//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: Ink // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// The castle was made of paper. Everything was made of paper and ink flowed in a fountain. Even more peculiar, the ink in the fountain didn’t stain or saturate the paper, the paper stayed clean, dry, and the ink just rolled off. It was a strange thing for ink to do, and Twilight was almost mesmerised by what she saw. From what she was hearing from Sumac beside her, she guessed that he was quite taken by all of this as well. On the low wall that formed the base of the fountain, words began to form, and she read them aloud. “Every life is a story, every story is a book, and every book must be read.” Deep worry-lines appeared on her forehead and her ears stuck out from each side of her head while she nodded, finding the statement to be true enough for her liking. “There’s not enough time to read every book,” she said to herself. The fountain seemed to have other ideas. “What if there was?” “Well,” Twilight replied, becoming thoughtful, and never once thinking that she was having a conversation with ink. “I’d need to be Princess Celestia to live long enough, but she stays pretty busy. In fact, she’s the busiest pony I know, because she’s stuck playing the Princess Game. The stakes are pretty high and there isn’t as much time for reading as one might hope.” Seeing Sumac, Twilight’s attention became focused on him as he stuck his hoof into the ink of the fountain. When he pulled it back out, his pale beige on beige sock was left unstained, and for this, Twilight was relieved. Trying to explain to Trixie, Lemon Hearts, and Twinkleshine why their precious son was now an ink blotter would be difficult at best. While she was busy gawking and yakking, Sumac was trying a hooves-on approach. Twilight contemplated a few stories where she herself was a major player. Flurry, Skyla, and Sumac were all her nieces and her nephew. Each of them was perfect, wonderful, and special in ways that there were no words to describe. Flurry was brash, a brawler, she was hot-blooded, a bit vulgar, but there was no mistake that she was the princess that Equestria needed. Skyla was the opposite; quiet, calm, studious, cautious, and she abhorred conflict in any form. Skyla had not yet proven herself as a princess, but Twilight was confident that she would someday, probably in some quiet, hard-to-notice sort of way that others might take for granted. As for Sumac, he was an adorkable little scientist that would one day become a mortician, at least, Twilight was pretty confident about this outcome. She was snapped from her reverie by a splash and blinking her eyes, her long eyelashes fluttering, she saw that Sumac was pronking about in the fountain, stomping in the ink. Sighing, Twilight smiled and she could appreciate that Sumac wanted to play in liquid ink that left no stain. Up on the parapets, paper birds flocked together and flapped their paper wings. Paper leaves rustled in trees made from heavy, pulpy paper. Little paper bees went about on bee business, going from crinkly crêpe paper flower to crinkly crêpe paper flower. Twilight was almost certain that if it rained here, ink would fall. Her mind began to wander, drifting away to explore a flight of fancy, and she thought of Seville. There was a pony that loved ink and paper. Like her, he was a penophile, he had a love of writing instruments, and he was a papyrophiliac as well. He knew his paper, the smell of it, the taste of it, the feeling of it against his frogs, and he loved good stationary. Seville Orange was the only pony that Twilight could have hours-long conversations about paper with, and he hung upon her every word. Was that love? She didn’t know. A part of her hoped it might be. What was love, if not a shared interest? It was rare for an earth pony to be both a penophile and a papyrophiliac, due the difficulty of having no magic to hold a pen with. As such, writing became a labour of love. Sumac was now checking out the paper flowers, mindful of the paper bees. A paper butterfly went fluttering past, and the colt went still, perhaps hoping the pretty paper creature might land. Observing him, Twilight saw the fundamental difference between Sumac and other ponies, or even herself and other ponies. This was a paradise made of paper, and neither of them seemed concerned about being here. Twilight knew that most ponies would be freaking out right now. “Come on, Sumac, let’s see what lies behind the gatehouse. Stay close with me, and don’t go wandering off, okay?” “Yeah, yeah, I getcha,” Sumac responded, and he bounded over to where Twilight stood. “The bees have little inky stripes around their bumble-bottoms. It’s all very fascinating.” The words left Twilight laughing a bit. “Such a dizzying scientific vocabulary.” “Well”—Sumac sniffed in a faux-haughty way—“I am Professor Egghead. What do you expect?” “One day, your well of goodness will turn sour, and Professor Egghead will be no more. The world shall know you and fear you as… The Mustachioed Mustang!” Reaching down, Twilight prodded the colt beside her with her wing, hoping to get a reaction out of him, and she smiled so hard that her face almost cramped. “Um, no.” Sumac’s mouth made a perfect round ‘O’ while saying the last word and he shook his head from side to side. “Now, act like a grown up and pay attention. Things are weird here. I swear, you’re a big foal sometimes.” “D'aww.” Twilight heaved the word in protest, and she began kicking at the paper grass to emphasise her objection. “I swear, those lessons with Sunburst have left you as a real stick in the mud.” She gave him a final, teasing poke with her primaries, and her smile persisted. “Onward, then…” Past the gatehouse was an open courtyard in which everything was made of paper. There was a pond of ink and paper swans swam laps in the night-black liquid. They kicked and paddled, and shimmering round droplets of ink rolled down their paper feathers, leaving behind no stain. Overhead, the sun shone like a paper lantern, casting a warm, diffused light. Perhaps the most intriguing thing of all was the door into the main hall. It too, was paper, thick, pulpy looking stuff, with lots of little stringy bits. But it was what was on the door that gave Twilight pause. Her cutie mark was high on the door, about eye-level to her, and below it, eye-level to Sumac, was his cutie mark, the zap apple with nine rainbow lightning bolts radiating from it like spokes. Seeing it, Twilight noticed for the first time that it was a sun-symbol, or could be seen as one. A sun-symbol substitute perhaps. A nebulous thought lurked in her subconscious and refused to take shape. A wagon wheel too, could also be seen as a sun-symbol, and Princess Celestia had a curious number of wainwrights that sprang from her loins. The zap apple with the spoked lightning bolts might have been a wagon wheel. An idea presented itself in her mind: Cutie marks were an alphabet of sorts, pictographs that when combined together, any pony paying attention might read. Even the illiterate could understand pictographs with a little work. Little ponies were just letters of some vast, complex alphabet that told a story if you arranged them in the right away. It was then that Twilight began to understand that she wanted to see those patterns, see them and know them. She wanted to read them. When just the right symbols were placed together in the right order, a story could be told. Twilight understood that she and her friends were… a word? A paragraph? When their symbols were all placed together, were they the title to their own story? What were they? It was all so profound and Twilight’s vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes. Lifting up a foreleg, she reached out to touch Sumac’s mark upon the door, but hesitated. What was a family? A group of friends? These cutie marks together, there had to be meaning, there had to be a way to translate these pictographs into meaningful words. This door, emblazoned with two cutie marks, said something. It was a message. But what did it mean? Was destiny merely the purposeful arrangement of putting the right symbols together to form words? Waiting for the right letters to appear so a statement could be made? With Sumac beside her, Twilight touched the door with her hoof… Squinting, blinking, Twilight tried to get her bearings. She was in another place entirely now, but where? Nothing was made of paper—wait, the wrapping paper was paper. Pausing, she realised that she knew what this was. This was Sumac’s birthday party. With a turn of her head, she looked down at the colt beside her, and she could see the wheels in his head turning. “This is your ninth birthday party,” Twilight said to Sumac. Turning her head from side to side, she spotted herself. She was sitting on a sofa, sandwiched between Pinkie Pie and Seville. Seeing herself with them, she could not help but think how perfect they looked together, how wonderful it was, and she began to kick herself for not noticing it sooner. The Twilight of Sumac Apple’s ninth birthday looked so comfortable and happy with her companions. “This is the day that everything changed,” Sumac whispered. “How so?” Twilight asked. “Pebble stuck her tongue into my mouth,” Sumac replied. Shocked by these words, Twilight began her decline into wordless sputtering. Extending her wing, she hid her face behind it, and then her sputtering began to sound more like giggling. On the couch, peering out from between her primaries, she saw Seville looking into her eyes, hanging on her every word, and she wondered how could she be so blind. There was a cry of surprise and when Twilight turned her head, she saw a frosting-covered Sumac and a triumphant Twinkleshine with an enormous grin. Sumac, the nine-year-old Sumac, excused himself from the table and went to clean his face. Watching him go, Twilight had a thought: she realised that this could have been the day when everything had changed for her, too, had she only been paying attention. The adoration in Seville’s eyes seemed so evident now, and it was painful to observe. Feeling a tug, Twilight began walking without thinking, following Sumac to the bathroom. She almost stumbled, but recovered just in time to see Pebble slinking along the wall, moving in total silence. Just thinking about it made Twilight’s cheeks feel warm. Sumac, her companion, continued to pull her along, and together, they slipped into the bathroom to spy on nine-year-old Sumac and nine-year-old Pebble. It was kind of cute, in a gross way, how Pebble licked the frosting off of Sumac’s face. The colt was sitting on the toilet, balanced on the front of the lid but squirming, and it was obvious that he was a bit uncomfortable. Pebble too, had some unease, but the two of them kept going, trying to push past the awkward phase. Those two were nothing, if not determined. Eleven-year-old Sumac watched his younger self with keen interest. It was a tender moment, filled with fragile innocence, and Twilight felt her heart flutter when Pebble took Sumac’s face into her hooves. Standing on her hind legs in a bipedal stance, she kneaded his damp cheeks, squishing his face, making him look old and then young again. Leaning in, the filly kissed the colt sitting on the potty, and she squashed her entire face against his in an inexperienced, slobbery smooch. The awkwardness gave way to eager exploration, and Twilight felt her heart warm. There was love here, real love, a curious, wonderful thing that left her captivated. She felt Sumac hugging her leg; when she looked down at him, she saw that his glasses were fogged over and he was crying. With her wing, she embraced him, and together, they relived this moment as the kiss intensified. “This day was a turning point for both of us,” Twilight said to the colt holding her leg. “You seized the day, even though it was uncomfortable and kind of icky, at least, by the looks of it, and I failed to notice. I think this is a place where our destinies intersected, and we were both given a choice. You were right to kiss Pebble, this is a day where you grew.” Twilight felt a keen, powerful sense of understanding flow through her like ink through a pen. While Twilight spoke, the colour bled from the walls and ran down in rivulets. Soon, everything was giving up its colour, its ink, even the younger Pebble and Sumac, who both became paper ponies. Their kiss continued, and the sound of paper crinkling filled the air as they kept their muzzles pressed together, snogging each other senseless. Soon, the room was nothing more than blank paper, leaving Twilight and Sumac as the only beings of flesh, blood, and colour. Twilight, overwhelmed, began to feel a little tearful, and upon closer inspection of Sumac, she saw that he was crying tears of ink. One welled up in the corner of his eye, forming a glistening black bead, then rolled down his cheek, leaving no stain behind. Twilight was more concerned about why the colt was crying, rather than the ink he spilled. She gave him a gentle shake, worried, and lowered her head down so her muzzle was close to his ear. More ink spilled from the corners of his eyes, and she asked him, “Hey, what’s wrong, little guy?” “Too embarrassing,” Sumac mumbled while his barrel began hitching. “I’m your aunt, you can tell me anything, remember?” Twilight pulled the sobbing colt closer. “Clearly, this memory is important, and we need to figure out why. So what’s going on here?” “Something came up between Pebble and I.” Sumac’s words were a raspy, sob-ridden whisper. “I tried to push her away, but she wouldn’t budge. I was so confused about it at the time and later, and I still am. I remember everything… how it felt… and I can remember thinking that I liked her so much… I was so scared that the grown ups would walk in and bust us and after I got used to it, I just wanted this moment to last forever.” “So this really was a profound day for you.” When Twilight began treating the subject matter as something to learn about, the awkwardness eased off a little. “Maybe this day wasn’t about me at all, like I was thinking. Maybe this really is about you. But both of our cutie marks were on the door… I wish I understood what was going on here.” “Pebble’s my soulmate, isn’t she?” Sumac asked, and he looked up at Twilight with wide, worried eyes. While he spoke, the paper versions of himself and Pebble continued snogging, rubbing their parchment paper lips together. “I don’t know, Sumac… I’ve never had a soulmate. Or maybe I have and I’ve been oblivious.” Twilight’s head began shaking from side to side. “It’s not my place to say, Sumac. That’s something you have to determine for yourself.” “That doesn’t help me,” Sumac bleated, and more inky black tears spilled from his eyes. Overcome with a strange compulsion, Twilight found the words pouring from her mouth and she could do nothing to stop them. “Yes, Sumac, Pebble is your soulmate. You will have a collection of lifemates, friends you treasure enough to establish a lasting bond with, but only Pebble will be your soulmate.” Stunned, she wondered where the words had come from, and even more disconcerting, she wanted to know why she knew they were true. She also knew that she had already witnessed this dynamic in action, with Tarnish and Maud, who kept both Octavia and Vinyl close. As a group, they were inseparable. The room moved around them, the paper becoming flat and featureless. Sumac sniffled and snuffled while everything around them folded. When it was all said and done, the paper ponies were gone, as was everything in the bathroom. All that was left was a door, and upon the door was a cutie mark that Twilight Sparkle knew all too well. A trio of vivid blue poison joke flowers decorated the door, and it was the only way out of the room. Seeing the door caused Twilight to endure a shiver of fear, as there was something unpleasant, something ominous about it. She might have just witnessed what may have been for herself, and now she was seeing a fixed event with no other options. Destiny left no other exits, no other means of escape. Being a concerned aunt, she began wiping Sumac’s face while she prepared herself for whatever came next, because she had to keep her priorities straight…