old plans, part the end · 8:27pm Dec 6th, 2022
Somebody pm'd me to ask me how this was going to end and I realized I did in fact have it in me to post this. Sure wish I'd managed it six years ago! Things in parentheses are the bits that'd take too much time to handle in this format.
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"Mag," whatever that means now, finds herself at the base of the throne, where nothing exists. There is a sun here, though it doesn't exist, and she can't feel it on her face. The trees grow straight (but they don't) and the grass under her feet is (isn't) soft, warm and green. Mag can't feel her heartbeat.
She has her shadow back. It's what's keeping her together. Luna told her she'd improve on Mag's shadow, and by god, that's what she did. Out in the real world, as in the dreaming or waking worlds, her shadow would do what shadows are supposed to do, following her movements, interceding between different essences to protect from dissolution and invasive darknesses and so on, but also there are also subtle wards and protective effects, and most importantly it's HERS. She's got this last component of her identity back, and in this place it wraps around her like a shawl and veil and in conjunction with Luna's graces, it's why she can still be Mag in whatever poor capacity. Obviously it's temporary.
She recognizes these fields and trees from Luna's dreams and from the look in Celestia's eyes when Celestia wasn't looking at anything. This is what's left of Equestria, which died and betrayed Mag's princesses and is now on the other side of annihilation. If Mag could be angry now, she would, but this isn't a place where feeling happens, so she tries to remember what she'd have done if she could be angry. She'd probably break something, but everything here is definitionally more broken than anything possibly can be, so there's not much else she could do to it. And she'd probably be too angry to stop at breaking any one thing.
Well, she could break everything. She could try to break the universe, break Equestria for treachery and desertion. Never mind the impossibility, nothing is possible here anyway. Mag sweeps her shadow past her shoulders to make her wings and flies into the dead Equestrian sun. It begins to burn away her shadow as she gets closer, her shadow disappears entirely when she finally gets a fingertip on the sun, and she casts her dharma decay spell and unravels Equestria.
[Everything twists apart, two distant screams echo across the worlds, and then it's a new chapter, possibly making this one sort of short, but I want the chapter break for emphasis.]
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[description of new location. Room made of clouds, reasonably comfortable, next to large window with no glass during a lunar eclipse.]
Luna is working at a spinning wheel, wrapping sun and moonlight around her hooves and pressing it into the mechanism to make a fine pale thread. She's quick and smooth, though she'll be faster when she finishes making the spinning jenny. Celestia is working at a loom and weaving thread into shapes. Neither has her cutie mark anymore, but Celestia has painted a sun where hers used to be, now in a different style. Sometimes she likes to paint other things, like hearths and hummingbirds. Luna has painted a moth on her own flank every day for the last two months. She's going to paint it again in a minute.
Luna spins and Celestia weaves until they have great lengths of bright cloth and the sun and moon part in the sky. They consider their work, glance at each other and start to wrap, sew and knot the many bolts together to form a human, which they throw a blanket over in deference to her species' peculiarities. The human curls up under the blanket and says, "I'm dead. Is that why I'm glowing?"
Luna spoke with some hesitation. "Nonexistent, not dead. It turns out dead is a different state. It's..." She cleared her throat. "Sister?" And here was Luna, perfectly corporeal.
Celestia flicked her mane back and the colors shifted to shades Mag had "You are alive and glowing because we made you a new body according to rules we now find ourselves under."
"Rules?" Mag held her hands out. The glow had subsided and turned to flesh, though now she was terribly pale and had no shadow.
"Well, you would know your dharma spell better than we. You broke the rules we once followed, broke them apart, and in order to return to the living world we had to find new rules. We copied yours if you don't mind—no cutie marks, no purpose. It's wonderful!"
"Yes, I'm not sure what you've been complaining about," said Luna.
"We are no one and we are free, just like humans, and we can do such things..." Celestia laughed. "Whatever we like, and the power is astonishing, because we're the ones choosing. Today we are the Spinner and the Weaver, and we turn light to life. In a few minutes I'll take a break to be the Eater of Lunch, which I'll do with the vigor of crashing planets. Tomorrow morning I'll be a Cloud Carpenter as I help construct a cloud building. And you, Luna?"
"I'm going to make hot cocoa and play that video game I like," said Luna. "But after that, Mag, you and I have work to do. I'm afraid I have no social skills and Celestia is quite a busy mare these days, so I'll need your help with introductions and phone calls and the like. Your ex-girlfriend needs help with her visa but we'll have to pretend I'm the one helping or she'll be too proud to accept. Valérie thinks the world is going to end like Equestria did just because the elements dissolved and she won't listen to reason. You were almost her friend before you disappeared, so perhaps you can talk to her?"
"Actually, I can help with introductions right now.” Celestia leaned out the window and called, “Twilight, we need you.”
And then was a third princess.
[description of TS goes here. TS has an aura like hot tea, rain on a warm day, or like cooking breakfast while drinking good coffee and humming to oneself. Include or exclude details as prose flow demands. Should already be shorter though.]
Princess Twilight Sparkle helped Mag to her feet, and smiled nervously. "Hello! My name is Twilight Sparkle, but my friends call me Twilight."
"Enchanté," said Mag with Twilight's hoof in her hand. She looked at the princesses and gestured at Twilight. "Okay, so, how in the HELL?"
Both sisters grinned. "Spinning and weaving, Mag. Spinning and weaving. We found them where we found you."
"Them?" She couldn't believe she was hearing this. It wasn't supposed to be possible.
"Yes, them. One by one. It takes time," said Luna, "turning light into cloth into people. We need eclipses, solar and lunar. We must know them as well as we know ourselves. But we know all of them, and we know you. Especially me."
"I've been helping with the designs!" said Twilight Sparkle, casually teleporting to a pile of folders and levitating a collection of binders. Graph paper spilled out; Mag could make out dense pages of anatomical and textile design diagrams. "Oops."
"I still think we should fetch Rarity next," said Luna to Celestia.
"We should make them in the order we find them, Luna, and we haven't even found her yet. If you figure out a way to sift through the infinity of nonexistence for specific souls, feel free to tell me."
"Whatever. Mag, give me your shoulder."
Mag pulled the blanket tighter around herself. "You can't have my shoulder. I just got it."
Luna sat and waited. Mag sighed and bared her right shoulder. Luna lifted a brush and ink, and silently painted a moth on Mag's with a few quick strokes. "We are past the age of cutie marks being granted by the aether. We must invent our own rituals now, and choose our own iconography. Consider this one a suggestion."
"You can paint new ones whenever you like, of course," said Celestia. "Autumn is coming. I'm going to draw a pumpkin."
"And for now I paint the marks of those I wish to remember," said Luna.
"I'm still thinking," Twilight said bashfully. Her side was bare. "And some of the others are arguing about it, and Silverquill keeps trying to draw his old one but he says it's never quite right, and then, goodness gracious, Scootaloo is being insane. We really need to get the other two so they can be crazy at each other instead of the scenery."
[Man, way too much exposition. I'd have to come up with a simpler way to do some of this. A couple dozen ponies are back, with years of work still to go.
- Luna is a warden of the ways, she reminds Mag. Luna explains that a warden of the ways is a person of some power who makes a habit of helping the lost find their way home. This is what Mag has been doing for a while now, so they can all go talk to the council of wardens if Mag wants. Mag says she’ll think it over.
- For the most part Mag’s new body is the same as the old one, but at certain times in certain lighting her hair and nails get an opaline glow, and ponies say the same. Mag’s lack of a shadow means her dreams are more vivid and sometimes things pass through her, like sunbeams or sprays of water. Without a shadow, she’s a little less real.
- Oh and Nayra and Jeff are dead, the city is putting itself back together, the current government told the princesses there won't be any trouble so long as they all stay the fuck off Incan land and don't interfere, which is why they're living in Incan airspace. They live in the clouds. New scene follows.]
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Mag and Luna enter a completely dark room in dreams. The Nightmare is sitting in a chair, still looking like Nayra. The Nightmare glances at Mag and Luna. "Ah. They found a way to bring you back. And what about Nayra?"
"We can find and remake those who've passed beyond existence," said Luna gently. "Nayra lived through the fullness of her existence, and then passed. You know this. She's gone."
The nightmare looked into Luna’s eyes from under Nayra’s oversized bowler hat. "I can kill everyone you love." The nightmare’s voice didn’t rise or quaver. Mag realized it couldn’t cry.
“And Nayra will still be gone. I am so sorry.”
“You.” The nightmare fixed her one eye on Mag. “You both died and neither of you deserved it, and I’m glad you’re back. Your princesses—once, told you they would give you anything you asked. Do you miss Nayra at all? Even slightly? Sometimes you liked her, I know. Of course you won’t do it for me, that’s only fair—but do it for the poor, starved girl with the cane who wanted so many impossible things.”
“I don’t think they’re lying,” said Mag. “It’s over. It’s not fair, but it’s over.”
“You’re right. It isn’t fair. I exist to give people what they want, but she only wanted things for others, and she died with nothing.”
Mag stood beside the nightmare and rested a hand on the back of its chair. The nightmare didn’t stop her.
“It’s because of me, of course,” the nightmare continued. “I understand that. I always show my host the way to power, and somehow they always turn it into their own death. I’m aware of this and I’ve always sought new hosts anyway. I almost stopped her from pulling the trigger, you know. But—it was what she wanted.” It looked up at Mag with Nayra’s scarred face. “I wanted her to be happy. I still do. Don’t you?”
“You see our problem,” said Luna. “Mag, I must be honest. I have spent too much of my life fighting with this stubborn half-ghost of a leech to be arguing with her now. It’s embarrassing. Warden, this is your first charge. And, nightmare… if we ever discover a way to raise the dead, wherever you are, I shall find you.”
The nightmare, bemused: “A warden of the ways? For me? Apart from Nayra’s dreams, leeches don’t have homes.”
“She has a point,” Mag said to Luna, but Luna was gone. The nightmare was no longer even looking at Mag; she’d gone back to looking into the middle distance with a hollowed-out expression.
“Okay, well, we’ll try this.” Mag took its hands in hers. She really had done this before, she realized. Just get them to talk, to remember and to love. “Tell me about Nayra.”
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[smooth ending goes here. Fluttershy slice of life where she’s doing cloud gardening while considering the difficulties of teaching Earth birds to sing? Luna negotiating the purchase of an island with the promise that Celestia never gets into earthly politics plus a promise for ponies to help with weather-related disasters? Valerie could be a literal stage magician maybe.]
It's been so long since I read this story I must confess. But nevertheless it left a mark on me. Much like Luna's moths or Celestia's pumpkin perhaps.
Thank you for this closure. It helped more than I think I realized it would.
Thank you.
I'm going to go sit with my grief for a while.
Thank you for doing this.
I want to take this opportunity to just thank you again. I'm glad more people appreciate this post just as much as I do. ^^
Does anyone remember what the hell I was planning to do with the eldest in the finale
5702004
It's been ages, so no, but I always loved this universe for its...Deepness. For however hard you were on yourself, this was one of the most vivid Universes that felt so in tune with the deep ways that I ever encountered in my decade plus here