Applejack paused. Then she blinked, rubbed an eye, readjusted her hat.
“...You’re joking.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s joking,” Rainbow Dash added. The pained tone of her voice didn’t help. “You’re joking, right? That’s not…”
Fluttershy sighed. “Look. Everypony here, we...we would have, y’know...that would have happened with ponies we care about, right?”
“...That includes you, dear.” Rarity replied. “Don’t you think we would have tried to protect you?”
Fluttershy squeezed her hoof around a lock of her mane and blinked a little longer than was necessary. “I know you would have. But I don’t think you would have been the only creature who might have tried to help.”
Rarity’s ears flicked. “I’m not exactly following, dear.”
“You don’t think that there’s anycreature else who would have tried to protect me if something awful happened? Somecreature powerful and who didn’t want to see me hurt? Somecreature that would have protected me as best he could if he felt I was in danger, and could have been at my side in seconds in an emergency?”
Rarity blinked. Then, after a pause, she sighed and looked down at her cards. “...And he’s not here, is he?”
“He’s not.” Fluttershy shook her head. “And if I was...if I was gone, he would be with me. But he’s not. So I’m...I’m just somepony’s imagination, I think. Like Starlight. Trying to tell them something important.”
Silence.
Fluttershy sighed. “...I’m tired. I just...I’m going to take my turn now.”
******************************************
There needed to be life. Even after everything broke down, even after everypony and everycreature and everything was...was gone, there needed to be something else that came from that. That’s how life worked. It’s how Equestria worked. It’s how every planet worked.
Ecoline did its own work on that. It discovered how to rebuild mushrooms, and spread them around the greener things while it worked on other decomposers. It learned how to create, raise and release all kinds of herbivores, too: cows, goats, sheep, deer, rabbits, beaver…
The secrets of the sapient mind weren’t known to Ecoline yet. They couldn’t recreate themselves, or bring back what Equestria lost. But they would learn. They could help. All they needed was time.
And maybe they wouldn’t have all of the time that they needed, but Ecoline wasn’t Mars. Nature would find its own way. And, in the greater scheme of Mars, that was all that was really needed.
******************************************
“That’s my turn.” Fluttershy set her cards down. “It’s your turn, Applejack.”
“Fluttershy, I…” Applejack faltered. “If you need somepony to—”
“I don’t.” Fluttershy gave Applejack a sad little smile. “I’m not afraid anymore. I can’t be. There’s nothing left for me to be afraid of.”
“That’s the point.” Applejack shivered. “This ain’t—”
“It’s how things are meant to be.” Fluttershy sighed. “I don’t think it will hurt. I don’t think I’ll notice when it happens, really. I can say what I need to say, and then...even at the end of everything, I still get to play one last game with my friends. Spend a little more time with them. It’s...it’s not so bad.”
“Fluttershy…”
“The dead ponies need to go where they need to go. I shouldn’t...they shouldn’t stay here just because of us. That’s not fair. Please, Applejack.”
Fluttershy leaned over the table and rested her hoof on top of Applejack’s, looking right into Applejack’s eyes. The steely glint in her eyes was gone, but the resolution, the determination, the acceptance remained.
Fluttershy sighed, then smiled again. “Take your turn. We need to finish the game. Everything will be okay.”
Applejack returned eye contact. Her face crumpled and her eyes sank back to the board. But, after a few seconds of silence, Applejack played a card.
******************************************
There weren’t many places left to go.
The other planets? They had their own colonies, their own business t’take care of. Didn’t make sense for Applejack to set up stuff t’get any more goods.
Mars? Well, they weren’t gonna touch most of it. They’d have to take things slow-like, get all this stuff settled in where things would be livable. Filly steps, an’ all that.
It couldn’t hurt to set up a lil’ place on Phobos, though. Nothin’ grand, but it’d give the folks on Mars just a lil’ more space to live in. An’ ponies, they were startin’ to grow even more. They’d got enough stuff around that they couldn’t really live out on Mars without protection, but it definitely coulda been worse out there. Started to seem almost Equestria-like at times.
Applejack just wanted folks to live. It...it never stopped feelin’ bad that almost everypony had to age, if nothin’ else. It...it stunk that ponies had t’die an’ be gone forever. But...but she needed t’accept that as they way things are. An’ maybe, amidst all this livin’ stuff, she might get t’feel like she could accept it again.
******************************************
Applejack rubbed her eyes. “An’ that’s...that’s me for the turn. Don’t got much else left t’do.”
Starlight paused. “I don’t...Applejack, if it helps, I’m not sure that—”
“It don’t help all that much. But I don’t mind the thought.” Applejack sighed. “Rainbow Dash?”
“I’m just, uh...I’m just heating things up on my turn.” Rainbow Dash took a breath. “Nothing else I can do.”
Starlight Glimmer tilted her head slightly as she stared at Rainbow Dash. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. You and Fluttershy...you want us to go to the end, right? And this is what my setup’s supposed to help me do, so...yeah. It’s time for it to end, I think. Uh, your turn, right?”
“Improving my launch pad on Triton and increasing my mining operations.” Starlight sighed. “I don’t think I can pull anything educational out of that. Rarity?”
“Treating the atmosphere on Mars and establishing a trading hub on the moon.” Rarity set her cards down. “Fluttershy’s turn.”
“...Is somethin’ the matter, Sugarcube?” Applejack ventured.
“Yes.” Rarity gritted her teeth for a second. “I’m rather disdainful of ponies avoiding their narratives at this stage in the game.”
Starlight blinked. “I really don’t have anything—”
“You have clues, buried inside of you. Rainbow Dash has clues too, apparently.” Rarity’s voice took on a sharp tone. “There’s letting actions lie because there’s nothing to explain, and there’s letting actions lie because there’s a fear of progressing a narrative.”
“Fear?” Starlight scoffed. “Why would I—”
“Because for all your talking about needing to push things forward, you’ve yet to contribute anything. You’ve skipped contribution several times over. This isn’t conducive to reaching a revelatory conclusion.”
“What if it’s really—”
“You would try.” Nostrils flared, Rarity looked over at Fluttershy. “Would you be a dear and...?”
“Of course.” Fluttershy nodded, flipped through her cards and began.
******************************************
Twelve percent of the atmosphere was oxygen.
It was insufficient. The percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere that was healthy was twenty-one percent for ponies. And while the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere was consistently twenty-one percent on equestria, it didn’t feel that way all the time.
Some ponies lived way up high, in mountainous regions. At fifteen hundred meters in the air, the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere felt as if it was at seventeen and one half percent. Ponies in these areas grew used to it; ponies traveling there grew very dizzy, quite uncomfortable, and unwell for some time without assistance.
At twenty-five hundred meters in the air, the atmosphere felt as if it was a little under fifteen and a half percent. This was still, technically, safe. A pony might eventually get used to conditions like these. But if it was uncomfortable at fifteen hundred meters in the air to a newcomer, it was certainly more than uncomfortable at twenty-five hundred meters. Certainly unsafe to take in all at once. Perhaps ponies were spoiled, too accustomed to having oxygen artificially created, artificially distributed, artificially managed to keep everypony comfortable and working to the best of their ability. Twenty-five hundred meters in the air most likely wasn’t.
At the current concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere, it would be as if everypony was living forty-five hundred meters in the air.
This was not merely unhealthy; it was unsafe. It was dizzying and disorienting at best; at worst, it could be incapacitating, crippling. Ponies deeply unaccustomed to the sudden shift in oxygen, or ponies of a sickly constitution, might very well die if moved too quickly to such heights.
And yet, twelve percent oxygen was all that existed outside. Even with temperatures warm enough that ice was starting to melt, and water—dazzling, shimmering, eminently captivating water— now flowed through the surface of Mars, it was still far too unsafe to open the domes of the cities and let ponies finally move freely. The outside world was beautiful, but it was the beauty of the mythical sirens, whose sweet tones drove ponies to insanity and violence.
Ecoline could not make everything better with a bedtime wish. But they could study, could experiment, and could learn how to make things better. They cultivated fungus, spread grasses, redeveloped hearty and beautiful strains of flowers to dot the greener parts of the planet’s surface. Soon they would have shrubbery. Soon, they might even have trees.
But best of all, Ecoline could bring animals back, too. And it was more mind-straining effort, but at last it was done: certain strains of ants, finally, began to walk upon Martian plant life. But if ants were helpful to the greenery and pleasant to watch, there was something far nicer to look at, and even more helpful when it came to spreading beautiful things and using those beautiful Martian flowers.
For the first time in two hundred and seventy years, the air began to hum with the sweet sounds of colonies of happy, healthy bees.
******************************************
“And that’s how things are coming to pass on Mars. And that’s how things were on Equestria. And…”
Fluttershy exhaled and closed her eyes. She had smiled before, all sorts of smiles; but on the train, at that moment, her smile was serene. Her smile was almost spiritual, as if connected with some distant shore on a distant planet on an unheard-of star, remote and alone and beautiful.
It was the smile of a pony entirely at peace.
“That’s how things will be,” Fluttershy said without opening her eyes. “That’s a lesson we knew from the very start. Things have ended, and new things may begin. And the cycle is beautiful.”
“Isn’t...wasn’t I talking about beauty before?” Rarity paused. “I don’t know that…”
“You talked of beauty, yes. But it wasn’t the beauty of life. Not here, not now. Your beauty was elsewhere; progressive beauty, ascending beauty, the beauty of the imagination. Not the beauty of here, and now.” Fluttershy giggled. “I think, um...I think it’s the sort of beauty that both you and Applejack had all along. Just not...just not complete.”
Silence.
“Does that…” Applejack gulped. “Does that mean we’re…?”
“I don’t know.” Fluttershy turned towards Applejack; no longer smiling, but still eminently calm. “Do you feel like you don’t exist? Or do you feel dead?”
“I’m...I’m not sure.” Applejack stared at the game board. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think of all this.”
“You knew before, when you didn’t know the nature of things. Why are you scared now?” Fluttershy leaned over the table again; once again, her hoof slid over Applejack’s. “All things end. New things come from endings. The only way to make this happen is if you play, Applejack. You can’t make wonderful things if you never work at them.”
Applejack fidgeted. She flicked her tail. She stared at Fluttershy, then Starlight Glimmer, then Rainbow Dash, then Rarity, and, finally, back to Fluttershy.
“Do you need me to help play your cards?” Fluttershy probed.
“...nah. I can...I can do it. Yeh. Like you said, there ain’t no way…”
******************************************
...There weren’t no way to not be afraid of it all.
It hadn’t struck the family that Applejack had made for the longest time: not for everypony workin’ their hardest tryin’ to make their own dreams come true, an’ all that jazz. Everypony was too busy thinkin’ about what needed to be done, what they had to get done, what they dreamed of, that there weren’t hardly any time to realize a pony didn’t have to be scared of the big things ‘til they were on their deathbed. An’ sometimes, not even then.
But some ponyfolk, the wisest kind, saw at th’ end of things that it was time to let go. Nothin’ stays forever, an’ some of those nothin’-stayers become new things all over again.
Applejack learned that from Fluttershy. From Ecoline. An’ Applejack, now after everythin’ else, tried t’help with all that. They took them’ flowers an’ them grasses and bushes an’ whatall else, an’ they helped plant ‘em too, right next to all that beautiful water in all them lakes. They...they built better schools t’help folks learn more about the environment. Not jes’ the scientists, but all them little colts an’ fillies, too. Gave everypony a chance t’learn about all things bright an’ beautiful about the world around ‘em.
The sun seemed downright friendly, now. The atmosphere seemed a lil’ better, what with all them magnets an’ stuff keepin’ the radiation out and keepin’ th’ atmosphere in. It was almost kinda warm, out there. Oxygen at fourteen percent.
Wouldn’t be long before ponyfolks could see that for ‘emselves.
Wouldn’t be long ‘fore it was time to let everythin’ go.
An’ it was time to make peace with that. That was okay.
******************************************
Applejack tilted her hat back and took a deep breath before turning to Fluttershy. “Did I...did I do okay in th’ end?”
“I think so.” Fluttershy nodded. “I think that was very beautiful.”
The barest twitch of Rarity’s head was the closest she got to a nod. Rainbow Dash followed suit: much more obvious in its motions, but much more fake in its warmth.
Starlight Glimmer said nothing at all.
“I guess...I guess that’s what I was supposed to do in th’ end. Embrace my...do the whatever. Got t’give the hints ponies need.”
“Sort of came full circle, didn’t it?” Starlight chuckled. “I guess—”
“You guess wrong,” Fluttershy replied, matter-of-factly.
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Okay, seriously, what’s gotten into you? You talk yourself into non-existence, then—”
“Then I accepted things I was wondering, when trying not to think about how everypony hated me. I accepted that sometimes bad things happen. I accepted that this could be worse than bad. And it was. But these aren’t ends, Starlight. They’re beginnings, for the ponies who died.” Fluttershy pointed a hoof at Starlight. “And I don’t think you want to recognize that.”
“Me?” Starlight pointed at her chest. “Why in Equestria wouldn’t I want to do that?”
“Because of what happens if we don’t get it right. If ponies want to pass on, what do they get if they don’t pass on?”
“Uh, I think I remember this from Daring Do. More of the same?” Rainbow Dash replied. “Like, their spirits just kind of stick around forever until Daring Do figures out what she needs to do in order to break their curse. That’s what happens in—”
“Exactly. They get to be stuck where they are until they pass on, forced to do the same thing they’ve been doing since they were first bound somewhere. And in here, I-I think that means we get to play the game forever, over and over and over again. But we’d be bound to figure it out eventually, and bound to escape, so I can think of only one reason why anypony might try not to make that happen. Everypony?” Fluttershy straightened up. “I don’t think this is the first time we’ve played this game. And I think that might have been on purpose.”
The table fell silent.
“I…” Starlight took a deep breath and glared at Fluttershy. “You realize that you, the pony who abruptly decided to bandwagon information given by me, the pony who’s been explaining every major thing to everypony here, is accusing me of being misleading?”
“I don’t think you were in the beginning. I wasn’t, either.” Fluttershy sucked in a mouthful of air. “None of us knew anything. I think that if we’re forced to do things over and over again in order to get it right, it’s something that we have to relearn every time, too. But I think that we might have been able to figure it out without you, too.”
“Bull.”
“You weren’t the first pony to push for the fact that we needed to keep going in order to learn about things. That was Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash also pointed out that ponies acted strangely around here, and that things weren’t quite the same as they would have normally been. And Rainbow Dash also pointed out that Equestria was gone.”
“Yeah, but what about the pony that realized that some of us were spirits? Do you think we wouldn’t be stuck here perpetually if it weren’t for that?”
“You didn’t bring it up at first.” Fluttershy snapped. “Said that you were ‘thinking’ about things until Applejack brought up the death possibility. I think we were close, and that was when you decided to co-opt the narrative. That way, you could point us in whatever direction you wanted once we didn’t have any time left.”
“And we don’t have any time left!” Starlight snapped back. “The oxygen’s liveable, the radiation is manageable, we’ve got water, and the temperature’s almost—”
“Here.”
Fluttershy and Starlight’s conversations died in their throat. Applejack and Rarity stopped watching them. Two pairs broke from their respective fascinations, and turned towards the odd mare out in their group.
An odd mare out holding up a single card, depicting the release of a massive meteor full of ammonia and water. With the water, civilization could grow a little further past its limited boundaries; with the ammonia to help warm up Mars’ atmosphere to the point of comfort, the game would come to a definitive conclusion.
The odd mare out held that definitive conclusion less than a meter above the table. The mare’s wings were splayed; trembling slightly, but unwilling to bow.
The mare’s right temple throbbed. Her hoof shook. She blinked, then blinked again.
“It’s my turn. There are things I want to say.”