A week.
It had been a week since the experiment, a week since the interviews, a week since the roar of manic obsession had been throttled away into a quiet whine. It had been a time of quiet contemplation and reflection, a time to spend with friends.
Twilight sighed, even as she massaged the fur around her horn; the memory alone threatened to nurse her migraine back from the dead.
At least Starlight is back to ‘mostly functional’.
***
“Darling, between Starlight’s, ahem, fit, and your own reclusiveness, well, let’s just say we’re worried about you. We’re all worried.”
In retrospect, Twilight had to hand it to Rarity; given the information the white Unicorn was, at that point, clearly working with, the fact the conversation hadn’t initiated with hysterics was a display of fortitude seen only during the most serious of moments. Furthermore, future-Twilight was going to have to award the fashionista another point, if only for sheer deviousness; Rarity had somehow coerced Applejack into attending the spa as well.
“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Twilight replied, only to wince and fumble for a more truthful answer when the empty platitude is returned with a snort from the farmer. “Okay, maybe there’s a small problem, but nothing I can’t handle-”
Another grunt, Applejack glowering from under the surface of the mud-bath like some vaguely concerned swamp-monster.
It’s almost as if they were made for the ‘good-cop bad-cop’ routine, Twilight thought to herself, even as she jerked her head towards Rarity, who was clearing her throat.
“You see, we heard some troubling things, dear-”
“From Spike,” Twilight interjected, tiredly; it didn’t exactly take a degree in Arcane Studies to figure that one out.
“Yes dear, from Spike; he really is quite the gentle-drake, I’ll have you know, but some of the things he told us were, well...” Rarity glanced at Applejack, as if beseeching the orange mare to share some of her inner-strength.
“What’s goin’ on, Twi?” Applejack finally said, slowly yet with a quiet forcefulness. “Ah’ keep hearin’ things about how yer usin’ a load o’ bandages recently, how you keep gettin’ bruises around yer eyes, and how yeh have some strange stallion livin’ in yer castle-”
“Applejack!” Rarity said, aghast, perhaps, of how straightforwardly and tactlessly the farmer introduced the topic.
“What? We’re all thinkin’ it, Rarity!”
Twilight, for her part, simply sat there, once again feeling the familiar sensation of being privy to one conversation while an undercurrent of subtext drowned out her ability to understand what the real dialogue was about.
I wonder if lies of omission and innuendo can somehow be added to the list of things the Element of Honesty considers a lie? Twilight pondered wryly, only to shake her head; if such things were considered lying, Applejack’s head would probably explode.
Then Twilight sneezed and stared at the minor dust-storm that ravaged across the mud-bath, grimacing as another thought, unbidden, made its home in her mind.
I hope this weird winter weather is resolved sooner rather than later; it’s been warmer than some Summer day--why are they looking at me like that?
“Well, dear?” Rarity finally prompted, her voice simultaneously soothing yet sharp, like the rasp of silk across a blade.
“W-well,” Twilight replied, suddenly feeling intensely scrutinized yet having no clear way to escape it.
Thankfully, Applejack came to her rescue, though, in hindsight, it felt more like an unintentionally brutal execution.
“Do yeh’ feel safe in yer home, sugar-cube?”
“What? Yes, absolutely!”
Except for all those volatile chemicals, the occasional experimental mishap, the weird ability for the crystal flooring to be flammable at the worst times, and--oh crap.
“Oh, Sugarcube-”
Twilight found herself pulled into an embrace, and not just a regular hug; this was an Apple family deluxe, the sort of hug that causes a faint ‘squee’ to squeak out of the hugged and causes a momentary weakness of the joints. It had been a dead art, until Pinkie Pie had rediscovered it in an ancient manuscript whilst traversing a dangerous jungle-
Shh, brain. Hugs.
And it was like a power-switch in Twilight’s mind had gotten flicked, leaving her with nothing more than a blissful smile and eyes glassy from joy.
“Rarity? Get tha’ girls.”
***
Funerals have been assembled with more levity.
And more coordination, evidently.
“Sugarcube? Ah ain’t exactly a math-y sorta pony, but Ah can clearly see we’re missin’ three-”
“Dude, you’re literally holding Twilight.”
“-two ponies, and none o’ yer sass, Dash!”
“I simply couldn’t find Pinkie or Fluttershy; though, even if we could, should we really try to bring the poor dears into such an…” there’s a pause, lengthy like a hangman’s rope, “...uncouth sort of situation?”
A moment of introspection passes for the assembled ponies (excluding Twilight, who for all intents and purposes might as well have been a non-entity for all the brainpower she was generating whilst in the throes of carefully concentrated friendship): the mere thought of how Pinkie Pie would’ve reacted to this chicanery is enough to cause at least one of the contemplative ponies to shudder and turn a lively shade of verdant.
“Well, dears,” Rarity finally manages, “To glorious victory or-”
“Or the part where we do the logical thing and call the cops, Rarity. Come on, I wanna give this jerk-patrol a hoof-sandwich and we’re not getting anywhere just standing around.”
“Yeah, cause yer doin’ so much with the Weather Patrol…”
“Hey! I can’t work with clouds that are literally evaporating before they get here, AJ; it’d be like trying to make Apple Cider without any freaking apples!”
The gentle bickering continues as Rainbow Dash pushes open the castle door and the ponies half-walk, half-drag their way indoors.
***
Something flickers at the edge of perception for Twilight; the generous might call it a thought, thought at this point it was still well within the realm of ‘instinct’. Namely, it is the instinct that a certain sense of warmth and security has abandoned her.
A hoof stretches out, blind and searching, slapping away at the aether of half-consciousness in pursuit of-
Agony, clearly, as the now fully cognizant Princess realizes she swatted one of Spike’s more spiny frills.Then she opens her eyes to pandemonium and the pain seems to partial relocate from her hoof to her brain whilst legally changing its name to ‘Migraine’.
The distant shouting of at least two ponies wasn’t exactly helping matters, either.
“Spike. What, exactly, is going on?” Twilight grunted, her blurry vision barely picking out the smudgy purple drake from the mass of red blockiness beside him.
“Uh, we’re gonna need snacks or something if I try to say the whole story, more like a saga, really-”
“Give me the Sparkle-Notes version, then! Focus Spike!”
“Rainbow Dash and Applejack are in the process of trying to fight Apostrophe and Rarity, well-”
“Fainted, yes, saw that coming a mile away,” Twilight grumbled, before realizing with a blink something peculiar in Spike’s earlier statement. “Wait. How are they ‘trying’ to fight the subject?”
“Twilight, Apostrophe is its name. You were the one to give it. As for the other stuff, well, it takes two to tango, so I figure ‘fighting’ requires both sides to take a swing-”
In a blur, Twilight was gone, the echos of something similar to “My research grants!” trailing behind her, even as Spike mumbles something under his breath and goes back to fanning his beau.
***
Words bounce through the castle walls, bestowing fragments of conversation to Twilight Sparkle.
“Verily, tis’ the Twilight entity’s fault for any harm that has befallen her-”
“Come on, AJ! You can’t tell me we aren’t allowed to rough ‘em up after that bogus line! ”
“Dash! We ain’t beatin’ a pony who's already tied up, no matter how much he deserves it. As fer you, fella, Ah recommend you start confessin’ yer crimes afor’ Ah have half a mind tah sick Dash on yah, personal hangups be durned! And start movin’ yer lips when you talk, it’s plumb weird when they don’t!”
“Ye’ have half a mind? My condolences. It appears I have yet to truly understand your kind.”
“My kind?!”
Twilight sighed in relief even as she rounded a corner, momentum skidding her into a wall hard enough to rattle the nearby windows; at least there hadn’t been a fatality yet.
Wait. Why am I running when I can just tele-
Her horn ignites and the whole of the universe shifts before her eyes.
-port?
Ancient poets had once regaled kings and commoners alike on nigh forgotten heroes performing incomprehensibly valorous feats of might, only for such stories to go the way of their tellers and fade into dust as entropy worked its magic upon both the physical and the cultural; a shame, really, given that the rattling contortions present within one of Applejack’s hooves could’ve been the muse for a million sagas.
The farmer was in a state of almost transcendent outrage, the sort that roots one in place and causes faint tears to form in eyes; manipulating such a pony with magic would be more likely to wound than evoke an undesired movement.
So Twilight body-tackles her, all whilst screaming perhaps the least intimidating warcry in three millennia-
“FOR SCIENCE!”
-and with a gentle ‘poof’ collides with Applejack, more reminiscent of a discolored ball of fluff attempting to do battle with the Sun than anything else.
Not to say Twilight’s impact did nothing, of course. It did far less than that.
Instinct forces a hoof to shoot out, even as a befuddled Applejack glances away from her target to the physically pathetic Alicorn grunting at her side and making feeble attempts to actually move her.
“Dude, Twilight, you need an exercise regime or something,” Rainbow Dash quips, before making the strangest strangled gasp noise and toppling on her side, foaming at the mouth.
Applejack, for her part, turns her head, looks down the length of her outstretched leg, and sees-
***
She had been a good filly, had always listened to her Granny when the green mare told the stories of ‘What Is’ and ‘What Was’, and could recite all of the tales by heart. She worked the fields, had helped save the world a half-dozen times, and respected her elders; she wasn’t a braggart and had always tried her best, regardless of the situation.
And yet there is Judgement. Granny had always mentioned something about this part, something that made her blood run cold even as she wracks her brain to remember it, before the memory flashes into her mind, as terrible and chilly as a cataclysmic cold-snap.
Good ponies don’t get Judged; only Bad ponies do.
And at the end of her outstretched hoof is Judgement, a thousand thousand eyes staring at her from between the shapeless wiggling, the half-lidded orbs green and familiar and terrible in their knowledge.
She tries to scream, but her mouth is gone and so the fear must be swallowed, consumed, left to ferment and rot within her guts. Her eyes, for the things glaring out from the destruction she has wrought are hers to the last, continue to Judge even as Apple memories continue to float to the surface like corpses in a river.
Was she a good pony?
Instinct cried “Yes!” but her eyes know better, have always been able to spot a liar in the midst.
“I’ve saved the world a bunch of times!”
And you’ve tended the trees a thousand more, the eyes seem to say; is either obligation righteous, or what should be expected?
And so the Judgement continues.
***
Perhaps a minute has passed, and little has changed except that there is now a gentle snoring pervading the room and the haphazard swaddling of gauze around Apostrophe’s head; even so, around the cloth peeks a hole in the skin of reality, a disconcertingly blackened scar that seems to writhe when stared at for more than a moment. It stretches downwards to the stallion’s cheek, more reminiscent of a crack in some dark mirror than any wound.
Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash naps, oblivious to the world.
“Why is she shuddering?” Twilight says as she tries to tend to her orange friend, her hair spontaneously coiling with metallic ‘sproing’s in increasing intervals even as the pitch of her voice rises with panic. “She shouldn’t be shuddering! Or unconscious!”
“Enlightenment is very rarely gentle,” Apostrophe replies, the myriad intonates warbling as the air shifts from the panicking Alicorn’s wings.
“Why are you acting so calm?!”
“My inability for mobility or an incomplete understanding of your primordial culture’s various nuances and conversational inflections does not mean I do not feel emotion, Sparkle,” Apostrophe says, the tone as calm as a summer breeze even as the words themselves are as chilly as an icicle dagger. “You and your kith are dear to me for breaking the monotony of existence; engaging in a fit would hardly facilitate-”
The world was filled with incoherent Alicorn noises as Applejack’s body clearly fought to take a breath, drowning out whatever else Apostrophe had left to say.
At least, until the air itself began to shift and boil in waves more reminiscent of the shifting coils that hover above flames and a bloodcurdling screeching cracks the crystal walls and silences the world.
I am louder, says a stray thought in Twilight’s ringing head, the words struggling as if constrained in some mighty vice even as the the thought adds, Wish ye’ to save your acquaintance? Oh bugger all, what’s the point in asking? The answer is obvious. Hold fast and remain unyielding.
***
It is all so broken. The fields, her family, even her world; the reaper cuts with the same scythe, one and all, and her eyes (the ones within her head, at least) remain affixed to what amounts to so much ash and-and-and other such things. And yet, somehow, Judgement continues, and all her regrets continue to stack up like so much cordwood.
A mocking slideshow of her life plays before her, each and every moment conspiring as if to denigrate her further. Even the triumphs, rare though they are, are tinged with the flavor of cinder and loss when contrasted with the decay of the cosmos. When the only thing left to do is fall, does anything matters?
And, for a merciful moment, Judgement abates and her neck, through no power of her own, shifts to look beside her. It baffles her, for perhaps a moment; a veritable wave of ponies, staring straight ahead, gazes unwavering even as their eyes twitch with tears or crinkle with a smile. They, surely, likewise see their own existences, lined before them and just as inconsequential as hers.
So how do some smile?
And when the moment of alien strength abandons her and her gaze once more directs itself upon the scattered recollections of her life, she sees a filly far too small to know the impossible odds the cosmos had placed against her existence, and in seeing this tiny, precious, bundle, her answer is found.
Every failure experienced and every wound endured could not hope to drown away even so paltry a memory from such a tiny thing; she had guided this filly, told of hurts made humorous by the passage of time and instilled in this fragile creature ethics to live by.
If every agony before that moment was even remotely necessary for that little filly to feel even a fleeting joy, so be it; it is a fine trade, one made with nary a regret. In a world where gold was meaningless, fame fleeting, and life tragic, she was a treasure.
Applejack watched her life unfold a dozen times more, and not once did this resolve waver; if a life of pains led to this single pure moment of joy, surely everything before it is justified, surely, surely…
***
“Is she going to be alright?” Twilight asks after a minute, nursing a mug of piping hot tea in the vague hope the drink would banish the migraines she had been experiencing; the last few moments had been the weirdest of the bunch, admittedly, with a fleeting sense of darkness followed by an agonizing pressure behind her horn, but such pain was transient and therefore ignorable. “I mean, she’s not shuddering anymore, so I suppose that’s a good thing…”
“She will smile until she wakes, held aloft on memories of blooming trees and baby sisters,” Apostrophe says, allowing itself a momentary pause before adding, “I had to rebuild the more broken portions of her psyche using your own as a template; there will be instability for a few days before such constructs are digested into the greater whole.”
The two beings stand beside each other, the purple one staring down at her friend even as the one with the patina-esque fur remains stock still. For a few seconds, all is peaceful and quiet.
“Are you alright?” Twilight finally says, the question feeling more like a ponderance than a genuine consideration of well-being; her face blooms into blush when silence is her answer, and she reiterates, far more sincerely, “Are you alright? I mean, you, uh, have a literal hole in your head, and most folks would either take, er, exception to that, or, um, be confronted with their own mortality…”
“The damage is done when the hobbles are nailed in, not when they are removed; when ye’ smash a prison’s wall, the prisoners do not perish, pony.”
“Well, that depends on whether the prisoners are still inside-”
“Ye’ are all like so many ants,” Apostrophe said shortly, each word weighted with an age experienced only by cosmic bodies.
“Excuse me?”
“No, ye’ are not excused. All the sorrows ye’ experience around me are reaped from poor decisions and hubris. I speak your kind’s tongue because the foolish and the mad peek within my mind and forget all things require a give and take. I wish to make no footprints upon this world and yet ye’ force me to stomp.”
“Really? You really think your introduction to the girls was low-key?” Twilight shot back, a grin nevertheless adorning her face now that the danger has passed. Her smile doesn’t last long.
“Ye’ wish for me to make my presence felt?”
“That feels like one of the worst ideas imaginable,” Twilight says, shortly, before peering curiously at Apostrophe; where, a portion of her mind ponders, is all of this animosity coming from?
“Verily, because it is.”
“Look, if worst comes to worst, can’t you just, you know, snip that portion out of her experiences? I mean, you literally revert time upon contact.”
“True, I am a cosmic repository of essential star material, a living reversal of entropic processes. But that is not the solution for all problems.”
“Really? Because having absolute control over a portion of time seems as if it could solve almost anything.”
“Verily? That is how ye’ see it? A pink pill for all woes? No. Some things are not so easily digested.”
***
Give, Twilight thought to herself as she flicked a bead of sweat off her forehead, and take, hmm? I wonder why it mentioned that?
“You sure it was a good idea to take them home?” Spike’s words are like a pickaxe, splitting stony and rigid thoughts asunder with a pointed tone. His thinking, at least, has hardly been impacted by the weather.
“Yes, Spike. Rainbow Dash and Rarity have jobs, and neither really experienced anything traumatizing. I’ll explain the situation with our ‘guest’ in great detail after they get a full night’s sleep.”
“Uhuh. And what about Applejack?” Spike asks, even as his stubby claws tighten upon his personal duster with an eerie creaking.
That’s the question of the day, isn’t it? What about Applejack?
“She’ll want to be home with her family,” Twilight says after a moment, her only evidence being the words of an alien and the certainty of personal experience.
For perhaps a minute, there is nothing but the sounds of rough sweeping and the clatter of cracked crystal before Spike speaks.
“Twilight?”
“Yes, Spike?”
“Either we put Apostrophe in a more secure place in the castle, or I’m writing a letter to Celestia. This stuff is too dangerous to have laying around where somepony could trip over it.”
“... you’re right, Spike. I’m sorry.”
“I am too, Twilight. Love you.”
“Love you too.”