Sometimes you can't quit while you're ahead
Ash. The only taste I can remember. I have words for other tastes, but I don’t remember what they mean. Sweet, bitter, green, wet, sour. I think those are tastes anyway. Or they referred to food. Or to other things.
I remember what hard means. Hard refers to the chair. Hard, and black, and brittle and burnt. I remember what these mean, because the chair is these things. These things are the chair.
I sit on the chair. Sitting is what I do, and that’s what the chair is there for. The chair’s always been there for me to sit on. Even when there was still food, and color, and things that weren’t hard, black, brittle, and burnt.
Sitting on the chair is the most important thing. For no reason must I ever stop sitting on the chair. That’s the most important thing. I must never, ever stop sitting on the chair.
It’s very difficult sometimes. Sometimes the sun shines in my eyes, and everything gets hard, black, brittle, and burnt. Even me. But then the big red ball moves away, and the hard-black-brittle-burnt flakes off me, and under it is red-sticky-soft, and then that becomes white-fuzzy-soft. And then it gets dark and cold. And then the sun comes back and it all starts over again.
The walls help. I don’t think they used to look like this. I feel like they should be white, but not fuzzy and soft like I am. No, they should be hard, that part is right, but they shouldn’t be black. I don’t know if they’re brittle. They’re not close enough to the chair, and I must never leave the chair.
The wind is something else. It’s soft, but not like I am. I can touch it, but I can’t touch it. It’s more like it touches me. Sometimes it brings more bits of ash, making soft-black-burnt piles in hard-brittle-black-burnt corners. I can touch those, because there’s one next to the chair. It’s also soft but not like I am.
Then there's the floor. It's quiet most of the time, but sometimes it bounces and rattles, and all the little piles of ash jump in the air, and sometimes I can hear sounds outside. Big, loud, heavy sounds. But it all stops eventually and I stay sitting in the chair like I have to.
The floor's moving now in fact. It’s bouncing again like it always does, making the chair bounce too. Sometimes the chair bounces closer to the funny part of the ground in front of me. The part called stairs. Sometimes it bounces away from them, but today it’s bouncing very close to the stairs. I don’t know what happens if it reaches the stairs, but I feel like something should. As I bounce closer, the feeling gets stronger. Something is going to happen, I just know it.
The chair bounces onto the stairs. And then it throws me out.
For a moment I’m not sure what happened. There’s still hard brittle black burnt, but it’s in the wrong place. It should be under me and behind me, not in front of me. But there’s nothing behind me, only in front of me. I start to look around, and then I see it.
The chair is behind me. I am not on the chair.
Nothing happens. I am afraid but nothing happens. I don’t know what should happen but I know it’s bad because I am out of the chair and that is bad. Maybe being out of the chair is the bad thing, but this isn’t bad. Maybe I’m still in the chair, because if I was really out of the chair, it would be bad, and this isn’t bad. Actually, it feels--
--good? Is that the word? I think it is. I think it feels good.
I must still be in the chair. I guess I didn’t know what being in the chair was. Or maybe something else is the chair? What if all this is the chair?
I start to move my legs. They make a lot more sense now that the chair isn’t that tiny not-chair I was sitting in. It’s good that I sometimes stood in the not-chair, or else I don’t think I’d remember what my legs are for. They’re for moving around the chair, which makes sense, because the not-chair isn’t the chair.
My legs are very bad at moving around the chair, and most of the time they just move me over sideways. I feel like they should all be under me, though, so I keep trying to do that. Sometimes, it works, and it seems to make a lot of sense, but it’s very hard, so I mostly just let them move me sideways. It’s strange feeling hard things in places other than behind and beneath, but I like it. It’s different.
The room is different too. When I’m not in the not-chair, I can see out the windows. There are more walls outside, big pointy ones I couldn’t see before. They look like my horn, except really amazingly big. Maybe there’s another me out there to go with the horns?
I move sideways out the holes in the walls, slowly making my legs work better. They’re making more sense now, and it works better to move forward and back more than sideways. By the time I get outside the walls, I’m moving more forwards and less sideways. I like this much more.
There are so many more horns outside. Lots and lots of them, but no mes to go with them. They’re just big horns on the biggest floor I’ve ever seen. And then I realize that this new floor is on an even bigger horn, one so big that I almost think it's a wall, all broken and craggy as it reaches up to the sky. In the other direction, the new floor just ends, and far below it is an even bigger floor. It stretches on forever, not flat like the other floors but curved and uneven, every inch of it black.
I’m getting better at walking. I walk around all the horns. Closer, I keep feeling like they shouldn’t be black. I want them to be white and… other things. Things I can’t remember. All I know is that they should be white and something else. It doesn’t feel good, feeling like these horns should be different. Maybe I left the chair when I went out to the horns.
Then I see something new. Not a horn, not a wall. It looks just like me, only burnt and black like everything else. It doesn't blink or walk or sit like I do. It just stands there. And there are other things, like me but smaller and wrong. Some of them are missing horns, some of them are missing wings, and some of them are missing both. They all look like they're trying to lay on the other me, wrapping their legs around. There are strange shapes in the bottom, and as I look at them, I feel almost like I should hear them.
"In memoriam."
There are more below, but only some of them are sounds. The rest are just cracks.
"#h#ugh #####ve go#e, w####ll ne##r f##get y##."
All at once, the good and the bad feelings get even worse. I really want them to stop.
I try going back to the stairs and walls and the not-chair, but the feeling doesn’t get any better. Now I feel like everything should be white and other things. Things that itch. Things that bug and trouble and feel bad. I try sitting in the not-chair, but the feeling doesn’t stop. At least I know the not-chair is definitely not the chair now.
I go back outside the not-white walls, and look at the not-white horns. I look at the black floor, but even that looks bad now. Worse, I don’t even know what it isn’t. I know the horns should all be white, but I can’t remember what the floor should be. I just know it shouldn’t be black.
I have to find the chair again.
I look around, but all I see are horns. There are the little horns all around me, and the big horns that the little horns are built on, but I know none of these are the chair. There’s another horn, though, a different horn. It’s not built on another horn, and it’s tall and narrow out in the middle of the floor. Just looking at it, I know it’s different than all the other horns. It’s a special horn, one that makes me happy, and sad. Maybe it’s the chair?
I start walking. It’s hard, especially when I get onto the big horn. I go sideways a lot, and sometimes the horn is already so sideways that I keep going sideways and I feel hard stuff all around me over and over and over. But it always stops, and I can always keep walking, and I do.
The wavy floor is so much bigger up close, but looking at it just feels even worse the closer I get. I feel like it should be fuzzy and not white, but not black either. It shouldn’t even be fuzzy I think, but almost-fuzzy. It doesn’t feel quite right, but close. Better than hard and brittle.
That other horn keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s so tall and narrow it almost looks like a crack in the sky. The sun comes up while I walk, and I turn black and brittle again, and my walking makes the brittle flake off, so the red and sticky can turn black and brittle too. It feels so familiar, it makes me forget about the almost-fuzzy not-white floor, and the horns that should all be white and other things. Then the sun goes away again, and I think about all the black things that shouldn’t be black and I feel bad again.
Maybe the sun’s the chair? But it’s the sun. How could it be the chair?
The horn just keeps getting bigger and bigger, until it looks higher than the sun. Around it, there are lots of walls, all flat and low. On them I see strange shapes, shapes that should be sounds, just like the good-bad me I don't want to think about. “Administration.” “Flight control.” It all makes my head hurt, and I have to sit down. This place feels the worst of all, but, at the same time I almost feel happy. Better even than the chair. The chair has to be here. I’m only ever happy in the chair.
I have to keep looking.
I keep walking, looking at more shape-sounds. “Mana-accellerator” “Recieving.” I wander and wander until one shape-sound makes me stop. It’s bigger than all the others, standing on its own, black against the black sky. Something about it feels terrible, but I can’t look away, even as the sun comes up. Then, as my eyes turn black and brittle, I can see it clearly.
“Celestia Memorial Spaceflight Center.”
And everything comes rushing back.
We don’t understand it.
We’ve tried everything.
Even severing your magic didn’t work.
You’re tethered to it.
We can’t stay.
It’ll cook us all.
We’re sorry.
I turn towards the sun. The sun that burns me. The sun that traps me. I turn and I try to cry with the eyes the sun took from me.
“Damn you!” I scream, the light burning my tongue to ash in my mouth. “Damn you!”
The sun leaves, and I get my eyes back. I get my fur, and my wings. But not my tears. The sun keeps those.
I turn away, leaving behind the memories. The memories of the ponies that I loved. The memories of the ponies that I hate. The memories of the ponies that I let go. The memories of the ponies that left me.
I fly back into the half-melted palace. To my upturned throne. No, not a throne anymore. Just a chair.
I set it back on its spot. I turn around, and I sit down. I wait. I wait to forget everything I know. Every thing but one.
I must never, ever, leave the chair.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Boltstrike58 · 3.3k words · 51 1 · 1.7k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.135 seconds
Total duration
984 users online
1,374,966 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Woah.. that was heavy, man. Not sure what to think of this, but it was cool nonetheless.
Wow. That's worse than death.
6594825 Thanks! I like trying to be different.
6594957 That tends to happen a lot with magic and destiny.
lol looks familiar
But good take on this, after all that much power has to have it's price.
Distantly reminds me of this, albeit much darker.
Wow. Scary. Just today on the drive home from work I had a random thought about how Equestria's sun was powered. Did it work like our own sun, fusing a limited supply of hydrogen into helium, doomed to expand into a red giant one day.
Apparently so.
On the bright side: Ponies invent starships ...
6595114
Oh the dangers of wikimedia commons XD
6595559
Pfffft. Yes. Yes I would say this is darker.
6595630
It's like when you learn a new word and start hearing it everywhere...
6595712 Annoying thought: "Why didn't Celestia just move the Sun further away?"
6595754 She's tethered to it. Within lethal distance. Sending the sun away presents the same problem as her trying to leave it. And if she brings it along... well then leaving no longer solves the problem.
6595762 She could leave it on the other side of the planet, 'cause screw those guys at least Equestria's nice?
Don't mind me, I'm just being tongue-in-cheek so as to not be curled up in the fetal position, crying.
First off, I am kind of annoyed at the ponies for not at least keeping in communication with Celestia with all she has done for the ponies over time.
Second, eventually the hot sun will cool and become a white dwarf. At that point things may or may not be better for Celestia.
Third, you do not have to move the planet, just change its spin so that the axial tilt has some places that do not get hit by the sun. Optimally stop the spinning altogether then live past the horizon point in the zone where things are livable. There are places on Mercury that are colder than the coldest places on earth.
Fourth, what happened to Luna?
Fifth, what happened to Discord? He could manage to at least achieve option 3 if he wanted to.
6606262
Because few things are more fun then listening to your starbound children as you boil alive every day. Nobody likes being reminded of their fate in such a case.
For the second, assuming Equestria to be one AU from a G type star... yeah, things are not going to get better. When the expansion hits the planet, the drag from the sun's atmosphere will slow it and cause it to drop inwards. She's on a trip to the core.
For the third, Mercury has no atmosphere. The convective forces mean the whole planet's getting cooked. That, or Celestia has no air left.
Four and five are tales for another story. We are discussing absurdly long stellar scales of time, after all.
6606427
Solitary confinement is worse than having other ponies to talk to. Really though unless the planet were 100% quarantined and policed, rogue ponies would try to communicate with Celestia, send care packages, and the like regardless of what the ponies in power would say. I mean you have an eternal fount of wisdom there. People go a long way to climb hills to find gurus.
As for atmosphere, it would be impossible for the planet to still have a normal one. One of two events would happen. It would either lose its atmosphere, or it would Venus up. It is more likely that it would lose its atmosphere. It would not have anything remotely resembling breathable air at one atmosphere.
6606459
You know, there's a line I'm fond of from a reviewer, and it goes (sarcastically) "Just enjoy the movie by not paying attention to the movie." I like it because it points out the absurdity of asking someone to ignore a plot hole. That said, I think you're taking the story in the wrong context. We are dealing with a pony who is trapped in the truest sense of the word. She cannot leave, she cannot die. Who is to say what transpired between her and ponykind in the ages of her imprisonment? Maybe they did forget her, or perhaps she even drove them off, considering her obvious martyr complex. Considering that the progression of the stellar lifecycle takes billions of years, who is to say what happened? Maybe this is all some sort of terrible nightmare curse, and Celestia is just trapped in a dream without end. Ultimately, it is just a story of a pony coping the best they can with an impossible burden.
As for the atmosphere statement, considering my initial point was that adjusting the axial tilt or orientation would do nothing to make the planet more livable, my point still stands.
6606553
Actually what I see is the ponies leaving behind remote controlled robots and pilgrims syncing with those robots.
6606262 I imagine Celestia would finally die once the star began collapsing as a white dwarf. A star that isn't fusing is basically 'dead'.
Okay, wow, you know it's a heartwrencher when what sounded upbeat.
6662306
I still envision the blighted landscape filled with robotic ponies remote controlled by ponies on ships in orbit around the planet on the far side of the sun, keeping her company in her last days.
I am loyal enough to take a turn at that. And I have the feeling that ponies are as well.
6595762
Tethered as in 'Go too far away and she dies' or 'If you push the sun too far she gets pulled along after it like a fishhook?'
Because if it's option 1, well, I'd think death is preferable. And if it's option two, is she just flat out unkillably unkillable/infinitely regenerating?
Because, well, lobotomy would be a kindness otherwise.
6801413 She constantly grows her flesh back after being directly irradiated XD I'd call that pretty regenerative.
6801562
Well, yea, I got that part out of it, but there's like, degrees. You know, like how with a zombie it doesn't matter unless you shoot them in the head, or your vampire needs a stake through the heart!
Wow forever alone .
Fascinating.
6606262
When Celestia said that she remembered the Ponies that left her, I think she meant that everyone else died. My theory is that they couldn't figure out how to get off the planet before Celestia's sun supernovaed, the charred husks of Ponies wouldn't be there otherwise.
Really excellent. :D
Incredible story, thank you so much for writing.
8371595
8372129
It's so surreal seeing people still reading this.
I found some descriptions thoroughly confusing, and I'm not sure if I am supposed to share in Celestia's confusion on those points.
Nevertheless, that was a heartbreaking story. The betrayal, but also the guilt. And at the end, she goes back to the chair with her one rule. Gut-wrenching.
I'm going to come back to this, because I've been thinking further on it, and this story deserves more comments (and views, and thumbs ups).
I've read a LOT of stories about far-future Celestia, many of them well-informed regarding the life cycle of low-mass stars like our sun. Most of them are sad because everybody died, et cetera et cetera. In fact, there's so many of them, and they're all so similar, that they tend to blur together.
But this story is very different. You took a tired old idea (I think it was even old when this story came out) and you made it something more than a sad scene. Celestia isn't sad because stars eventually expand and roast their planets. What Celestia is going through is completely different, because her ponies are alive... because they abandoned her. She's angry, she's guilt-ridden, and she just wants to forget. This was beautiful, hopeful, and haunting, all in one, and you tie the whole thing back together with a bow from the end to the beginning.
8387128
It's so nice to hear this. I'll admit, it's often the stories near and dear to your heart are usually the least successful because their very artistry makes them appeal more to a fringe audience. I'm glad to hear those who have enjoyed it have gotten so much out of the experience.
Excellent story! I really like how Celestia has driven herself to forget. Influenced by the sun or her own self, who knows.
I had a lot of trouble piecing together the shapes and scenery around her. Looking forward to the comments to see what others thought.