Friendship is Revolution

by ultiville

Beautiful and Terrible

Twilight realizes the farm isn't much like Sweet Apple Acres as soon as she walks out the door.

It's no orchard. Instead the fields closest to the house are tall with corn. Loose dirt drifts among the brown, dusty flowers, thick like moisture haze in the heavy summer air. The farm's nestled among rolling mountains, more like oversized hills than the steep, snow-clad peaks around Canterlot, and covered in trees even to the tops. From her research she knows that here this means they are ancient, smoothed and shrunk by time, born in the morning of this world. She hasn't seen this many trees total since coming to Earth, let alone in one place, and wasn't sure the humans in their staggering numbers had left room for them. She finds them unspeakably beautiful.

She walks off the porch to the baked earth drive in front of the farmhouse. It's still early in the day but already the August heat is driving the air above it, creating shimmering lines, and making her hooves and legs shiver with the heat. And now that same rising air fills her grateful wings and she ascends with barely any effort, riding the powerful summer updraft.

She has no idea how long she's had her wings, how many memories are missing. As an alicorn, she isn't even sure how long she will live, or how she'll show her age. This has been weighing on her lately, with all the images lurking in the dark corners of her mind. However long, though, it still feels like mere months ago when the wings felt alien to her, and she feared she'd never grow comfortable with them. Now she finds her heart aching with how much she's missed flight.

She starts out low, watching the neat rows of corn flash by beneath her. She heads north towards the woods at the edge of the mountains, and the cornfield gives way to rows of a shorter plants she can't identify from her height, then to a pasture filled with cows. She calls out a greeting, but the animals only look up at her, mute, and she remembers that here they cannot speak. Then she remembers that humans eat them, and shudders a bit. To her left horses graze at the neighboring farm Rachel mentioned, but they make her even more uncomfortable, and she flies on.

At the edge of the cow pasture she crosses a clear, swift-running brook, and has to flap hard to keep her altitude in the cooler air above it. The effort makes her wound hurt, but it's a dull ache, not the sharp, tearing pain that would indicate new damage, so she goes in among the trees.

They're widely spaced, and the ground cover short, so even among the trunks flying is easy. She feels like she's soaring in an emerald-roofed palace supported by wooden columns. Cottonwood down drifts in the air like snow, or stars. Here in the shade it's cooler, and she has to flap more often, but the break from the sun brings relief to her dark coat, and she welcomes it.

There's a clearing ahead, and she breaks tree cover through the gap in the canopy, riding a thermal off the mountain to ascend high into the lightly clouded sky. She frowns at the lapse on the part of the local weather team, then remembers Earth doesn't even have them. Then she sees the land below her, and loses the thought.

The forest is vast, if broken by roads and small towns, and the wooded hills stretch as far as she can see in all directions. It's a landscape like a crumpled sheet, the hillsides and tops coated in dark green forests, while the valleys hold shining rivers, dark highways, rectangular fields, and, in the case of the larger ones, towns.

It reminds her of home, and she feels the ache of loss anew. She also feels winded, and turns to descend back to the farmhouse.

By the time she lands, she realizes she's overdone it. Her wings ache after long disuse, and her whole body feels heavy. She trots slowly to the house and sees Rachel still on the porch, looking worried.

"Good flight?" the human says, with casualness Twilight recognizes is forced.

"Very," the princess replies, "I missed it more than I realized. But I didn't realize how weak I was either. I think I'll go back to bed."

"Sounds good. I dunno if I'll be here when you wake up, though," Rachel says, "I need to get back to the city, I have work tonight. We've been taking shifts. If you're out for more than an hour or two, Fiona will be here."

"Oh," Twilight yawns, "I didn't realize. Sorry I wore myself out too much to chat more."

"Hey, no worries, you didn't know. Besides, I come out when I can, I'll see you again soon."

"Or I'll come back," Twilight says, "I hope Rosie still wants me to work for her."

Rachel laughs. "Are you kidding? She said business had never been better, you're like the best free advertising she can get."

"Well, that's good then. See you soon, Rachel. Thanks for being here."

Rachel presses her arms gently around Twilight's neck. Those wonderfully expressive hands lightly grip her mane, that warm, strangely lumpy chest presses tight against her. Rachel says nothing, and Twilight feels safe and comforted, despite the odd anatomy involved. Soon she's out again.

---

It is, in fact, Fiona who sits by her bed when Twilight wakes. Late-afternoon sun slants in through the window and makes her golden hair shine. For a moment it reminds the pony of Celestia in its splendor, and she keenly misses her mentor's guidance. Then the human turns fully to look at her, and smiles a gentle smile, and she's all strange again. They've barely talked before: Twilight met her in the bar, then quickly was sequestered awaiting trial, where only RD, Alanna, and AJ had much reason to see her. But what she knows, she likes. Fiona is a woman of science, and seems both curious and knowledgeable about not just medicine, but all the natural sciences. Twilight looks forward to talking to her, and is flattered she's come to help, despite their short contact.

"Thanks for coming to see me," she opens.

"Of course," Fiona replies, her voice soft, slightly musical, "you may be far out of my area of medical expertise, but I couldn't just do nothing."

"Well, we've barely talked, so I wouldn't have blamed you, but I'm glad you didn't."

"I enjoyed the talking we did get to," Fiona says, and smiles, "and it seems we don't have much to do here. It'll be several hours still before dinner. We could talk more now."

"I'd like that," Twilight smiles back, "but it's beautiful out here, and I didn't get to do much exploring when I went out flying. Shall we go for a walk while we do?"

"I'd love to, if you're feeling up to it. Rachel said you overdid it earlier and tired yourself out."

"Well, I haven't used my wings much in...a long time, so I think that was a lot of it. Besides, anywhere we can walk, I can always glide or teleport back. It isn't like I'll just collapse in the woods."

Fiona grimaces a little. "Right, you have some options my other patients don't, I suppose. I assumed running roughshod over the laws of physics like that would be exhausting, though."

"Not really. Or not physically anyway. For a lot of unicorns it'd be draining to use that kind of magic, but I've always had a talent for it, and alicorns have reserves on a totally different level. A trip of a few miles isn't any more draining for me than walking across a room."

Fiona lets out a low whistle.

"I don't think we really knew what we were getting ourselves into with you," she says, but her smile is back, and she chuckles a little. "Well then, Princess, let's go for a walk. Anywhere in particular you'd like to go?"

"I flew north last time, and saw a brook running along the edge of the woods, right on the slope of that little mountain. I think I'd like to go take a closer look at it. Then if we're feeling up to it, we can start walking up the mountain, and see how high we can get. Have you ever seen this area from above before? It was beautiful from the sky, and I bet it would look similar from the mountaintop."

Fiona just nods, and they walk out the door into the late afternoon. The sun is low above the hills now, but still looks several hours from setting. The air is even heavier than before, and Twilight feels the sticky humidity on her coat. She knows she'll be sweaty soon, but can't bring herself to mind, almost welcomes the unfamiliar feeling. Canterlot, as high up as it is, is never this hot and humid, and Ponyville's expertly maintained weather never achieves this level of slight unpleasantness. It feels novel, to deal with weather so untamed.

"A penny for your thoughts," Fiona says as they pass in between the first rows of corn, along the narrow trail. The plants are taller than Twilight, nearly as tall as her companion.

"Hm? Why would I want a penny?"

Fiona laughs. "It's an expression, from many years ago, when pennies were worth more. It just means 'what are you thinking'. I admit I'm not a master of pony faces, but you looked thoughtful, and were quiet."

"Oh, I'm not even really sure," Twilight blushes a bit, "just thinking how untamed everything is around here. The weather, all the forests on the mountains. I read there are billions and billions of humans on Earth. I didn't think anywhere would be wild."

"I'm not sure anywhere is," Fiona replies, shaking her head, "certainly not here. You're right we can't do anything with the weather except screw it up, but none of the rest of this stuff is what you'd call natural. We didn't really bother to control it, so I guess in that sense it's wild, but there's almost no old-growth forest left around here. A few spots, scattered in protected land, but nothing you can see from here. This was all clear cut for timber within the last century. We just don't need as much wood as we used to, so we've let it grow back, but it's all pretty new."

"Huh. I couldn't tell. So is anywhere really untouched?"

"I don't know. Not much of anywhere, I think. We have some national parks that are pretty large and where development and logging and so forth aren't allowed, that might be as close as it gets. And of course some other countries have some wilder areas, but most of them don't regulate them like that, to make sure they stay that way, so they're either going fast, or no one really knows because they're not watched. And I don't even know how much I'd count a wild area that's only wild because we've fenced it off, you know? If it's big enough, it might be ecologically identical, but sometimes I think it'd be good for us to have a place that isn't ours, and parks aren't that. They're wild because we let them be, not because they're something we can't control."

"Like the Everfree," Twilight murmurs.

"Mmm? Oh, yeah, that spooky forest. Is it really so far outside even your control? From the show, it seemed like you have your world even more on lockdown than we have ours. Like you said, you have a department to manage the weather."

"It's...different," Twilight thinks for a bit, "with us it's all really local, and it's all personal. We control everything in Ponyville, but there aren't very many ponies, all told, and even fewer that don't live in the big cities. In all of Equestria there are maybe fifteen million, and the vast majority live in a few urban centers. Outside those, we don't control much at all. And in the Everfree we just can't. I still think Celestia knows why, since her old castle is there, but I certainly don't. Or don't remember if I do," she sighs here.

"Still having memory issues, then? We were hoping when you changed you'd gotten over them."

"Not really, I'm afraid. Or at least, I'm having different ones now. I remember some things much more clearly, like what happened in my early life, or when I was at school in Canterlot. And I've got a few months of real memory after Tirek now. I convinced Applejack to write a book, a history of the Apple family! But somehow after that it all gets fuzzy. I have some images, and impressions, but no shape of events." She sighs. "I don't even know how long a period is missing. I don't know that I'd visibly age. It could have been years."

"Wait, you're ageless too? Damn."

"Not exactly, Celestia claims I'm still mortal. But I'll live a long time, and I don't know if I'll get old or just eventually...stop. Another thing I've never gotten a straight answer from her on, at least that I remember."

There's a pause as they both think. They're walking among the tomato vines now, and see the pastures along both sides of the trail ahead.

"I know they can't speak, but are you sure they're not intelligent?" Twilight asks, tipping her muzzle towards the cows.

"I don't know how we could be," Fiona says, "I'm certainly not. I don't even really know what it means. They're clearly intelligent enough to know how to live their lives, find food, form habits. All mammals can solve certain kinds of puzzles, recognize people, and so forth. Do you mean self-aware? I don't have a way to measure that objectively, but a lot of scientists think they are, now. Can you tell for sure?"

Twilight frowns. "In Equestria, almost everything can talk, including pretty much all our large mammals. Fluttershy can even talk to the small ones, though only because it's her special talent. I guess maybe it'd be possible to make a spell for it, but there's never really been any need. But if your scientists think they're aware, why do you eat them? It seems awful to me."

"I don't," Fiona says, "and increasingly many humans don't either. For a long time we needed meat in our diets to survive. We're naturally omnivores, after all, unlike you. But now, living in a rich country, I don't need to. We can figure out what foods to mix to get complete proteins and so forth. Some people even do it without eggs or dairy, though personally I don't mind that so much. However intelligent they might or might not be, cows and chickens couldn't really survive without us at this point. But a lot of human actions are like that, I'm afraid. We started doing something because we didn't know any better, or because it was the only way to survive, but now that we do know the price, we can't seem to shake the habits."

"I guess that makes sense," Twilight says, "I wonder if we have things like that, too. We can be set in our ways, I know, like when everypony was afraid of Zecora. Still, it seems very sad."

"It seems sad to me, too," Fiona sighs, "and I'm afraid it will get sadder. We've had our share of distrust of people who are different, too, even though we've only got humans. And one big problem with there being more of us is that when we do damage, we just do more of it. You're lucky, you don't seem to pay the same kind of price for your power."

"What do you mean?" Twilight asks.

They're almost to the stream now. They can hear it burbling over rocks not far ahead, accompanied by sporadic moos from the pasture.

"You have actual magic. Free energy, or at least so it seems to me. Does it damage anything when you use it? Deplete some limited stores?"

"No. Or I don't think so, anyway. We've never detected any harm from channeling it, and if it's possible to run it out, we've got nowhere near enough ponies to do it, or powerful enough ones. And when Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and I all get together, that's a lot of power. But you have your own equivalent, right? Your lights, and computers, and cars, all of them must require a lot of power to run as often and as casually as you do."

"Power, but not magic," Fiona says and slumps her shoulders, "energy. And that's what I mean: to get it, we have to pay a terrible price. Most of it comes from burning coal and oil we have to dig out of the ground, and using complicated machines to turn it into electricity, or move the wheels of the car, or whatever else we want to do. Removing it from the ground destroys huge amounts of land, and burning it releases carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the air. It's changing our climate, and not in the careful way you ponies do that. Most scientists think within a few centuries or less, weather everywhere will be totally different. Most of the coasts will be underwater. Including Cambridge and Boston, if we don't build sea walls or otherwise protect it."

"You're destroying your own world? And you know it? Celestia, why don't you stop?"

"What would you do, if it turned out your magic was doing the same thing? What do you think other ponies would do?"

"Well, I..." Twilight stops, "I want to think I'd stop but you're right, I don't really know. I mean, our magic is a part of us, we'd die without it, but I assume you mean just the active stuff, like what I do with my horn, or changing the weather. And I see what you mean. It's addictive, isn't it? I'm not sure we'd know how to get along without it."

"Right," Fiona said, "only for us it's even worse. We couldn't really support our population without it. Millions of people would die, probably billions, if we couldn't ship food around. Most people in this country need to travel to their jobs by car. And of course that's just the start. You've had a thousand years of being ruled by, well, what look to us like gods. We've had wars, and power struggles. If we just stopped using this stuff, and other countries didn't, a lot of people are afraid we'd be taken over, enslaved. And of course, a lot of rich and powerful people made their money on oil and coal and that sort of thing, and now they use their power to make sure they can keep doing so. And finding alternatives would cost a great deal. It's a mess."

"It always comes down to that with you humans, doesn't it? Money."

"Well, the point of money is that you can put a price on almost everything. So if you say it costs a lot of money, it really means a lot of time, a lot of resources, effort, and so forth. I think it'd be worth it, but it's such a huge step, that it's hard to build enough of a consensus. And of course, some of the people who benefit from the status quo say it's all lies, and they have the resources to say it loudly. People are figuring it out, but we've known for several decades, and now the message from them is 'it's too late'."

They've reached the stream now. It's a simple brook, like countless others even just in rural New England. But It's still beautiful, despite all the ugliness in the world. The crystal clear, silvery water cascades over rocks green with growth, and sings as it does, gurgling and tinkling down the sloped bed. The air above it is refreshingly cool, the sandy banks inviting. They walk down and Twilight falls to her knees, pressing her belly to the cool beach.

"How do you live with it?" she asks, finally.

"Well," Fiona says slowly, "I do what I can, when I can. I don't eat meat. I use better energy sources as much as possible. I vote right, though I'm increasingly unsure how much that matters. It's all I feel like I can do, and it's better than giving up."

"Do you think I should? Do what I can?"

Fiona looks over at her, head tilted.

"What do you mean? Why wouldn't you?"

"I'm a princess of Equestria again, with all my magic. As you say, I don't pay the price for power you do, and I have rather a lot of it. If I studied it, I could probably fix your atmosphere, lock some of that carbon in blocks, or just make it...go somewhere else. Maybe the moon. I'm not a weather master, and if I could talk to Rainbow Dash it'd be faster, but I could probably figure it out in a year or two. And I am basically a combat master by now, sadly, and the Princess of Friendship to boot. I'm not sure I could defeat an entire earth army on my own, but I'm not sure I couldn't, and I don't think I'd have to be alone. I could be Earth's Celestia, if I wanted to."

Fiona looks over at her, eyes wide.

"You would be a queen," she murmurs, "not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn, tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth. All would love you, and despair."

Twilight looks down at her hooves, half-buried in sand. "That's a beautiful way to put it, and probably accurate. That's why I asked."

"You didn't recognize it? It's from the Lord of the Rings, one of my favorite books. I should prescribe it as part of your recovery, that'd keep you in bed and resting." She grins for a minute. Then they both sigh, and turn to gaze at the water dancing across the rocks, shimmering in the sun.

"I guess that's always the ultimate price of power, in any world," Fiona murmurs.

"Mm?"

"You have to live with how you use it, and how you don't."

"I might have to live with it a long time."

"I think I'd still rather do that than the alternative, but I'm not sure that's wise of me."

"I'm not either," Twilight says. "I feel like I should do something, though, even if it isn't taking over the entire world."

"Let's think about it," Fiona says, "and in the mean time, maybe do start looking into atmosphere spells. I'm afraid it might be too late for anything but actual magic to fix that one."

They sit for a while on the beach, in silence, looking at the water play across the rocks.

Comments

[zimmerwald1915]

I feel somewhat misled by the summary page, but the story's good enough to let me ignore that. Will be watching.

[ultiville]

4535499 Thanks for watching! And I had no idea what to write for the summary, so if you've got a suggestion I'm certainly glad to hear it.