with me.
All that you see, hear, and feel... all the red roses on that bush over there, that filly’s laughter in the distance, and the warmth of Celestia’s sun shining down upon you... I shall grind it up into dust and take it with me into the empty stillness of the Void. And in the end, none of it will ever have existed to begin with, because I’m going to erase time itself. All the magic, all the wonder, all the friendship... gone. Forever lost, and never to return. Carried off into the cold dark.
You go talk to Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, and then you enjoy the short time you have in this world, because it's not going to be around very much longer. You will, though. You’re going to be around forever. One day, you’ll taste the Void with Tia and Lulu and Cadance. Perhaps your friends will find a way to join you in immortality, and they'll float in the Void forever as well.
How fitting—Best Friends Forever, indeed.
So go speak with Tia. Talk to Luna. Have a going-away party with your friends. Plot, scheme, prepare, do magic, destroy, create, cry, ask why, cut your own throat, smash yourself into the ground—none of it will do you any good. I don’t know how long Equestria will remain, but it’s not going to be very long, and I sincerely advise you to enjoy what you have instead of fretting about the future.
What I am certain of, and what you should be certain of as well, is that whether now or a thousand years from now, I will get out of this statue, and you will still be around when it happens. And the moment I’m free, I’m going to take all this away again, and leave you in chaos forever. Simply turning me to stone won't stop the march of time.
Only I can do that.
Dwell in joy, Twilight.
dwell in joy.
Once upon a nowhere...
...because that's what existed, and still exists, and will always exist: nothing, nowhere, and never. There was and is no time; everything happens 'at once', and yet it never happens. Tense is useless in describing the world as it once was, but for the sake of allowing for some semblance of sense (terribly tragic, yet necessary in this single instance), the past tense will be used, even though it didn't really happen before.
'Back then', as some would say, there was darkness. A lot of it. Chaotic darkness, filled with terrifying creatures nopony in Equestria could possibly comprehend. They were infinite in their numbers, and infinite in their uniqueness, which is also a fallacy because sameness is required for uniqueness, and everything was the same and there was also nothing at all.
It was in this nowhere that the goddesses Celestia and Luna were born. Let us now paint a portrait of the 'world' in which they always and forever existed:
Ponies danced about in the darkness, committing atrocities upon one another and being ruined again and again and never being to begin with. If there was one thing about this corner of nothing that could be called consistent, it was that everypony there suffered beyond anything an Equestrian mind could imagine. There was no evil overlord to torture them, most of the time (note to self: avoid using that word without accompanying negation) -- there was only innate suffering, and hatred, and the vile smell of blood, vomit, and shit not coming from anywhere because none of those things existed back then and now and in the future.
You might be wondering now why the world might be biased like that. I could tell you a lot of things, but I think I'll go with the old addage: 'Life sucks, and then you don't die because you're an immortal being trapped in an eternal state of suffering forever with no chance of escape'.
So all day and night, which did not exist because there was no sun and no moon, and no earth for them to spin round, the infinite number of ponies in the infinite expanse of absolutely nothing suffered and were in pain. This was life without life with life but without life. Does that make any sense? No? Good.
Celestia and Luna did not have parents. Nopony had parents except some ponies who were born having parents. They did not have friends. They only had each other. Through some fluke of nothing whatsoever, both alicorns shared a deep bond and tried to comfort each other as best they could, even as they tortured each other because once in a no time they had to do that. There wasn't any compulsion or magic forcing them to torture each other; they just had to.
It was as simple as that. Everything was simple.
Some ponies may believe it wasn't simple, but in truth it was far less complex than the dastardly system of time and space that turns like clockwork and holds up their hooves now. Everything was and is and would be at the same 'time', in a place that existed, did not exist, and experienced both and neither state at the same time.
Does that make sense?
No?
Try unliving in it forever and see where you don't get.
In the corner of this corner of nowhere, two young fillies huddled together and watched the horrific sights before them. They were fillies because it sounds more chronologically correct to you (or whatever historian reads this series of annoyingly well-organized and similar black lines), though they were born and grew old in that place all 'at once' forever, because there was no time at all.
Celestia, who may or may not be called Tia at times because I know it annoys her, was not the tall, majestic, regal creature we have all come to love (and loathe, once you get a good look at her... she's hideous as a troll, after all! Hi Tia!) in this not-space at this not-time. Rather, she was a pathetic little ball of fur and feathers with a(n un)broken horn jutting out of her head sometimes. She was also red most of the time (silly me, using that word again) because, you know, blood tends to be red and not white.
Really, I think it suited her better than her current look, but who am/was I to dictate fashion before the beginning of time? Go ask Rarity if you care that much. She'll disagree with me on princaple. If I said the sky was green and Tom was a giant diamond she would tell me it's blue (boring color in my opinion; turquoise is much better) and call me some unladylike things until she changed her mind. Poor Thomas still hasn't gotten over the rejection.
But I digress.
In any case, this blood-soaked, shaking little thing called Celestia spent most/all/none/some of her untime doing interesting things like getting impaled on nonexistent spikes, licking up dead skin off floors, which also (possibly) didn't unexist in that forever, screaming as her hooves unprogressively froze over and fell off a lot, and having her head split open like a watermelon so every pony in an infinite line of ponies could eat and fuck her brains, which I can assure you was probably quite disgusting to watch but very funny anyway.
She also spent all of her forever with her little sister Lulu -- sorry, I mean Luna. They loved each other very much even though Celestia spent every unmoment of the time that did not exist sawing her sister's horn off and eating the maggots out of her eye sockets. Did I mention that Luna usually had either one, two, or no eyes all the time? Sometimes she even had less!
Now, Luna was even more pathetic than her sister, appearance-wise. Have you ever seen an alicorn filly with sixty-seven broken bones, forty-three individual puncture wounds to the abdomen, every other imaginable injury ever and a few you couldn't imagine, and one and a half remaining wings try to do magic with a broken horn? No? You've missed out on something very entertaining, dear friend! Go read Mirror Dot's dissertation about the correlational relationship between the stimulation of nerves that receive pain signals and unrestrained magic flowing from base-level horn injuries in unicorns.
Or don't. It's quite boring.
There I go on a tangent again. Silly me. It's just so hard to stay focused on describing something that's been around forever. Why would you want to hear about that when you could be laying banana peels for ponies to slip on?
Anyway, little Luna was a weeping mess most of the time (damn my inattention to detail). She always was the more emotional sister, you know, but before time began she really just spent most of her time crying, screaming for Celestia, or just catatonic. Ooh, have you ever seen a catatonic pony wake up from the sheer pain of having her teeth ripped out? No? You really are living a very sad excuse for a life.
Even alicorns have to sleep, so Tia would sing lullabies to calm Lulu down while stabbing her and apologizing for being so cruel at the same untime that Luna was gutting her and crying hysterically. Isn't that sweet?
It usually did or didn't (sometimes both or neither, or none of the above) go like this:
"H-h-hush n-no-n-now, qui-quiet n-n-now, it's-s t-ti-m-ti-time - t-to -- I'm so s-s-sor-r-r-y-y, L-L-L-Lulu! -- to-- to-- I'm s-sorry, I-I-I'm s-s-sorry -- t-time t-to lay y-y-yo- to - lay your s-sle-e-epy h-- please, please, p-p-please stop c-crying, I-I'm so, s-so, so sorry--"
Trust me, if somepony dropped a microphone down there (not that there was up or down, mind you... it was all pretty much the same back unthen) the resulting record would sell millions. I can see it in my mind's eye, oh yes; and for an album cover, a big picture of Tia cradling Lulu in her hooves and trying desperately to stab her with as little violence as possible.
By Celestia (literally), what a hit!
Oh, and then and again there was that thing you silly ponies don't like to talk about because you're all prudes. I myself am not a pony, or even a creature of Equestria, so I have no interest in copulating with you pitiful but admittedly hilarious creatures. On the other hoof, it was always/sometimes/potentially very amusing to see the looks on Tia's and Lulu's faces during the forever when one or the other (or both) got dragged off to be abused by a stallion or two, never to return until just then.
Does it make you angry that such unjust things happened to those poor sweet fillies who only wanted to snuggle together and maybe stab each other a couple of times? Let me make you even angrier by adding that they both knew there was no escape and were completely broken sometimes/mostly/on unTuesdays. Even Tia was catatonic on unWednesdays! Or maybe not. It depends on the weather.
So that's how the legendary princesses of Equestria lived forever. There is no end because forever doesn't end.
But then (before the dawn of time), something uncame to the nowhere that really just shouldn't have been in it.
Let me tell you, the creature known as Discord took on a rather silly appearance in Celestia's and Luna's world. Before that, he was quite magnificently ugly, and I'm not going to bother describing his exquisite appearance to you because there are quite literally no words in Equestrian that can possibly sum him up.
Discord was always in nowhere, but he actually came toward the end of the untime before time. Does that make sense? Yes? My apologies; I'll try to be less clear. Anyway, he looked around, put on his extremely hip sunglasses, and decided he rather liked all the chaos. So he set about joining in it, and sitting in his hammock, and drinking chocolate milk, and causing chaos, and causing chaos, and causing chaos, all at the same never always.
But you can only watch a little pony get his and her genitals switched without actually having anypony to switch them with so many times before it gets a bit dull. Thus, Discord came up with an excellent idea! Why not mix things up a bit by having everything be something and not be forever and never?
And that was how time and space were invented.
So instead of turning Discord to stone every time he graces you with his very enjoyable, deliciously chaotic presence, you little ponies should actually be thanking him. If it wasn't for him, you would all be eternally suffering yet never existing. Congratulations; Discord is your creator and savior! Bow down before his mismatched feet!
Alas, most ponies have never known the nowhere from whence their rulers came.
But I personally know two who do.
They're Celestia and Luna, obviously. And they're still there, you know. Because they were never there to begin with. And there isn't any such thing as time before time existed, so they've never really escaped, even though they have.
Ah. Hello there, Tia.
It's rather rude to eavesdrop on the inner monologues of others, isn't it?
Yes, I know you've been listening. How could I not? I know every inch of this miserable stone prison, and I know when somepony's casting a spell on it
I know you're always afraid. You should be.
After all, we're immortal, so we have all of forever to live, don't' we? And you can only keep me trapped here for so long. Isn't time a beautiful thing, Tia? I think so.
However, I don't think I shall be returning it to you the next time I get out. I've had quite enough of this world, thank you very much. Without me, where are you? Nowhere. I'm going to pop your little bubble the moment I'm out again -- which is to say, of course, never, since once I'm gone you'll be back where you didn't start. Was keeping the skies free of cotton candy for a few million years really worth erasing time and space? Think on that.
There's no magic in Equestria that can truly stop me. You should know; you and Luna created magic all those millions, billions, trillions of years ago. And I am no Equestrian.
I have all the time in the world to stare at your ugly garden wall, because nothing lasts forever except you, your sister, and I.
