Back and Forth

by adcoon

Epilogue

“Princess?

“Princess! Can you hear me? What is … By the sun and moon! Commander, I need you over here! Princess down! I repeat, princess down!

“Hold on, princess. We’ll get you to safety.”

“Lieutenant, what—in all Equestria! Princess!”

“Commander, we have to get them back to the Empire now!”

“I hear you.”

“I have the foal, sir.”

“Take the rear. Straight up till you see the sky.”

“I hear you, sir. Hold on tight, princess, we’re getting you out of here.”

* * *

“I don’t like this.”

“You worry too much, dear.” A thick soup of mist coiled around her hooves as she stepped closer to the edge of the water and looked up at the ancient stone. The sky was clear; the dense fog that had filled the gorge months earlier had dissipated as mysteriously as it had appeared, leaving nothing more than a carpet of white mist on the ground near the lake.

Shining Armor followed her closely, his eyes constantly scanning the surroundings. “I nearly lost you and our daughter to this cursed place,” he said, his heart hurting at the mention of it. “And you still haven’t told me what happened.”

“Nothing will happen,” she reassured him. “This is something I must do.”

“You tell me that, but you won’t tell me why,” Shining said, looking at her with sad eyes.

Cadance kept looking at the stone and the sky behind it. The ancient markings of Clover the Clever were still there, faded beyond recognition by the wear and tear of ages. The stone glittered in the sun, awaiting her own mark.

Was it even possible for her to leave the job unfinished? What would happen if she turned around and just left now? With her knowledge, could she change the future? She knew Fenris would appear one day soon, and she knew the chain her daughter would forge for it would not hold. What would happen if she acted on her knowledge? Could she defeat Fenris before he won and spare everypony that future?

But if she did make a new future, how could she know it would be a better one, not worse? Maybe Fenris would still win, and no savior would come. Perhaps Silica and Silene would never even be born, or end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One day, the great wolf would swallow her. If anypony should end that way to save others, it was her; she was already dead, and she could face the end a second time knowing what she knew. For all the death and suffering she knew would come, for all the ponies she loved who would die, a brighter future still awaited in the end.

How could she ever destroy that?

Cadance turned and looked at Shining Armor, at the guards and ponies gathered behind him, waiting anxiously for her. None of them knew what she knew or that she had died in the future and come back—not as alive as she seemed to them, a strange fact that she had attributed to Discord’s meddling magic. None of them knew that the fate of the future balanced on them all this day.

And that was all as it should be. Just as she couldn’t change the future, no one could never know besides her and Discord.

She smiled sadly at Shining and leaned forward, kissing him softly. “What will be, will be,” she said and held a hoof up to his cheek, looking into his eyes. She was crying, but she couldn’t keep from smiling. “No matter what comes … it will all be fine.

“Ponies,” she said and turned to the gathered herd, looking at them all. “Today we establish a new village, here in this place, in honor of two brave young fillies. You will not know them or their names, but they never stopped believing in a brighter world, and they taught me that no odds are ever too great as long as there is friendship and courage in our hearts.

“And enough glitter to go around,” she added with a smile.

She turned around again and looked up at the stone. “Silica and Silene, may you one day find your home here, and in all our hearts.” She spread her wings and drifted up towards the top of the stone. Her horn lit up as she began to carve a message, the words still clear as flames in her memory, and with those words she sealed the future.

“Glimmerville, established in the year 7AH in honor of two young fillies who made the world glitter. One day we shall meet here, and you shall make your own marks upon the future. Till then …

“— Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Princess Skylark of the Crystal Empire.”

Comments

[DJPurple3]

Daaaaaaw!

[wlam]

I don't know, I'm not particularly happy with this. The whole ending just seems too neatly constructed to leave nobody an out. in addition to being pretty sudden and rushed altogether. The whole thing could have been avoided at half a dozen points, especially with Discord being as clearly and inexplicably aware and involved as he is, so it just ends up being enforced needless tragedy for its own sake.

But then again, time travel stories involving closed loops always seem to end up that way. A feeling of arbitrariness is just what you get for using a plot device that relies on breaking causality and complete predestination as a central element.

[adcoon]

5732242
Won't deny the 'sudden and rushed'. It sadly ended up that way.

But what you say, that it could have been prevented along the way, that's in fact the whole tragedy of it all and the point of the entire story. Cadance reflects at the end that she could in fact prevent it all from ever happening, with the knowledge that she now has of the future. This future only happens because she makes that mark upon the stone. But as she says, how can she know that another future would be any better? It could be infinitely worse. Or perhaps the entire fabric of time and space would fray and explode in total chaos, destroying all of reality.

Clover's message warns against the hubris of thinking you know what's best for the future. It's implied that she messed with the future herself, and it caused enough chaos that she realized she had to fix her mess and make sure the future unfolded as it should and not as she wanted it to.

Discord isn't all-powerful or all-knowing, but there are certainly many things he could have done along the way too, but it's the exact same problem. Will the future be any better if he did intervene? In fact, the story only ends as well as it does because Discord plays nice instead of messing around with the time line, like he was no doubt tempted to do. In fact, Discord seems to lose very little from this entire story, unlike everypony else. Perhaps that's why he plays nice and stays largely uninvolved, because he knows he'll come out of it with the winning hand that way.

[wlam]

5732448
The problem is that there are just so many holes in that answer. It's part of why I hate time travel stories, as a general thing; they always leave this impression of being just a little bit too scripted. If Cadence hadn't gotten that letter, she would never have gone to the future. If she hadn't gone to the future, she wouldn't have found out how to defeat Fenris. If she hadn't found out how to defeat Fenris, she wouldn't have left herself a message. If she hadn't left herself a message, the letter wouldn't have been written.

And there's the circle. No outside trigger. A whole lot of really contrived situations are needed, with the future being required to either have always existed, meaning she can't decide to change it even if she wants to, or being created that way out of whole cloth when Discord created a letter that otherwise would never have happened. Either way it ends up feeling futile and not really in tune with the ending to it that you wrote. If it can be changed, then there's no reason for it to happen at all except for cruelty on part of whoever triggered it. It's not like they couldn't keep trying.

[adcoon]

5732513
I don't personally have a problem with that, and I don't think it feels any more scripted than any other story, since any story would end up different if you changed the events in it. But if you're not fond of time travel plots in general then it's understandable. A few things, though:

It's not actually revealed where the letter came from or how, but the two fillies definitely did write it and 'send' it (there's no indication otherwise). That it actually reached Cadance was most likely a consequence of whatever time magic Clover had worked, not anything to do with Discord.

Cadance's message wasn't to herself either, it was to establish the village and nothing more.

And it's not a loop, like you see in some other stories. Cadance only gets that one time through, no going back and doing it different. There's no indication otherwise in the story, that I'm aware of.

[wlam]

5745973
I suppose it's partly a matter of taste. All stories are "scripted," sure, but generally they are written in a way that preserves the illusion that the characters have free will and choices available to them. They only ever could have done one thing, but it shouldn't look like that, you know what I mean?

And I understand that my logic might be a bit hard to follow there, if you aren't used to that kind of plot or to thinking a lot about causality in the first place. I only noticed it as strongly as I did because I'm both into speculative fiction and had a lot more classes on quantum mechanics over the course of my chem degree than I really ever wanted to, but the loop is definitely there. The message might not have been for Cadence, but without it the village would not have been established, which means there would not have been two fillies, which means there would not have been a letter, which means no message would have been written...

It's hard to explain without using analogies. Think of it like this: You are sitting on your balcony playing with a rock when you are startled by a shout and drop it. Someone is walking below your balcony at that point and gets hit in the head by a rock. He cries out.

-> Rock -> Fumble -> Fall -> Headsmack -> Cry ->

Now shift the Cry to the left

-> Cry -> Rock -> Fumble -> Fall -> Headsmack ->

The order of events is still the same, except now it's more visible that the end leads back to the beginning. From the moment you heard the cry, the dropping of the rock was a fixed event that had to happen, or you couldn't have heard the cry to begin with. The whole thing springs into existence out of thin air.

The same thing happens in your story. Everything that happens is already predestined from the moment the letter arrives, because any sequence of events that doesn't lead to the letter being written can't happen, or it wouldn't have had anywhere to come from. She never had a choice to begin with and it makes the whole thing just... vaguely gratuitous and intensely hopeless to me.

[ferret]

So if anyone's having trouble keeping up with this, here's my little synopsis. Princess Cadance went investigating a misty village one day, that had a thing from the distant past, where Clover the Clever pulled Cadance into some apocalyptic scenario with unbeatable wolves. Just when all hope was lost, Discord turned them into clovers or something and made Cadance a mangled undead corpse, and then she had a baby, but it was premature. So now empowered by their plan to bring color back to the world until the wolves killed them all, then they invented gunpowder on accident, and that gave them the power to do nothing. The wolves killed them all after they shot off a bunch of glitter. Also Cadance had the crystal heart ground up into dust, for reasons, and made the evil final boss eat it, which made him upset. Then she died again, and then her baby died. Then she woke up, and she concluded that it was all for the best and everything happened as it should. Then she knew the wolves were going to come in the future and kill everypony because they already did or something. Also Discord won.

[adcoon]

5749048
Whoops, forgot to reply.

Of course there's a loop of causality. That's the premise after all. But it's not the kind of loop that lets (or forces) Cadance go back and do the whole thing over again and again until she gets it a certain way (or forever and ever), like you seemed to suggest. She gets one chance at it, and whatever she does is then fixed.

But it could have turned out different. If everything was fixed from the beginning, Discord would never have needed to intervene because there would have been no way Cadance could have died or failed. Cadance could have acted differently, so could Discord, the wolves and anyone else, but they didn't. Nothing was fixed until the end when Cadance decided to make sure it was, by writing the message and sealing the deal.

[wlam]

5814268
No biggie, I had a few busy weeks and honestly didn't actually notice until now.

The problem with that is something that's called "infinite regression" in computer science. If she could have behaved differently, then the content of the loop would be able to change, which would make her behave differently, which would make the loop change, which would make her behave differently... The outcome of the loop is what causes it, so any changes feed back into themselves infinitely in a butterfly effect. Basically, the whole thing is a paradox unless everything is 100% deterministic and free will doesn't exist.

I'm getting really too far into stuff that's just my own opinion there. I really only wanted to explain what about the whole thing makes it appear somewhat forced and artificially bleak to me personally, so unless you're interested in chatting about that stuff more (I wouldn't mind) I'm fine with letting it rest at that.

[adcoon]

5815347
Eh, I think it's besides the point to argue this much further

I'm certainly not denying that the story came out seriously flawed in many ways. Most importantly, it's clear that I did a poor job of expressing my ideas clearly and not confusing the readers. That I have to clarify and sort out misunderstandings in the comments is just evidence that I failed telling the story properly. It's like jokes; if you have to explain them, you did something wrong. It's not the fault of the audience for not getting it.

Which is unfortunate, because I think the story I was trying to tell was a very powerful and beautiful (if tragic) one. At least I know this one isn't representative of my other writing, and I know I can do the whole time-loop thing well too.

[Shumiry]

Huh, I'm either too smart or too dumb to be confused by this. Or maybe I've just read enough time paradoxical stuff that it makes sense to me. Whatever the reason, I thoroughly enjoyed this! A very interesting story the whole way through, and I personally enjoyed the touch of gore you included, which lends a certain weight and reality to the tale.

Please keep writing, I'll keep reading!

[adcoon]

5870859
Glad to hear it

[ambion]

I remember starting this story the better part of a year ago and leaving it sit fallow until it was finished.

I've come back to it now, and I'm glad I didn't forget about it entirely, because finishing this story was worth it.

That said, I was and still am surprised that it ended as it did. It just seemed to me that the first reading of the story I did (which at that time had ended with the foaling of Skylark) was setting a certain pace for the story, and that the chapters after that - that I come to finish tonight - rush us to an end that I had felt would not come until quite a bit more wordage had been laid down. In that respect, I honestly think the story needed to be considerably longer to resolve itself and make sense. Mysteries that had been intriguing in the build-up just sort of...timey-wimey'd themselves, Lost style.

This was an interesting story, with an almost fey premise and vivid use of imagery, especially so with the contrasting of brightness and dullness. These appealed to me.

The increasingly erratic plot and general confusion about what's going on and why was something I didn't invest in and as such didn't worry about.

That call-to-arms speech Cadence has at the end was pretty badass, too. I liked that.

[ambion]

5780340

I'm convninced there is a story that makes sense in all this, hiding just out of sight somewhere in this.

[Ice Star]

This story is simply divine! The prose, voice, and mystery are all so well conceived and enjoyable.