//------------------------------// // Trance // Story: How to Disappear Completely // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// Flash Sentry was no astronomer, but one thing was certain. This was not his night's sky. He gawked the entire time while trotting out of Bon Bon's establishment. His head tilted heavenward, his eyes darting about and searching for a single constellation that he could recognize—finding none. The light pollution was practically nil here, so he had full visibility of the cosmos twinkling above. He thought he might actually see the Milky Way—just like in all the pictures of desert nightscapes that he had grown fond of in school. Instead, his eyes caught two... three... even four interconnecting beams of stellar light. Perhaps Equestria floated in a denser part of the galaxy. Flash didn't understand. He didn't want to understand. He simply gazed and tried not to drool. The air was cool, growing chillier with the occasional evening gust. The teenager felt his pony ears fluttering—the tiny, sensitive hairs curling in tune with the breeze. He reacquainted himself with the weight of the headphones dangling over his neck. A gift. Clearing his throat, Flash raised the article over his cranium and... lingered there. So many curious sounds echoed from the woods and bushes surrounding Ponyville. It was more than crickets. This entire world was alive with things that were lucky enough to still be around. Equestrian culture—it would seem—wasn't quite as fond of trampling things as other civilizations were. This brought a smile to his face. The expression disappeared briefly as he fumbled with the headphones. After a tiny moment of frustration, his fetlock finally made contact with a switch on the back of the device. He heard an initial hum that resonated in his skull. Then—softly at first—a melody bled into his ear canals. The volume was low. His hoof brushed past the growling manacrystal and found a knob. He turned it, cursing himself mentally for not having even a single iota of Vinyl Scratch's grace in executing the gesture. Soon, he no longer cared, for his mind was being filled with an intoxicating instrumental of synthesized proportions. At least... he knew it was synthesized, but he couldn't quite tell at first. The instrument samples sounded incredibly organic, and yet it had the soothing effect of a high production Moby track... without coming across as experimental. Flash lingered there as the music from this world's Vinyl Scratch rolled on, painting the walls of his mind with glitter and sparkles. At first, he wanted to call it "Trance," but the otherworldliness of the symphony threw him off. In the end, the opening track sounded like a weird cross of Talk Talk's It's My Life and the store lobby of a Rainforest Cafe. He smiled, for he didn't know what else to do. It was too surreal to be a dream. There he stood on four hooves, illuminated by an unfamiliar ceiling of stars, being serenaded by alien horse music. There was no way in Hell he was staying in one place for long. The smiles and giggles of his new friends flickered in the back of his mind. Friends... He exhaled the last cold breath of his life, spread his wings, then plunged into the starlight... accompanied by sonic bliss.