//------------------------------// // Topaz // Story: An Eternity of Rocks // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Topaz Starlight strode into a large restaurant named Gerry le Grand with Maud in tow. “The filly and I would like some privacy,” she told the maître d’. “The reservation fee for a private booth is seventy-five bits,” the griffon responded. Maud stared open-mouthed. She had never been this close to a griffon before. Starlight nudged her with a hoof. “Well, go ahead and pay the fellow.” She leaned in to whisper. “And don’t play dumb—I know exactly how much you are carrying in those enchanted saddlebags.” Maud fished out the bits, and the two were seated in a lush booth with a velvet curtain. She tried to read the menu, but found that it was written entirely in Prench. “I don’t suppose you have rock soup?” she asked the waiter. The waiter gave her The Look—the “What’s Wrong with You?” look. “I’ll take a salad then.” “And I’ll have the ratatouille,” said Starlight, without even looking at the menu. The waiter gave Starlight a different look. “This establishment does not serve the ‘ratatouille’,” he said with a sniff. “It is a peasant dish, and therefore beneath Chef le Grand’s notice.” “I’m willing to pay a hundred bits to discover if Chef le Grand can turn a peasant dish into something amazing,” Starlight said with a sneer. “I’ll…have to ask him.” “Go right ahead,” Starlight said, waving a hoof in dismissal. “In the meantime I’ll have a small salad, double the usual number of breadsticks, and whatever red wine your sommelier recommends.” “Aren’t you afraid you’ll attract unwanted attention?” Maud asked once the waiter was out of range. “Not really. I’ve got an ‘annoying but forgettable’ spell cast on both of us. Once we’re gone, everyone here will think of us as ‘those two ponies’, without being able to recall anything specific about us. Now, I can save both of us a lot of trouble if you let me scan you.” Maud paused for a moment—no earth pony welcomes unicorn pony magic on their persons. “Very well,” she said finally. She felt a strange form of energy sweep over her before concentrating inside her head. “Well other than that cloud-walking charm you’re wearing, you’ve also got a magnetite crystal in your brain,” Starlight told her, “about as big as three grains of sand. The way it’s magnetized causes it, and therefore you, to be sensitive to time magic. An accident of birth?” “I assume so.” “I assume I got that part completely wrong,” commented Maud. “There are ways to be immune to time loops,” Starlight replied. “But it would involve vibrations rather than magnetism. That means that realistically it would be a dragon that noticed a time loop rather than any pony. But I can’t imagine a peaceful confrontation such as the one you’re writing if the main character was a dragon…who wasn’t Spike.” “And you came up here to discover why you were experiencing the same day over and over. Makes sense so far. What’s your name, filly?” “Maud.” She saw no reason to volunteer her family’s name unless forced to. In this way maybe she could protect them in case she failed to do any good. “Hello, Maud. I’m Starlight Glimmer. So I’m curious—did you have a specific plan, or were you going to wing it?” “I could see you and the pony you called Twilight fighting. I thought the fighting might be what was causing the days to repeat. So I thought I’d help you come up with a way to win.” Starlight stared at her for a few moments, one eyebrow raised. “I still don’t entirely trust you,” she said. “But our fight has become rather stale lately. Alright, I’ll humor you: how do you think I can beat Twilight Sparkle?” “I think I need to know more before I can give you good advice. For one thing, what are you two fighting over?” “Nothing less than the future of Equestria. Princess Twilight wants to keep the same miserable system in place that we have today, while I want to put a radical new idea in place, one that will ensure Pony prosperity forevermore.” “Princess Twilight. So she is an alicorn princess?” “Yes.” “What is she the princess of?” “Friendship, if you can believe it.” Maud posed her next major question: “What does the race have to do with your argument? I mean, if you had chosen somewhere more private for your debate, then I never would have been able to find you.” Starlight stared at the young mare for quite some time before replying. “Maud, the race is the debate. I traveled back in time to stop it, and Twilight followed me to stop me. Or rather, I let her follow me so that she would know that I was re-writing her past. I was confident that taking her bizarre group of bickering friends away from her would change her life so much for the better that she would thank me and promise not to stand in my way anymore. Instead she’s in total denial, claiming that the alternate futures I send her to every time Rainbow Dash fails to win that race are all horrible dystopias. As if her team were the center of the universe or something.” Maud paused for a few moments, trying to re-work her instinctual response into a form that would not leave her a black smudge on the dinner bench. “Perhaps her resentment comes from the fact you’re trying to take some of her friendships away, and she’s the Princess of Friendship?” Starlight laughed out loud. “You know, I never thought of that! I still think she’s over-reacting.” “What do you know about her?” “Her title and the fact that she lives in a crystal castle with a magical map that tells her where to go to solve friendship problems. I used that as the power source for the time loop spell.” “Well, do you even need to break up her friendship? If you’ve figured out time travel, why don’t you use it to get what you want behind her back?” Starlight was about to reply when the waiter returned with the salads and breadsticks. He informed Starlight that Chef le Grande had taken up her challenge, and to prepare herself for the best ratatouille she had ever tasted. Starlight had attacked the breadsticks before the waiter had departed. It was only after eating her fill and drinking half of her glass of water that she bothered to answer Maud. “Because of that map. It’s some of the most powerful magic I have ever encountered. I did some spying on Twilight’s group, and one thing I learned was that their mutual friendship is how she became an alicorn princess—she started as a unicorn. She got the castle and the map as part of the deal…I think. What I do know is that they didn’t exist when Twilight was still a unicorn. And I heard her say that she has some regrets over becoming a princess, that she worries that she really doesn’t deserve the position. The map is the reason that her group hunted down my experimental village and ruined it, and as long as it existed, I knew that no amount of time travel would ever allow me to accomplish my goals. So I needed to un-do her princesshood, and that traced back to the event that give six ponies their cutie marks, and led them and one dragon into becoming friends: Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom.” Maud had next to no knowledge of pegasus history and myths, and so had no idea what a Sonic Rainboom might be. But she did consider, given the circumstances, that there was a non-zero chance that Pinkamena was meant to be a member of Twilight’s company. “And what is your radical new idea?” she asked. “I believe that cutie marks are a curse,” Starlight declared, “the source of all bullying and unhappiness in ponykind. My goal is a world without cutie marks, and my village was a place where ponies agreed to undergo a spell I had developed that made all ponies equal, by stripping their marks away from them. It’s a spell unlike anything that I have ever seen or heard about before—that’s how I know that it’s my destiny.” Maud was shocked by this idea of removing cutie marks, but of course did not show it. “Are you sure you thought this through?” she asked before realizing that she should have phrased it better. “Am I sure?!” Starlight asked, her ire significantly raising the temperature of the room. “Of course I’ve thought this through! This is the single goal towards which my entire life has been directed! And another thing—I remember you now! You said you were a stranger to me!” (No she didn’t.) “When did you meet me before?” Maud asked. “It was back when…wait. That would be my past, but your future. And yes, I clearly remember that you were older than you were now.” She sighed. “Never mind. But I still want to know what you meant by that ‘thought this through’ remark.” “Well, if everypony lost their cutie marks to make this perfect world, what about Princess Celestia? Who will move the sun, moon and stars if not her?” “It can’t be that hard,” Starlight replied with the dismissive wave of a hoof. “I bet there’s an artifact buried under Canterlot that could take care of all of that, and all I’d need to do is to push a button to activate it.” “And what about Equestria’s enemies? What if there’s an invasion?” “A citizen army could stand up against anything that our enemies could throw at us!” “Including magic?” “Um…well…” “And what about you? If the only way to remove cutie marks is your magic, how do you remove your own mark?” “I…don’t know.” She looked down at the table, and started to trace the wood grains through the tablecloth with the edge of her hoof. “It seems to me that you have one major issue, and two minor ones,” Maud concluded after some thought. “The major issue is whether all ponies should go through life without cutie marks or not. If the answer to that question is an unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no’, then nothing less than total victory would be acceptable between you two. But it looks like the correct answer might be a compromise: a land where ponies who do not want to have cutie marks can live together without being judged, and then Equestria, where things remain as they are. This new land—let’s call it No Mark Land—would have to be located within Equestria, so that ponies who have cutie marks can use them to protect No Mark Land from invasion with their magic, even if having cutie marks makes them miserable.” Starlight frowned as she thought this over. “Alright, assuming I can’t uncover artifacts that would remove the need for Princess Celestia’s powers or its magical defenders, I suppose I would have to accept the premise that you describe. But the number of ponies keeping their marks would have to be a bare minimum. For example, do you have a cutie mark?” “Yes. It’s a rock. It represents my love of rocks.” “Well I’m willing to bet that that mark has brought you nothing but misery. That ponies have said and done bad things to you because they didn’t understand rocks like you do. Yet you loved rocks before you got that mark, right?” “Yes.” “And has the mark itself done anything for your love of rocks?” “Well, I can identify them by smell now. That’s new. I used to have to use a guidebook.” “But you still would have identified them with that book if you never got your cutie mark. So what did your mark actually do for you, except to separate you from your peers?” “I’ve always been separate from my peers.” If she was normal, if she was like other ponies, this would have been said in a voice of despair. “They will never understand what I feel, not just about rocks. About anything. And I’ve had that problem since I was born.” Maud put a hoof to her lips, too late. She had never been this open about herself, not even with her family. She just assumed they knew, since the idea of discussing it was too painful. And here she was revealing her deepest, darkest secrets to an emotionally unstable and unrestrained unicorn of unimaginable power. She lowered her hoof, only to see it covered by Starlight’s. “Alright,” the unicorn said softly. “So that’s something else I’ll try to fix while looking for sun-moving and Equestria-protecting artifacts.” Starlight looked up, her eyes misty. Maud was nowhere to be found. Sitting on her chair was Boulder. Starlight sighed with a smile, knowing that Maud was just hiding just around the corner. “Alright, Boulder, I’ll keep reading the story for you.” There was a moment of shocked silence from Maud, which she then broke by throwing open the booth’s sound-proof curtain and looking out at the dinner crowd. “Maud?” Starlight asked beseechingly. “Did I offend you?” “I won’t waste your time asking for the impossible,” Maud said, still facing away from her. “I just…do you hear that?” She pointed out at the other restaurant patrons. “What? The sounds of hooves and claws? The clatter of utensils on plates?” “There. Laughter. If I could laugh just once.” She closed her eyes. “To really feel what joy is like, if only for a moment. I would be satisfied for the rest of my life if I could only have that.” Instinctually, Starlight threw the curtain closed, to hide herself away from anypony watching her crying. And yet this filly across from her had the same deadpan expression as always! “I’ll do it—anything in my power I’ll throw at the problem. This I swear.” “You’d do that for me?” Starlight finished using the napkin to wipe her eyes. “Maud, I want to make every pony happy. That’s what I was doing before Twilight led my followers astray. And I want to thank you—you’re helping me to see these issues in new ways, ways that I hope will finally get through to Twilight. Because she told me that as an alicorn she will probably live forever, and her dragon will live close enough to forever to not make a difference. Whereas I will get older and one day die. So I can’t just repeat the same cycle forever. “You said there were three issues. The one about cutie marks is the first. What are the other two?” “Those two aren’t important unless the first one can’t be completely resolved.” “Well…I’m willing to admit that maybe not everypony needs to give up their cutie marks.” “In that case, the second issue is whether you should get your village back, and the third one is whether Twilight gets to keep her friends. If you can convince her that most ponies would be happier without their cutie marks, then she should be willing to change history so that she never disrupts your village.” “But what about the map?” asked Starlight. “Maybe Twilight knows how to deal with that,” countered Maud. “The third issue is the outcome of today’s race: If she can prove that she’s one of the few exceptions to the ‘cutie marks cause misery’ rule, then you should allow the history of her friendships to go forward. Especially since with the other change made, you two never have to meet until your group is big enough to make a request for protection that Princess Celestia cannot ignore.” “Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. I just—” “Madame, Mademoiselle, your meals are ready.” Starlight slid aside the curtain with her magic. A bowl of hot vegetables topped with a spiral pattern of zucchinis on top was placed before each of them, along with Starlight’s wine. Maud peered at the strange dish. “I didn’t order the rata…what she ordered.” “Compliments of the house. The Chef was so pleased by the recipe that he came up with that he made enough for everyone! What do you think?” Maud had a taste. Would be better with rocks, she thought. “It’s good,” she said. “I’ve had better,” said Starlight. “When?” challenged the waiter. “When I gave the same challenge to the chef’s big brother in Canterlot. Oh, and you can take the wine away—I don’t drink.” “Then why did you order it?” “So you’d take me seriously.” The waiter departed, shaking his head despairingly. Starlight then turned to Maud and asked, “Do you think you can help me come up with arguments that will get through that thick skull of Twilight’s?” Maud stared down into the spiral for a few moments before meeting her eyes. “Tell me how this spell of yours works, and I might have an idea how you can convince her.”