Laughter
Raindrop’s wings hurt. Her chest hurt. Her shoulders hurt. Everything hurt.
Burning aches and pains heralded the unbelievable amount of stiffness she would be feeling in the morning. The Wonderbolts were not an easy group to please.
The suit she wore was clammy with her sweat, and the musky scent of it was strong on the air around her. She wanted nothing more than to fall into a lake and just float there for eternity. But the Wonderbolts were pushing her onwards.
“C’mon rookie! You’ll need to fly faster than that if you want to qualify!” the captain urged. She was a smaller pegasus, with a violently red mane and tail. White wings protruded from her sides, keeping her aloft. Her mane and tail flickered with the wing, giving her the frightening appearance of being constantly on fire. She was aptly named ‘Firebrand’.
The two ponies under her were both male. One of them was a blue pegasus with a black mane and tail, named ‘Velocity’. The second, ‘Windshear’, was a lightly-built male of a soft brown colour with two-tone green-and-blue mane and tail.
And they were all watching the rookies circling the arena, putting them through their paces. Already, five had dropped out from exhaustion or accidents. It was brutal. If this was the entrance exam, then Raindrop couldn’t even fathom how hard their daily training would be.
And still, she was no closer to discovering which of them were the bearer of the element. It could have been any of them, from the captain of the wonderbolts, to one of the recruits who had already left.
The scrape of a key in the lock resounded. The cogs inside the door clicked and turned. Stardancer saw it all happening. She knew what was going to happen next. But further out, the possibilities cascaded in a cacophony of uncertainty.
To Stardancer, time was a river. A roaring, rushing, unstoppable river. It could be forded. It could be dammed. It could be diverted, but it would always be flowing ever onwards. Stardancer could look ahead of the stream, and see the course it would take. It was a muchly oversimplified way of looking at it. For her to explain it adequately, she would have to explain to a pony that the river could split at any junction at any second. And that there were a billion different courses the river could take every metre.
Some events were easier to discern than others. She called these the ‘keys’. The keys were what grounded her. They gave her points to ‘jump’ to. Sometimes the keys were simple things, unobtrusive. Like a rock falling. But sometimes, the keys were different. Sometimes, the keys were deaths.
Today, the key was Sentinel. The key was also the key in the door, but the key she had to focus on was the conversation. The rules of observations and interaction were muddying the waters of the time river. She needed her wits about her to keep the course of the river from being diverted too far off course to be deflected. Lives and happiness depended upon it.
The door clicked again as the handle was turned, and the orderly opened the door to admit Sentinel into the room. The orderly gazed past the guard, raising a brow at Stardancer.
Stardancer merely nodded in reply. She knew the orderly was asking if it was fine.
“You already know who I am,” Sentinel stated simply, sitting down in front of her and watching her with narrowed eyes. “And I know who you are. You can see the future.”
“Anyone can see the future, Sentinel. I can merely predict it with a greater deal of certainty,” Stardancer replied cryptically.
Sentinel snorted, and then produced a coin from a pouch. “When I drop it, what will it land on?”
Stardancer watched him for a long moment, and then shook her head gently, “You will have to throw it before I will know.”
Sentinel flicked his hoof, and the coin rose into the air. Stardancer did not follow it with her eyes. She stared into Sentinel’s eyes, watching him.
“It is a two-sided coin,” she stated flatly. “What do you hope to achieve?”
“I needed to know that you’re telling the truth,” Sentinel said, retrieving the coin, and then slipping it back into his pouch. “How can you not know what I’m here for?”
“Because you have interacted with me,” Stardancer said, rubbing a hoof against her temple, brow furrowing.
“And?” Sentinel queried, staring at her, an eyebrow raising.
“And? Every time I interact with you, every time I speak, every time you think about me, or observe me in any way, with any of your senses, it changes how you think. And how you think changes your questions. There are billions of possible futures cascading past my mind’s eye right now and I cannot pluck a key out of them to accurately predict the flow. Such as when you flicked the coin. I could not know what it would land on because my answer of heads or tails would influence your throw itself, from the timing of it, to the angle of your hoof, or the strength you threw it at,” Stardancer explained tartly, staring at him. “Now ask what you came to ask.”
Sentinel paused at that, wetting his lips with his tongue, and then looking up at her for a long moment, and then down at his hooves. “...I need to know if Raindrop loves me.”
Stardancer gave a nod at that, and then peered up at him, frowning deeply. “I... Cannot say.”
“What do you mean, you can’t say?” Sentinel asked, snorting once and then staring at her, shaking his head. “Some prophet you are.”
Stardancer took several long seconds to respond, her eyes slightly glazed. She gave a start, and then blinked once at him, as though only just realising he was still there. “I cannot say. If I say one answer or another, it may trigger a set of actions that cause the opposite. I need to examine the keys. Need to test the waters and make the river flow backwards...”
Sentinel frowned at that. Everyone in the royal guard knew of Stardancer. She was a threat to the security of the castle, and thus, all guards were warned of her abilities. Mainly, they were warned to stay out of her way. If she wished something to happen, then it was widely known that she would get her way. The last time she had been denied a visit to the park, she had put the entire asylum staff in hospital with food poisoning and then escaped the skeleton-crewed facility and spent her day at the park before placidly returning to the asylum.
“You really can’t tell me?” Sentinel asked with a deep sigh, his head drooping.
The unicorn shook her head gently. “I am sorry, Sentinel. I wish I could comfort your troubled heart. But I need time. Need more time. Every time you speak with me, you expand the possibilities, and it takes longer.”
“How?” Sentinel asked, staring at her, head canting to the side.
“Because I have free will. And free will is my burden,” Stardancer replied with a wave of her hoof.
“How can free will be a burden?” Sentinel asked, staring at her.
“Do you know how I will react to every word?” Stardancer asked suddenly.
“Definitely not,” Sentinel replied with a shake of his head. “I was kinda hoping you’d just say ‘yes’ and I’d be on my merry way.”
“The world does not work like that. Time does not work like that. Every word I say has a different effect. Every explanation I give shapes a million events each in the future. It changes them in tiny ways. But even the tiniest ripple can become a wave, and wash away that which I hope to save. A single word could change your future, or the future of another pony whom you meet. This conversation may cause you to hold up a pony in the street, and the chance meeting with his future wife never happens, and their children are never born. With every word I speak to you, a billion possibilities throw themselves in my face and clamour for my attention. I cannot focus on them all.”
“But...Can’t you just tell me if Raindrop and I will end up together?” Sentinel pleaded. “You’re a prophet, you have to have some idea.”
Stardancer shook her head sadly, and then laid her head down on her forehooves. She went completely silent.
After a minute or so, Sentinel moved forwards to nudge her with his hoof. “Stardancer?”
When Stardancer looked up, her eyes were unfocused, glassed over. And she was mumbling under her breath.
“The fence. The cart. The keys are cascading. Five ponies. Bronsen. Mane tossed. Pebble. Hesitation...” she trailed off and winced, hooves lifting to rub at her temple, pressing with a strong pressure as she began to beat her muzzle against the ground, tears starting to stain her muzzle as a low wail rolled from her throat.
“The keys! There’s so many keys!” Stardancer wailed, beginning to sob, “The keys! Have to find the right keys!”
Sentinel drew back from the babbling pony. she sounded hurt, like someone close to her had just come to harm. The door unlocked, and the orderly gently tugged Sentinel away from the stricken pony, ushering him out into the hallway as another orderly entered the room, a large syringe in hoof.
“The ball! Throw the ball away!” Stardancer shrieked, as she tried to wriggle away from the orderly, kicking at him impotently with her rear legs. “Throw the ball! Anger of foal’s tears will show the way!”
The orderly closed the door, and the unicorn’s wailing was muted.
“Sorry you had to see that,” the orderly said apologetically. “Her medication isn’t as effective as it used to be. We’re still trying to work out the timing of her doses to keep her, well... Sane.”
Sentinel nodded in understanding, turning to leave. It had been a colossal waste of time. Even a living prophet couldn’t tell him if Raindrop and he would end up together. Maybe he was just a young colt pining after what he couldn’t have? Lingering doubts still swirled through his mind, even worse now after what Stardancer had said. He had just wanted some small reassurance. But even that was, apparently, too much to ask for.
The guard sighed and kicked a pebble, watching it skip away across the street, before he began to follow it, head lowered dejectedly.
Wisp looked up at Princess Celestia with a canted head, her expression confused.
“So... I just have to choose to take it?” the young griffon was asking, seeming bewildered.
Celestia smiled and nodded gently, motioning for Wisp to take the Element of Laughter from the table.
Wisp frowned a little bit, and then leaped up onto the table proper, padding over to the Element of Laughter and hefting it in her paws. It remained grey and stony.
“It’s just a rock,” Wisp complained, rolling the element back and forth between her paws, “Laughter isn’t even an element. Fire and water are.”
Celestia gave a smile at that, shaking her head gently. “It is an Element of Harmony. One of six, in fact. Tell me, Wisp. Why do you laugh? Why are you happy?”
The young griffon blinked at that, her ears splaying backwards. “I just... Am.”
“No, Wisp. You are happy for other reasons,” Celestia chided gently, leaning down to look the young griffon in the eye with a piercing gaze that seemed to penetrate her very soul. “You grew up alone, in the desert. You cannot fly. And yet, you are always happy, why is that?”
Wisp gave a little bit of a sigh at that, her head lowering. “I’m not... Always happy. Sometimes, I get really sad...”
Celestia nodded gently. “That is perfectly understandable, but why is it that you never let it consume you utterly?”
“Because... Well. Because it doesn’t do anything. What did being sad ever do for me?” Wisp asked, shaking her head for a moment and huffing. “It makes me angry and makes me depressed. It makes me feel... Weak and powerless and useless. When I’m sad, I just want to curl up and cry and not do anything.”
“And how is it that you keep from being sad?” Celestia queried.
“I just... I decide not to be sad anymore. The things making me sad are all in my past. I just... I just choose not to let the things I can’t change matter. And I smile. If it’s something I can change, then I let myself be sad, but if I’m being sad about something that’s all the way in the past, it just ruins my day. And that’s not acceptable. So... I just smile.”
Celestia smiled at that, and nodded gently. “That is a very good way to look at life, Wisp. And look,”
Wisp followed the line of Celestia’s gaze, and saw the orb in her paws suddenly seem to shift. The surface of it morphed, and turned a glassy black, while tendrils of vibrant pink began to build and glow within it. A sudden sensation of happiness filled Wisp, and she felt her beak opening in a grin as a pink light suffused her form.
Celestia smiled, watching the griffon staring vapidly into the glowing Element of Harmony, the orb reflected twice in her large, joyous eyes.
One bearer was already found. Now there were only five to go.
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Sentinel is desperate. Sooner or later he will give a hoof of maired.
Trust me, that will go right into the insanety
hmm, I would expect the elements to at least maintain some amount their previous user's symbolism/spirit.
Poor Sentinel, he needs to find Madame Pinkie
Stardancer is probably an element. But even if she is I have no idea which.
1056110 Sentinel is immune to changeling magic O.o changeling magic has no effect on semen, eggs, and fertalisation, s'far as I know.
Aiya, Poor colt's getting desperate.
1056546
Magic?
Per chance was Wisp's ideology inspired by this?
maxcdn.zenpencils.com/comics/2012-04-19-worry.jpg?9d7bd4
1056553 Well that's good! I was worried for a minute there. Me needz mah happy ending :D
1056609 Actually, Wisp's ideology is based on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU
1056673
Hahahahaha! You just reminded me of my cousin! I trained her to respond to some cool ideologies.
Me: Hey, kiddo. Don't worry?
Her: BE HAPPY!
Me: Right! And what do you do when you see scary trees?
Her: LAUGH!
I'm so proud of my little girl
My next challenge will be "Why do we fall?"
1056701 Oh, and I've still gotta decide who tells Sentinel the greatest ever piece of advice ever spoken.
"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."
1056711
MATE! SPOILER ALERT!
(my vote goes to Awesome Nurse, at the bar, over a few cups of cider)
1056719 Oops. Also, it's actually gonna be told to RAINDROP, not Sentinel. Raindrop's the one who needs the words, not Sentinel
It's really bad when you have trouble getting your own plot points straight! 
1056724
The moment the author is confused over their own story, I can't help but think:
Are we going to be alright?
1056732 Maybe!
I honestly have no fucking clue where the story is going sometimes. I just start writing. It's a very odd way of doing shit. Sure, I've got some things planned out, but everything else, I make up on the fly. The coin toss, for instance. I didn't intend on having that there until the moment Sentinel opened the door. I still haven't got a solid character for the Element of Kindness (though everyone wants it to be the Nurse). And the whole current estrangement of Sentinel and Raindrop didn't even happen in my mind until literally during writing Raindrop's response to his 'Ithinkiloveyou' admittance.
But that self-same on-the-fly style of writing I think is what can make the story so interesting. If any one part of it starts lacking, be it romance, action, or exposition, I can easily just add an element of that in there and make it seem as though I'd planned it the entire time. I just plan the major events, everything else is fluid
1056746
I'm sorta like that, but because I planned something really tricky and complicated, I don't have the privilege of just sitting down and writing away. I'm stuck with long times of planning and great deals of foreshadowing.
1056771 I have a character that can see into the future. I had changelings in the story for twenty or more chapters that were hinted at repeatedly, that barely even anyone caught onto. This is complicated :D It's just wending everything else around those hints and clues and everything else, and making it all seamless, that makes it fun and fluid. I didn't even plan on revealing the changelings until after the majority of the Elements and their bearers were found.
I really liked Wisp's scene.
Stardancer is one of my favorite characters ever!
...i effcking love this fic and want more NOW.
Goddammit, Sentinel. Raindrop is the sort of pony with a heart a mile wide and twice as deep. Albeit slightly covered in spiky bits. You are pointlessly fixating on all the wrong questions.
Sometimes, the keys were deaths.
Today, the key was Sentinel.
I hope that's not foreshadowing.
I DEMAND MOAR!
1056746
Nurse should be Honesty. She seems quite good at cutting through Sentinel and Raindrop's bullshit.
1057741 I'd think she would be Generosity, since she's so nice with giving out advice to others at any time of the day for whatever reason.
Stardancer's logic made me think about that "flowing time river" thing. I thought about it in the past and now I saw it again and I still can't put it anywhere. Ugh... my head hurts, I can't think about anything now, but possibilities of time and future.
This is a really great chapter but after a previous scene in which Stardancer looks at a butterfly and knows what effect that butterfly will have if it lands at a certain place, it's hard to believe that she has no ability whatsoever to know what effect a simple one-word answer will have. Besides, what Sentinel is asking is not a question of the distant or even near future but the the immediate now and as a future becomes more immediate, the branching possibilities narrow dramatically until they can be discerned. So... it's hard to buy that she can't even repeat Raindrop's answer.
1056546
If she is I would have thought she was the element of loyalty...but nothing happened when she handled it...so I'm not totally sure
1056546
If she is I would have thought she was the element of loyalty...but nothing happened when she handled it...so I'm not totally sure
1185086
She can predict what happens loosely with keys.....Go back to the butterfly. she knew it would have an effect but not what would happen. her thought process told her that if she killed it something either positive or negative would happen, she knows what will cause changes but not what those changes will be. its as simple as that
1057741
naw she's the element of patience...She holds understanding and is very patient....as in she hasn't killed either of them yet...
1057224
dang it your wise
1056746
going with the flow is the best way to write...trust me I've been published a few times and I know how to go about things. Just know what you want your story to be based about. How it will start and how it will end. and then you just start writing! so yeah you've definetly got it right
so much wisdom
me must think more 