Monochrome- Cold Grey Life
I'd like to say that I miss my colour but I never really knew it. My parents named me Twilight Sparkle, Twilight for the midnight colour of my hair, and Sparkle because they thought I was their most precious jewel. My hair isn't blue any more, or pink. My coat isn't lavender any more, it hasn't been lavender for a while. Everything is grey, everypony is grey now. All of the colours are gone, cleared and washed away before anypony can get to know their colours. She likes to keep things orderly, everything must be neat and pure and clean. She says that normalcy breeds power, that abnormality is a taint so we all must be the same, we must all be normal. All but her, she is allowed to keep her colours, white and pink and green and blue. She is allowed to keep everything she was born with.
I'm not angry, I could never be angry. I've grown up knowing that colours are reserved for her and her alone. We do not deserve colours because we would not be orderly with them. We would style them and change them and mock what she gave us so we don't deserve them. She makes everypony grey, eternally grey and that is fine. That is ok because we don't deserve colours.
Order is key she says. Everything must click and fit and slot into a pattern, a routine. She says that that is why the weather is always the same. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday it is sunny, it is warm, the sky is a blue, a washed blue with no sign of clouds. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday it rains, the skies go grey, as grey as our coats and it rains, daintily but surely. It is orderly, it is neat so it is fine. I used to think that the weather should be more free, should come and go on its own whim but that was when I was foolish and blind. Order keeps everything rotating and so the weather, like everything else, must be kept to a regime.
I've lived my whole life in Canterlot, where the streets are grey and the houses are grey and the ponies are grey. The grass though is green, a dulled green and the sky is frequently blue, a washed out blue. Those colours never change, there is never any new shade or different shadow. It might as well be grey to me, everything else is and everything else is neat and orderly and fine so why not the grass and the sky?
I asked her once, as a small filly, why the sky and the grass was not grey and she laughed like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She told me, in that voice the betrayed no good or ill will, that patterns must be kept up and changing natures colour itself would go against the pattern, that the best we can do is merely wash away the abnormality that it brings and replace it with a strict pattern, a strict colour. So the grass remains green and the sky remains blue and everything remains in perfect order.
I'd be lying if I said that I don't miss my parents and my family but it is how it should be, I am a part of the order and tidiness of the castle life now, I have been adopted by her to learn of the wonders of order and neatness and perfection. My family understood of course, when the summons came days after my first true exam of normalcy. They knew that I had to go to the castle but that didn't make I any easier on them or on me. I am no longer allowed to see them, members of the castle are not meant to talk to civilians outside of the castle out of fear of breaking the pattern and so I go to bed every night, looking out at the city with its few, evenly spaced, yellow torches, trying to imagine what my family look like but only seeing splashes of grey where their faces should be. That's ok though because that is how it is meant to be, order must be kept.
I was taken in years and years and years ago, before my cursed mark came about, adopted into the highest reaches of the Canterlot order, positioned as her student. I don't know if I ever got that cursed mark on my flank, I don't want to know. Having that mark, it makes you different and unusual and creative and I hate it, she hates it. She can have that mark because she deserves it be we don't, no, its a curse for us. I'm glad, on some days, when my coat is all grey because I can never see if I have that mark or not. On other days, on days were I feel bad and vile, I want to see my cursed mark, I want to feel different and special. But that is a bad thing to think about, that goes against the pattern so I block it out.
Everyday I learn something new about our world, something that had once been twisted and corrupt but had now been fixed and purified by her. The trees used to grow by themselves in all directions until she came along and made sure they stayed at perfect height and perfect form. The birds used to sing endlessly and tirelessly until she came along and wove them into the pattern. The birds sing at eight o'clock now, morning and night. Their used to be four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter but she fixed that. Now there is only summer, a brilliantly orderly summer. Some ponies used to have relationships with ponies of the same sex but she fixed that. Now a stallion must always love a mare and vice versa. She says it is how it is meant to be. That is fine, she knows best and the pattern must be kept the same.
At one time, long, long ago, so long that I have nearly forgotten the whole ordeal, I asked her if there was anything that she hadn't fixed, anything that refused to bow to her infinite wisdom and order. That was the only time I have ever seen her angry. Emotions tie us down, she says, they corrupt us and make us different. Emotions and feelings aren't allowed to be shown, a gesture that she called a smile has remained extinct for nearly two hundred years now. I had never seen anypony angry before, I had never seen anypony show any signs of emotion before that day and it scared me. She told me that it was a silly question, that I was a silly filly and that her student would never ask such silly questions. I felt sad when she said that but I didn't show it because that would be wrong of me. She looked though, I saw that, I remember that. She looked out of the window of her study down into the gardens but her pink eyes showed nothing.
That is something that makes me confused, though I'd never show it. She has allowed us the colour of our eyes so that we may see without fault, so that we may remain steadfast and true to her. I don't think I like having purple eyes, I feel different and unusual and wrong but she says that the colour of your eyes can never change, can never be changed and so it is orderly and pure and whole. I think I'd like grey eyes though, I think I'd like to impress her.
One day she told me about something ponies call relationships and how free and dirty and chaotic they were before she fixed them, about how everypony could make their own marital decisions and how everything was so...untidy. She said that anypony could marry and love and please anypony they want but that that was wrong and that wasn't ordered and that it was a breeding ground for abnormality. She said that the system now, how ponies are chosen for each other by a team of other ponies, ponies who have developed perfect order control, is perfect and pristine and ordered because now you are matched with somepony who is your equal in every way. Love is not permitted though and the pony couplet, she said, only stay together long enough to reproduce because foals and fillies are cute, she said. I think that was a joke but I couldn't laugh because laughing is wrong and I'm a good pony.
I've been told that there are other ponies out there in other towns and cities. She showed me a map one day, a perfectly square map on a bed of white paper with only grey landscapes and black marker depicting anything. There were perfectly square forests on the map, there were perfectly square towns, cities and villages across the map, the names were scribed in luscious black ink, the blackest black that I have ever seen, like the darkest night. The colour was what intrigued me, what made me lean over and made my face morph into one of interest before she stopped me, before she told me that I should never show emotions, that that is what bad fillies who don't want to maintain the order do. I never showed any interest in anything after that because I'm not a bad pony.
She told me that life has been like this, perfect and orderly, for over two hundred years now, that the time before where chaos and the whim of any random pony could shatter the peace and tranquillity. I'm not sure I would have liked that time, it sounds scary and dark and different. Its safe now, safe and calm and quiet and orderly and I like that. I like the colours though, I like red and green and blue and yellow and purple. I think I like the idea of purple most of all. I don't miss colours, I've never had any so I can't miss them but I like what they look like. I'd never tell her that though because then she would be made and wouldn't show it and I would be scared and wouldn't show it and the order might be broken.
I'm scared now though. I haven't told her my feelings, I haven't shown emotion, I haven't expressed interest and I have kept to the order but I am still scared because there is something outside my window, there is something in the gardens around the castle and it scares me. Sometimes, late at night when I am going to sleep at my designated time, I'll feel something different and something fuzzy and something frightening and it always comes from the gardens. Sometimes, when I wake up at my designated time, I'll hear something. It sounds like the wind but unordered and free and scary and I don't like it. It sounds like what a bad pony would hear. I can't tell her though because that would be against the order. Good ponies don't hear or feel things, good ponies stick to the schedule and I am a good pony.
I hope I don't have to go into the garden though. I don't think I'd like it there, it feels different. I would never tell her that though because that would be going against the order and I like order.
Yes, I like order.
[.]
We went for a walk a month ago, thirty straight days since today. She took me into her garden where the roses are white and tamed, perfectly symmetrical and carefully ordered. The grass was smooth under my hooves, the same dulled green as always, the wind was blowing softly, just like always and the hedges around me were cut specifically and efficiently into a perfect order without a single dulled leaf out of the pattern. I wanted, want, my garden to look like that when I grow up. I'm not sure I'll have a garden though but that's ok because I'm not her, I don't deserve a garden.
She let me walk alone for a while, she said I needed to learn order by myself so that I may know what is correct and what is incorrect without her having to tell me, so that I may see into the pattern like her. So I walked and I walked and I walked until my hooves hurt, constantly following the left path through the pristine hedges, careful not to touch or damage or even think about the hedges or the pattern too much in case I disrupted the regime. Order was, is, key.
I didn't mean to find it, I never meant to step off of my pure and straight path of order but as I stood at the crossroads of a splitting in the hedges, as I made to turn left again and follow my chosen path, something light and whispered and unnatural murmured from the path to the right. Something different and special and something that was never, and could never, fit into the pattern of order. It was so new, so alien and so abnormal that I stopped and I stared and I thought and I allowed, for just a split second, a look of surprise to wash over my face before I smothered it away. It called to me again and it was like it was my designated bed time, it was like it could see me, it felt special and different and scary. But it felt different and special and maybe not as scary as I remember.
I am not a good pony, not any more. I'm a bad pony.
I turned to the right path and I walked down it.
The path was the same, the same as it had always been, symmetrical and perfect and orderly, for the first two minutes, I counted them. At two minutes thirty three seconds, I counted them, the leaves were different. I know they were, I could tell. They felt, they looked...bright. They looked alive. They looked free. The green wasn't washed out, the colour was like nothing I had ever seen before and it was beautiful and terrifying and beautiful, oh it was beautiful. The leaves were different sizes as well, inches and centimetres and millimetres and nanometres too large or too small. The leaves were strange and unordered and free and it was beautiful and terrifying and beautiful, oh it was beautiful.
Flowers grew in the middle of the path, unmolested, unordered, chaotic and free, their colour the most luminous yellow I had ever seen, so yellow that it hurt my eyes. I was scared, more scared than I had ever been before. The leaves were wrong, the colours were wrong, the order was askew and yet, because I am a bad pony, because I am a curious, naïve, emotional little pony, I did not walk calmly away like I should have done. I kept on walking because I was scared but everything around me was beautiful but it hurt so, so much. It shouldn't exist, not without being contained within a perfect pattern and yet the flowers grew carelessly and the leaves grew tirelessly and the wind blew strongly, whirling around me, rebellious and independent.
I kept trotting forward, hoof before hoof, head held low, eyes roaming, freely roaming as if I had never been taught not to show emotion or interest, as if I was allowed to show emotion and interest. I was scared, still so very scared that she would find me but the grass was high and the leaves were twirling and the flowers were colourful and I felt different and fuzzy and special and nice. I felt nice. Yes, nice.
I wasn't trotting like I usually would whilst I was there, my movements, one hoof and then another, trot, trot, trot in perfect order, were abundantly disjointed and I felt so bad, I felt like a bad pony but it was a good feeling of badness, it was a nice feeling of badness. I felt...whole. I like that word. I felt whole. I felt like Twilight Sparkle, the mare who was born purple and blue and pink. Order was nice and fine and neat but Twilight Sparkle was fun and free and happy. I think I like Twilight Sparkle, I think I like her a lot. I think I'd like to be her a lot more as well but then she would be mad at me and I would be scared.
The one thing that I remember most of all though was the statue.
It was in the middle of the path, no, it was slightly off of the middle of the path, not symmetrical, not orderly but something else entirely. It was...annoying, yes, annoying, the way it sat in the middle of the path except not in the middle, it made me feel annoyed that it wasn't perfect, it made me feel angry but I'm a good pony, was a good pony, and good ponies don't show their emotions.
It was grey as well. I like grey, I think I do at least. I saw yellow and green and brown that day and they felt better than grey, they felt different and fun. Maybe I don't like grey that much, grey is fine. It was grey though and I felt sad, I think it was because I didn't want it to be grey, I wanted it to be a new colour, like purple or red. I would have liked it if it was red. It was grey though, just like everypony else. It was normal, or I thought it was before I looked at it properly.
It hurt to look at, it hurt to be standing near. It was so many different things, it had so many different parts and it looked so greedy and scary and magnificent. I knew, I just knew that this...thing could never, would never fit into the pattern, it was too different, it was too wild and free and chaotic. It hurt, it hurt so much to look at because it didn't fit into the pattern because, unlike the flowers and the trees and the birds and the bees, this thing couldn't be changed and moulded into something new and ordered and perfect. It looked mad and crazy and frightening and beautiful, oh it looked so very, very beautiful. And its face, its face had something on it, something funny and different and weird. I think it was happiness, or triumph, or maybe anger, I don't know emotions well enough to say what it was, emotions are bad things to study and I'm not a bad pony. I'm not...I'm...I'm a pony. Yes, just a pony. Not a bad pony. Just a pony.
I felt different, looking at that statue. I felt fuzzy and warm and painful, I felt painful, and my cheeks were warm and my head was loud and yelling and painful and my hooves were shaking and I felt angry. I had never felt angry before, I don't think I like feeling angry, it scares me. That thing, that grey statue that shouldn't have been grey was frustrating and annoying and it made me so angry because it didn't fit into the pattern, because it was wild and uncontrollable and it was beautiful and unfair and mean, it was mean, mean, mean because it shouldn't be free, because it shouldn't be chaotic and different and greedy. It shouldn't disobey the order because it made me...it made me...jealous. Yes, that's the word, jealous. I didn't like feeling jealous, it scared me.
And then, whilst I was feeling jealous and angry and painful and sad and confused and different, when I was in that garden with the statue that shouldn't be and that made my head hurt and my skin burn, whilst I was there, scared and scared and so, so scared, something spoke to me. I didn't like its voice.
Hello Twilight Sparkle
That voice I heard it was...male. Yes, it was male, definitely but it sounded wrong, all wrong, wrong, wrong. There was something in that voice, something I didn't like, something I still don't like. I think it was mischief or maybe malice or maybe sadness, I don't know, I don't what to know, I never wanted to know. And then it spoke up again and it scared me, it scared me so much that I ran and ran and ran.
I've been waiting a long time to speak with you.
The statue knew me, it knew me, Twilight Sparkle, not the grey pony, not her student, not what I was but what I could be, what I had been. I could tell, I knew, I just knew. It knew the real Twilight Sparkle, the one who was fun and purple, oh so very purple. I ran because it was scary, because I didn't know Twilight Sparkle but somehow it did, oh, it knew me, it knew me, it knew me. I was scared, so scared and I still am, so very, very scared. I ran, I ran fast and far away and the statue just sat there and it did something, something weird and different and horrifying and terrifying and something beautiful. I think it laughed, I don't know, I've never heard laughter before but I studied it. I hope that was laughter, I think I like laughter. I don't like it but I like laughter.
Yes, I like laughter.
I ran until my lungs hurt and my hooves hurt and the green leaves that weren't green were back and the wind that wasn't free was back. I ran until the flowers that were so bright that it hurt disappeared and the feeling I had had, the bad feeling of niceness and difference faded away like the sun at exactly nine in the evening everyday. I ran until I was out of that perfect maze that wasn't perfect and I ran until I was on the pure white steps of the Canterlot Castle Tower and I ran until I was in my room, my grey room with its single bookcase and its single bed and its single window and its single desk. I didn't worry about her, about how I had disobeyed the pattern and perfection by running, by leaving my designated area. I worried about it, him, though and how he knew me, the real me. I don't like feeling worried, it made me feel sick. I don't like feeling sick, it makes me feel different.
I felt worried right up until nine in the evening, when the sun dipped below the horizon again. I worried right up until I fell asleep at exactly nine in the evening.
I worried about him.
I don't like worrying, it feels different and untidy and...different, just different.
I like laughter though.
Yes, I like laughter a lot.
Author's Note
Monochrome was originally intended to be a one shot but I figured that it would be better suited to be spread out into multiple chapters since I don't wanna post a roughly 20000 word chapter straight up.
Anyway, enjoy the story and, like always, constructive criticism is welcome.
