“To the end of Ponyville?”
“To its end and whatever comes after, Cheery.”
We clinked our champagne flutes and she downed hers. I stayed still first, studying my yellowed, distorted reflection in the glass instead, a greyed beige coat and glasses that didn’t hide the flaccid bags under my eyes. A bubble fizzed its way to the top, then the fruity drink was gone.
In a sense, the Wall was at least good at one thing. It was a neat trash can.
I threw the empty glass bottle, and poofed it went, down the otherworldly gullet. Like the rest of it. The town. The ponies. My life.
At least I had Cheerilee by my side, and about five other bottles of the finest champagne from the region. I popped another cork and refilled our glasses once more. This intimate party couldn’t stop there. The show had to go on.
“Where did you find them?” Cheerilee asked, admiring the beverage with a hint of a cross eye.
“Oh, you know, mayoral privilege,” I said, wiggling the content of my flute from side to side. I only caught her pressing look after a while. “Oh, come on, you damn well know. I just opened the Town Hall's safe.”
“So, you stole them?”
I pinched my lips together, eyes wide. I quickly cleared my throat and fixated on my drink. Anything to avoid her furrowed brows. “Don’t you think it’s weird we call them glasses?”
“Stop avoiding the topic, you thief...”
She laughed and returned my stare, and silence followed. I squirmed, my withers cold against the plaid cover we’d laid out over the ice. With the Wall mere hoofsteps away, occupying a prominent place at the foot of the slope where we sat, I could do nothing but close my eyes. To avoid hers and the nearby ghastly sight.
Only after a moment did I reopen myself to the world, the starry sky above me, and the abandoned houses at our backs. There was no escape from the feeling of her piercing eyes. They mirrored the lamplight while her ears twitched at each crackle of its small flame.
I wanted to kiss her but she had to ask her questions, that sly teacher.
“What do you mean?” she finally said.
“Well, you know…” I motioned my hoof in vague circles, “flutes are made of crystals, right? So why call them glasses?”
That shower thought earned me a guffaw and a raised eyebrow. Cheerilee wiped a smirk off her face, along with the glistening champagne moist on her lips. “You know crystal glasses aren’t made of actual crystals, May’? It’s just branding.” She gave me another look and pointed at my drink. “That’s lead glass.”
“There’s lead in my glassware!?” I protested, staring dubiously at my champagne. She hummed positively and I downed the glass in one gulp. “Better in me than in there touching that thing then.”
“I think you’re drunk.”
“I am.” I chuckled. “But I feel good. For once. Also I am just borrowing those bottles. I'm no thief.”
"Yeah, nah. You’re just another corrupt politician now." We shared a wicked smile, toasted to our demise, and sipped some more alcohol. Only after a while spent staring at the Wall standing massive before us did she spoke again, "You stole that book too?"
I frowned and looked down at the large pockets of my winter coat. The deepest one weighed against my side with the heavy leather book that filled it past its brim. I pulled it out and set it face up for Cheerilee to read by the lamplight.
"No," I said, quite unsure how to explain, "a mare brought it to me yesterday. She was from Canterlot, working with mister Sunburst on theories about the Wall.”
“What was her name?”
I cleared my throat and rubbed my cold muzzle. “Sunset Shimmer.”
“No way!”
I leaned back at the outburst. She quickly flicked the book cover open and revealed the inner inlay and the cursive inscription of the owner’s name. And the name of who had gifted it.
From Twilight Sparkle to Sunset Shimmer~
I scratched the bridge of my muzzle and threw Cheerilee a quizzical look. “You know her?”
“You have no idea how many times poor Sweetie Belle talked about that, and I quote, ‘weird pony from the mirror’ and her magic diary.” She sighed. " Poor Sweetie Belle…” Then her face scrunched up as she glared at the strange book. “I thought that weird mirror was in Twilight's castle, though."
I worked my jaw as I fought against the champagne-induced numbness and daze. "I don’t know either, sorry. That’s unicorn stuff. But she's Twilight's friend so… she sure found another way."
Confusion flashed over Cheerilee’s face. "Why did she give it to you?" she said only to grimace. "I mean, you know... it's not like we're important ponies in the great scheme of things, right? Why you..." She motioned her hoof, "and not Rarity or somepony else."
"Actually, Sunset’s been sharing the book with everypony. I wasn’t at the top of her list." I sighed, not really knowing why. Or rather, I did — Cheerilee and I were side characters of a story that was happening elsewhere, Canterlot for some, and inside the Wall for others in all likeliness. "She's been passing the book from pony to pony. You know… Well I’m telling you now. Miss Shimmer’s been staying in Equestria for some time. A gap year off of her life on the other side of the mirror."
Cheerilee waved her empty glass at me and I served her and myself another drink.
“You’ve ever seen yourself?” Cheerilee asked, fumbling the next words to clear up her request. “The one from beyond the mirror, I mean."
I would be lying if I wasn't skeptical of another me living in another world with, uhm, hands? But… "No. But I saw two Twilights. At once! That counts for sure."
Cheerilee burst out laughing, "Talk about an apocalyptic scene. Twice the number of villain magnets."
I laughed along as I lazily swished my champagne, playing with the eye-catching cloudy tears of alcohol that hugged and seeped against the inside of the glass. It was a good batch.
"She, eh, I mean Sunset, she told me to try it out," I said, pointing at the book. "She's cast spells on it, wrote down messages, stuff I don't much get, really. But she got nothing out of it. I guess she's waiting for somepony to stumble, make a mistake, and... have the book react?"
“Try what?”
“Well, talk to Twilight of course.” Earning nothing but another look of confusion, I poked at the book. “Twilight’s got her own book in her castle. Whatever you write in one comes up in the other. It’s like sending letters, just more… unicorn-y.”
Cheerilee flipped her way through the book, squinting to read under the lamp’s flickering light. I didn’t have to look down myself. I’d read it through and through. And what had first been a journal had turned in the last pages into a swath of questions, pleas, and complaints. And a striking absence of any answer.
Cheerilee downed her drink, laid the flute by her side, and picked the hefty book in her hooves. She gave it a shake, turned it upside down as if to expect something tumbling out maybe. Well, besides some photos and scrapbook dried flowers of course. Her face turned doubtful at first, then deeply resigned. I just shook my head.
“It’s supposed to glow if anything happens,” I said.
Cheerilee studied on the book’s adorned cover, its red and golden sun that caught the meagre lamplight. Until she dropped it back against my flank, sending my glass spilling over my coat. I was too far gone to care.
I waved the bottle next to the lamp, backlighting it to see it was empty, and so I threw it at the Wall. And sorely missed.
It slipped out of my hoof and thumped in the snow, dinging against the hard soil underneath. It didn’t break as it bounced its way down the snowy slope and both Cheerilee and I watched it roll till it settled at the edge of the cleared-out path that contoured the Wall. That was a terrible shot.
Cheerilee coughed in her hoof. “So what do you…”
Her words died behind her teeth. A frown crossed her face. Her eyes locked onto something behind me and I turned around.
A lamp was swaying, its handle firmly grasped through a thick scarf in a pony’s mouth. I squinted and caught a glimpse of blue eyes and a pink coat.
Pinkie was digging her way forward through a thick layer of snow, a bit further away down the same slope we sat on at the edge of the Wall. I followed her hooftraces back to the long row of empty houses. She stumbled a couple of times before she finally reached the shoveled path below us that ran along the Wall.
Once she’d stepped fully on the way, she dusted the snow that hugged her legs and looked up. Her head lifted high and her body rigid, she seized the gigantic black monster a few feet away.
She secured her lamp at her hoof to tighten the scarf around her face. She tied it once, twice, then a grunt escaped her lips and she pulled it off her head.
Her slick mane cascaded over her face, glistened with the orange tint of her light. She brushed her smooth mane behind her ears and rolled the scarf around her neck, adding layers till only her eyes and forehead were visible.
Seeming satisfied, she bowed down to bite through the scarf on the handle of her lamp.
No matter how far away we were, we still heard the sigh that escaped her teeth.
She turned around and walked the length of the bent pathway till she reached the section right below us and she passed by, not seeing up, or not caring. I was hoping for the former.
Then she reached the half-buried stump of a tree, cut down before the Wall would engulf its branches. Her chest rose and fell as she stopped to study the dead wood. She only glanced away to look at the Wall.
“Hey, Pinkie!” Cheerilee called, startling the aforementioned mare who stumbled back butt-first in a heap of snow.
She looked around and back, and up the slope until her eyes settled on our little late-night apéritif. She seized us with pinprick eyes that gleamed in her lamplight. Behind her scarf and with her teeth locked on the handle, they never creased with the hint of a smile. Only after a while did she nod back.
“Come here!” Cheerilee boomed, motioning her up. Pinkie took a step forward but stopped. “Come on!”
Pinkie had never hesitated with joining a group before. But then, she had just done so.
Securing her lamp between her teeth, she stepped off the track and into the snow, and traced her way up to us. Each footstep crunched and fell through the rigid layer of frost that draped the snow. Like crushing through scum-dried sand. After a quick struggle, she was by our side.
“Hello Mayor Mare. Hello Cheerilee. What… What are you two doing here?” she mumbled once her lamp sat next to ours. She stood still in the snow, not setting hoof over our wool cover. Instead, she looked us over until she locked onto the remaining champagne bottles, still stacked and full by my side, ready for consumption. “Ah.”
“Want some?” I asked. “We’re celebrating.”
“I don’t–”
“How’re you doing?” Cheerilee cut her, pushing our trash to leave an open spot on the plaid cover. She tapped the fabric, inviting Pinkie to sit.
“I’m– I’m fine,” she said, pushing away my offered glass of champagne. “Just a bit down, you know.”
She untightened her scarf and brushed her mane back as she sat, crooked over by the two lamps. Or rather, she dropped. Her rump thumped against the plaid sheet and sunk with it through the cracked cover of ice beneath. Her withers sunk deep into the snow under, dragging the plaid cover with them. She slumped on her back as both Cheerilee and I stumbled back or forth, caught off-guard. She flayed. We gasped. And everypony ate the snow.
Good Celestia, we laughed. We laughed loudly, Cheerilee and I.
Only Cheerilee and I.
At first.
Pinkie heaved and her eyes welled as we dragged her up and out of the hole she’d stuck herself in. But she was heavy and, with a few drinks in Cheerilee and I, she slipped out from our grasp.
As Pinkie dropped back into her snug butt-cave, Cheerilee stumbled after, and I with her.
As we lay atop each other, I heard giggles, laughs finally escaping Pinkie’s snow-matted face.
As her chest cracked up and down, her pale face smiled. And though our orange light painted stark the dark bags tugging at her eyes, I saw a sliver of happiness. We cracked up together, helped each other up. It lasted for a bit, if not a while.
After some times and once we’d calmed down, Pinkie and I exchanged a look, and timid, closed-lipped smiles. She swallowed and her attention drifted to Cheerilee, who promptly cleared her voice.
“What are you doing here?” my beautiful teacher asked. “It’s not like there’s much to do around.”
“I could ask you the same thing, ya know?” Pinkie retorted, a shrill dying at the back of her throat. She held a hoof to her mouth, letting it go to let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t raise my voice. I... I just wanted to be alone for a while.”
Cheerilee and I nodded and we invited her to sit by our sides. Insistent enough, we set a glass in her hooves and she gulped it in one single draw.
“She gave you the book too, eh?” Pinkie said, reaching out at the book discarded by my legs. She opened it, scurried a few pages, and snapped it shut. A frisson ran down her spine and she dropped the book back.
"Something's wrong, Pinkie?" I asked, a hoof on her shoulder.
"No, yes. Maybe? I don't really know. Every time I touch that book, it feels… weird. Like–"
"Like a doozie?" Cheerilee offered.
"Not really, I've not had one since that day last year." She tapped her lips, pondering what she was about to say. "It's like a hole, if you get me?"
We both shook our heads.
"Go on," Cheerilee said with a broad smile.
Pinkie looked down at her empty glass and I offered to refill it. She gladly accepted.
"I mean, ah! It's weird. It feels like nothing is right about this book. It's not a doozie. It's like… the opposite of a doozie. Like my guts are telling me something is supposed to happen, but it just doesn't. Like it's delayed or whatever, whatever should happen is, uhm, held back in a sense—You get me?"
“Not really,” I said, taking the book in my hooves. I flicked through the last pages again, dragging one of the lamps to my side to get a better view of the writing.
"I can't really say, Pinkie," Cheerilee mused after a short silence. "I'm just an earth pony, this whole shenanigan sure flies way above my head."
"I'm an earth pony too."
"Yeah, I know,” Cheerilee said with a giggle. “But you're Pinkie, you're different... and special. No offense."
Pinkie chortled and sipped her glass. "None taken."
"Held back, what do you mean?" I finally asked as I flipped back and forth with the last scribbled page the following blank one. "Do you mean Twilight could be calling out for us through the book but it doesn’t go through?"
Pinkie hummed, and tightened the scarf around her neck. "I don't know. Maybe? Maybe it's just the Wall. It takes but doesn’t give back? Or I'm tired and sad and alone... Everypony's gone to Canterlot or left. Even Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity, and... and..."
As her eyes welled up, Cheerille took the party pony in her legs and dragged her against her chest in a tight hug.
"There, there."
"I miss Rainbow Dash's pranks.” Pinkie sniffled. “Since the accident with Sweetie Belle, she's taken Scootaloo in. And she's way serious about it, about her, about helping the filly out. And..." She wiped the snot off her face with a loose end of her scarf, and pressed her ear against the cup of Cheerilee's neck. "There's no laughter anymore,” she said between two muffled sobs. “Only ponies being serious. All because of that damn Wall. It stole everything and now the world’s just so cold."
"Today's the first day of Spring," I said, swallowing a knot in my throat. "You know that?"
"Y– Yeah."
Cheerilee and I shared a smile, hers motherly, mine likely unsure. I was really bad at allegories.
"Well," I continued, "Sun'll be back soon, and with it warmth."
"Winter Wrap Up will be late without Twilight," Pinkie countered.
"Maybe," I said, scratching my chin. "But it will still come."
“I’m still… peeved at that book?” Pinkie said pensive before her eyes darted at the culprit.
Keeping Pinkie in a tight hug, away from reaching the book, Cheerilee leaned aside and picked it up instead. She glanced at it over Pinkie’s shoulder, and threw it on the ground.
“Then it’s a bad book, wouldn’t you agree?” she said.
“Uhm, maybe?” Pinkie replied with a frown. “Wait, why a book would be bad. It’s done nothing…” Her eyes squinched harder and she glowered at it. “Yeah, it’s bad because it’s done nothing!”
Pinkie gave it a gentle kick, Cheerilee was quick to imitate. And I… to pass more flutes filled with Champagne. And we drank.
And drank.
And threw bottles at the silent beast, the guest of honor of the now late night party. And though we were cold, hungry, and alone in its looming shadow, the moon long disappeared behind it, we still celebrated.
At some point we’d lit the dead trunk on fire, don’t ask me how. And we waltzed around it. Was it defiance against the Wall. Earnest yes but we were drunk. And drunkenness was the only left to appreciate. There was nothing else remaining in Ponyville.
A teacher. A prankster. A mayor. All crumbling under a year of hardships, sacrifices, and protracted hopes that had amounted to nothing.
And yet we danced. Or stumbled rather. Drunk like sailors through a timid storm we shambled and rumbled and squandered the last smiles we could spare.
Fits of dizziness would send us rolling in the snow, sometimes catching each other from falling into the monster’s gullet, nearby past the past overlooked by where a venerable tree had once stood, and now was bursting orange and yellow flame and an acrid smoke of wet wood as the ice congealed in its crack melted and seeped in its scars.
I kissed Cherrilee. I mean, we kissed a lot, I think. And at some point, my head turning, I fell back against the snowy slope, pierced my way through the thin layer of ice, and dragged Cheerilee with me.
Oh, we laughed. And cried. We cried a lot.
“It’s funny,” I coughed up snow after my chest stopped hurting a bit.
“I know,” Cheerilee replied.
“No, no,” I grumbled, shaking my head as if it would have been that easy to cast away the alcoholic daze. “The book. I’ve got a weird idea.”
I threw a glance over at Pinkie whose laughter and joy at us enterlacing died instantly at the mention of the hintless thing.
“What do you mean?” Cheerilee asked, pushing herself off of me and dragging me out of the snow.
I hiccuped, feeling the champagne heavy on my stomach. “The book might be glowing. No, no. I can see it on your faces. Bear with me.” I coughed up and cleared my throat. “The wall has swallowed everything we’ve thrown at it, everything that’s touched it. And we’ve assumed that it takes but never gives back, right?”
Pinkie gave me a cross-eye, rubbed her hoof over her face and frowned back. “What do you mean, Mayor?”
I glanced up at Cheerilee and gave my broadest smile. “The hypothesis is that the book glows when something is being written in it. But it stops when nopony is, right?”
“I still don’t get it,” Pinkie said.
“Me either, hun,” Cheerilee said.
“Well, what if the Wall gave back actually, but very slowly?” I offered. “The book wouldn’t glow. I mean. We wouldn’t see it glow, but it would be, at an infinitely small amount. Right?”
“I still don’t get it,” Cheerilee said, as Pinkie’s eyes grew to the size of saucers.
“What if it’s glowing right now?” I said, trying to keep myself from burping. “But we can’t see it because the message’s taking months to write?”
"Here!"
Pinkie rammed her hoof against the page where four letters hadn't yet finished being written.
"Four, F, I, T ?" Pinkie enunciated.
"Help," Cheerilee whispered, then gasped. "Somepony is writing this, right now!"
The hypothesis was right. The book was shining, albeit at a glacial pace. Though, the wall was good at taking, it couldn't hold everything back.
I turned to the Wall and studied it, working the rusty gears in my head to wrap my head around the implications.
Either the Wall merely retained information and trickled it out, or time was of the uptmost matter.
"Oh, no, Twily," Pinkie muttered, eyes locked on the book. "You've played with another time spell, have you!?"
I gulped down, my alcohol-impaired mind struggling to assess the best action sequence. I reeled, feel to the side, and emptied my stomach.
"I'm too old for this," I gurgled, looking away as Cheerilee rushed to my side and propped me up to my wobbly hooves.
"This isn't meant for anypony," she consoled back. "What do we do now?"
"Pinkie!" I called and she snapped the book close. I looked at her tail, not shaking, her mane, not waving, her ears, unflopping. "I'm going in."
None of her physical features started doozying, and I smiled. I had a charted course. But...
"I need somepony to stay back," I said, "to inform Celestia about this all."
"I'm not leaving you," Cheerilee protested.
"I'm saving my friend too," Pinkie agreed.
"Okay, okay," I muttered. "Think, think."
Time was of the essence. If it flew slower inside we had all the time in the world, if it didn't and the Wall was just retaining, delaying the cries for help from within, it would already be to late.
I ran. Not in the Wall's direction but towards the edge of the village. Towards one of the last houses I knew was inhabitated.
Pinkie and Cheerilee behind me, screaming my name, I trudged my way through the snow and the late winter sleet that had started falling.
Forward, forward, forward to that house, and its last occupant. Diligent, timely, unexpendable like me.
Though it was late, the window curtains of the first floor still let out a slit of a light. And so, I punched at the door, my pastern shooting with hot pain at the blow.
Scrambling and crashing sounds rose inside as I drummed at the wood and hooves quickly trotted to the door.
"Derpy," I called out. "It's Mayor Mare. Open, please."
I fell in, shared my suspicions about the Wall while Pinkie and Cheerilee finallly caught up to me and crossed the doorframe uninvited.
Pinkie provided papers from her mane, Cheerilee pens from her coat, myself words to deliver... and Derpy, her wings.
"This is for Celestia and none other," I huffed, fighting to catch my breath. "I'm sorry for being brusque, but this is urgent."
Derpy read the missive quickly her eyes growing wide or squinting line after line.
"This is crazy talk, Mayor," she protested.
I looked to my pockets for the book, but it wasn't there. I hissed air through my teeth, ready to swear about forgetting the book back at the Wall. Until Pinkie presented it to me, with a smile.
"Look," I said, showing the last page and the half finished message. "Somepony is writing to us, for us."
"And this cursive," Cheerilee confessed and we all turned to her.
My love sniffled, rubbing her cheek now covered with tears. Sadness was fighting happiness and was losing.
"I know who’s writing."