//------------------------------//
// Hydrogen 
// Story: Memory of Forever 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

After eternities vast enough to require multiple exponents to express, a new sunrise came to Saddle's End.

It didn't exist in the strictly physical sense—but by volume, simulated spaces had once outstripped the real ones by many orders of magnitude. But they were gone now, sleeping as once Saddle's End had slept.

A star rose in the sky, a G-type main sequence that bathed the small community in warmth and life once more. Birds began to sing, heralding the sunrise as though a trillion trillion trillion years had not passed since the last one. It was all relative here—time was a matter of perception. From Saddle's End, one day had followed the next just like the infinity of time before it.

One by one, the ponies woke, knowing nothing of their long sleep. Bread Basket, the baker, tossed a few cords of wood into the oven before mixing the dough for his morning pastries. Young Chase galloped along the ocean path, her saddlebags laden with newspapers freshly printed in Canterlot.

Canterlot didn't exist anymore, in the strictest sense. But they all knew that. Even if they couldn't visit, it was good to be connected to their history.

Nopony felt like Saddle's End was a small town anymore, even if it had only two streets and a few dozen residents. It was good to live somewhere where everypony knew everypony else. Life was stable, predictable.

Chase reached the strange house at the end of the lane, the one made of semitransparent crystal like so many old memories. There was a mail slot, and she lifted the paper from her mouth, intending to slot it in. 

Of course, the one who lived here wouldn't read it, but that didn't matter. It was the principle of the thing, to get her paper delivered to everypony in town. 

But today, something was different. A pony stood outside the front door, shifting uneasily on pale hooves, wings opening and closing nervously as she lifted one hoof to the handle, then lowered it again. 

"Somethin' wrong, Sunny?" Chase asked. Of course she knew the pony's name. She knew everypony's name. But Sunny was a special kind of pony—their first friend? She didn't quite remember. It was important, but not as important as getting her papers delivered on time.

"No. I mean... yes? Probably not." She spun, wings spreading to her either side in a nervous tic she'd displayed for at least a trillion years now. Chase didn't know exactly. Time beyond the current day mattered little to her anymore. "I can take today's paper. She'll probably want to read it."

It wasn't that Chase didn't trust her—she knew everypony in the world, and was probably friends with them by some definition of that word. But there weren't many she would trust to do the delivery in her stead. Sunny Skies happened to be one of them.

"Here. No point bringing it in for her, though. She's been asleep for constellations, Sunny. I barely remember the last time we talked."

It was so long ago, so long that Saddle's End wasn't even the only town in Equestria. The mare had moved here from somewhere, to set up her observatory. She hadn't grown up like so many others, that was clear. But she didn't stay part of the community, either.

"This time is different," Sunny said. The pegasus caught the paper in her wings, tucking it into the satchel she wore. "I'm waking her up. I mean—I'm supposed to wake her up."

"Oh," Chase said. Everypony will want to know about this. Something new would be even more interesting than her latest paper. She could imagine what Red and Windsail would think. And old Professor Dyson up on the hill, hadn't he hated this mare? The look on his face would be worth a million years of newspaper salary! "Do you want help waking her up, Sunny? Do you want somepony else there?"

The pegasus plainly did—she could see that from her expression well enough. The way she kept her wings half open like that, nudging slightly closer. But ultimately she retreated from Chase, towards the door. "I don't think she remembers you very well. But we're old friends, she'll know me. I'm sure you'll see her around soon."

Chase had already stayed a little too long. If she didn't make it to the end of the lane within the next few minutes, old nag Truffle would make her grumpy way to the mailbox and find it empty. Then she'd be hearing about it every day for the next thousand years at least.

Still, she couldn't help but chance one last question, even as she turned back towards the road. "What's the occasion, Sunny Skies? What's different about today?"

Sunny relaxed at the question, grinning. Something familiar and technical was exactly the realm she was most comfortable. Being the sum total of all knowledge and every lifetime in the universe was hard. "Saddle's End has to go somewhere, and she's the pony who will take us."

This was enough of an answer for Chase, who turned back to the path and her more familiar pattern. This would make for quite the stir in Saddle's End, and soon. She would have the special pressure of spreading that information. It didn't matter that Sunny's words didn't precisely make sense. They often didn't, but everypony in Saddle's End could always assume she knew what she was talking about.

Sunny Skies waited until the newspaper pony had made her way down the lane, and rounded the corner out of sight. She didn't knock on the door—there was nopony currently alive to answer. But there would be, in a moment. 

She walked in, or maybe through the door. There was nopony watching her at that precise moment to be sure.

Resources were scarce at the end of the universe, and even storing more for simulation had an appreciable impact over the incalculable eternities that had passed. There was no furniture, only a raised cot in the center of the room. The light caught it, near sunrise and sundown, enough to let the silhouette of the pony atop it shine through to those outside.

This monument was one of the little mysteries of Saddle's End. Not meant to be solved—those with that ambition were long gone. But of those few creatures who remained, all were satisfied by a sense of appreciation for things greater than themselves. This pony was a hint at things they didn't know.

But it was not a coffin, or a mausoleum. “Death” had not survived as a concept with any meaning. It was just a bed, though the pony within had slept on it many orders of magnitude longer than the lifetimes of the largest black holes. 

She wasn't much to look at. Not young for a pony, but not old either. A simple unicorn, with a coat of multihued pink and a white and blue mane. It was cut short, a style that had come and gone from fashion a few quintillion times. Her expression was still twisted into discomfort—pain greater than most in Saddle's End had known for lifetimes. This was a creature of an earlier age, a brighter one. 

And a darker one, too.

She slept until this final moment, when Sunny made her way up to the bed, and nudged her with her muzzle. 

"Wake up, Spellsong. You have work to do."