A Bug on a Stick

by Orbiting Kettle

Chapter 9

Shafts of warm light fell through the windows, while the song of crickets flew on the soft breeze along with the smell of upturned earth and wildflowers. Out there, behind the top of the wall, one could see the treetops in the distance, waving in the wind like they were calling out for fillies to play with them,

Celestia considered it terribly rude not to answer to the call, yet she couldn't, trapped as she was in the library with her sister, Chryssi, Master Sottile, and the most mind-numbingly boring treatise on the importance of the number three that had ever been inflicted on pony-kind. Even the sudden rants about the evil of beans that could be found in the scroll didn't help much. They also seemed, in her uneducated opinion, spurious reasoning at its finest.

"So the stories are inside here?" Chryssi was pointing at an open scroll in front of her covered in the scratchy symbols typical of Pegasus Cloudscript.

"Well, that is a pretty complicated question, little one. And it is something we will return to once you have studied enough, because it tells us something very important about magic. But until we reach that point, yes, we can say that there is a story there." Master Sottile sat in front of her, a kind smile on his face and a pile of different scrolls at his side.

He seemed in a pretty good mood, probably because he had a new student. It could be an occasion to ask him if they could, maybe, go out and have some fun while Chryssi got started on learning to read. Even a delay would be a little victory.

Chryssi picked up the scroll and sniffed at it. She squinted at it, then glanced at Master Sottile. "Doesn't smell like a story."

Confusion, then an intrigued smile. The moment to strike was right now. "Master Sottile, is it alright if we leave you to teach Chryssi the fundamentals of reading and return later to help her exercises?" She elbowed Lulu.

Her sister seemed lost for an instant. A rapid burst of sibling communication in the form of eyebrow wiggling took care of that. "Right, we don't want to be a distraction. We'll be back in a while."

"Oh, yes, you can–" He stopped, looked up from Chryssi, and sighed. "No, you cannot. It was a good attempt, and I think Garvino would be proud of your timing, but you have something to learn. Numerology is a fundamental aspect of both magic and philosophy. So, do not worry about Chrysalis and me, we shall have no problems doing our part."

Celestia slumped down and grumblingly returned to her scroll and to the poetic waxing of how the number three returned again and again in everything good.

"As for you, little Chrysalis, you are right that on that scroll there is not the story per se, but a recording of it. Consider it words in another form. When somebody tells you a story, the words are not the story itself, right?"

"No, they are." Tia looked up and saw Chryssi putting down the scroll and pass a hoof over the writing. "You can taste them."

"You can?" There was a moment of silence after the question. Master Sottile seemed deep in thought and slightly confused. Maybe in a short while Celestia could try again to get out of there. It seemed to be the start of one of the weird discussions between Master Sottile and Chryssi that had happened every now and then in the last month. They usually left Master Sottile mumbling something and going in the laboratory in the cistern, and Chryssi huffing or pouting until they found a way to distract her. Which would be easy with the beautiful weather outside and the forest waiting for them. "And do they all have the same taste?"

"Nuhu. When Tia tells them they are different than when Lulu tells some, and Millet tells very yummy ones." With a tap of her hoof, the scroll unrolled some more. "But here there's nothing."

"Hmmm, let me try something." Mater Sottile’s aura surrounded the scroll and floated it up to him. "Now listen."

He cleared his throat, then began.

He looked back to Chryssi, who sat open-mouthed and stared at him. "See? I just read it, right from the scroll. I didn't remember it, because pegasus foal rhymes are not something I study much, but I took the words from paper and said them."

Chryssi's mouth snapped shut, her eyes wide open with the kind of hunger Celestia had lately observed only when flat-cake was somehow involved. "You created the story." She pointed at the scroll. "There was nothing, and then–" She sat on her haunches and waved her hooves around. "–there was the story. Can you do it again?"

A chuckle escaped Celestia. When Chryssi looked at her she smiled. "Yes, silly. Words always stay." Celestia glanced down at her own reading material and sighed. "You can read them as many times as you want."

The speed with which Chryssi's head snapped back to Master Sottile made it seem for a moment as if her face had moved faster than the rest of her head. "Teach me."

Master Sottile laughed the hearty laugh which often precursed a reduced studying load for the day. "We are here exactly for that. Now–" He stood up and sat down beside Chryssi. With a hoof he pointed out something on the scroll. "–that symbol stands for Hrn…"

Words were stupid. And vicious. And traitorous. And sandstone.

Probably.

Chryssi had to admit that she wasn't really sure about the last two words–which made them even more traitorous sandstone–but she had heard Fidelis say that stuff when he was very angry with things, so it probably was appropriate. She was very angry with words too. They were there, on the page, all being… not being, and she couldn't get them out from it.

Screaming seemed the right answer to her current problem. And pouting. And biting stuff. And…

And she wouldn't do any of those things. Except pouting. She could pout. Donna Copper Horn and Meadowsweet had been very clear about the other stuff, though. She considered if her current feelings were enough for a talk with them, and for going away from the stupid words. They had said to come whenever she felt that way, but last time it hadn't helped much. She had felt better for a while, even if Donna Copper Horn still tasted sour, but it hadn't really changed much in the long run. She still couldn't really read, or make sense of the stuff on the page even after three months of attempts.

"Lulu, have you finished the Astral Sequence? I think I need it for the next step in the Sun circle."

Chryssi glanced over to Tia and Lulu, both working on what seemed to be a mathematical problem. Chryssi wasn't jealous. Jealousy was bad--and probably tasted bad too--so she avoided it. She just wanted to do that instead of continuing to stare at the stupid scroll full of nothingness in front of her. Mathematics made sense, even if sometimes they used words in it. But they were far fewer words than in other places, and it mapped so nicely on a defined subset of the ontological model she had created. It was far from complete, but it worked alright in the defined constraints. She had even told Master Sottile and her friends so.

Well, she had tried. A lot of the right words were missing–which was just another proof of their nastiness–and she doubted she came across very well. A lot of hoof waving was involved, though, and in her opinion, it should have bridged the missing concepts.

Words, on the other hoof…

Once more she shuddered and looked down at the mess on paper. Compared to mathematics, it wasn't tidy at all. And she had to fight with it. Because she didn't like it. Which meant she had to try even more.

It was all profoundly unjust.

Outside birds were chirping and crickets were singing their enticing melody. A call for laziness and for naps on the grass, with the sun warming one's tummy. Or for hunts in the forest, where one could get some juicy butterflies or maybe even a beetle or two. Crunchy beetles, and berries, and chasing Lulu and Tia around, or exploring the caves in the hills and all the other fun places. Or maybe simply getting some bread and some water and then talking about the future. Well, listen to Tia and Lulu talking about the future, but it was nice anyway, even if she didn't understand most of the stuff.

"The charts are ready, I put them over there. But they are weird, I don't think they are right."

Getting back to the stupid things she had to do was hard. Very hard. But she was strong. A strong little bug. Her eyes glided over the first group of symbols. There was a sound that should come out of it, a fake word that became real if she could speak it out. The central symbol was a…

Chryssi threw her hooves in the air and flung the scroll against the wall. "Nghrrr! Stupid words. I hate them. It's stupid!" She fell on her back and looked up at the ceiling. "I am stupid…"

There was a sound of shuffling hooves, and then Lulu's face appeared in her field of vision. "You are not."

"Lulu's right." Tia's lifted Chryssi up in her forelegs and hugged her. "You are very smart. You got all those geometry things immediately, and you learned to talk and walk and all that."

"And you are only one year old." Lulu nuzzled Chryssi, then stopped for a moment. "I think."

Pouting was far better when there was an audience for it, a fact that Chryssi decided to exploit in full. "But I can't read. At all. Master Sottile said I would read badly for a while, but I can't even do that." She wiggled a bit in Tia's embrace and pointed at the discarded scroll in the corner. "That thing is… It's nothing. It was nothing, and it is nothing, and I can't make it become something."

Lulu sighed and walked over to the discarded scroll. She picked it up and looked at it. "Do you want me to read it again? You seem to learn faster when you can do things like we do them."

Imitation. Chryssi froze, things clicking into place in her mind. Mimicry. She was good at that. It was the solution. It would save her. She had just to enter in the right frame of mind.

She melted back into Tia's hug, letting the taste linger in the back of her mouth as a pleasant background note. Her tongue flicked for a moment and she grinned. "I would like that very much."

Master Sottile nodded and a smile tucked at the corners of his lips. Chrysalis sat in front of him, holding the scroll, with an eager expression on her little muzzle. "You did well, Chrysalis. I dare say you improved incredibly. You even got the cadence and the intonation right, not something I would expect so early on. Tell me, what changed?"

"Lulu and Tia helped. I was all like I can't do this and they were You can and I was Nuhu, I can't. and the were Let's show these stupid words how to be and then they read to me." She rolled up the scroll and stood up. "Can I now go do the math stuff?"

Such eagerness warmed Master Sottile's heart. He put a hoof on Chrysalis' shoulder, before briefly glancing over to the other two fillies. Celestia and Luna were surrounded by scrolls and were whispering and moving stones on the intricate diagram drawn in chalk on the floor. It seemed they had isolated themselves in their own little world. "Not for the moment, Chrysalis. Let Luna and Celestia finish with their Heavenly progressions. It is a very complicated process, and it is better not disturb them. Making an error there could cost other ponies very dearly. Not yet, obviously, but it is better to form the habit early on."

Chrysalis looked at her friends for a while, then asked, in a low, whispering voice, "Why? Isn't that just math?"

"In a certain sense, it is. But as mathematics is the language of Harmony, it is very meaningful. Come with me." Master Sottile's horn lit up and a couple of scrolls slid out of their alcoves and floated to his side. He walked to the far corner of the room, where a lectern stood.

"Why can't I do stuff with them? It's fun." It still amazed Master Sottile how, when she wanted to be silent, Chrysalis' hooves didn't seem to make a sound when walking.

"Because it is their duty to do it alone. I will teach you too, sooner or later, but for now, they have to work alone." A scroll unfurled on the lectern. He grabbed Chrysalis and lifted her. "See, they are doing a very specific kind of calculation. You know that unicorns raise the Sun and the Moon, right? Well, to do that they need a whole lot of information and calculations. Every day the spell is a bit different and has to be prepared accordingly. It is a duty of every learned pony to try and calculate it, and so every young pony has, at a certain point, to prepare these calculations. Celestia and Luna are at the age where they have to do that too, and that is what they are doing right now."

The scroll was filled with lines, circles, and symbols. He pointed with his free hoof at it. "Here begins the heavenly progression. And then you have to fill out the later parts. When Celestia and Luna finish, I will check it and then send it out to the Celestial Council, and if it is good enough, then I will teach them the next steps. It is a great honor and great responsibility."

Chrysalis stared at the scroll for a while. "Those symbols are different from the others."

"That is because they use a different alphabet, little one. One I have yet to teach you." He put her down again. "But that will come later for you. We have yet to finish with the nuances of Cloudscript, and then we will get into Earth Tongue. And then–"

"Finished!" Luna and Celestia's enthusiastic exclamations resounded through the room together.

Master Sottile turned towards them.

"And it's–" said Celestia.

They deserved some praise. He didn't expect them to finish so fast.

"–perfect," finished Luna.

And then there was light.

It was a half-moon on a dark background. It was moon-related. Moon!

Luna felt like prancing, and jumping, and dancing. There was this deep-seated need to be a nuisance, to shove her backside in everybody's face and to giggle uncontrollably. It had to be something her Cutie Mark told her to do, there was no other explanation. There was no other reason why Tia was a sourpuss right now.

"A sun," she grumbled. Again. "It had to be a sun."

That couldn't stand. Not now. "Tia, we got our marks! We got great marks! There will be a celebration, and then we are gonna be halfway to being grown mares. It's great!" It was a bit weird that Luna had to state the obvious, but sometimes her sister was a bit dense. Maybe this was one of those times. Well, Luna wouldn't allow that. "Marks!" And that should do it.

It didn't. Tia's frown stayed frowny, but now she was looking right at Luna's flank. "You got an awesome mark, Lulu. I looked it up. You have all these things like… like Numerology, and Star Reading, and Secrets, and a lot of other stuff. And it has all the inherited domains that are stuff that sounds like fun, or like an adventure. And what did I get? I looked it up too, you know. I got Administration, and I got Judgment, and Knowledge. Not like the discover-stuff-and-invent-things knowledge. No, I get the read-stuff-somebody-else-wrote-and-remember-it kind of knowledge. And you don't want to know the inherited domains. Teaching." Tia stomped and huffed. "The mark tells me I get to stay somewhere and tell others not to do fun stuff."

Luna blinked. "When did you look it up?"

"During winter. It was all written in Canon's Domains of the Soul." Tia sighed. "I was thinking that maybe Chryssi could get a Cutie Mark too, and then I looked at the scrolls in the library. There wasn't much except for Canon's writings."

"Canon, huh?" Luna tapped her chin with a hoof. "Didn't Master Sottile say that he was–" Her voice became deeper, ready for her wonderful imitation of their teacher."–an old mule with his horn so high up in his own plot that he would choke on his farts if he didn't love himself so damn much."

"I…when did Master Sottile say that? Why am I never around when it happens?" At least it seemed that she had finally stopped grumbling about the mark. "Well, it doesn't matter. He still has written all that stuff and it makes sense and I have this mark and by Harmony, I remembered all that stuff and he was right!" And she had begun again.

Luna sighed, sat down beside in front of her sister and hugged her. She still wanted to prance around and wiggle her behind, but there seemed to be something slightly more urgent to take care of. "I think your mark is awesome and nice and don't listen to that stupid pony, Canon. And didn't you want to be a queen? The mark kinda seems the right one for that."

"But I wanted to be a witch-queen, or a warrior-queen, not a… a queen of scrolls or whatever."

"You can be the queen of the sun." Luna snickered. "And I can be the queen of the moon, and then we can rule everything for half a day at a time."

"Snrk." Snorts were a good thing. They could be angry and the prelude to some scuffle, but this seemed to be the other kind. Tia giggled and said, "Yeah, we can do that." She pulled out of the hug and ruffled Luna's mane. There would be retribution for that, later. "You are a silly sister, Lulu."

The column of black flesh stood in the middle of the laboratory, its roots reaching deep down in the floor and the earth beneath it. It hadn't changed since the little bug had crawled out from it, a shard of Something Else grafted onto this world.

Fidelis didn't like it. At all.

Below the smell of decay and putrefaction that had been omnipresent at the beginning, there had been another odor. He was probably the only one who had perceived it, and even then it had been something vague, barely present, deeply unnerving. It had made the work he had to do to rebuild the cistern in a place where Master Sottile could study the thing unpleasant and slow, taking many months and still not finished.

Somehow, he suspected Master Sottile had not come to look at the state of the work, though. The old stallion had come down the stairs many hours ago, had taken a seat on one of the stone cubes in front of the column, and hadn't moved since then.

It didn't disturb Fidelis. He moved two pebbles on the circle carved in the stone plate on the table in front of him and considered the results. They seemed to match what he felt from the stone in his paw. It was a young one. Fresh from the farm, unbound to stories in the earth. It would make a fine addition to the tale here.

With his claw, he began to trace the syllable on the smooth surface. A smile crept on his muzzle. Ponies may move the sun, the sky, and the plants, but among Masons his paws were the target of envy. It was a bit of a shame that so few of his kind seemed interested in the finer points the Art, there was so much… what was the word the Master used? Potential.

With the last line connecting back to the whole, it was time to let the pattern rest. He carefully placed the rock in a bucket full of sand, tapped three times on each side pointing at one of the six earth directions, and covered it with some heavy, black soil. His work was done for now, he had just to break a loaf of bread to end the day.

Master Sottile still sat still, lost in contemplation of the ugly column, his mind probably wandering the infinite paths of his craft.

He had to leave. Having a non-Mason on the building site after the bread had been broken was asking for trouble. Even if it was Master Sottile.

"What bothers you?" He wouldn't simply throw him out, that much respect had to be given. For now. "That thing won't talk."

"The fillies got their marks. Sun and Moon." Master Sottile didn't move.

"I heard. Saw them earlier. Luna showed me her butt, Celestia not so much. I'm going to prepare little gifts."

Master Sottile nodded, his first movement in a while. "That is nice. They will love it."

"They will. But that has nothing to do with the thing there." Fidelis sighed and sat down at Master Sottile's side. "It's not alive. Not even like rocks."

"Maybe. Or maybe we are not looking at it in the right way."

A brief glance at the stallion told Fidelis that Master Sottile was less lost in his thoughts than he seemed. His eyes were focused, and his jaw clenched. "What answers about the marks are you seeking from that thing?"

"No answers about the marks. I seek answers about the future. You see, for a while, I thought that our little Luna and Celestia weren't the ones. That they were just wonderful fillies we had to prepare for the world. I thought so because of Chrysalis. Because she is such a strange being that one would think the Vision would mention her. You know, a creature coming out from a hole in the air seems to be the kind of detail one shouldn't omit." Master Sottile sighed and covered his eyes with his hooves. "And then the marks are those of the Vision. And I have no idea what we should do. What is Chrysalis? Is she a menace? Is she a catalyst? Is she a trial? Is she simply a foal? She had no idea what Harmony was, nor how the world works. She is dangerous, and yet she seems the beginning of a parable about how we should give every creature a chance."

Fidelis pointed a paw at the column. "I don't like it, but I like Chryssi even if she came out of that. She tries, and I think she's honest in doing so." Fidelis scratched his chin. "I think you are making it too complicated. You said it seemed a parable. Maybe it is. Treat her like that. It worked for now."

There was a moment of silence, then Master Sottile looked from behind his hooves. "And what if she's something else?"

His joints creaked as Fidelis stood up. He stretched his arms, then held his paw out to the stallion. "Then we will have to trust Harmony."