"So, why are we doing this?” Twilight asks, wincing at each and every step as if she strides upon a world of brimstone and crackling tinder. It is a short walk, one that should be the work of perhaps five minutes, but the heat seems to stretch time out like taffy.
“Verily, I shall not lie,” Apostrophe replies.
A fifth of the walk passes as Twilight awaits an explanation.
“Okay. So… what?” Twilight prompts, her patience evaporating almost as quickly as her sweat.
“I shall not lie, so I shall not speak until I’m in the pit.”
Twilight halts and gives Apostrophe the stink eye for a second before continuing her trot with a half-heartedly mumbled, “Shouldn’t be keeping secrets from your ‘friends,’ either.”
“But ye’-”
“Yeah, well, I’m the princess of Friendship, not the princess of ‘Always-avoiding-hypocrisy’,” Twilight interjects. Then, as the pit looms into vision, she quietly asks, “It’s not going to hurt anypony, right? Well, I mean, any more than they already can be...”
“Nopony will be harmed.”
And if you think I actually believe that, I might as well get into the shuckster business and put Flim and Flam out of business, some ancient and vengeful part of Twilight’s mind manages to think before being quashed by an admittedly wavering trust in Apostrophe.
And the she stands before the pit, Apostrophe held in the grip of her magic and nothing but a yawning darkness bleaker than the starless skies.
“Do it,” Apostrophe gently encourages.
Twilight casts Apostrophe into the darkness.
There is nothing but the whistle of wind for a few moments, and then, “Ye' really must be a chess player, Twilight. I had my doubts, and yet-”
The problem with using monologues in the presence of heroes is that the heroes in question tend to develop incredibly violent reflexes upon hearing even the tone being used. For Twilight, the flashback it induced was less a ‘code red’ scenario than a ‘nuclear option, salt the earth’ sort of response.
“I KNEW IT!” Twilight roared, even as her magic blindly lashed downwards, ripping gouges into stone and earth alike in a display of awesome power and hair-trigger impulses.
“What?”
“I knew you’d betray my trust, you back-stabbing jerk!”
“What?”
Apostrophe, by its very nature, spoke in myriad intonations simultaneously; it was possible, at times, to parse out the intended inflection by the tone used by the majority of voices, but such a thing was more art than science.
And yet, somehow, nothing but shock and a hint of outrage saturates its words, even as it says, “Are ye’ a fool of fools, purple pony?! You lull me nearer with sweet promises of friendship and now is the time ye’ unload your manifold psychoses upon me?”
“Yeah, well, real friends don’t do these things to one another!”
“Oh,” Apostrophe quietly replies, the voices morose and accepting. “I had no clue ye’ cared so deeply.”
“Of course I care, idiot! How could I not?!”
“I… I beseech your forgiveness. And yet, there is little choice; microcosm though it may be, lump of dirt though it is… your land matters to me. I cannot surrender it to flame.”
Wait, what?
“Uh… I think we’re on two different pages of two separate books on opposite sides of the library,” Twilight manages even as a blasting updraft of air from the pit brings the scent of salt and sadness.
“We are?” Apostrophe asks, the voices shifting and churning as a repressed existence once more tests it’s limits. “You are trying to prevent my abnegating act of… the word your kind use is ‘love’, though surely that’s not correct… correct?”
“Uh,” Twilight utters for a second, before the more judicious portion of her mind hijacks control of her mouth and supplies, “Yeah, that, uh, sounds about right. Don’t do… whatever it was you were going to do.”
Then Apostrophe laughs and the world goes manic, because even in a land as diverse as Equestria some things simply don’t happen.
The tone is clipped, even if the words themselves blending together like a mad rant; the myriad warbles of Apostrophe’s voices forcing a shiver from the surrounding earth in sympathy. “The trouble, little purple… friend, yes, friend… is a naivete unseen out of spinning cradle-graves; the lie that all victories may be won without…” and here Apostrophe halts, as if in contemplation, before continuing, tangentially, “Ye’ think in terms of absolute victory or defeat. All is lost or all is gained. Reality turns into chess. Why else do the many risk life and limb for one? It is an equation of absolute loss, and yet… it is gold. Challenging eternity for one more minute, one more second, the pinnacle of madness, and a beautiful madness indeed.”
And for the first time, Apostrophe intentionally draws a slow and shuddering breath, before saying, “Verily, something worth preserving, surely?”
Oh Celestia, now you’re making me feel guilty for doubting...
And then the world goes funny as the darkness of the pit twists into something heavy and irrepressible. The shadows, slick as oiled velvet, seep around Twilight’s hooves and even her thoughts seem to leak out of her skul-
***
The ocean, again. It stretches forevermore in all directions. Yet, it is as still as glass.
“Ye’ think of water when pushed to incomprehension, whilst the orange one thinks of organic machinery,” observes something that is Apostrophe yet-infinitely-more, its voice booming despite the subtle hiss that hints even this is a repressed whisper.
“Everypony’s got their own idea of what’s ungraspable,” a lump of Twilight-ness replied, before willing a set of limbs and sensory organs into thought-existence. She peers at her reflection before nodding in approval; she was exactly as she appeared to be.
“And that does not bother you?”
“Not really. I mean, okay, yeah, it’s kinda silly Applejack’s personal version of Tartarus is sort of related to applied mathematics, but I’m not going to judge.”
The surface of the ocean twitches, a miniature wave across an infinite plane. Apostrophe is perturbed.
“Verily, why is the unknowable considered so bleak to your kind?”
The line between thought and word is nonexistent in this ‘place’, and so Twilight finds herself replying, “Because the unknown is dangerous, and because the shadows held sharp teeth.”
“They still do,” the ocean replies.
“Yes,” says Twilight.
There is nothing but a dripping noise and the subsequent bubbles that rise from unspeakable depths to pass the time for perhaps a minute. The ocean shrinks, just slightly.
“Do you know your friends so fully?” Apostrophe asks, and though it should be imperceptible Twilight can hear its voice lessening.
“No,” she admits almost cheerfully. “I only know a little about what, really, makes them tick, and I get the feeling that even if I devoted the rest of my life on studying them I’d only get surface details. Having friends… honestly, it’s a learning process.”
“And yet you hold them close despite the danger?” The voice is growing weaker, that much is certain now, and the ocean is filled with countless tiny bubbles, as if it were boiling away.
“Of course I do; they're my friends. I trust my friends,” Twilight says, even as she swallows her doubt and tries to keep her shaking thought-legs resolute.
“Like treasure hidden in darkness,” the ocean adds, even as the end of the sentence trails off in a hiss of pain. Then once more in the myriad voices of Apostrophe ask, “Verily, we are friends, yes?”
This is a world of thought and intention; a lie cannot hope but die here, Twilight knows, and it leaves her screwing her eyes closed even as her jaw swings open and says-
“Verily.”
There is a trill, a noise that sings for a moment, in reply.
“What are you doing?” Twilight asks, even as the ocean froths and boils in all directions to the infinite horizons. And yet, except for where her hooves disturb and ripple the surface, she remains in an oasis, an isle of stable waters.
“Cooking. I am cooking, my little purple friend.”
“What’re you cooking?”
“I suspect, once more, it is your language that fails in communication…”
A second (though surely far less if this is truly a realm of thought) passes and the connection between subject and verb are realized.
“How?” Twilight asks, more than a little panicked. “You eat stars-”
“This is true. But what of it?”
“How can anything even burn you?”
“Through the willing refusal to manipulate my density to the impenetrable yet ultimately self-defeating levels of-”
“Stop being pedantic!” There is a haze of steam that hovers above the hissing ocean, only to dissipate before some ever greater heat. “Hurling yourself into the sun does nopony any favors!”
“Truly? Then there is nothing short of a tragedy awaiting this idiocy-”
“Are you serious?!”
“Certainly not. If there were nothing but tragedy awaiting this action, you would possess no consciousness to speak with me. Due to the temporary inconvenience of death.”
“Oh har-har, real funny, Apostrophe,” Twilight shoots back, her tone laced with biting sarcasm. “You know, you’d probably have better luck talking to ponies if you weren’t so morbid all the time!”
“Verily, I suspect I would have had better luck in that regard had I not been located on the bottom floor of a dungeon for the majority of my duration here.”
“Er… yeah, I… yeah, that’s probably true,” Twilight replies, her posture and tone drooping with barely contained shame.
She watches the seas boil in silence.
“So… jokes aside, what’s going on with-” she waggles a hoof vaguely at the horizon, “-all this?”
“It is as I have told ye’,” Apostrophe says, words slow and deliberate, as if they had to be forced into existence.
“... how?” Twilight finally says, only to add, “Why?” a moment later, as if that were the true question.
“For the former, nothing but my stomach can weather solar flames in such a state, but such a fragmentary thing is all that is necessary to erase a planetary gravestone. Existence before essence, and entropy reverses in even my fragmentary presence. As for the latter…”
The ocean seems to ponder this, even as Twilight waits.
“It is not morality,” Apostrophe-the-ocean finally says, “because good and evil are not at stake. ‘Honesty’ is quite a mockery on your dirtball, ‘Loyalty’ is irrelevant as is ‘Laughter’. Only one blinder than I could think ‘Kindness’ as the reason, and to think this exchange ‘Generous’ is correct, yet not ‘True’.”
Another moment passes in pondering, the ocean growing frenzied and tumultuous. And yet the placid circle around Twilight remains unbroken, even as she is certain she spies a crackling sphere dancing like a buoy in the waves.
“Friendship,” the ocean finally concludes, “The answer, the poison that slays me, is friendship.”
“Friendship isn’t like that-” Twilight interjects, only to be interrupted by another trill from the ocean below.
“Ask one who drifts deep within a sphere so heated that light has mass,” Apostrophe retorts, though the words remain untinged with malice, “This is an expression of friendship, little purple friend, and it destroys me.”
“You don’t have to-”
“And yet I do, because the alternative wounds me more. That is the shameful part of this entire friendship ordeal. It is akin to a comforting shackle, or those objects that dwell in the lockbox beneath ye bed-”
“Uhuh,” Twilight interjects, her face transcending its purple origins to become a burning red.
“Verily, I never pondered to ask, are they intended to be anklets? But for the gossamer chains and padding, it would possess a clear nature-”
“Okay, the metaphor is clear, you can stop now!”
“Nevertheless, the point remains, if there is to be a trial, the murder weapon was friendship. And yet I find I do not mind. Congratulations, my purple friend; though knowing your kind slays me, I find little regret with it.”
If the ocean could express, it would be legitimately beaming at Twilight. At least, until the heavy malaise of sorrow and regret begin to manifest, emanate, from the little Alicorn.
“You’re pinning all this on me?” Twilight says, words catching as primordial sobs threaten her ability to speak.
“… I suspect two days is not enough time to obtain knowledge of adequate social norms,” the ocean replies.
“You.. you don’t say?” Twilight manages, before, all too quickly, her face shifts into mask of royal stoicism and dignity, “You’re supposed to say stuff about… about how you’ll succeed, and how you’ll come back, and how we’ll throw you a party and-”
“I… shall see you again.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“Verily, I am sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
The ocean continues to disappear, the bone-white sand growing more and more visible with every moment.
“Could… could ye’ say it, once more?” Apostrophe manages.
“What?”
“Ye’ know.”
“...you’re my friend.”
“Thank you.”
The seconds of silence that pass stretch just a moment beyond what ought to be allotted for a properly dramatic farewell, and it is just as Twilight begins to feel antsy that she hears, barely a whisper, “Verily, friends tell jokes, yes?”
“Um,” Twilight manages, “Some.... times?”
“Did I ever tell ye’ about the star-eater who got eaten by a sun?”
“No…”
“Verily, I now have.”
Twilight, for a moment, responds with stony silence. Then, as if wrested in a desperate internal struggle, the corner of her lip quirks upward in an undignified smirk, and the facade of dignity dissipates in a torrent of giggles and sobs.
“Thank ye’... oh, verily, and be sure to free the simulated Twilight from her pillow prison if she has not yet done so.”
"Wha-"
And with a pop, Apostrophe is no more.