Questions
It's something we always have. Why, What, How. How is the hard one. I mean, What, that's easy. What are we doing? What do we want to talk about? Living. Life.
Now Why, now that's a bit harder.
Why do I want to write this?
To make the audience think in a certain way.
But How, how is tough.
How does this make you feel? How does it do what it does?
How is filled it more questions. Take a card, for example. What is a card? A piece of cardboard, with little pictures and numbers. It's the center of this story's conflict, and embodies so much more.
Why use cards?
Why be cards?
Because cards are so much more than the picutre. Tarot cards, little pictures of characters, tell the story of the life that reads it.
We know what, we know why. But, how do we tell the story?
The fool is drawn from the deck; perhaps this pony is starting a new stage in life where he or she sees the world with new, innocent eyes, like a fool. Or death, the "sinister" changer of the world; when one dies, a story ends, but all the little side characters to that story continue on. They still have to be part of other stories, including their own.
We walk through a world of Hows, and Whats, and Whys. Twilight, don't you ever have questions about knowledge?
You seem like a learned pony to me.
What do we know about the world? Why is it important to know such things?
How do we know?
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Pick a card.
Twilight shook her head. "Every night we do this, and every night I refuse. You disappeared after my encounter with your perversion of Princess Luna, and now I'm free."
Perversion? Hm...
She walked around the dreamscape. Luna, of course, knew what Twilight faced every night. Even now, two months later, they have not found the source of the Card Master's haunting nightmares.
The words of the Card Master drowned out as Luna descended from the moon, watching the dream from high above. Twilight could smell the coarse sand in the wind, and watched as the cold air stood up the hairs of her coat. It was an effect of the magic, the Card Master's and Luna's. Whenever she entered the scenes changed, time and cards and dreams and nightmares spiraling around each other.
In the dream world, Luna might as well have been the God, a firm hoof over the reality of the mind. But even here, the Card Master matched her power almost equally, and he too had an aura of omnipotence.
"You're learning well, Twilight," Luna said, waving her horn and dispersing the phantom of the Card Master. "Soon enough you will have total control over your dreams."
"Thanks, I'm trying," Twilight replied. Two months ago, Luna began training Twilight in the ways of her dream magic. It was impossible for Twilight to reach out or manipulate dreams as Luna could, but within her own dreams she could learn to become all-powerful.
"More than just trying," the princess replied. "No pony else, save my sister perhaps, has ever achieved this level of control over their own dreaming."
"So, what's the next lesson? I'm ready to learn how to put the Card Master to rest." Twilight pumped herself up, it was calming being a student again, learning a whole new world of skills, but Luna put up a hoof.
"There is nothing left but to practice, and to heal," she answered. "There are two parts to control in the dreaming world. One is your magic, which you have learned to control with finesse. Your technique is strong, but without power or familiarity you will have to converse with the Card Master every night. You have trained so that you can get the technique right, now you must practice so that you can't ever get it wrong.
Twilight nodded. "And the second part of control?"
Luna continued. "The other is your mind. The Card Master has left memories you cannot shake. This is now a part of you, one you cannot shake. You will not gain strength by finding ways to avoid him, the magic will only fester like a wound. You must confront this reality every day, not so that you will get used to it, but so that you can face the memories and overcome them."
"That sounds like dwelling," Twilight said, then asking, "Haven't you gotten over Nightmare Moon?"
Luna thought for a moment. "Yes, and no. I do not let it hold me back from the future, but I have not forgotten. Forgetting would be to deny a part of yourself, a part of your growth. You may one day understand that you have overcome adversity, but that is pointless if you become desensitized to the adversity itself. Own your mistakes, confront them, and overcome them. But do not let go."
Twilight bowed her head. "I will try."
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Did you know there are only a limited number of stars in the universe?
Astronomers in Canterlot have always known this, and seem to make it essential to count all the stars to find the biggest one, or the strangest one, or the oldest one. Celestia-113 they named it, the biggest star they found. Two hundred years ago they said it was the biggest star, dwarfing all others they had seen before.
"A red speck in the sky" they called it, "ten times as big as the previous largest star." Back then they must have had interesting ideas, don't you think? They didn't even know that the sun, too, is a star. Exactly the same, nothing different but a few details.
They spent their time, one pony after another, finding the most precious stars, yet ignored the one closest. Every year the books would change when some astronomer decided some stars were worth knowing about, and the others weren't.
Perhaps we have a fascination with the lights in the dark. We fear the dark, yet it makes what little light we have so precious. The tiny twinkles, each a grain a sand, yet there are more stars than there are grains of sand. There are more stars than ponies walking Equestria. Is it their numbers, the empty vastness they alone seem to occupy?
If so, why do we classify them? Red, white, blue, yellow, giant, dwarf. Are we fascinated by the light? Look up at the night sky, the clear sky untouched, and watch one. It calls to you, and you begin to wonder at its cool glow. From here we know nothing of the unyielding power of the stars, we think of their cool breeze and silent nights.
Why do we look at the stars?