//------------------------------// // Act III // Story: Foals // by Regidar //------------------------------// “Your memories fade, like looking through a fogged mirror...” -MGMT “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” -Carl Sagan “But why though? Why should I leave them behind? Even though they’re in my head, they’re real to me!” -Anon The sky knight rode his trusty cloud dragon stead as they clashed against the smoke fiend. A large gash was torn into the sky as the knight’s sword slashed. The smoke fiend lashed out at them, but they were quick. The cloud dragon dodged the raking claws of the smoke fiend. Then, the whole scene was decimated by a hoofball clonking Pound Cake in the head. “Hey, Pound, watch it! Stay off the field while we’re playing!” Pound Cake didn’t find it fair that he was the one who had to leave. He had been their since earlier that Saturday morning, staring at the clouds, imagining the battles all day. Then, they showed up to play a late afternoon hoofball game, and forced him off of his favorite imagining place. That wasn’t fair to him... The pegasus was now thirteen years old, and in Middle School. He would be off to Highschool next year. Whoopy. His parents had been disappointed in his disinterest in athletics. That’s what pegasi were supposed to do. they were supposed to be all rough-and-tumble, preparing themselves for a life as a weather controller, or some other job focused heavily in flying. They were not supposed to be writers, poets, painters, or dreamers. Pound Cake guessed he had let his parents down there. Heading back home, he recorded the events of what happened in the sky throughout the day in his journal. This wasn’t the original that Twilight had given him so long ago, but rather the thirteenth one he had gone through. He embellished some points, and downtuned others. Finally, after a few minutes of viscous scribblings, he was ready to work on paints. Taking a brush in his mouth, he got ready to paint the scene of the sky battle. just as his brush touched the paper, something most peculiar happened. His inspiration vanished. He blinked, confused. What had just happened? The image was so clear in his mind, but now, it was murky, tainted, lost... he tried desperately to recall what had been there just moments earlier... It was gone. Pound Cake ran, terrified, to his journal. He scanned through it, reading over the details. But he just couldn’t manage to bring back up the image of what he had before. The confused and lost pegasus had never encountered this before... his own world, the one he saw... it was slowly draining from him, everywhere he looked. Where he used to see whole civilizations, a garden merely filled its place. Old manors with sinister characters simply became rundown, empty houses. The clouds... Oh no. Not the clouds too. He took flight, soaring into the clouds, frantically searching for what had been their before. It began to rain, as though the world itself knew that his inspiration was gone, its twin imagined by the pegasus dying and fading. At the back of his mind, he knew the weather ponies were making it rain, because they were on a schedule, not because he was losing his world. Pound Cake alighted atop of a cloud, and cried himself to sleep. He awoke to be still on the same cloud, but he wasn’t alone any longer. A grey pegasus with a cockeye was staring down at him. Pound Cake recognized her as the mailmare. She had been showing up at Sugarcube Corner every Sunday to deliver the mail, even though the post was supposed to come on Saturdays. “What do you want?” The pegasus didn’t answer his question. Instead, she kept looking him over, observing him. Pound Cake felt a bit awkward. “Right, um, so I’ll just-” “You’re different.” The mare’s voice was soft, like somepony blowing bubbles, if that was even possible. It was calming, and soothing. It seemed to have an undertone too, like somepony had changed it from something else. Pound Cake didn’t know how to react to this. All he could do was stare back into her derped expression. He could see sadness, happiness, and a mishmash of countless other emotions in those eyes. She opened her mouth, and spoke. “Even when you think your world has ended, it hasn’t. It’s just hiding, like the sun does behind the clouds during a rainstorm. Don’t let anypony try to change you from what you really are, Pound Cake. It’s great to be different.” The mare put her hoof on Pound Cake’s shoulder, and he could feel a surge of energy as the word seemed to brighten, and change. He looked down, not to see Ponyville, but instead a volcano just about to erupt, which changed to an arctic tundra, then to a tropical beach. Best of all, when he looked back at the clouds off in the east where the sun rose, he could see it again. The beauty which lay beyond, somehow out of reach. The colt looked back at the mailmare, who smiled. “Everything’s magic.” The grey mare flew away, off to deliver some mail, Pound Cake assumed. Looking back down, he saw Sugarcube Corner, but he could feel the inspiration coursing through him. He swooped down into a window of his room. He had a painting to make.