//------------------------------// // 8 The Infinite // Story: When the Stars are Right // by Broken Phalanx //------------------------------// There should be an award for being right and loathing it. It had been two days ago. Two days of hearing a tortured star have its expansion stifled and attempts at self-immolation extinguished. The singing of spheres grew dim, as if the very heavens find fault in this delaying of the inevitable. Two days of prayers from ponies and other countless species across an entire world, two days to make amends for lifetimes of mistakes. Two days of last dances and candle-lit romances. Apostrophe had heard the death-rattle of a thousand infant civilizations; some hurled obscenities at the perilous skies, while others consigned themselves with a melancholic sigh. Apostrophe had heard all the ways a world could die. This one, to its last, whispers, “Love,” the breath alone being of unfathomable gold. Apostrophe listens to it for an eternity, the days passing in loneliness. Then the door swings open and bathes the room in what feels like mocking light; for a moment she stands, back-lit, a living shade contrasting against the dying sun. “In hindsight, I guess it’s kinda clear why you were so near to our planet,” Twilight says, her voice bright and fragile like a light-bulb of carefully maintained yet ultimately false positivity. “I suppose… I really could’ve just asked and you would’ve told me, huh?” “Verily, falsehood is a social construct; I have never had need for it. Ye’, though… should this not be a time to be with kin and kith?” “The girls are, and Spike's with Starlight right now...” Twilight says, and she seems to deflate as the words leave her, as if some great mask that has supported her thus far has been removed and caused all stability to falter. “But… you’re right, you know. Lying is a social thing. I told them… I told them I would be studying a way to stop this.” “Ye’ are not?” “I am not. There’s… there’s just not enough energy in any magical artifact we have, and even the energy we could use would be so unstable as to sterilize the whole planet anyway!” The room was still for a moment, as possible responses were tested and found lacking in structural integrity; one, however, was eventually found. "Ye' are rattled and prognosticating failure when it is not your due; what misfortune did visit ye' to leave ye' so broken and incontinent?" "I... think your using the wrong word there." "Ye' know the language strongly enough to know the intentionality, infantile star-being." "I'm going to just ignore that statement..." “Verily, a wise decision for both our sakes. To the original point: why did ye' lie to them?” “I… I want to give them a bit of hope, okay?” “Verily, even when the situation is hopeless?” “Especially then.” “Such that it is, a not ignoble goal.” There is a quiet sniffling noise, the sound of tears being swallowed, before Twilight adds, “You’re… not too terrible of a listener, for being a pain-in-the-neck star-eater, you know?” “I take pride in my audio receiving organs, thank you.” There’s a quiet shuffle, perhaps a couple of books being reorganized, before quiet gurgling noises erupt into true waterworks; it is the noise of sorrow, pure and simple and agonizing to behold. A suffering that wounds even its witness. A deluge of regrets, too deep and unfathomable to be plumbed in a single day, sweep through the room: the simple, of parents who deserved better and friends who needed more; the selfish, of being more concerned of an entire world’s perceptions than her own desires; the cerebral, of tomes unread and theories unpublished; and even the romantic, of quietly imagined kisses and comforting cuddles. And when it feels like it will drown the world in pain, the sobs stymie into hiccups. “I guess,” Twilight manages, the effort of such self-restraint rocking her form, “I guess I won‘t ever get a chance to write that story I’ve got in my head…” “Why not?” “Because it doesn’t matter! Because we’ll all be dead before it’s even close to being finished!” “There is a trick to dealing with these situations, I have heard.” “What, ‘live everyday like its your last’? Because I’ve heard that before. From Celestia. I think she was getting ready to dive into a lake of sponge cake when she said it…” “No, such a statement is absurd. One cannot live everyday like it is their last; it is frankly impossible.” Twilight, for her part, bites the sardonic reply she was about to shoot back with, and instead asks, “...okay, what’s the trick?” “One cannot live everyday like it is their last. But they can live out their remaining days as such.” “...you blend pedantic and quixotic in ways I’ve never seen before, you realize that?” “My apologies, I lack the pithiness the golden-you possesses whilst you speak.” “...Huh.” “You have taken my, given the limitations of your sensory organs, seemingly incoherent ramblings with remarkable calmness.” “No point in freaking out over stuff at this point. I mean, in a few days we’re all going to be screaming ash anyway, present company excluded.” Twilight shudders as she sighs, before adding, “Is this how it always goes?” “What are you referring to?” “Dying. Obliteration. The ultimate unmaking.” “That is something neither of us knows.” “Pretty sure I’m able to comment about it, at least-” “No. You are among the most common entities across the sweeping waves of thens, whens, and nows. There is always a Twilight Sparkle, though the name and form changes.” Her subsequent and righteous irritation seeped into her tone as she replied, “Sheesh, you really know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you?” “I suspect this is irony, but it is the faltering of your own language rather than my intent that is resulting in miscommunication. You are common. You are like the atoms of a blazing star, the inconceivable and unplumbable beauty of a thousand colors invisible to your eyes but incandescent sound to me. You are common, and immeasurably precious, because you are necessary. You are gold, and will therefore exist amongst the cosmos, always, forever.” “Huh," Twilight manages, her brain deciding that such a response, though lacking, was at least better than the dismissive grunt she had preemptively prepared. "That’s just about the most romantically platonic thing somepony has ever said to me.” A minute passes in reflection and contemplation before Twilight asks, “Hey, Apostrophe?” “I listen.” “We never, really, got off to a good start, did we?” “T’was akin to houses and flame; a great deal of screaming and obscenities ensued.” “Heh. Look… I know this wasn’t ideal for you. I’m… sorry. I’m sorry I assumed the worst, sorry I put you in a cage for months, sorry I never showed you everything Equestria could be when it wasn’t terrified of alien invasions or other nonsense… I suppose I’m most sorry it took me this long to say, well, do you want to be friends?” “Verily?” “Verily.” “Verily, then allow me to say, as a friend ought, start on thy tome.” “Are you serious? It really doesn’t matter now, does it?” “It matters to ye’, and that alone suffices. What do you wish to write of?” “I… I want to write about friendship. About how it makes us better, brighter. About how it can conquer everything,” Twilight sighs, before stoically adding, “And other comforting lies.” “The truth is a lie forced into reality.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Whatever ye’ wish. Though… perhaps I might make a recommendation?” “I’m not making it a biography about you.” “Verily, curses," Apostrophe replies with initially, before saying, almost offhandedly, "I hope ye’ craft better stories than falsehoods; that travesty of attempted subterfuge was likewise humorous and thoroughly laughable.” Twilight’s magic wobbles and nearly drops her quill; a flurry of emotional responses are considered, before she clears her throat and replies, rather neutrally given her own internal turmoil, with, “Oh?” “Do not misunderstand me; you can portray the defeated and subsequently demure personality quite strongly. Perhaps ye’ act convinces even you, but I know gold enough to realize it doesn’t tarnish under stress.” “Okay, look, Apostrophe, I appreciate how you keep saying these… I suppose it’s flattering, honestly, but you’re laying it on a little thick for a friend, and you're ... look, gold is nice and all, but it’s just a metal-” There's a silent desperation in the words, not carried by tone but rather in haste as Apostrophe rattles on, interrupting with, "Ye’ exist in that state betwixt two close eternities, do ye’ not? Ye’ see the reality of a cosmic gravestone and the countless names that litter it, and ye’ see the soft edges of infinite Maybes-and-Could-Have-Beens stacked beside each other like the pillows of coffins. Ye’ are under no delusions of which is which, and yet ye’ do not truly despair.” “Apostrophe… you’re just being absurd now. I already know that nothing can be done, and you’re saying like I’m not sad?” “ Ye’ can do nothing and are thusly possessed by an inimitable sorrow. This is correct. But ye’ still hold out for a solution, one ye’ kith would deem a ‘miracle’.” “Of course I do! I mean, yes, I do, but that much is obviously going to be the case.” “Then ye’ do not truly despair even now.” “...Apostrophe, you’re acting pretty arrogant for somepon-... somethin-... someone I could just dump on the side of the road. At this point, what's the worst that could happen?” “Ye will not do that. I know this by two reasons.” “Mind telling me why? Because every time you start acting high-and-mighty I’m sorely tempted to just tip you over and be done with it,” Twilight says, and though her tone is clearly irritated she adds just enough of a lilt to her words to dull their edge with a humor she hardly feels. “Reason the first: ye will not do that because we are friends,” Apostrophe replies, either oblivious to the attempt at jest or aware of how skin-deep it truly was. A minute passes in silent consideration before Twilight turns back to her desk. Another minute passes; a blank tome is retrieved, a quill is sharpened, and ink prepared, before, inevitably, she asks, “What about the second reason?" "It is, in retrospect, ultimately non-essential. Disregard it as meaningless, my... friend. I already have." *** Twilight, lamentably, is correct; a book simply takes too much time to be written in a single day, and a day is all she has. And yet, even as the raging sun dips below the horizon whilst nevertheless strangling the light of stars, even as Twilight prepares what is certain to be her last, lonely, night within Friendship Castle, a meek “Ah,” reverberates through the room. “What is it, Apostrophe?” Twilight says, wincing at the venom in her own sleep-deprived voice. “Verily, would ye’ wish to hear… a last request of sorts?” “That’s really morbid, Apostrophe. Even for you.” Then a yawn and the crick of popping joints fills the room and Twilight adds, “Yeah, sure, as long as it’s simple enough to do in a few minutes, what do you need?” “Hurl me into that pit your pink friend dug. I am referring to the inverted mountain.” “...why?” “Verily, why not?” The next few seconds are silence, before the quiet tinkle of magic fills the air and encapsulates Apostrophe’s constructed form. “You ask for the weirdest stuff, Apostrophe.” “Verily, and yet you are my friend?” “Hey, what are friends for, if not for tossing into massive pits?” “I suspect this is a jape.” “You’re probably right.” *** The sun rises the next morning, but proclamations of doom continue for three days. A week passes. Ponies leap back into work with a vigor rarely seen in less trying times. Doomsayers dwindle. A month passes. It is finally the subtle breeze of chilly winter that banishes the haunting memory of a dying sun from contemporary conversation. Someponies write a book about the perishing sun; no publisher will touch it. Come Winter Wrap-up, it is simple another unpleasant memory to be nestled away in some dark corner of the mind and be banished to the forgettable pages of a bleaker past.