//------------------------------// // Chapter 11 // Story: The Archetypist // by Cold in Gardez //------------------------------// Days passed. I started wearing the shades and sunhat and blindfold constantly, even indoors. It felt like the sun was everywhere, warming me and filling me with its brilliance. A wonderful sensation, to be sure, but the glare could be a bit much. It was better when I looked straight at the sun. Even in my castle, beneath a dozen floors of crystal, through the smoked lenses and the blindfold and even my closed eyelids, I could see it perfectly. When I focused on it, the rest of the world went away, and all my cares vanished for a few minutes. I could forget the chaos that had invaded our lives, upending the small, weird, perfect town I’d grown to love. I probably could’ve fixed my eyes with a bit of effort, but I had more pressing issues to take care of. One was sitting across from me. Starlight was orange today. Not her best color, in my opinion, but I had several orange friends so it seemed kind of heartless to say I didn’t like it. Though her new coat color matched the light amber of her mane and her deep chocolate eyes, it all felt wrong. I just lacked the will to tell her so. She had pancakes. Trixie also had pancakes. Starlight slid the tureen of syrup over to her marefriend, and their hooves lingered together for seconds longer than necessary. Their eyes met, and Starlight blushed. Trixie leered. It wasn’t so long ago that I took my breakfasts alone. Before I came to Ponyville – before I had friends worth sharing my life with. And I didn’t miss those days. But at that moment I really could have done without Trixie in my life. “You look good today,” Trixie purred. “I love that color on you.” Starlight beamed at her. That’s the only way I can describe it; a smile of such transcendent joy that her whole face glowed. For a moment it seemed to me as bright as the sun. This was a mare hopelessly in love. A deep sadness washed over me like a wave at the realization; that Starlight had someone more important in her life now. We’re supposed to be happy when our friends find love, aren’t we? Maybe I was just a bad pony. “Think you’ll keep it?” I asked. Starlight jumped, startled from her lovestruck reverie. Her hooves pawed at the table for a moment, nearly knocking her pancakes askew, and she finally smiled at me. “Probably not,” she said. “There’s too many colors in the world, you know? Why settle for just one?” “The rest of us do.” She shrugged. “For now.” For now. If the past week had a motto, that would be it. Everything felt ephemeral, teetering on the edge of some precipitous change. Discord’s curse had upended everything I thought I knew. Fluttershy. Applejack. Rarity. Trixie. Starlight. Something was happening to each of them. For some it was obvious – for others, more subtle. And that, perhaps, was the most frightening change of all. I could only rely on myself. Even Starlight was drifting away from me. Trixie and Starlight were chattering about something. I tuned back in just in time to see Trixie perform another of her tricks: she peeled her face away like a mask, revealing Fluttershy’s shocked face beneath. Again she pulled the mask away, and she became a startled changeling. Again: Princess Celestia. Again: my own face. Finally: nothing at all. A blank space stared out from beneath her stage magician’s hat. It floated in air above her hollow cape. Starlight clapped. I clapped, because it was polite, and frankly impressive for anypony who wasn’t a unicorn. Not that I knew any unicorns who could perform magic like that. I guess it was just impressive, period. I wondered where her dreams would end. I finished my pancakes and set off to survey Ponyville. I flew lazy circles around the town. From the air it didn’t seem like much had changed. Emptier, maybe. Not as many ponies in the market. Or maybe ponies were just sleeping in because it was the weekend. Or it was just random – not everything had to be the work of Discord. Seeing his hidden hand behind everything was a shortcut to the rubber room in Ponyville General Hospital’s psychiatric ward. The sun baked through my coat and my feathers, pleasantly burning me. I made a game of pretending the sunshine was rain, and the clouds giant umbrellas, and I swooped through their shadows to dry myself of the light. Soon my muscles hummed with energy, aching from the unusual exertion of constant flight for flight’s sake. It was a silly, ephemeral joy that accomplished nothing, and I let myself revel in it. Let future Twilight worry about all the problems that awaited upon landing. Did any pegasi dream of flying forever? Of trading their hawk or eagle wings for those of an albatross and slipstreaming along the thermals, rising higher and higher until the world became nothing but a patchwork mosaic of farms and forest and other dreams? That didn’t sound so bad. I closed my eyes behind my shades and let the sunlight wash away my cares. I didn’t bother to land at Fluttershy’s cottage. It was clear from the air that nopony was home. The windows were open. Thin cotton drapes blew out and tangled in the branches that grew along the walls. The thick grass growing atop her roof had a ramshackle, wild look to it, as though in their master’s absence the plants were making a break for freedom. A flock of songbirds burst from the weeping boughs of the willow beside the stream. They circled around me, riding the eddies of my huge wings, then turned as one toward the Everfree, quickly vanishing into the mists that always concealed it. I wondered, briefly, if they could find Fluttershy for me. I heard a rude squawk and glanced over to see Fluttershy’s raven shadowing me. He was large enough that I could feel his eddies teasing the tips of my primary feathers. I banked to see if he would follow, and he did. “Where’s your master hiding, Mister Raven?” I mumbled under my breath. He didn’t answer. We flew a few more laps around the meadow together, and then went our separate ways. * * * “We could go back to Princess Luna,” Starlight said. “She might be able to find Fluttershy more easily than we can.” She walked beside me down the street. Lunch was just a memory and a greasy, happy lump in my gut. They’d made the mistake of asking where I wanted to go, and of course the answer was the Hayburger. Really, they should’ve known by now. “Normally one goes to the police for missing ponies,” Trixie said. Oh, yes, Trixie was with us. Because Starlight now came as part of a set. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded Trixie so much if not for the fact that she was now tainting all of my Starlight time. For once, Trixie wasn’t wearing her silly cape and hat. I’d gotten used to seeing her without them in my castle, but for her to venture out in public without them was unusual. Leaving them behind hadn’t dimmed her grating overconfidence, though – she was as comfortable with her nakedness as any pony we passed in the street. “They’ll keep an eye out for her if I ask, but they won’t go searching for her unless there’s some sign that something happened,” I said. “Luna can search for her dreams.” We ambled through Ponyville, taking our time, walking nowhere in particular. Everywhere I looked, I saw things that were off. The Inkpot and Tea Sets store, closed years ago when its owner died, was open again. A sign in the window advertised for a grand re-opening ceremony. Across the street, vendors were setting out the last of the day’s produce for the afternoon crowd. There were fresh greens and pungent garlic and razor-spined cacti and an absolute lack of apples. “Or you could just ask Luna to fix everything,” Trixie said. “Isn’t that what princesses are for?” “We do other things occasionally,” I said. I hadn’t meant to sound annoyed, but they must’ve caught my clipped tones. We were silent the rest of the way to Rarity’s boutique. The little bell above Rarity’s door rang as we entered. A moment later her voice echoed out from the dressing room: “Good afternoon! Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where everything is—” the mare herself emerged into the lobby, and her demeanor instantly switched from business owner to friend at the sight of us. “Oh, darlings! Please, come in, come in. Get out of that dreadful heat. Sit down, won’t you? I’ll get some tea started.” Starlight tried to help, but Rarity had none of it. She shoved Starlight and Trixie together on the chaise lounge and set me on a cushion beside them. The tea, when it arrived, was a jasmine blend. Trixie held it with her hooves, of course, while the rest of us used our magic. If Rarity seemed surprised by her lack of a horn, she hid it well. Rarity hadn’t stopped creating, by the look of the display room. The original dress was gone, but in its place were dozens of smaller accent pieces – saddles and bridles and hats and bows and vests, all done in the same mosaic style reminiscent of a butterfly. Even behind my blindfold and shades I could see them sparkling in the afternoon light. Any one of them, by itself, would instantly become the highlight of my own wardrobe, if I cared enough about fashion to buy one. “You’ve been busy,” I noted. “Is it being busy when you’re having fun?” Rarity asked. “Because I’ve had the time of my life making all these little pieces. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to go back to making items on commission. Just the thought of sewing something else hurts.” “They’re all so beautiful,” Starlight said. “It’s almost hard to believe a pony made them, you know? They’re just so… perfect.” We all spent a moment admiring the collection, then turned as one toward Trixie. She caught onto our attention and shrugged. “They’re pretty good.” A smirk pulled up one corner of Rarity’s lips. “High praise from the Great and Powerful Trixie, I’m sure.” She took a sip of her tea and turned toward me, and for the first time I noticed how the light reflected in her eyes. They had taken on a faceted appearance, like those of a crystal pony. Or a dragonfly. “I assume, since it’s the three of you, this is not just a social call?” I shook my head. “This curse, or whatever it is Discord has done, it’s getting worse. Ponies’ dreams are leaking into the real world somehow. I think you’ve started to see it yourself.” “Mm.” Rarity made a quiet, noncommittal noise. “I saw Applejack the other day. She seemed quite happy.” “Did you try buying apples from her? I don’t think she cares much about that anymore.” Rarity shrugged. “That’s her prerogative, isn’t it? We shouldn’t expect ponies to always continue along the same path in life, simply because it makes us comfortable. If we never changed, where would you be, Twilight?” My wings fluffed a bit. I tried to keep them down, but they always seemed to know when ponies were talking about them. “I’d still be a unicorn, and that would be fine. I had a meaningful life and wonderful friends and—” “No,” Starlight interrupted. She swallowed heavily. “She means before. If you never changed, you’d still be that recluse in your tower in Canterlot. And I’d still be a tyrant slowly killing all of the ponies who trusted me. And Trixie would be alone, always running from town to town, amazing ponies and making them hate her at the same time.” I glanced at Trixie. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth half-open as if she wanted to respond. But she kept her silence, and in a motion so small I almost missed it, her lightly shaking hoof crept across the cushion to Starlight, who grabbed it firmly with hers. In a tiny, deep, hidden part of my soul, the place where I tossed all the feelings and thoughts that ashamed me, a little flame of that old hatred smoldered and burned. My heart beat harder, shaking my hollow bones, and a dream – a wish – passed through me, to reach up and tear their hooves apart and take back— “Well said.” Rarity’s refined tones yanked me back to the present. I tore my gaze away from Starlight and Trixie’s twined hooves just in time to see Rarity watching me with a smile. A hot, heavy shame flushed my face. Of course she knew. “Change can be good or bad, can’t it, Twilight? It’s what we make of it.” My throat was dry, and I took a sip of the tea. “We should strive to make the best of it, then.” No one had a response to that, and we lapsed into silence. Rarity and I were such good friends that silence was comfortable between us, and of course Starlight and I spent entire hours together, reading or studying, with only a few words ever spoken. But to have all of us here together, and Trixie in the mix besides, turned the silence into a tense, living thing, slowly growing, swelling up from the floor and tapping at us with thousands of little legs like centipedes, demanding that one of us finally devour it. I licked my lips and searched for something banal to say, if only to break the tension that slowly squeezed my chest and— Starlight broke first. “You haven’t seen Fluttershy, have you?” “I have, in fact. Just yesterday.” “How was she?” I asked. “Was Discord with her?” “Oh, she was wonderful, darling. Normally she’s such a quiet mare, but she looked so energized, almost wild. Beautiful, too. You know, I thought for a moment she might be pregnant, because they say pregnant mares have that glow? But I asked her and she just laughed and said I was being silly. Fluttershy said that! Where does a mare like that suddenly find such confidence?” In dreams. I didn’t say it aloud, but we were all thinking it. “And Discord?” Rarity shook her head. “Sorry, no sign of him. I didn’t think to ask her, either. If she comes back I will.” No progress, then. But a little weight lifted from my shoulders nevertheless. Fluttershy was fine. I’ve never lost a friend, and I can’t imagine what I would do if Discord’s foolish pranks hurt her. “Thank you. Let her know we need to find him as soon as possible,” Starlight said. “Of course.” Rarity set her tea down. “I don’t suppose the three of you would like to stay for lunch? I can make us sandwiches, or we can go out—” “We already ate," Trixie said. She spoke quietly, almost like she was apologizing. "But actually, Trixie has one more thing to ask. She… I was hoping you could make something for me.” “Oh?” Rarity leaned forward. “A bespoke item? Well, normally I have strict limits on commissions, but for a friend of a friend I suppose I could make an exception. What were you thinking of?” Trixie reached into her saddlebags, lifting out a small box secured with twine. She set it down on the table and pulled off the lid. Inside, neatly folded, were her star-speckled cape and pointed hat. “These have served me well for years,”  she said. She brushed the fabric with her hoof. “But they are worn and patched and tired, now. It’s time for them to rest. Can you make me new ones?” “Oh! Trixie…” Rarity pulled the box closer and felt the cloth within. “Well, this is quite something. You really want me to—” “Of course. You’re the best, aren’t you?” “Well.” Rarity made a show of looking away. “I wouldn’t say that, necessarily. But, well, I know a thing or two about sewing…” “They say clothes make the mare, don’t they?” Trixie asked. “If that’s true, and if you are as good as Starlight tells me, then I’d rather have you making me than anypony else.” And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she stood, walked over to Rarity, and placed a kiss full on her lips. I gawked at her. I waited for the slap, or Starlight’s protest. Anything to happen. Instead Rarity just smiled. She touched her hoof to her lips, then looked down at the box. “I’ll get started right away.” I looked at Starlight, expecting an explosion. Instead she just watched them both with a small smile on her lips. Celestia, what was wrong with this town? I shook my head. “Are you still dreaming of butterflies, Rarity?” Focus returned to Rarity’s eyes, and she nodded. “I am. They’re still hard to remember, of course, but I have quite the dream collection of them now. I think, I mean. Hundreds, maybe thousands. You know, silk comes from butterflies? They spin a cocoon in their larval stage. How odd to think that the most valuable thread in the world comes from a simple insect?” Could a pony turn into a butterfly? What would that look like? I found myself staring at Rarity’s sharp, penetrating, faceted eyes. If we didn’t find a way to stop this curse, I got the feeling we’d find out.